Niall's Girl

Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty Two

Turns out we weren't even headed straight to the United States, we touched down in Mexico for the first two nights of the North American leg of the tour. We all bundled off the small plane and into the airport, half-asleep or, in Louis' case, half-drunk.

"Right guys," Paul Higgins said as we were bustled into another VIP lounge, "there's loads of fans here so we're just sorting out a safe way to get you through. Until then, stay here okay?" There were a few nods and 'yep's. Zayn was already asleep on a sofa with his head resting on Perrie's shoulder, which was so god damn adorable an actual 'aww' left my mouth. Perrie looked up at the sound, and sent me a friendly smile. I grinned back, in awe of the gorgeous singer. New girl-crush alert.

Louis had also collapsed down on a chair to sleep, Harry was over at the other end of the room with Lou Teasdale and I had no idea where Liam was. I hadn't even met him yet. So when Niall went to go to the bathroom, I was left on my own. I flopped down on a black leather sofa in the corner and did what any teenage girl would do in this situation - get out her phone so it looked like she was popular. I sent Ben a quick text to say I was in Mexico, and he quickly replied to tell me to buy him some Doritos. I wasn't sure if that was racist or not, so I ignored it. In a burst of boredness, I opened the twitter app. My profile loaded and I smiled at the fact that my icon was still Niall's floating head on a rainbow background. I scrolled through my timeline absentmindedly before I finally registered what the hysteria was about. It was about me.

Photos had been uploaded of Niall and I making our way into the airport, and although he only had grabbed hold of my arm, rumours were flying left right and centre.

'She's Niall's fiancée #engaged #confirmed'

'they have been dating for months'

'she's not even that pretty #niallsgirlfriend'

I raised my eyebrows at that, but it didn't hurt that much. They were just overreacting because they were worried Niall was off the market; I would be joining in if I wasn't the girl Niall was rumoured with. The main thing that worried me was magazines and online journalists and things like that catching wind of this. On the photos they had of us at the airport my face couldn't even really be seen. But what happened when they did get my face on camera? My parents would find out I was hanging out on tour with a boyband, my friends would find out, I would surely get sent so much hate. I wasn't looking forward to that.

I continued scrolling. To my surprise, other photos suddenly emerged. The photo had obviously been zoomed but even through the grainy camera you could tell the two people were Niall and I. His Range Rover was in the background and I suddenly recognised the car park to belong to the bowling alley we had visited when he was at my house. Worse than that, though, was that we were holding hands. And now the fandom really was freaking out because it obviously seemed like something a couple would do.

Niall stunned me by sitting down next because I hadn't heard him approach.

"Whatcha doin'?" He said, scooting closer to me so he could peer over my shoulder to see my phone. "Oh shit." He said bluntly when he saw the hundreds of comments about us together. He snatched the iPhone from my hand and started scrolling down the timeline. He spotted the photos and when he saw the one from the bowling alley he frowned and leaned down closer to the screen as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He turned to me searching my face with his eyes as if for confirmation that this was really happening but I just nodded, my face emotionless. I didn't know what to say or what to think because I didn't know what Niall felt about it. He looked back to the phone and just kept scrolling. His face started turning a bit red and he looked... well, pissed off, to put it plainly.