They say that social media is both a blessing and a curse. To Kelsey, this statement had never been more true.
With the release of his newest single, "Put A Little Love On Me", Niall had spent weeks traveling around the world, doing all sorts of promotion. Including plenty of pap shots with Krystal. At the start of the promotional run, Becca, her resident aspiring entertainment journalist, had introduced Kelsey to both the blessing and the curse of Niall Horan fan accounts. In some lapse of good judgement, Kelsey had followed such accounts on Instagram, resulting in a flood of Niall pictures daily. Although she loved to see pictures of Niall when he was out and about promoting, it was his other companion who she was less than thrilled about seeing.
Niall had been good about preventing Kelsey from being caught off-guard. Whenever he was set to make an appearance with Krystal he gave her a heads up, letting her know exactly where and what they'd been papped doing. And he was always right, with those pictures popping up on the internet later in the day.
Kelsey had quickly learned that social media was not ideal when you were watching a guy you were see date another girl in front of the camera. She soon discovered that the best way to move past the fact that Niall lived a completely different life in person than he did with her was to simply avoid social media. If she didn't see it, she didn't have to think about all the comments saying how perfect Krystal and Niall were together. She didn't have to be reminded that she wasn't getting to walk the red carpet with him or hold his hand as he walked through crowds on the way to his hotel for the night. She could, quite honestly, pretend that Krystal didn't exist.
But today, Kelsey was particularly bored laying on the couch. She'd had a long shift at The Manhattan the night before, and she'd decided that today was just going to be a day of relaxation. Niall was coming over later this evening and until then, she had nothing to do but rewatch old Grey's Anatomy episodes.
So when she picked up her phone and the glowing purple and pink icon of the Instagram app caught her eye, calling out to her on the bright lit screen, she couldn't help but click on it. Because what harm would a little mindless social media scrolling do?
She almost didn't recognize what it was when she first scrolled past it. A blingy new ring seemed to be a weekly occurrence for at least one of her friends. But then it hit her. Like all of a sudden she'd been hit by a bus.
Kelsey looked at the ring again. It wasn't small by any means. It's exactly the one they'd admired on Pinterest boards for years in college. It's the same one they'd looked at in jewelry cases at the mall just for fun. But when they had done all those things, Kelsey never would have imagined that the giver of that ring would be him. But then again, there's a lot of things that a year ago she never would have imagined happening.
Kelsey swiped left and there he is. His smile bright and his eyes crinkled on the sides like they used to when Kelsey made him laugh. His face pushed up against hers showing off the ring in her hand. Kelsey felt sick to her stomach. A year ago, Jessica was trying to get hints from Sam as to when he was going to propose to Kelsey and now...Jessica and Sam are engaged.
Her eyes become fixated on the photo. A picture that less than a year ago likely would have consisted of her face instead of Jessica's. Staring at it felt like Kelsey was holding her hand over an open flame; but yet, she couldn't seem to bring her eyes away from it.
She thought about the night at the beginning of senior year, when Sam had walked in on her dabbing her eyes at a wedding video on Youtube. He'd laughed at her at first, wondering how she could possible be growing so tearful from watching a video of two complete strangers. But then he'd crawled into bed beside her and clicked replay and they'd watched it all over again, this time with his arms wrapped around hers and her head resting on his broad chest.
"How're you going to make it through our wedding without crying if you can't make it through this babe? You know I'm gonna write vows a million times better than those," He'd said with a grin; the one where his eyes crinkled on the sides.
They'd spent the rest of the night critiquing the weddings of complete strangers. Laughing, crying, deciding that when they got married it would be in the fall because that's when the leaves were the prettiest and the air was cool enough that Sam wouldn't sweat through his tux, and that if they were going to have to have cake at their wedding (for tradition of course) it was going to be red velvet, because that was the only kind Kelsey would eat. Kelsey had warned Sam that when he proposed it better have meaning. It had to incorporate some piece of their relationship. Something that showed the journey they'd had together. No crazy flash mobs or impromptu dance numbers allowed.
And that's what really got her: thinking about the proposal she'd always dreamed about. She hadn't thought about Sam this hard in months. She'd said she had moved on, that he meant nothing to her anymore. But her she was sitting on her couching, staring at his stupid, crinkle-eyed smile and remembering every stupid little detail of the fairytale romance they'd planned out. And that almost stung more than him cheating on her with her best friend. Almost.
The tears began to swell in Kelsey's eyes, but she tried to hold them back. The last thing either of those backstabbers deserved was a single ounce of liquid to be shed in their name. Because she was happy right? She'd moved on.
Kelsey tried to scroll, as fast as she can to get to something, anything but the picture of her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend happily engaged. It was only bad luck that she would happen to land on a picture from one of the Niall fan accounts, but this time, instead of a charming photo of Niall it's a picture that had been manipulated into a wedding photo of Kelsey and Niall. Taunting her as if Niall is just the next man on her list to lose to someone else.
Kelsey threw her phone to the other side of the couch where it lands with a thud. She didn't want to look at it. She didn't want to think about Sam and Jessica. She didn't want to think about Niall and Krystal. Was this what her life was coming to? Always being the other woman?
So Kelsey did the only logical thing she can think of. She grabbed a bottle of cheap Moscato from its place on the top of the refrigerator and pours herself a glass. And then another. Until slowly, she started to feel numb.
*******************
Niall could tell something was wrong the second he walks into Kelsey's apartment. He spotted the empty bottle of wine before he spotted her, laying on the couch with a bag of popcorn and The Notebook playing on the TV. He knew a woman with an empty bottle and The Notebook was almost never a good sign.
Becca cleared her throat loudly as Niall entered, gesturing for him to come towards her. He slowly crept towards her, his brain racing through trying to think of what he may have done that would have sent Kelsey into such a downward spiral.
Becca didn't say anything to Niall. Instead, she held up the same photo that Kelsey came across hours before. To Niall, it looked like just another engagement photo at first glance. But judging by the way Kelsey was laying on the couch like she just went through a bad break-up, he could put the pieces together of whose engagement this was. It had to be Sam's, the guy that broke her heart.
Niall didn't know much about Sam other than the obvious. But judging by the empty wine bottle sitting on the glass coffee table, there was a lot more to the story than Kelsey has ever let on.
"She's probably nowhere near as perfect as you," Niall said as he slides onto the couch next to her. He hoped his words would give her some consolation, a little reminder that she was far better than any girl her ex-boyfriend could be engaged to.
But Kelsey's eyes didn't fill with relief or reassurance. Instead they shifted towards the floor as words are muttered from Kelsey's mouth that Niall never saw coming. "She was my best friend."
Niall turned his head to look towards Becca for confirmation of this new revelation. Kelsey's best friend engaged to her ex-boyfriend was a more complicated story than he initially thought, and it definitely explained the messy state that she seemed to be in. But Becca has seemingly vanished, leaving Niall to pry the details from an intoxicated Kelsey all on his own.
"I..." Niall wasn't sure what to say. Should he ask for more details in hopes that maybe with more information he can provide some comfort to her that it would all be okay? Or does asking questions just bring up old wounds, wounds that in the few months that Niall had known Kelsey, she had kept hidden? Should he instead keep quiet, knowing that she would tell him in time if she wanted to?
Niall didn't have to make a decision though because shockingly, for both Niall and Kelsey, she began to speak. "They'd never really been close you know, in fact when Sam and I first started dating, Jess hated him."Once the words left Kelsey's lips she couldn't take them back. It was like the wine has opened a gateway into her inner monologue and Niall was about to hear it all, whether she wanted him to or not.
"I was hopelessly in love. The butterflies in my stomach, heads in the clouds kind of love. And I thought Sam was too. There was never a bone in my body that doubted his love for me," Kelsey said slowly, and Niall can sense the ache in her voice even with all the alcohol.
Niall didn't say anything, instead watching as Kelsey shifted her gaze from the window to her nails, bringing her fingers to pick at the edges as she began to speak. "It was a few weeks into second semester. I'd been studying non-stop for the LSAT, partially because it was two days away and mostly because after the news of my parents divorce I needed something, anything to get my mind off of things. I'd told Sam I'd be in the library all weekend studying. But I felt guilty that we hadn't spent much time together recently. So I decided I'd surprise him. It would make both of us happy, giving me a much needed break from studying and him some extra time with me that he'd been complaining about missing out on." Kelsey paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. "And so I went to his apartment, all dressed up. He didn't answer the door when I knocked, and I figured he was either sleeping or listening to music, neither of which was abnormal for him."
Kelsey noticed that her voice was beginning to shake. It's the first time that she'd told the story, the whole story, to anyone out loud. Niall seemed to sense her hesitance, reaching his hand to grasp hers, and offering a reassuring squeeze.
"So I let myself in," Kelsey continued. "And I walked to his bedroom, pushed open his door and found my best friend naked on top of him." The image still bore through Kelsey's mind. The guy dropping, chest stabbing feeling she'd had that day lingering now. "Nothing prepared me for that. Nothing prepared me for finding my best friend on top of my boyfriend." Kelsey looked at Niall, her eyes beginning to water.
"Sometimes I wonder, what would have happened if I had not just let myself in. Would I have found out some other way? Or would I still be living in ignorant bliss, working my ass off in law school while he fucked her on the weekends?" Kelsey spat.
"And the worst thing of all was that he knew what I was going through with my parents," her voice grew more angry. "He knew how fragile I had become, how much distrust I had in love. And then he went and shattered me while I was already broken. I couldn't come back from that, not for my LSAT that Monday, not for anything."
Kelsey began to sniffle, wiping a stray tear that had escaped from her eye with the pad of her finger. Niall instinctively wrapped his arm around her shoulders, bringing her towards his chest and rubbing her back in a smooth, rhythmic motion. They stayed like that for a moment, Niall not sure what he could possibly stay and Kelsey still trying to find her words while keeping her emotions in check.
"I searched the deepest corners of my mind for some red flag I missed, some sign that they'd been doing this all along, that I'd just been oblivious to their love. I spent nights laying awake running through every moment I'd spent with the two of them for any signs of attractions, I tried to recall every time that Sam had been late to answering my texts or hadn't let me know where he was. But I couldn't find anything, I still can't find anything," Kelsey said with frustration.
"But now," she began sitting up and wiping her eyes once again. "Now, they are engaged and that's the end of that," she smiled, but it's a smile Niall can see right through. It was one of those smiles you used to try to mask the fact that you were an emotional wreck. The kind that you think might make yourself feel better even though you feel like absolute shit. Those smiles never worked, and it didn't work for Kelsey in that moment either.
The truth of the matter was, whether Kelsey was ready to admit it or not, the roles of those two people, arguably the two most important people in her life just over a year ago, was over. There would be no glorious scene where Kelsey rushed into their wedding, shouting that this was a mistake and Sam suddenly realizing that it was Kelsey he had loved all along. Similarly, there would be no scene where Jessica came begging for forgiveness from Kelsey, and Kelsey would accept, realizing that what Jessica and Sam had was unlike anything Kelsey and him could have hoped for.
Kelsey began to think that maybe this utter despair, this feeling of rock bottom, this ache in her chest like her wounds were reopened, would catapult her into a place of healing. A new journey. Or maybe now she noticed all the scars she'd been holding onto for so long. Maybe her wounds were still there, and maybe this was simply making her realize just how fragile she was. Nothing in her life was certain. She didn't have her career path solidified, she didn't have her family, and did she really even have Niall? Or was that just a mirage as well?
"What are we doing?" Kelsey said suddenly.
"What do you mean Kels?" Niall asked, taken aback by the sudden change in subject.
"I mean what are WE doing?" Kelsey said again, gesturing between the two of them. "What are we Niall? Just messing around for the fun of it? It's not like we can ever be something with all this sneaking around." Kelsey didn't intend for her words to come out so harsh, but it was what she was thinking. It was what she questioned to herself every time she came across a photo of Niall and Krystal.
"We're getting to know each other Kelsey. We both agreed to take things slow, and you know I like you. I really like you..." Niall looked at Kelsey, his brows furrowed. "Is this because of the engagement?"
"Yes. No. I don't know," Kelsey threw her head into her hands. "I just," she paused again, her mind searching for the right words.
"I just think about how I'll never be able to post a photo of us snuggling on the couch, or how we can never go out to dinner or walk on the beach hand in hand. And I just wonder if this is even something. Or is this just us being stupid and foolish and thinking that this can go somewhere with all these limitations stacked upon us." Kelsey feels her cheeks begin to grow wet. Again. It had got to be the wine, because Kelsey didn't feel sad about this. She felt frustrated.
"And god, I just have this idea in my head that keeps playing over and over. And all I see is you and her and you telling me that you realized it wasn't all fake with her," she let out, her voice beginning to crack. She didn't know if she could do it. She wasn't sure she was strong enough to find herself in the position of the other woman once again.
"Kels," Niall said softly, running his fingers through her hair. There was a phrase on the tip of his tongue. I phrase that involved the word falling and was almost as terrifying to Niall as being trapped in a small space for hours on end. So he pushed the words away, instead taking the tip of his finger and wiping a stray tear from Kelsey's eyes.
"You've went through a lot today, you're hurting. And honestly, I don't know if anything I can say right now is going to make you feel better. But all I can tell you is that I would never hurt you in the way that they hurt you okay? And this thing we are doing? This is more real than anything I've ever had. Okay?" he looked into her eyes, they're red and puffy, but they were still the most beautiful things he'd ever laid eyes on.
"Okay," Kelsey replied. It was no answer. It was no solution to all her doubts and fears. But for tonight, and for her wine-influenced mind, it was what Kelsey needed to lay her head on Niall's shoulder and drift off to sleep.