Need You -N.H- Book Two

Eighteen; Lullaby

Lullaby

niall

"Good morning Rosa," I say as I come down the stairs and into the kitchen area, she's up and making tea already and I'm so thankful. I take a cup and sit at the dining table awaiting my conversation with Chelsea.

And just like that she comes through the kitchen, tight short around her thighs and a loose sweater hanging off one of her shoulders. Teasing me like I assumed she would. She grabs tea from Rosa, a banana from the counter top and sits across from me at the table.

"Morning Ni," she coos and I almost throw myself across the table at her.

I tap my fingers against the table and take a deep breath in. I had talked myself through this conversation about ten times last night. Each time it only ended worse than the first time I ran it. The pressure of seeing Sarah's sweet face again riding on the conversation I was about to have.

"You need to leave," I say to her. The smile she had on her face is fading, her eyes go cold and she clenches her jaw.

"I told you, I'm the best person to help Rosa with your mum." she says it strongly but I can hear the waver in her voice.

"I know what you told me," I say. "You know what you failed to tell me? Why you used me to hurt Louis, why you left me like a rag doll in the garbage?"

"I didn't mean to do those things, I thought we were having fun Ni." she says shrugging her shoulders like it was nothing. "Reckless, drunken sex right? That was always fun," she says and it suddenly feels like there's a rock stuck in my throat.

"What? You don't remember the time we did it in the back room at the frat party? Or the time we hid in Louis closet and made out for a few hours while he studied for that economics exam?"

"I was different back then," I snap. I was, drinking and lying to anyone who would listen to me. I even stole shit from my dad back then just to see if he would notice things missing, he never did. Or maybe he had but chalked it up to a misguided kid just trying to cope with his brother dying.

None of this would have happened if Greg hadn't given up on mum, everything would have been so different. I may have even met Sarah on better terms, I know deep down that taking care of Sarah was me proving something to myself. Trying to show people that I could care about someone and something. Show them that I wasn't just an asshole in a football uniform.

I was determined after having my heart broken that I would fix myself up, it took forever and a few extra bottles of gin. But eventually I arrived to a place where I could look my father in the eye and join my mother for breakfast on Sunday's again.

"No you weren't, you're that same person now. Look at you drunk every night, waking up just trying to shower off the smell of whiskey. Walking around the house trying to keep busy while your brain wanders to images of me in the black lace you bought me."

"Enough Chels."

"You're pretending that you aren't that party boy, charming but selfish, ignorant and only out to prove a point. You were using me just as much as I was using you, but you won't admit it because that means owning up to it. It means feeling the guilt of sleeping with your best friends girlfriend just because he cared too much after your shit bag brother packed up and left."

"I'm warning you to fucking cut it out," I snap, so angry with her words all of them so true in their own right but it hurt to hear them out loud like this.

"That was never the issue though, you were jealous of him because all you wanted to do was pack up and leave, pretend you were dead. You couldn't deal with a dead brother, sick mother and absent dad so you drank yourself into the bottom of a whiskey bottle and fucked everything around you could find-all expecting to come out unscaved and innocent."