Wonderwall

Chapter Eleven

Niall handed over a five pound note to a blonde haired waitress and handed me a coffee in a warm, cardboard Costa Coffee cup. We walked out, me slightly behind him, trying to cool down my drink at the same time as walking out.

Niall turned around to look at me and I heard him laugh.

'Come on, Brianna. Don't take too long.' He smiled at me. The sun shone brightly on his leather jacket and I frowned, wondering how the hell he could wear a jacket in this weather. Then again, I had chosen jeans and a long sleeved lace top. But at least my colours were bright whereas his were dark. I followed him through the park that he'd brought me to and we eventually found a bench that overlooked the park.

At first I was happy just sitting and enjoying the sun with my eyes acting as sunglasses, but then I started to get uncomfortable by Niall's silence.

I opened my eyes to see Niall with his eyes closed as well. I thought he was sleeping but his eyes shot open and looked at me, sweat falling from his forehead. He wiped it with his hand and gave a laugh as he saw me looking at him, completely disgusted.

'Sorry about that.' He smiled. He sat up, his feet up on the bench, his whole body turned to me. He placed his elbows on his knees and grabbed one hand with the other before looking at me with wide eyes.

'Nial-'

'How are you?' He muttered, the smile gone from his face. I tried to lighten the mood by frowning and smiling in a kind of 'are-you-for-real' way, but he seemed deadly serious.

'I'm fine, I told yo-'

'Stop. Look, Brianna. I had a girlfriend. You remind me a lot of her. Her name was Marissa Ross. She was never okay. I would look into her eyes and I could tell. She'd tell me constantly that she was okay. Her parents fought, she wasn't looked upon as 'smart' in school. I knew she wasn't okay but I couldn't fix that, because she lied to me over and over again. I can see it in your eyes, Brianna Wood. Something's bothering you.' He cocked his head, squinting at me. 'But I don't know what it is.'

'It's my dad. Or the Dad I don't have.'

When my Dad first died, nobody really wanted to discuss it. My mum would sit in her room for hours watching old episodes of Star Trek. She said that before the police even came round to our house, she knew something was wrong. She told us, (me, Noah and Finn), that she burst into tears half an hour before the police turned up.

There was a car thief and my father was put on the case. To put it as quickly as possible, many people lost a lot of money after the bank was stolen from, but I lost my dad.

After Noah was expected to now be the 'man of the house', Mum was pretty much okay to give up on being a parent. That was until we realised that Finn was getting bullied at school and Noah realised that he couldn't be 'the father'. So he apologised to us and told Mum that she couldn't give up. That she had to work twice as hard to be a good parent. So he left for the USA with his girlfriend, leaving Mum to struggle on her own.

I told Niall all this, including the part where I walked through the front door and how angry my mum was. Before I knew it, I was blurting out my whole life story to someone i'd known just over a week. But it was weird, because with the old bench and the eerie silence. With the empty park and how Niall's attention was fixed on me, I felt like I could tell him anything.

So I did.

When I finally finished with Aidan being the closest thing to a father i'd ever get, although he was my best friend and not much like a father at all, Niall took in a deep breathe and let it out again.

And although he cared, and although all his attention was on me, I was impatient and he lacked reaction.

'Well?' I spat, suddenly more upset than angry. He slid his legs off the bench and slid closer. His eyes looked up into mine as I took a deep breathe. He smiled at me and I attempted to smile back, but tears started falling down my face.

'Shh' Niall mumbled. He reached up a hand and wiped them away, before I could. I squinted my eyes shut and dropped my head on his shoulder, crying into his shoulder.