Something About You

Isla's POV - March, 2016.

Isla can't sleep.

Mullingar is so quiet compared to London, so still, so dark, and, lying on her back in her childhood bed, Isla doesn't know how she used to do this every day, how she could fall asleep to the sound of nothing, to a sky so dark that it feels like she can see her own reflection looking back at her through it. Every move she makes in bed feels loud enough to wake the whole damn village.

But she's tossing and turning despite the noise, unable to put a stop to the way her mind is rolling over and over and over itself, desperately replaying memories of things that happened in this place, in this room. She can even see him if she indulges herself: leaning against the wall by the door and balancing on one foot as he takes off his football kit, tossing muddy socks and sweaty shorts toward the corner. He'd crawl up her bed in just his stupid Topman boxers, all lean muscle and bleached hair and she would melt right into it, despite the smell and the sweat. She'd let him kiss her silly and it would be enough, this, him, them. It used to be the only thing she could be sure of.

It's ridiculous, Isla knows, the way coming back to Mullingar still gets to her like this. This is her hometown too, a place she has just as much claim to as Niall, if not more. It's been half a decade since he left. Mullingar is not Niall anymore.

He's the one thing she can't logic her way out of, though, the one argument she doesn't have a retaliation for. He's omnipresent in her life no matter where in the world she is, but it's even more intense at home, in this village that holds him high upon its shoulders, their son, the one who made it. She can't shake Niall anywhere on Earth, but when she's in Mullingar she's not even sure if she wants to.

They'd run into Maura this morning—her, Mully, and Mia—and Isla was trembling for an hour afterward, hands shoved into the pockets of her puffer jacket in the desperate hope that no one would notice. Maura held her in a hug longer than she did Mully and Mia, and when she pulled away Maura cupped her cheek, the way her son sometimes used to, and told her how happy she was to see her. Isla could've thrown up.

Six hours later, she got so drunk that she did.

Now, half tipsy, half hungover, and fully exhausted, Isla's wide awake in the middle of the night trying not to think about him, and failing. Mindlessly, she squints at the bright light of her phone screen and scrolls through Instagram instead of thinking, tossing likes out at random, until she finds something, anything, that will get her mind off of him.

Instead, she finds the opposite.

It's the carousel of pictures that Mully'd posted yesterday, nearly identical to her own: the three of them out on the football pitches, in The Chambers, sitting, high, on the edge of Lough Ennell. It's the little "Liked by niallhoran and 500 others," underneath the image. It's Isla's heart jumping up immediately, and catching in her throat.

It's the fact that she knows she's being ridiculous, reacting like this.

It's her sister, telling her that Niall is flighty, unreliable, filled with notions, not good enough for her.

It's the way she can't stop herself from clicking over to Snapchat, to Niall's private account, to check where in the world he is.

He last updated his story six hours ago, in a club, in Bangkok. There's a girl hanging off his arm and a shot in Deo's hand and that's enough, Isla tells herself, enough, enough, enough, enough. He liked the picture drunk, the same thing she's doing now. He probably didn't even look at it.

She locks her phone aggressively, satisfied by the artificial clicking noise, and tosses it toward the end of the bed. Fuck the plugging it into the charger. She doesn't want to see anything it has to offer her anymore, anyway.

There are a million things Isla could do right now, she knows. She could call him—he'd pick up. She could cry—it would probably feel better. She could go downstairs and cuddle the dog. She could get angry, could call Mia, could ask Deo who the girl is, could block Niall on every platform and tell Mully to tell him she's sick of this, of him calling in the middle of the night when he needs emotional support but not giving a fuck about how it makes her feel. She could make sure Niall Horan never has access to her ever again.

Instead, she shuts her eyes, buries her face in the pillow, slides one hand down between her thighs, and forgets how to feel anything else.

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