“Thanks Sarah!” Kol said, taking off her apron, since her time in the soup kitchen was up. “I’ll be going now.”
“You take care now, poppet,” Sarah, the fifty-something year-old woman that was in charge of the kitchen, fondly gave her a hug. “Have fun yeah? How good it would be to be young again!”
“I’m sure you can still do what I do, Sarah,” Kol laughed.
She waved to the people in eating inside as she exited. A lot of them waved and smiled back at her. Most, if not all of them, asked for an autograph from her. Sarah had one of those Polaroid cameras that printed out photos instantly, and she generously photographed the people who wanted photos with Kol as well and gave them the Polaroid.
Kol took a cab because she decided not to bring her car around on New Year’s Eve, fearing the explosions of fireworks and just explosions in general potentially hitting her car.
The traffic was bad though, and by the time it took twenty minutes of being just on the same street, she paid her fee and decided to walk the rest of the way. The house she was going to wasn’t very far from here anyway.
Kol could walk the rest of the way.
Several times, she was stopped and recognized. She had to take photos and have a little bit of small talk, when all she really wanted was to get to her friends already. Kol may have been a nice person, but she could also get moods when she didn’t want to be approached by strangers.
Right now, there were a few guys, probably drinking already but not quite drunk, bumped into her on the way.
One of them instantly had his phone out, and from the looks of how long he was holding it up, he wasn’t just taking a photo. He was taking a video of it.
She had a picture with each one of them and she said, “See you later.”
Kol started walking, and to her irritation, they kept following her. She kept looking back, just wishing that they would leave her alone already. The guy still was taking a video even while they were walking and following.
“Hey Kol you want to have a drink with us and a couple of other friends?” one of them boldly said.
“Can you just say hi to the camera one more time?”
She looked over her shoulder and didn’t stop walking. Kol wasn’t at all worried if they could harm her. There were a lot of people still around, with it being a holiday, and there was traffic lined up, with people inside those cars. If there was a commotion, she would be sure someone would help her.
They kept saying her name and she decided to stop and turn around. “Sorry. It’s one of my few nights off.” Hoping that they would get the message, she started walking again. They still followed, still trying to talk to her.
She eventually just said, “See you later,” when one of them requested her to say something different. Kol got to the house right on time and went straight up the stairs. She knocked a few times and Luca, the owner of the house answered it.
“Hey Kol!” she said, kissing her cheek. She saw the group of guys still hovering near the stoop of the steps. “Are they bothering you?”
“They sort of followed me on the way here. I couldn’t shake them off,” she said, heading in and taking off her coat. “Sorry I brought them here Luca. I might get you in some trouble later when they’re even more drunk.”
“No it’s fine. I’ll just check in five minutes. If they’re still there, I’ll call the police,” Luca said. “I’m just glad that nothing happened to you. Why did you walk here in the first place?”
“The cars weren’t moving after ten minutes traveling from the soup kitchen, but it was close enough that I could walk,” Kol shrugged. “Are most of them here already?”
“Niall arrived about thirty minutes before you did, with the boys. They’ll be in the sitting room. I just need to go upstairs and check on Kenny. He’s feeling a bit under the weather and he might not be able to go with us.”
“Oh okay then. Tell him I said hi,” Kol said, proceeding to the room that Luca directed her to.
The people in the room all greeted her when she arrived. Some of them were already tipsy, but her boys seemed to still be sober and just had a pint in their hands.
She quickly sidled next to Niall and related to them what had just happened on the way here. Niall looked furious the longer she was saying her story.
“You want me to check if they’re still outside?” Liam offered. He was good at boxing, so if any of them were to get in a scrap, it was always useful to have Liam on their side. Harry wasn’t bad when it came to a good punch either.
“Stay here, Kol. Me and Liam will go out to see if they’re still there,” Niall said, standing up as Liam did the same.
“Oh don’t get into a fight if they still are,” Kol said in concern. “It’s New Year and they were just having a little fun. It’s not everyday you see someone you recognize just walking on the streets alone at night.”
“We’re not going to fight them, don’t worry,” Niall reassured her, disappearing into the hallway.
“I think you better have pepper spray with you all the time though, Kol,” Harry said, his brow furrowed. “You were lucky that they didn’t have the guts to do anything to you. You really shouldn’t think too much of how good people are and won’t do anything bad to you. You keep forgetting that these guys have probably wanked to you or might have stalked you like that Chaz guy.”
“Hey, Chaz was a sweetie,” Kol said, defending that stalker of hers. “And boys are different. They’re not as possessive as the girls are of you guys.”
“We’re just worried about you, is all,” Zayn said, drinking another bit from his pint.
Liam and Niall went back into the room. Niall had that angry, stony look on his face again. Kol got up and went in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Well, they left now,” Liam said. “I just said that this was a private residence and I could call the police and have them arrested for loitering. I don’t know if that was true, but that seemed to scare them away.”
“If anything happened to you…” Niall said, putting an arm around her neck and smelling her hair. “I can’t even leave you alone at night without some guys hitting on you.”
Liam sat back on the seat that he had abandoned.
“Can I talk to you in the hall in private?” Niall asked Kol, jerking his head to the direction of the hallway.
“Yeah sure.” Kol figured that he wanted to talk about this in private. She was probably going to get in trouble for walking here alone at night. It wasn’t safe for a girl to go walking around with drunk people on the streets on New Year’s Eve, much less the girl being Kol Vicencio.
Niall was sort of frustrated with how dense Kol was sometimes. The guys probably had some sense not to do anything to her, since she was famous and she was more trouble than it would be worth if they decided to go for her. Kol failed to see that there were some guys that didn’t think like this though, and would kill to even just meet her, and maybe be her cherry popper regardless of the consequences they would get.
“What made you think it was a good idea to walk here?” Niall said, standing in front of her. At this point, she had the wall behind her and blocking her way. He even had his elbow leant on the wall near her shoulder, so he was leaning forward.
“There were a lot of people anyway. It was safe to walk,” she said defensively.
“Alone?” Niall said, making it sound like that was the obvious signal that she shouldn’t have walked alone. “Kol, you have the money to pay for the cab even if there was a bit of traffic. Why couldn’t you wait?”
“I wanted to see you guys already and it wasn’t too far from where we already were,” she said. She knew why he was telling her off. He was only concerned, but it was annoying how he wouldn’t see her side and why she thought it was okay.
“You always seem to forget you’re Kol Vicencio,” Niall said in weariness. “You’re a celebrity to them. You’re famous.”
“I’m not a celebrity,” she said. “I’m just a normal person with my job being that I’m photographed and people just see it. I’m not any better than them.”
“I know that, Kol,” Niall said. He understood it too. He even said in one of his interviews that he never put on disguises because he didn’t think himself a celebrity. If he thought himself a celebrity, then that meant he had an ego. Right now though, he was concerned about her. “You could’ve asked me to pick you up. What if you got mobbed? What if they crowded around you or something?”
She didn’t think about that. She wasn’t usually the one getting mobbed. It was usually Niall. She was just used to girls tittering in excitement seeing her though, what with her being Niall Horan’s girlfriend.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you,” she said, looking down at the floor. He too her chin and made her look into his eyes.
“Okay. Just…next time, please keep yourself safer. It’s bad enough that guys think it’s okay to approach you and ask for hugs even though you have me,” Niall said. “Just like on that Jerry show, and I was right there in front of them.”
“I knew that it bothered you!” Kol said, grinning. Niall had said after that interview that he didn’t think much of it, since it was a normal thing to see. It was just like how he always had hugs from girls and he said ‘I love you’s’ to them.
“Of course it did. They had their arms and hands all over you and I was just ten feet away,” Niall said, straightening up. “Now let’s head out with the others to the pub. It’s almost eleven and it’s New Year’s Eve and I want my New Year’s kiss to be perfect when it hits 12AM.”
“Or you can have one early right now,” Kol said, tilting her head up and putting her mouth on his.