Lights (Niall Horan)

forty-six

Anna Holden

"Well, one good thing came out of that phone call." I tell Harry sarcastically, handing him back his phone and blinking back tears. "Now we know Niall hates you."

"I already knew that, actually." He mutters, playing with the visor in the rented Honda. "Don't I have some extra sunglasses? Anywhere?"

I stay silent, mulling over Niall's words in my head.

He's such a wreck.

I've never come close to this side of him.

But everyone has a dark side, and it's up to them if they decide to show it.

His cold, unfeeling words cause me to find myself deathly afraid of Niall. They make me wish he had slapped me in the face instead of saying those words.

Sure, he wasn't talking to me, but it felt so hateful, so foreign, that I couldn't imagine those words otherwise.

"But it's okay, you can wear mine." Harry talks to himself, pulling an extra pair from his jean pocket and placing them in my lap.

"Do you always have to be so secretive?" I blurt, just to fill the silence, and pull them over my eyes.

The glasses make the world seem a lot dimmer, in all the wrong ways. Instead of sunlight, I see dark shadows, and instead of a clear blue sky, I see murky, dirty water.

"Uh... Yes." Harry replies dully, merging onto the highway and hitting the pedal with full force.

"I'm sorry... That was a stupid question." I mutter, staring past him and out the car window.

There are two vans following us in the rearview mirror, even after Harry did some tricky manevers, and I sink back down in the passenger seat, exhausted.

I'm not cut out for this.

There is no way I would be able to do this for my entire life:  dodging paparazzi and watching out for everything I do.

But Harry seems like he knows what he's doing:  highly equipped for emergencies at every turn.

I will never be like Harry, so detached from the entire world and attatched to all the right things in life: friends, family, and happiness.

Fame would certainly drive me into insanity.

It already kind of has.

And I'm not even famous.

But people know who I am, all because of five famous boys who decided to give me their phone numbers.

It started out as a casual, friendly gesture, then turned into so much more. We've gotten to the point where we trust each other with everything; ranging from secrets to favorite pizza toppings.

But at the same time, there is so much I haven't told them, and there is so much they haven't told me.

Sometimes it seems like we're not as close as we used to be, all because I stopped dating Niall. Our conversations get pretty awkward quickly, but it's not due to fear that they think I'm going to hit on them next.

It's because they know about the pain I caused Niall.

And that's probably the worst part, them knowing full well that I would take back every single word spoken if I could.

I take a deep breath and sink lower in my seat so that my head is rested uncomfortably in the crack between the window and the head cushion, the final conclusion suddenly striking my mind.