Let Me Adore You (N.H.)

Untitled Part 22

It was late when Niall had brought me home on Saturday, asking me if I didn't want to stay at his place. I thanked him but told him that in my opinion it was too early to go that far. And by the way he reacted he seemed to understand it. Or at least accepted it. 

I would've loved to spend some days with him, getting to know each other in our own pace. Christmas and other obligations however made me very tensed and it just wouldn't be fair to him.  My professor had only nodded, kissed me goodbye on my cheek after he had escorted me to the dormitory. I hugged him, inhaling his scent that mixed with the chilling night air, making me want to stay in his embrace forever.

I wished that memory could've been the only thing I had to think about. To my annoyance, it wasn't. My mother called me to remind me when I should be there on Christmas Eve, Professors reminded us about deadlines and the upcoming exams and my friends reminded me that our annual Christmas Dinner would take place at Claire's this year.

Juggling everything drained me, especially the thought of spending the holidays with my parents. I loved them endlessly and I missed home however I would rather write twenty essays in three days than to spend one evening with them. A total of four days with them could be either extremely boring or too eventful.

What should I tell them when the boyfriend topic would come up?

Clearly I couldn't tell them the truth, that would be hilarious. Maybe I would stick to a half lie, half truth. Something in between.

My Monday consisted of endless text messages between me and my friends during lectures, thinking about present ideas and searching for desert recipes on pinterest. It was always my task to contribute a nice desert because Claire, Jo and Anna apparently loved my cakes, same as my family did. I didn't know when I would have the time to bake, so I was obviously a little bit stressed when I exited the lecture hall where I just had another linguistics class.

I didn't listen to a single word the nice professor said, even though I normally loved to listen to her and participate in discussions, but today I was more interested in my phone and pictures of puddings and cupcakes. Just when I was about to click on a cute picture, a body appeared next to me and a hand grabbed my elbow lightly.

Since the incident from last week where Niall had held onto my arm not so softly, I wasn't that much into unexpected touches. I flinched a bit, tearing my gaze away from my phone to look into Niall's face.

He looked straight forward, before noticing my reaction, not addressing it.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" He said under his breath, still walking so it would look like we were heading in the same direction. The halls were crowded anyways, it wouldn't raise suspicion that we were close. His hand around my elbow has vanished but I was still surprised he talked to me in public when we should be very careful about any sort of interaction between these walls.

"Sure." I said, putting my phone away trailing a bit behind him, taking turns every now and then. Originally I thought we would just go anywhere more secluded but my Professor never stoped, opening the door to leave the building we were in, ready to cross campus to get to his office.

"Don't you have a lecture now?" I asked, closing my coat.

"No I cancelled it. How do you know?" He slowed down a bit since I was struggling to keep up with him.

"How do you know I had time to talk?"

"Touché." Niall simply said, hands in the pocket of his jacket, staring down at his feet until we reached the faculty building.

"You know, you could've just send me a message." I began to speak again when we climbed upstairs, looking around to see anyone I might know who could ask weird questions. I shouldn't worry that much, I could say we had to talk about something related to my essay and wiggle my way out of uncomfortable conversations.