Sea of Love

001. English Boys

Niamh stares into the mirror, studying her reflection. Every morning, she would silently remind herself of all the things she found beautiful about her appearance. She liked her lips, how rosy they always seemed to look. She liked her eyes, her father had always told her that they made her look like a doll. Her lashes too, they were voluminous and pretty.

She told herself these things because she knew if she didn't, she would start to think about the things she didn't find beautiful. How her teeth stuck out, how her eyebrows were so bushy, how she wasn't as slim as her favourite Disney princesses. The kind of things that made her feel terrible, the kind of things that made her a teenage girl.

Niamh didn't find herself to be attractive. Maybe that's why she was so obsessed with the idea of falling in love. So that somebody else could find her attractive, and make her feel as beautiful as she told herself she was.

She twirls a strand of hair around her curling iron, holding it steadily away from her neck. Part of her is tempted to let the iron sear her skin for just a moment to make a mark that would resemble a hickey. She doesn't though, deciding that the pain wouldn't be worth it ─ that and the fact that she knows her friends would never believe her.

Niamh hums along to The Cranberries' song coming from her CD player, occasionally singing the lyrics as well. She had never liked getting ready in silence, it left her feeling awkward. If she couldn't sing along to her music, she would talk to herself as if she were a model in an interview. This was something that Niamh would never admit to anyone, but she had once walked in on Erin doing the same, so she didn't feel too embarrassed about it.

She plays with her hair to fluff it out and add volume, yet immediately pauses once the screeching sound of the smoke alarm floods her ears. She rushes out to the apartment kitchen, where she finds her father throwing a glass of water onto the flames that had erupted from the skillet on the stove. The fire only grows.

"Ach, da! What the hell are you doing?" Niamh panics, quickly grabbing the skillet's lid to smother the grease fire.

Rían looks warily between the skillet and his daughter, "...Making you breakfast." He sighs, grabbing a chair to stand on as he goes to take the batteries out of the smoke detector, "At least it got you up for school there, princess."

"I was already awake," She narrows her eyes in amusement before turning back to the skillet and carefully lifting the lid to check if the flames had been put out. She stares at the burnt 'breakfast' left in the pan, "Did you make bacon?"

"Was s'posed to be, aye," Her father nods, stepping down from the chair with the old batteries in his palm.

"Daddy, I'm vegetarian."

"Oh, you are not!" Rían scrunches his face up at his daughter, "Since when have you been a vegetarian?"

"Since last week!" Niamh exclaims in reply, "I told you, remember? You were washing dishes and you asked if I could still eat at the chippy."

A look of realization crosses his face, "...Aye, so you are. Lucky I didn't finish that bacon then, love."

Niamh rolls her eyes and pulls down a bowl from the cupboard to pour herself some cereal.

"You can have those as a vegetarian, love?" Her father questions curiously.

"Aye. You reckon there's any meat in cornflakes, da?" She teases him, sitting down at the kitchen table.