× Horan

It was the last place I wanted to be on a Sunday night.

I could have been at the gym, or the football field, or the chemistry lab, or in my hall sleeping. But instead, crying babies filled my ears, people practically sprinting to get to their flight, and parents who didn't know how to control their children stood with bags under their eyes and hair a mess. People were lined up at the check in desk with suitcases and baggage. In the arrivals lounge, there was a curious mixture of bored and excited people. Men in suits talked loudly on their phones, not caring who overhears them, and couples saying their goodbyes with a kiss.

There were plasma screens of arrival and departure times on the wall of the airport. An abstract sculpture the size of a blimp above everyone's head looked heavy enough to create an earth quake if it were to fall. In the background, soft classical music played.

It all pissed me off.

I couldn't believe Coach talked me into doing this. He claimed that he had paper work to do, but I knew he hated airports just as much as I did. He was probably at his house at that very moment laughing at me because I didn't have a choice in the matter.

I wasn't even sure what exit she would be coming out of, and I didn't have the patience to ask someone or to look to see California on the screen. I was going to wait one more minute - okay, five more minutes - and if she didn't show, I was just going to leave. She could fend for herself in the city like a big girl; she was going to have to at some point, anyways.

Right when I was about to leave, I saw her caramel brown hair through the throng of people. It was hidden under a knitted gray beanie as it fell in loose curls down her back. A white V-neck was under a black bomber jacket and she had on gray sweatpants with her last name printed in white down her leg. A rolling suitcase was following after her along with a backpack, a large duffle bag over her shoulder, and a drawstring pouch in her hand. It didn't look like she was having any luck trying to maneuver them.

Lynn was looking around, figuring out where to go, I was sure. I saw her pull out her phone, probably to call Coach, but I quickly made my way over to her before she had the chance. I weaved through bodies of business men and around obnoxious kids until I knew she was in hearing distance.

"Hey!" I shouted as I broke through the people. "Princess!"

Lynn looked up from her phone and around the terminal until her deep blue eyes landed on me. Her eyebrows furrowed as she saw me walking up to her.

"I thought..." she paused. Her mouth tipped down into an understandable frown. "I thought Coach Mathews was going to come get me?"

"Plans changed. Believe me, I don't like the situation either," I told her stonily. I held up my car keys in her face and jingled them. "Now let's go before my night is completely ruined."

I started walking away, stuffing my hands in my pockets. Maybe if I was lucky, I could be back at campus by nine and still have time to kick some goals before I needed to get my sleep for Monday morning classes.

"Wait!" Lynn shouted after me angrily. "Are you not going to help me?" she accused, pulling the rolling suitcase to a stop beside her and dropped the large bag from her shoulder. It fell to the ground with an odd clank that made me wonder what the fuck she packed.

"Uh, no," I stated simply and continued walking. I heard her groan and say how much of a dick I was under her breath from behind me, but I kept going, making my way out of Heathrow Airport as fast as I could. My only responsibility was to get her safe to campus, not all her shit.

When I got to the side doors that were closest to where I parked, I turned and saw her a few feet behind me, struggling with her things. Rolling my eyes and letting out an angry grunt of annoyance, I rushed over to her and took the large bag from her shoulder and the rolling suitcase without a word. She was so damn slow and was wasting my evening as it was.

"Thank you," she said in a small voice as she kept in pace beside me.

"Whatever," I retorted. The last thing I wanted was her gratitude when I really just wanted to get the hell out of there.

I pushed through the glass double doors without bothering to hold them open for Lynn and walked the distance to my car. I took my keys and clicked the button, unlocking the doors. I dropped Lynn's bags on the asphalt (if she had anything fragile, they would have been in pieces) of the parking lot and popped open the trunk.

"Whoa," I heard Lynn say in awe. I looked over my shoulder and saw her gazing at my black, sleek Jaguar coup. "This is yours?"

Picking up the bags I dropped on the ground, I shoved them into the trunk carelessly (if the fragile things weren't broken before, they were now) and took the one Lynn was still holding along with the backpack and threw them in, too.

"Well," I said, slamming the trunk shut. "I didn't steal it, if that's what you're inquiring. Now get in."

I was walking around the car to the driver side when Lynn bumped into me, going around the same way I was, and I couldn't help but grin at how clueless she looked.

"The passenger seat is on the other side," I mocked. "You're in London now. Things are different here."

The look on Lynn's face was priceless when it dawned on her what I was saying. "Right," she said with a nervous smile that followed with a laugh. She quickly walked to the other side and slipped in as I started up my Jaguar coup and took off out of the lot.

We sat in an uncomfortable silence, so uncomfortable that I swore a knife could cut through it. My hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles were turning white. I kept my eyes on the road as I sped down the motorway and tried my best to pretend there wasn't a body with the prettiest blue eyes sitting next to me.

I reached out and turned the radio up, the song Start of Something Good by Daughtry was playing and I rolled my eyes. Honestly, I should have been used to this - the painful silence, I mean. The day I was born to the day I left Ireland I had lived in that kind of silence, but unfortunately, I was pretty sure that kind of soundlessness wasn't something anyone could ever get used to.

I was zipping through traffic, trying to get back to campus before nine, but I only had five minutes to go to achieve that goal. It was doable if I went twenty over the speed limit all the way there, a theory I was willing to test out.

"That's a bad habit," I heard Lynn say over the loud music.

I looked over at her. "What?"

"Biting your nails. It's a bad habit, not to mention annoying."

"I don't care?" I said mockingly and continued to bite my nails just to piss her off.

Pressing on the gas, I sped through the motorway and weaved through cars. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lynn grip onto the leather seat in fear, her eyes wide as the engine of the Jaguar came alive with power.

Lynn reached over and turned the volume down on the radio. "I get that you have something better to do, but you don't have to kill us just to prove a point," she alleged, her eyes wide with fear. Just from that look I almost slowed down. Almost.

I ignored her and kept speeding through cars and turned the volume back up on the radio once again, this time louder in hopes it would get the point across to Lynn that I didn't want to acknowledge her and her nagging voice. She was worse than my mother. Okay, that wasn't true. No one was worse than my mother.

Ten minutes later, I pulled onto campus and into the parking lot of the resident hall I was staying in. I turned down the music and took my phone out from my back pocket. I found Coach in my contacts and pressed call.

"Horan?"

"I'm at campus. What do you want me to do with her?" I asked. Lynn gave me a dirty look, but I ignored her.

"Great!" he said, happiness clear in his voice. "I'm still swamped in my office, could you maybe show Lynn to her hall? Her roommate knows she's coming. Also, tomorrow after your classes, could you bring her around campus and show her around?"

"No!" I snapped. "Coach, I-"

"Please? I'm flooded and I trust you more than any of the other lads. I promise after you bring her to practice tomorrow I'll take care of everything else. I'm begging you, Niall."

"I have to bring her to practice, too!?" I was nearly shouting, but that wasn't fair. I was told to get her and bring her to the university, not show her around and be her personal chauffeur. "Fine! But you owe me," I finally give in, knowing it was a lost cause to argue with him. "Whenever I don't show up to practice one day, don't ask for an excuse from me."

"Alright, deal," Coach sighed. "Just take her to her room. It's three-zero-three in the Aspen House."

I hung up without answering or saying goodbye, and put the phone back in my pocket. I pulled out of the parking lot again and roughly turned a short corner (Lynn nearly falling out of her seat despite the seat belt over her chest) to get to the hall Coach instructed.

"Where are we going?" Lynn asked, holding onto the handle above the door to keep herself from moving around in her seat.

"To your hall," I told her, pulling into the parking lot to the Aspen House. "Also known as a dorm, as you American's like to call it."

I opened the car door after I parked and stepped out. The night was dead, no soul seemed to be walking and the wind was at a standstill as I made my way to the trunk and started taking her heavy bags from the back. Lynn picked up the rolling suitcase and backpack as I grabbed her other two bags. Without saying anything or even giving her a look, I shut the trunk and started making my way to the front doors of the hall.

The building had a lift, but I walked right past it to the stairs. There was no way in hell I was going to spend even a few seconds in a small compacted space with Lynn and falling into that ugly silence again.

I stepped onto the third floor and made my way to room 303.

"This is you," I told her. There was a whiteboard hanging on the door that read: Chloe's Room! with some poorly drawn hearts and stars like the swirly handwriting wasn't girly enough.

Lynn stepped up to the door and stared at it like it might grow teeth and bite her. I pushed passed her, growing impatient, and knocked on the door loudly before taking the knob in my hand and pushing it open.

The room was extremely bright and colorful - it reminded me of a kaleidoscope. There were stuffed animals on both of the beds and personal pictures everywhere - and I mean everywhere. There were some posters of some pop band and a cork board with even more pictures and doodles on it. Blankets of every color and clothes with every pattern lay amuck on the floor. It was a vibrant disaster and it made my eyes hurt.

"You must be Lynn Mercury!" someone shouted in a high, squeaky voice. I took my focus off the room and saw a tall blonde walk over to Lynn with her hand extended.

"Yeah, hi," Lynn said, letting go of her suitcase to shake the girl's hand.

"Ohh," she said, her voice full of enjoyment. "I love your accent, so American. I'm Chloe Reed."

"Niall?"

I turned and saw Abby Moor stand up from one of the beds, looking at me confused. Shit. She was wearing one of her traditional dresses and a pair of white flats. Her long blonde hair pulled back from her face into a braid.

In a desperate attempt to hide, I found myself moving behind Lynn in the doorway.

Abby's attention quickly flickered away from me and onto Lynn. "Oh, I know who you are," Abby said suddenly, putting on her best fake smile. "You're that football girl, yeah? Or, I guess it would be called soccer over there. My brother has told me a bit about you."

Lynn looked so uneasy that I almost made up an excuse to get her out of there if, you know, I actually liked her.

"I should probably get going," I said to no one in particular. I could almost smell the snotty bitch fight that was brewing in front of me and as grand as that sounded to watch, I had better things to do. I gently placed Lynn's bags on the floor by her feet and started backing up. "I'll, uh, come find you tomorrow to show you around and bring you to practice," I added, almost immediately regretting what I said by the look Abby was giving me.

I quickly walked out of the room and down the hall before I did something stupid like say goodnight to Lynn.

"Wait!" I heard Abby say from behind me. Her feet padded on the ground as she ran to catch up to me. Then suddenly her arms wrapped around my neck and used all her strength to pull me in close to her. I didn't pull away because I knew if I did, she would just come back at me with more force. "Can I come back to your room tonight?" she asked flirtatiously, batting her eyelashes.

Abby had this... obsession with me, and that's the nice way of putting it. It started right after I slept with her last year. She always seemed to be right at my side and couldn't go two seconds without touching me, which, let's be honest, is a fact most girls do when it involved me. Everyone at university knew that Abby could get infatuated quickly (I was probably the fourth victim of Abby's). It seemed like the only person who didn't know we weren't actually dating was Abby herself.

She was a full time job and I wanted to quit.

Abby didn't even live in the Aspen House, so of course she would decide to visit her friend at the exact same time I would be showing up. If I believed in God, I'd be cussing him out right about then.

I was always telling James - my teammate, my roommate, and the brother to Abby - to tell her to leave me alone. But of course James loved the fact that I was uncomfortable about the situation and fueled the fire higher by feeding Abby lies about how I talked about her all the time when really the exact opposite was true.

The problem was that James didn't know I slept with Abby, and the second he did, I was a dead man.

But even thinking about sleeping with her again was a really, really bad idea. Luckily, I didn't have to let her down because right then someone stepped out into the hallway.

"Niall?"

I spun on my heels and saw Lynn standing in the hall, her white shirt falling off her shoulder. She was dressed so casually compared to the girl standing next to me, it was nice to see someone not put any kind of effort into her appearance.

"Thank you," she finally said with a kind smile.

I nodded at her but didn't give her anything more than that. Lynn must have known it because then she walked back into the room and closed the door behind her.

"I don't like her," Abby said, tugging on my arm. "You better not fall for her or else I might beat her up."

The thought of Abby getting into a fight almost made me laugh. It wasn't like she wasn't capable, I just couldn't believe she would take the chance to get her dress dirty or scuff a shoe. The idea of it was amusing.

"As much as I would love to see that, there isn't anything to worry about," I said, not to assure her, but more to convince myself of that idea.

"I don't want you talking to her anymore."

Shaking off her grip from my arm, I continued my way down the hall. "First of all," I started without looking at Abby. "You don't have any say in what the fuck I can or cannot do. And secondly, that request is impossible since we're now on a team together."

Abby had stopped walking and I continued my way down the stairs, leaving her behind.

As I walked to my car to spend the remainder of my night at the gym, I couldn't help but think how weird it was. Lynn was officially on my team. And with that, I had to kick my game up to a hundred and ten percent.