Chasing Pavements - A Niall Horan Fanfic

Chapter 14: Change My Mind

Niall’s head was splitting open, and some smart ass bird had the audacity to keep chirping happily on the ledge outside his window. The spot next to him was empty. It had been for about an hour. He vaguely remembered waking up to the sound of his front door slamming. He vaguely remembered the night before. Bits and pieces of the night played behind his eyelids as he tried to recount how he’d even gotten home. It came to him in quick little shots. Harry leading him to the car. Harry buckling him into his seat. Harry helping him up to his flat and into his room. Harry leaving and Becca helping him into bed. Then it was blank. He’d obviously fallen asleep, and it was a deep, dreamless sleep. He sort of remembered the bed shifting some time during the early hours of the morning, but it was a blur like everything else before the exact moment he woke up to that damn bird singing. 

He sit up without allowing the world to spin him off it. His mouth was dry and tasted much like a good night of partying gone wrong. He hadn’t puked yet, and the taste in his mouth certainly wasn’t helping him keep it that way. Smacking his lips, he looked around the room for any signs Becca had been there at all. Bloodshot eyes landed on a yellow piece of paper underneath a water bottle and two pills. He slid the note out from under the bottle carefully. It took a minute for his eyes to focus long enough to read what was written: “Take these and rest. Spending the day with Li.” 

His eyebrows furrowed momentarily before a sharp pain coursed through his head again. Quickly taking the pills, he picked up the note again and practically memorized it. What did she mean by “spending the day with Li?” Were they going to play video games for a bit? Niall figured Liam would be spending the day with Danielle, not Becca. After all, Niall would want to spend the day after his birthday with his girlfriend. As much as it confused him, it hurt him too. He didn’t get drunk just to trick Becca into spending a day cuddling in the bed with him. At the same time, he really hadn’t expected her to leave him to fend for himself. She didn’t seem the type, which meant only one thing. He had done something monumentally stupid, and Liam was trying to fix whatever it was. 

The Irish boy tried to search through the hazy night in his mind to think of anything he could have possibly done, anything his now sober mind would deem idiotic. He remembered drinking…a lot. He remembered dancing around. He remembered some girl licking icing off his nose. That gave him pause, but after a minute or two of pondering it, he shrugged it off. No way she would be upset over that. After all, he didn’t lick it off the girl. The girl licked it off him. He tried to keep thinking, but as the night went on, it got hazier. A flash of a memory hit him, though. Some brown haired girl came up to him while he was obviously too drunk to tell his ass from his head. She giggled a lot and smelled like cigarettes and some sweet perfume that made him want to barf. Still, he bought her a drink…mostly to get her away from him. That’s all she was after anyways because it worked. She got her drink and she walked away from him. Didn’t leave a name, a number, or even a thank you in her wake. 

Slapping his forehead, he cursed his stupidity three-fold. One for hitting himself in the head while suffering from the worst hangover of his life. Two for being stupid enough to not realize she was watching him. Three for abandoning her after agreeing to be her date to the party. Niall knew there was no way to take back what he had done, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to make it right. He just really didn’t know how. He’d never really dealt with that sort of situation before. Sure he’d done stupid things in the past. Wasn’t that kind of a given when you were an eighteen year old? 

He staggered up from his bed to search for his phone. Looking down, he realized he still had his jeans on. A hunch told him to check his pockets. Feeling the hard plastic against his fingers, he extracted his phone. Fourteen missed calls and three voicemails waited for him to check them, but he ignored them. Whatever it was could wait. Fixing his mistake was the only important thing to him in that moment.