Best Friend's Dad (Ziall Horlik)AU

Chapter 5

Niall's POV

I walked into school on Monday morning and I swear someone flipped a switch for the sound that was going through the halls. The second I walked into the school building, everyone stopped talking and looked at me. Immediately, my shoulders hunched foward and my head hung just a little lower because I hated having everyone looking at me like this. My feet shuffled me down the halls until I was at my locker, but I was still getting looks of pure hatred or disgust. Some people looked like they wanted to break out laughing at me, but I was just confused as to why.

My eyes stopped looking at everyone and just focused on getting my books out of my locker, but the word fag had been written on it in black sharpie. I ignored it, thinking that would be the end of the harassment I'm getting for being something I'm not. I knew I thought wrong when I did the combination lock and it was completely broken. I just opened my locker door and saw there were condoms everywhere, in my books or taped on the cover of my binders and folders. There were also other homophobic slurs on all my stuff and on the walls of my locker. That was all I needed to see before slamming my locker door shut and running down the hall to hide in a broom closet or the bathroom until the first bell rang and I could leave school.

Unfortunately, my choice of hiding in the closet became a joke to everyone that was saying now I was literally in the closet. I don't understand how they all came up with something stupid like me being gay. I'm not gay and I'll never be so really the joke is on them. Well, at the moment I'm kind of their joke and it's not very funny. All I could think of was Melissa told everyone about my drunk incident at the party and now they all think it's so funny. I don't really care about what they think, I'm just scared that maybe Liam knows something about this whole mess.

The bell rang for us to get to class, but I stayed right where I was. I hugged my knees closer to my chest and let out a few tears that I didn't even know wanted to make an appearance. This was all such a mess and I didn't know how to fix it. I hoped that by the end of the day there would be someone else to make fun of if they had to have that, but I felt it in my bones that they weren't going to have something new for a while.

The door to the broom closet opened and Harry Styles slipped in. I wiped my face to rid myself of tears, but more kept coming. Harry looked down at me then dropped his backpack before scrunching up his tall frame to sit next to me. We both stayed quiet for a minute before I just felt all my walls crumble down and let out the tears that had been stored up. Harry didn't even hesitate to pull me into his long arms to hug me.

"I'm not gay! They don't need to do this to me, or to anyone!" I cried to him. He hummed in his deep voice in agreement to what I had just said. My heart was in pain and my throat was burning because I didn't want to cry so loud. I'm an ugly crier and it's not something I would share with this curly haired boy that's really a complete stranger to me.

"Niall, have you ever thought maybe you might be gay? I know it sounds weird at first, but it could be possible. I didn't think I was but I met one guy and knew that I was." Harry asked me. I moved out of his arms and shook my head because I've never thought I was because it sure as hell wasn't.

"What has everyone thinking this? I only made one mistake and all of a sudden the whole school has to turn against me? This doesn't make sense!" I said. Harry sighed and pulled out his phone. His long fingers tapped the screen a few times before he was showing me a text message and a picture of me. I read over everything multiple times just to be sure I was seeing this the right way. I just stood up and got my backpack before leaving Harry in that broom closet. This was all a lie so there was no need to react the way I did. Maybe if the truth of what happened at the party came out then I could be feeling like my world is over, but it's not over because this is all a fabricated story.