Shattered [Niall Horan]

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

// Brianna

A quiet supper at some fancy Mexican diner was followed by a silence-filled walk that led us to the car parking lot. As we seated ourselves inside his car, Niall started the engine, and put the stereo on. The melodious tunes of an unfamiliar song filled the air-conditioned atmosphere around us, as I sunk further back into my seat, a cloud of questions and horde of confusions buzzing through my brains.

Him not taking me to his forever-beloved Nando's, would definitely have been the greatest shock of the evening, if my mind hadn't been lodged in other thoughts. Disappointment would probably be too strong a word to describe my emotions at the time, but one thing I knew for sure was that it wasn't anything close to joy or glee.

The sudden new apparel of Niall's behaviour over the past two days was nowhere to be seen and he seemed more engrossed into the food, a few occasional petty conversational topics, and some frequent texts and phone calls, making me feel like a total sucker for attention, the whole time we were at the restaurant. It was more like one of our usual, normal hangouts and not anything close to a date, as Lilly had chosen to suppose. And this entire issue was bothering me way more than I wanted to allow it to.

Not a single time did Niall mention anything that I expected him to, and I had actually started to believe that he had taken my advice and decided to pretend nothing at all had happened between us. But why would he even propose to bring me out with him then? If this wasn't supposed to be a date, then what exactly was it supposed to be? What was it that he was up to? And why had I been so stupidly assumptive about this whole thing from the beginning?

The question debate taking place inside my mind was interrupted, when Niall decided to assign an end to the growing silence. "Did you like the food?" He questioned, eyes glued to the road in front of him.

"Hmm," I hummed.

"What's wrong?" He flashed me a quick glimpse.

"Nothing." I shrugged.

"Really? No, it's just, you seem..." He seemed thoughtful about what word to place next into his sentence. "..kinda.. disappointed." He decided.

"Why should I be disappointed?"

"I dunno, you tell me." He smiled a cheeky half-smile, his otherwise invisible dimple, showing a little.

Now, blondie's canny mind was definitely up to something. Whenever he would intend on doing something cunning or cheeky, he'd always flash those mischievous beams, every now and then, leaving hints of the fact that something was playing on his mind. It was more of an involuntary habit that he carried. Then he would run his hands through his hair, scratch the back of his head a little, lost in thoughts on how to execute his cheeky mission successfully and I absolutely hated myself for having everything about him memorised like this. It felt as though he was some stuck up popstar and I was some crazy, obsessed fan who knew everything minute detail about him, like a creepy freak.