Strum

(Ellie's POV)

"Okay Ellie, you can do it. Good things will come from this," I whisper to myself as I stand in front of my favorite place in the world, a small guitar shop on the corner of a tiny street in London.

Lately I've been coming a lot. I've played guitar since I was twelve and haven't been able to put it down since. Now I'm nineteen and I'm sure that playing guitar is embedded in the deepest parts of my heart.

After high school, I was, amazingly enough, accepted into the University of London. Saying goodbye to my family was the worst though. I've lived in Mississippi from the time I was born, and its where my roots are.

My dad and my older brother are back home, checking up on me every second. But my mom is a different story. When I was 12, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The harder she fought the battle, the farther she was from winning. After nearly a year and a half of crying, laughing, loving, and praying, God decided that her time to be an angel had come.

That's what started my guitar obsession.

In the corner of our living room sat a guitar. My dad knew how to play, but he rarely ever did. One day I picked it up and just looked at it. I figured out how to channel my emotions into my guitar. Piece by piece things became easier for me. The pain still haunts me, but now I can cope with it.

With a little bit of struggle, I open the door to the shop. Guitars in all shapes, sizes, and colors line the walls. And then I see it. A single white guitar. The only one in the entire shop, and its all mine. I walk over to it, in awe of its beauty and pull it from the stand. After finding a stool, I place the guitar in my lap. Immediately my fingers play anything and everything I can think of, and its the most beautiful sound I've heard. The store manager watches me over his tiny glasses and taps his foot to the strum. I hit a sour note and stop, let out a huff, and straighten myself.

All of the sudden, a song comes up and my head, and it's all I can think of. Finally, I play Kiss Me by Ed Sheeran, and it sounds even more lovely than anything else I've played. Then comes the singing. I'm not the most confident singer, but not too many people are in here, so there's no reason not to.

As I play along with the words, I hear something. Not too loud, but loud enough to make me turn around. I look behind me, and a blonde boy pulls a stool next to me. He pulls a black guitar from its stand. I turn around to hide the blush from rising on my cheeks, but it does no justice. At least he can't see me, I think to myself. As I start singing the chorus, quieter this time, I hear the boy sing beside me. I almost stop what I'm doing because from what I can tell, he's amazing. I turn to watch him, and at the same time, he looks at me.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that he planned this.

As I draw out the last chord of the song, he chuckles to himself. I take the guitar off of my neck and change my direction to actually see him for the first time.

He has blue eyes, almost the color of the ocean. His smile lights up the whole room as he sticks his hand out to me.

"Hi! I'm Niall! Niall Horan. But who are you?"

"I-I'm Ellie Morgan."