One More Night (Niall Horan)

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Stevie

“I think the biggest thing for me was the intensity of it all. I went from… dancing like it was all I could ever do in my life, a boyfriend who didn’t really support my dreams yet we’d been together for so long that ending things seemed like an impossibility. I went from that to… dating Niall, and then came my career. I was thrust into the spotlight… like… like a blind man who was finally learning how to see.”

“That’s an interesting way to see it.”

“Well that’s how it was for me.” I try to tell her calmly, but I can feel the tension running up and down my spine waiting to explode into emotions of terror and anxiety. I had to trust her and tell her everything, yet trust was just something I didn’t think I could give much more of anymore. “Careers are supposed to grow, to expand as you make a name for yourself, yet I was put up on a pedestal without a moment to breathe.”

“Tell me about your boyfriend before Niall.”

“He was… my friends didn’t like him. But when we were together, just the two of us sparks flew. I was in love with him and my friends made it hard for me to be with him because they didn’t like him. They only saw him as a bad guy.”

“How did that relationship end?”

I heard the story like I was hearing it from a different person’s perspective, overlooking myself as I sat in a chair, my hair defying my wishes for it to be straight, dark bags under my eyes which seemed to be emphasised by the lack of make-up that normally covered my face. I hadn’t been this messy since before my career in singing began. Now it all looked to be over.

I listened and remembered everything that had happened to me and it seemed strange to me, the things I had faced in such little amount of time. It seemed unrealistic, but it was how it had all happened.

“So, you went almost immediately from your relationship with Niall to a relationship with Rob.” The woman reads from her notebook, probably summarising all the things that are psychologically wrong with me, because that’s what they do, isn’t it? Listen to my stories and come to their own conclusions.

“Pretty much. I guess being cheated on lowered by self-esteem.”

“I’m not sure that’s why the relationship ended badly.” The woman, Stevie, as she insisted that I call her instead of Doctor Wolfe, as it reads on her certifcates that plastered her walls, “I think you don’t realise yourself that you have an issue with giving away your feelings and showing your true emotions.”

“I’m sat here talking to you, aren’t I?” I reply in a tone that would shock my mother, in an attitude she thought had disappeared when I’d become an adult.

“You’re relaying back events that I could easily read about in a magazine.” Stevie tells me and I feel like slapping her across the face.

She’s only trying to help. That’s exactly what Niall would say. We all just want to help you get better.

“We’ve spent three sessions already talking about your childhood, your relationship with Niall… none of this is any use to me. I want to know how you feel about your past experiences. Now, I want you to tell me what happened on the night of-“ Stevie leans closer towards her notebook and then looks up again, as if holding the pause she had accidentily made, and momentarily decided to hold it against me to make me squirm. “The 12th of January. Your friend Zayn’s birthday party.”

Niall grabbed onto my hand as he rang the doorbell, a sign of affection he hadn’t shown me all weekend, yet now that we were out in public he now decides to show everybody how ‘happy’ we are.