Act Like You're in Love {Niall Horan}

Chapter 43: Premiere

~Mariah's P.O.V.~

"No, she picked this for me because she thought this was a good color on me, but I don't like this part," I told Callie, gesturing towards the figure-eight strap.

"Why? It looks pretty."

"It's uncomfortable."

"Pretty means uncomfortable, most of the time. This is Hollywood."

"If you didn't notice, I'm not the traditional Hollywood lady," I said with a roll of my eyes.

"Oh, I know. Hence why everyone likes you. You're different. You aren't a bitch, and you don't cake yourself with artificial beauty."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"Do," Callie replied simply, turning back to herself. She looked into her own eyes, the ones with metallic eyeshadow above them.

I didn't reply, so Callie finished the conversation. "You're too pretty for makeup. And then your outer beauty equals your inner. Now, hand me that earring right there."

I sighed but complied.

"So," she said, putting in the earring, "you never told me how that first date went."

Immediately a wide smile found its way onto my face. "It was fantastic. He took me to The Pottery Place, and I have a picture on my phone of the piece I made," I told her while rummaging through my purse. I grabbed my phone and found the picture.

"Wow, that's impressive!" Callie said, genuinely enthusiastic for once.

"Thank you! I was pretty proud of it. Anyway, afterwards we had a picnic, that was fun. Oh, and we met this other couple, Nellie and Jared. They were such nice people. I told Nellie we would make plans, I totally forgot, I need to get back to her on that," I went on and on, beginning to talk more to myself than Callie.

"Alright, shut up now," she said bluntly. I've learned to not care about what she says too, so I wasn't offended at all.

"Ready?" I inquired as Callie smoothed out her own dress. It was a shiny, grayish-silver and looked pretty cool on her.

"Yup."

~

"Well somebody looks good today," I told Niall, biting down on my lip to stop my smile.

"More than one," he replied cheekily, crossing his arm over mine before taking my hand into his.

His warmth spread from my fingertips, through my hands, and up my arms.

We walked down the red carpet together getting pictures taken. Going our separate way was apparently not an option because as soon as we did so, some people I didn't even know ushered us back to the same place. I posed for yet another red carpet picture with Niall. This was something I really had to get used to.

After the cameras stopped bombarding my personal space, I went inside with the boys, other actors and actresses, and a few others.

When we walked in, I was baffled how there were already an inconceivable amount of people inside. I blinked a few times to adapt to the new lighting - or, rather, lack of lighting - of small-scale, colored lights lining the rows along with calming, yellow lights above that had a low radiance.

Hurriedly, Mary ran over to me to congratulate me and tell me the rundown. We were to chat with people, watch the movie, chat some more, and then leave for an interview. Then, as quick as she came, she took off.

There wasn't much time before we were all escorted to our cushioned chairs. I was seated in between Niall and another actress, Sasha, who played a minor role as a policewoman. Of course, the movie didn't begin for another few minutes, so I conversed with her, and we exchanged numbers. Nowadays I seemed to be giving everybody my number. Soon enough, my contacts would be filled mostly with celebrities.