Broken (a Niall Horan love story)

Chapter 20

***Navaeh’s P.O.V.***

My head was swimming with things that I should’ve said to Niall before I left; things that would’ve made him see how wrong he was about all of this. He was-in fact-wrong about this. Why’d he have to be such a downer about it too? I mean, gosh, I don’t hear those words from anyone, and was it wrong to want to believe that Cody actually meant them. He seemed like a nice guy, and it wasn’t as if he was trying to jump my bones. But of course Niall just had to assume that Cody was like ‘every other boy’.

I let my shoes scrape across the side walk while I made my way down to the park. I wasn’t going to go home yet; I hated that place with a passion even if my step father wasn’t there to torment me. For tonight, I would just sit at the park until it was time to go back. Maybe I would sit on the swings for a little while…

After finding a bench and plopping down on it, I rubbed at my temples while letting out a long groan. Niall was so frustrating some times. He acted like he wanted me to make friends, but now that I have met someone who could be a potential friend he acts like it could be a bad thing. Couldn’t he just be happy about it? Whatever, I was dwelling on it too much and it was only making my head hurt.

“Navaeh?” a voice called from a little ways down the sidewalk to my right. For a second, my mind couldn’t register who it was, and I had a sinking in my feeling in my stomach when I thought that it might be Niall. I really didn’t want to talk to him in that moment. I rose my head to see who it was, and was greeted by a pair of green eyes that practically radiated a welcoming feeling.

“Cody? What are you doing here?” I wondered as I stood from the bench rather awkwardly.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” he chuckled with a shake of his head. He motioned towards the bench in a way to ask if he could take a seat, and I nodded while sitting down as well. “I just got off of work; I have to walk by here to get back to my house,” he told me as he pointed to a name tag on his uniform that said that he worked at the local grocers market.

“I was coming back from a friend’s flat,” I supplied.

Cody nodded and ran his hand through his hair before regarding me with an observant look. His eyes glanced over my face before he asked, “you okay? You look a little frustrated.”

I couldn’t help but to scoff a little while shaking my head, “yeah, you could say that. I didn’t leave his flat on good terms.”

“A fight?” he questioned to which I nodded, “those are never fun.”

“Not at all,” I agreed. I was glad that he didn’t ask what the fight was about. That would lead to a more than awkward conversation.

“So, Navaeh, would you mind if I walked you home?” Cody proposed with a wide and friendly smile that seemed to light up the area around us. The sky was starting to get that dark red tint to it, and soon there would be no natural light left beside the moon and stars. I still had an hour or two before I would have to go home so that I could go to bed. I had no desire to go home before then, though.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather not go home,” I declined as politely as humanly possible. He raised an eyebrow in question before he seemed to remember something.

“Oh, right, family problems,” he recalled from earlier in the day when we had talked. “Is there anywhere else that you’d like to go?” he wondered. I thought it was sweet that he wanted to walk with me somewhere, and I tried to figure out a place where I could go. Definitely not Niall’s. As if I needed help deciding, my stomach growled and I slapped my hands over it with a blush.