every rose has its thorns. // niall horan

chaptet ten.

After Rosaleen pressed send she reread the last few lines of her email. Okay maybe what she wrote wasn’t exactly true. He had said those words, but he meant it in a different way than Rosaleen had insinuated to CiCi. When they got off the bus in Dublin Niall had bumped into a nervous looking teenager carrying a bunch of roses.

“First date?” Niall had asked, pointing at the flowers.

The boy nodded, worry etched over his features. “Do you think the roses are too much?”

Niall had just smiled and said, “Roses have thorns for a reason. It’s because the flowers deserve that sort of protection. As for your girl, if you protect her like a thorn protects a rose she will appreciate that more than any flower in the world.” Then he had turned to Rosaleen and gave her a supportive pat on the shoulder, “For this trip I’ll be your thorn.”

Then they walked towards his cousin’s apartment, which happened to be the same direction the boy with the roses was going, and Niall happily gave him some more tips.

Rosaleen sighed; too late to take back the email now. Oh well, CiCi would lap that up. She was a sucker for romance. Rosaleen knew the real reason she had typed it, and it had nothing to do with CiCi. She was trying to justify to herself why she was so caught up in the whirlwind that was Niall Horan. She was giving herself a reason to get over Tim, who she never thought she would part with. Rosaleen wasn’t the type of girl to go around and flirt with boys; she only dated Tim because he was as equally boring as her and they had known each other their entire lives. She hadn’t even known Niall for a week and here she was sitting in an apartment in the middle of Dublin. When she stepped off the plane in this same city on Sunday, she didn’t think she would ever be over Tim. Now it was Tuesday and her only thoughts of him were fleeting at best.

“And this is the living room. Where I will be sleeping tonight.” Niall walked into the room with a video camera, presenting the tiny room as if it were a magnificent ballroom. “It’s a bit cramped and a bit messy but adventures don’t come with five star hotels now do they?” The camera landed on Rosaleen and behind its lens Niall grinned. “That gorgeous girl right there is my travel companion Rosaleen. Say hi to the folks back home Kat.”

Rosaleen waved to the camera timidly as Niall bounded closer to her. He plopped down next to her on the tattered couch and turned the camera so that it got both of them in the picture.

“You may be wondering why I just called Rosaleen Kat. And if you were wondering, then it’s your lucky day because you’re about to find out.” He talked to the camera as if it were an old friend, and if it wanted nothing more than to hear about their trip. Though it couldn’t respond, Niall continued on as if it really had asked why Rosaleen was being called Kat. “My friend Rosaleen here, as you can see, has red hair.” Niall held up one of her curls for the camera. “Now I myself am not much of a reader, but I once had a friend who for some reason found books interesting. Anyway, she read a book series called The Hunger Games. One day she was telling me about it and before I dozed off I remembered her saying that the main character’s name was Katniss and they called her the girl who was on fire. Why they called her that I will never know, because I feel asleep at that point and that was the last time Cass ever talked to me about reading. Actually I think that was the last time Cass ever talked to me. So the first thing…” he stopped and corrected himself, “no second thing I thought when I saw Rosaleen was she reminded me of the girl on fire. So she’s Kat now.” He grinned proudly at the camera before turning it off.

“My hair’s not that red.” Rosaleen spoke up defensively. “It’s like red-gold.”

“Oh,” Niall pretended like this made all the difference in the world, bring his hand to his heart in a ‘how could I have been so stupid’ way. “And are your eyes forest green? And your skin a light caramel brown? And your freckles?” He indicated the spots covering her face and she turned away self-consciously. She hated her freckles. “What are they? A kind of reddish-brown?”