13 versions of a heart // n.h. au

ii. joanna

Joanna, Joanna, Jo-anna. I loved to say her name over and over, roll it around on my tongue like it was a cigarette. Joanna had a bad habit of smoking – just a single cigarette, the night before her first final of the term. She'd go out on the terrace outside our dilapidated little garden flat and smoke it while I pretended not to notice. And when she was done with it, she'd crush it in the pot of geraniums her mum bought us when we moved in.

– Niall Horan, Girls I Loved, page 17

At home that night, Mim pulls the book out of her bag and sets it on the kitchen table next to a glass of wine she doesn't really want to drink. Wine makes her remember things she oughtn't, makes her wish for things she shouldn't. Like that she should've done something in the weeks leading up to the breakup, something to make Niall keep loving her, something to make him stay. It's pointless thinking like that, because there's nothing she could've done to make Niall stay. And even if he had, she'd begun to resent him. She'd begun to hate him for the pages and pages that he produced while she struggled to write a single verse in a week.

She runs her hand up the spine, imagining she can erase Niall's name with her fingertip. Then she opens the book and pulls the dust jacket off. The real cover of the book is fabric, navy blue, his name and the title etched into its surface in gold letters. Mim flips the book over and is confronted with a giant picture of Niall, the same one that greeted her at the bookstore today. So she opens to the front flap and reads the summary:

Niall Horan's debut novel is told by narrator James Camden, a young professional, in enlightened, brief prose reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway. Camden struggles to come to terms with his history of failed relationships as he encounters, once again, the girl he never really let go of. Is she a figment of his imagination, a dream girl crafted from bits and pieces of all the girls he's ever met, or is she real? Part thriller, part mystery, part love letter to nobody, Girls I Loved will sweep you away.

Mim amends the sentence in her head: And if it doesn't, you'll sweep it into the bin. She opens the book to the title page and flips past the dedication without reading it to the table of contents. Thirteen chapters, but Mim can only see seven on the first page. Each one is adorned with an epithet:

i. elizabeth

who wore perfume that smelled like plumeria

ii. joanna

who brushed her teeth three times a day to counteract all the coffee she drank

iii. katie

who always put her right shoe on before her left

iv. sarah

whose reading glasses always slipped off her nose

v. charlotte

who hated nicknames

vi. scarlett

who never wore red

vii. carolyn

who was never on time for anything

How romantic of Niall, to make up all of these girls and then make their quirks and embarrassing habits into little endearments. How absolutely adorable, how fucking sweet. Mim slams the book shut, narrowly missing her fingertip as she yanks it out of the way just in time. She doesn't want to see the rest of the list. She doesn't have to turn the page to confirm that her name isn't there.

But why should it be? She reminds herself that this is a novel. Just because she was the girl that Niall loved when he was writing it, the one from whom he drew most of his inspiration, doesn't mean she should expect to find herself inside. Just because she made him tea when he was up late writing, just because she put aside her own dissertation so that he could put his heart and soul into his – none of that is any reason to expect to find herself trapped between the pages of his book for all eternity.

Mim reaches for the wine glass and tips it back. She doesn't even like wine, not really, and this one is particularly bad. It's the cheapest one they had at the market when she stopped in on her way home from Joshy's birthday party. She needed something to wash away the bile that rose in her throat as she watched Cora slice up the cake and Harry pass out the pieces and little Josh sit on the ground with a plate in his lap and a fork in his hand, stuffing his face. Mim covets their happiness, eyes it with jealousy, but there's something about it, too, that disgusts her. It's too perfect, their little family. Cora and Harry have been together since uni, and it's always been so easy for them.

Mim's jealous of them, but here's the thing: she knows that even if she and Niall had made it, they'd never live a life like that. They're not have a baby at 22, get married at 23, move to the suburbs and never stop smiling all the while kind of people. Mim and Niall, they made things hard.

They always have. They never should've been a good match, but they were the only two who couldn't see it. Niall was loud: everything he did was loud. He moved loudly, ate loudly, laughed loudly, came loudly. And Mim back then, she was quiet. Mim tried to blend into walls, tried to make herself small. And Niall was the first person who didn't let her.

Jealousy's a bad look on you, Mim tells herself as she sets the empty wine glass in the sink. Nostalgia's a bad look on you.

Mim pulls her emergency cigarettes out of the drawer next to the sink and lets herself out onto the terrace. There's a plant out here, an old, wilted creeper vine that hasn't climbed anything in ages. Mim taps her ashes onto the plate next to its pot and listens to London at night.

As the lights go off one by one in the complex across the street, Mim considers her situation: she lives in the tiniest flat known to man, but she has a job that pays for it. Working for the Office of National Statistics is no dream job, but at least it pays. She hasn't written anything since Niall left her, but that's okay. She's a different person now. Now, she's somebody who doesn't need to rely on somebody else for validation. She doesn't need somebody else beside her to tell her that she's okay.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt sometimes, this loneliness. It hurts when she sees a couple holding hands as they stroll through Covent Garden eating ice cream; it hurts when she hears Joshy squeal in joy as Harry swings him through the air; and it hurts when she goes back inside and sees the book on the coffee table: Girls I Loved. The boys Mim's loved: there's only one.

Mim channels Cora and tells herself that Niall can't touch her here. He can't get in her mind unless she lets him. All those things she once thought about telling him, just so she could get a bit of closure, just so she could make him feel bad for what he did to her – he doesn't need to hear them. He lost her, and someday he'll realize that that's punishment enough.

At least that's what Cora would say.