Capture My Heart (BK3: Niall Horan)

-Ch 45: Lovely.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: Lovely.

Niall Horan:

Raising my arms and placing them behind my head, I sighed in some kind of despondent desperation as I watched Ashley poking and prodding at the almost perfect ‘mess’ she’d spent hours teasing her hair into. My mind had been very much succumb with thoughts, guilt trips and worry that hadn’t really made it to anything verbal, nor managed to trace back to anything or anyone that wasn’t her and her web of complexity that she wove thicker and thicker each day.

“I just don’t understand why it hasn’t snowed, it’s cold enough for me to keep freezer items in the garden.” The not so intellectual words spoken in her very intellectual voice brought me a little back to the surface from the pond of complications I’d begun to sink into. She was very good at throwing in her fishing hook and dragging me back out when I got so close to saying something half impressive but probably more worrying than she would like.

“I thought you didn’t even want it to snow.” I mumbled quietly half lapsed under my breath, folding my left leg over my right I shuffled around the pillows and tried to sink further into the mattress.  After a full, long day at work she was in a surprisingly good mood, which was not to say she was usually in a bad one, there was just something particular about how happy she seemed. It should have made me happy too, and it did a little, but the other things were outweighing matching her good mood.

“I didn’t, but I think I do now. It’ll feel a bit more like it’s going to be Christmas soon, and it’s really pretty to look at, you know, from inside.” She smoothed her hands over her dress that reached her knee; we were going to her works Christmas party tonight. I had commented that it was too early for a Christmas party, and was originally not going to go, but that only earned me a financial speech about why it was partially early, so it had been better to just agree.

“Well, you better hope it snows soon then instead of right over Christmas.”

“Why?”

I shrugged, fiddling my thumb over the sleeve of my jacket. Ashley had assisted me in making my hair look like I hadn’t just rolled out of bed, but now I literally was going to be rolling out of bed, and I could feel her comment about that on the horizon. “Flights and stuff.”

She went a little quieter now, the cherry pigmented lipstick she had on disappearing as she moved her lips over each other, looking away from me and back to the mirror. We’d spent at least two hours like this, me lead here while she spent painstaking concentration on her appearance. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t annoy me a little bit.

I had expected her to carefully continue the conversation, but instead she turned to me with a bit of determination in her face, and said with only a little bit of hurt, “You don’t want to go, do you? I shouldn’t have asked you to come; it isn’t really your thing. Stay here, I won’t stay there for that long.”

“Of course I do, don’t be silly.” I reassured, but it was more to myself than to her.

“Well what’s the matter then? You’ve barely said anything since I got home. Did something happen?”

I wanted to roll my eyes, but Ashley was a lot smarter than me, she’d pick up on that straight away and that would automatically launch us into some kind of tension that could not be resolved without sacrificing something else. “No, nothing’s the matter. Now are you ready to go? Is being fashionably late still a thing?”

“Niall.” It was that stern kind of Niall, the kind of Niall that told me this conversation wasn’t over and was nowhere near to being over until I spilled something. The kind of Niall that told me that all other plans and occupations were irrelevant until she was satisfied. Which was sweet in a way, but very much an inconvenience when you’re just a boyfriend that wants to get through the night without having some kind of highly strung and tense conversation.