Chapter 16 - Conversation

“And this is Persephone,” I say as we keep walking around the stables. We stop in front of the chestnut horse with the white mane and when she sees us, she snorts and moves, excited. “And she’s clearly happy to see us here,” I add and Niall and I approach her to stroke her hair.

“She’s beautiful,” he says and smiles at me. I totally ignore the flip my heart does. “Do all the horses have Greek names?” He asks next and I can’t help the smile from coming to my lips because he realised.

After the topic about his girlfriend, we started to talk about horses. I introduced him to every single one we have here, with names and time they have been here. And yes, all horses have Greek names.

“Yes, it’s something my dad started when we thought that having horses would be a good idea for the retreat centre,” I explain and he nods.

“So your dad started this. And where is he now?”

I stay quiet and frozen on my spot because even if it was many years ago, it still hurts to think about him. Persephone feels my distress because she rubs her head against mine as softly as she can, comforting me.

“He died years ago. A few years later after my mum,” I tell him and I hear him gasping.

“Oh my God, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” he says immediately, taking a step closer to me, but I step back. I need distance between us.

“It’s okay, I’m okay. It still hurts, but I came to terms with it long ago, that’s all,” I say but he still looks at me with pity in his eyes. I don’t blame him, everyone does the same when they find out I lost both my parents.

We’ve been here talking for a while and I don’t know why I even tell him about my parents, but just like he said about me, there’s something that makes it easy to talk to him, even if it’s about horses, or about my dead parents. He gives you this you-can-trust-me vibe when he smiles and after all the things he’s told me, it seems fair that I let go a bit about my own story.

“So now you only have Rhonda,” he says and I jerk, clenching my fists and Persephone snorts, worried this time. “Woah, you don’t like her, do you?”

“Very perceptive,” I tell him. “I hate her guts, I’m just counting the days for this summer to end so I can finally leave and I won’t see her again.”

“You won’t ever come back here? But this is your home,” he tells me and I shake my head.

“It stopped being my home the day my dad died, it became a prison and I just wanna be free. I wanna go to Uni and do what I want. This is the last summer I work here,” I answer honestly. I’m impressed I’m actually telling him these things.

“So if I come back here, I won’t find you around,” he muses and my head snaps in his direction, taken aback from his statement and the way he said that. His eyes are on me and for a moment I catch my breath, not sure of what to do.

“No, you won’t,” I reply and he looks disappointed.

He doesn’t say anything else, he just strokes Persephone’s hair and I focus my attention on her as we stay in silence for a little while, until he speaks again.

“At the end you didn’t go to the ball, did you? You told me you weren’t going to but maybe…”

“I didn’t,” I finish for him and he nods as if that’s what he expected, but again, he doesn’t look exactly pleased with my answer. “I had work to do. Rhonda gave me a huge list. I didn’t even sleep,” I tell him.

I know, I know. I did go to the ball, I danced with him, I kissed him. But I can’t tell him that, can I? He’s just fixing things with his girlfriend, I can’t just go and say ‘Hey, I’m your mystery girl, the one you’ve been thinking of. But yeah, don’t get excited. I’d never date a famous guy like you. Sorry.’ That would only make me a bitch and I rather not.

He doesn’t need to know that I’m the girl who danced with him that night, and I hope, for the sake of his relationship, that he forgets about his mystery girl.

“Yeah…” is all what he says and I don’t know what to make out of that.

However, I totally forget about that when I feel my pocket buzzing and I take out my mobile, just to see a text from Charlie with a gif he found on tumblr of a dog dancing. I crack up laughing but then I see the time.

“Oh shit!” I exclaim and Niall jumps, startled. “It’s almost midnight and we’re still here. We gotta go,” I tell him and his eyes widen in shock.

“Wait!” He calls me when I’m about to leave running. I stop and turn around to look at him. “Um, would you, um… would you meet me here tomorrow?”

I arch my eyebrows in surprise, not expecting that. I know it’s not a good idea because I just shouldn't spend time with guests in general, especially the guy I snogged with and whom I’m trying to help fix his relationship, but then my tongue betrays me.

“I guess,” I say and I slap myself mentally.

“Great,” he says with a big smile andfor two seconds I forget that I shouldn’t even be doing this to start with. I shake my head and turn around to finally leave the stables, but I hear him one more time. “Goodnight, Ella.”

Smiling, I shout back, without turning to see him, “Goodnight, Niall.”

+ + + + +

The next day I see Niall and Zoe talking by the pool. She is smiling brightly and looks really happy, which is a good sign, but Niall doesn’t look that happy. I mean, he smiled more heartedly when we were with the horses last night. It’s like the smile doesn’t reach his eyes and I’m not even that close, but I can notice it.

If I can, I’m sure Zoe can. How bad does it feel to see your boyfriend not being as happy as he should be in that moment? But she looks optimistic. Maybe she just hopes for the best and she is really trying. Niall should do the same.

I try not to look at them for too long and just fold towels and make sure all the robes are where they are supposed to be. I don’t want to stay staring at them because I start to think of the ball and those songs we danced to together, the way he looked at me. I even remember the lame jokes we shared and I laugh again. It’s terrible because since I confirmed that Niall is my mystery guy, I think even more of him. And just to make things worse, when we were together last night at the stables I could feel the same connection we had at the ball, the same force pulling me towards him.

I know it’s all a trick of my mind, probably a sick twisted game of my conscience wanting a guy that I can’t have for many reasons, one of them the fact that he’s in a relationship with a gorgeous girl who really wants to be with him, whereas I don’t want to be near one of his kind.

“Hello there!” I blink and gasp, scared because I wasn’t expecting someone to pop up in front of me.

I focus my sight and find Harry, with his elbows on the towels I was just folding, his face in his hands and what I think is an adorable face. Not sure. “Harry, do you need a robe?” I ask him and he shakes his head.

“I can find those myself,” he says and I chuckle at the emphasis he makes to the word find. “I just wanted to say hi and make sure that you’re still refusing to be my friend.”

“Nothing has changed, Harry. I can’t be friends with the guests and I’m sure that if Rhonda saw me talking to you now, she’d get my head,” I tell him and he pouts.

“Oh, c’mon. She can’t be that bad, I bet she’ll let you be my friend. She doesn’t control you, does she?”

“She doesn’t,” I reply immediately. “But she is my boss and I signed a contract. I must comply with what she tells me to do. Being friends with the guests is not in that list of allowed things to do.”

“Well that’s not fair,” he complains.

Tell me about it, I reply mentally. “But if it puts you at ease, you’re a nice one. I’m not fond of celebrities in general, but you are okay.”

He blinks in sheer shock and even gasps, taking a few steps back. “Did you… did you just give me a compliment?” He looks around, as if waiting for the meteorite to hit the Earth. “Is this the end of the world?”

I have this urge to smack him with the towel I have in my hands, but I control that impulse. “Don’t get used to it, Moth Guy. I won’t repeat it.”

He laughs and I can’t help smile. “I know that you know in your heart that we are friends already.” I shake my head but he nods, enthusiastically. “Yes you do, you do, you do,” he sings, very annoyingly. “You doooooo.”

I shake my head again and keep folding the towels. I don’t even reply to him and he understands that it’s the moment to leave. I keep doing my job by the pool, but I have a smile on my face now and I’m not exactly thinking of Niall and the ball, which is good, a relief.

But then, when I’m leaving the pool, I see him again, with Zoe. She doesn’t look that happy anymore, in fact she looks tired and a bit resigned. But then I met Niall’s eyes and he is looking right in my direction. Our gazes meet and I don’t know what I should do. Ignore him like I would normally do? Wave at him? Approach?

At the end I just smile, rather awkwardly if I say so myself, and carry on with my chores of the day. I try not to think of him or that I most likely will meet him at the stables tonight, if I go, of course. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Maybe I should stay in my room, re-reading Harry Potter.

I don’t tell Liv and Charlie about Niall and I at the stables because I know they would encourage me to go. I can hear Charlie in my head saying ‘go and meet your prince charming!’

That boy is cheesier than any girl I’ve met. He really enjoys making fun of how similar my life is to Cinderella and now with this whole Niall thing, he hasn’t dropped the prince charming pun.

Niall is no prince charming, not really. He’s not even the leader of his band, although I know he’s mega famous nonetheless. And even if he were a modern version of prince charming, then he already got his princess. Yeah, their relationship is kind of broken, but he already found her.

In the fairy tale you know they lived happily ever after, but how can you be sure? Maybe they fall out of love, maybe it doesn’t work after many years. Maybe it wasn’t as perfect as it was at the beginning. No one knows that.

In my shitty fairy tale, if Niall is the prince charming, he found his princess way long before he met me and this Cinderella is not looking for a prince, she’s looking for freedom. I won’t find freedom next to someone, I can only find freedom on my own.

Nevertheless, I still go to the stables after dinner.

-:-:-:-

Dedication to @ashtonsboox. Thank you for the comment and well, AVPM is amazing! I had to add it in at least one of my stories.

Bel, xx