Letters Not Sent, Voices Not Heard {A One Direction Fan Fiction}

Chapter 22 ~ The Boy Snaps

April 2013

Niall’s P.O.V.

I ran my tongue across my braces-free teeth for the millionth time that day. I had just gotten them off and I couldn’t feel freer. I could eat what I wanted now.

But something from this day was missing.

Bailey.

Bailey had always said she was going to be with me when I got them off. She wanted to be the first person to see me free from my prison. But this time, it was the lads.

All this things I was supposed to be experiencing with her, I couldn’t. I hadn’t even talked to her since she left. I was relying on what mum and her parents had told me which was enough to make me feel even more awful.

Here she was, living it up in New York, fulfilling her dream and living without me. And I’m touring with the boys, fulfilling my dream but so dejected without her with me. It was like I needed to know she cared about me to function properly. It probably wasn’t even that. I just needed her with me or there for me over a phone whenever I needed her.

I didn’t know what was going on with her from Twitter because whenever I saw her icon, I scrolled passed it. I couldn’t look at her smiley-faced tweets when I was feeling like this.

“You guys look,” Liam said. “Bailey got a dog!”

“That can’t be right,” I said. “She hates dogs.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “She said she met some homeless guy and he had a dog and something changed her mind. Look it’s so cute!”

He showed me his phone and I saw the picture. It was in fact, really cute.

“What’s its name?” Zayn asked.

“She’s says she named it Marley,” Liam answered.

Bailey really had changed. When we were kids, she always swore she’d never liked or would like dogs and she surely wouldn’t own one. Had I been holding her back? Now that she was thriving without me, was she realizing things she never would have realized had I not been an arse?

They all began talking about her and I couldn’t even stay in the same area as them. I went to grab water from the dressing room to get away from it all. I’d gathered that she had begun talking to Liam a little. I remembered they had been close while she’d been here. Whether she had asked about me or given any hint as to how mad she was at me, I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know. If she hated me more than ever, I’d rather live in ignorance than know she would rather me die. Ignorance was bliss.

“Niall?” I looked up and saw Zayn had come after me. “You OK mate?”

“I just can’t stand to hear all this talk about her,” I whispered hoarsely. “I knew I could never live without her but that’s exactly what I have to do. I can’t hear all this about her and possibly be OK.”

“I know it’s hard mate,” he said. “But maybe you need to start learning to let her go.”

“I can’t let her go,” I said fiercely. “I can’t. And I won’t. I love her too much to let her go. She’s my best friend and the girl I love with all my heart. I can’t let her go.”

“Niall you’re letting her get away by not talking to her or anything,” he said.

“Zayn if she hates me, talking to her isn’t going to make a difference,” I sighed. “This is why I’m so stuck.”

“I get that, but Niall you-,”

“Can you stop telling me what I am or am not doing and what I should or shouldn’t do?” I interrupted as my temper boiled over. “You don’t understand! When you tell Perrie you love her, she says she loves you to. I tell Bailey I love her and she runs out on me and doesn’t talk to me for months. You don’t understand any of this! This isn’t your battle to fight, it’s mine. I have to figure this out for myself because I understand this a hell of a lot better than you do.”