Voir Dire (N.H.)

eighteen

They say that social media is both a blessing and a curse. To Kelsey, this statement had never been more true.

With the release of his newest single, "Put A Little Love On Me", Niall had spent weeks traveling around the world, doing all sorts of promotion. Including plenty of pap shots with Krystal. At the start of the promotional run, Becca, her resident aspiring entertainment journalist, had introduced Kelsey to both the blessing and the curse of Niall Horan fan accounts. In some lapse of good judgement, Kelsey had followed such accounts on Instagram, resulting in a flood of Niall pictures daily. Although she loved to see pictures of Niall when he was out and about promoting, it was his other companion who she was less than thrilled about seeing.

Niall had been good about preventing Kelsey from being caught off-guard. Whenever he was set to make an appearance with Krystal he gave her a heads up, letting her know exactly where and what they'd been papped doing. And he was always right, with those pictures popping up on the internet later in the day.

Kelsey had quickly learned that social media was not ideal when you were watching a guy you were see date another girl in front of the camera. She soon discovered that the best way to move past the fact that Niall lived a completely different life in person than he did with her was to simply avoid social media. If she didn't see it, she didn't have to think about all the comments saying how perfect Krystal and Niall were together. She didn't have to be reminded that she wasn't getting to walk the red carpet with him or hold his hand as he walked through crowds on the way to his hotel for the night. She could, quite honestly, pretend that Krystal didn't exist.

But today, Kelsey was particularly bored laying on the couch. She'd had a long shift at The Manhattan the night before, and she'd decided that today was just going to be a day of relaxation. Niall was coming over later this evening and until then, she had nothing to do but rewatch old Grey's Anatomy episodes.

So when she picked up her phone and the glowing purple and pink icon of the Instagram app caught her eye, calling out to her on the bright lit screen, she couldn't help but click on it. Because what harm would a little mindless social media scrolling do?

She almost didn't recognize what it was when she first scrolled past it. A blingy new ring seemed to be a weekly occurrence for at least one of her friends. But then it hit her. Like all of a sudden she'd been hit by a bus.

Kelsey looked at the ring again. It wasn't small by any means. It's exactly the one they'd admired on Pinterest boards for years in college. It's the same one they'd looked at in jewelry cases at the mall just for fun. But when they had done all those things, Kelsey never would have imagined that the giver of that ring would be him. But then again, there's a lot of things that a year ago she never would have imagined happening.

Kelsey swiped left and there he is. His smile bright and his eyes crinkled on the sides like they used to when Kelsey made him laugh. His face pushed up against hers showing off the ring in her hand. Kelsey felt sick to her stomach. A year ago, Jessica was trying to get hints from Sam as to when he was going to propose to Kelsey and now...Jessica and Sam are engaged.

Her eyes become fixated on the photo. A picture that less than a year ago likely would have consisted of her face instead of Jessica's. Staring at it felt like Kelsey was holding her hand over an open flame; but yet, she couldn't seem to bring her eyes away from it.

She thought about the night at the beginning of senior year, when Sam had walked in on her dabbing her eyes at a wedding video on Youtube. He'd laughed at her at first, wondering how she could possible be growing so tearful from watching a video of two complete strangers. But then he'd crawled into bed beside her and clicked replay and they'd watched it all over again, this time with his arms wrapped around hers and her head resting on his broad chest.