Heart | N.H.

twenty four - convalescence

"I'll get it," I shouted as the sound of the doorbell echoed through the house. Rushing to the door, I opened it to reveal Harry, Liam and Niall standing together in a clump to fend off the chilly air.

Shivering and pulling the sleeves of my sweater over my hands, I stood back. "Come on in."

"I brought beer! We're gonna have the sickest New Year's party ever!" Harry shouted. He stepped inside, then froze and turned pale. "Oh! Er, hi, Mr. and Mrs. Watts. I was totally kidding. Disregard everything I just said."

"I should hope you were joking," Mom said severely, her eyes narrowing.

"Besides, we already have beer," Dad added.

Mom elbowed him. "Ben!"

"What? It's true," he justified himself. "Anyway, all of you guys make yourselves at home. It's nice to have you over. Miracle usually doesn't spend her holidays with anyone-"

"That's quite enough, Dad," I said, giving him a fanged smile. I didn't need him shooting off his mouth about the previous state of my social life.

Giving my parents a dimpled, angelic smile, Harry said, "Thank you so much for inviting us."

 The rest of our group arrived shortly. Annika brought board games and Louis brought a box of DVDs. Harry and Niall took turns putting on songs, and Callie tried to teach Liam and me how to dance--an endeavor that was fruitless, and only resulted in me knocking over everything on our coffee table.

"Your grace and poise is unmatched, Miracle," Louis told me.

I gave him a sweet smile. "Why thank you, Louis. Why don't you come up here and show me how it's done, though?"

"I'm good," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh really? I think you should show us your dance skills," I insisted.

"I could twerk," offered Harry cordially.

"Studies show that people who twerk often have lower intelligence," said Liam officiously.

"Where'd you learn that, AP Psych?" snickered Louis.

"No, I made it up. To save us from Harry twerking."

Offended, Harry said, "Fine. You ain't getting none of this here fine booty. And you know you want the booty, Liam. Don't even deny it."

Annika shrugged. "I don't know about that, but I do want food."

This resulted in all of us piling into the kitchen, where the table was covered with food of all kinds. Mom and I had spent the afternoon working on a masterpiece of a cake, complete with frosted fireworks and a rainbow of candles. It graced the center of the table in a queenly fashion, surrounded by subjects of brownie platters and boxes of homemade cookies (including Liam's famous Chips Ahoy variety).

When there were less than ten minutes to midnight, Niall dragged me upstairs, leading me to my own bedroom window. "What are we doing up here?" I asked. "We're going to miss the big celebration."

"Just a moment, and then we'll go back down," he promised, pulling up the blinds on my window.

"I will be counting. Sixty seconds. No more, no less."

"It's really pretty out tonight. Cold as fuck though. Wonder if the fireworks will be good."

I tapped my tongue to my teeth impatiently. "You're down to fifty-two seconds."

"Got any resolutions?" Niall tried.

Relenting, I softened my expression and shrugged. "I don't know. My resolution for this year was to survive."