Just Pretend (preview)

Chapter 1; The Old Times

"I remember when you two would always be over in our backyard, either playing in the sand box or playing soccer together. No netter what the day or weather was, you would always go out and play and come home all muddy and dirty." My mum smiled, as we flipped through old photos. We had come across a photo of Niall and me when we were younger, my long lost childhood friend.

"I remember one day we started to play with chalk but got bored, so we decided to color each-other with chalk and then played soccer." I smiled, reliving the memories we had shared while we were little.

"Yep, you two had a very unique relationship, I'm telling you straight up." My dad chuckled while handing me the picture of us covered in chalk while playing soccer.

"To bad he had to move away, without telling me. I mean really, who does that?" I mumbled to the two of them, and the room became an unusual silence.

**Flashback**

"Mum, I'm home!" I yelled as I walked into my warm house, after school.

"Hi honey! How was your day today?" She asked, looking quite nervous or maybe even worried.

I slumped on the couch and crossed my arms.

"Boring, Niall didn't show up today." I replied and she sighed, a bigger one than usual.

"We have to talk, Lauren." She say on the coffee table next to the couch I had been laying on.

"Okay.."

"Niall had to leave, they moved away." she paused while tears formed in my eyes. "I'm sorry Lauren.." she continued on but my sobs cut her off.

She pulled me into a hug and told me everything would be alright.

"But it's not alright mum.." I replied sniffling and coughing and still crying.

I cried for a week straight, no school for a week because of the anger and sadness I felt. No good bye, no warning and not even a reason as to why they left without telling us.

**End of Flashback**

"Mum, why did Niall even move away?" I asked, cautiously. Her expression turned from happy to nervous and hesitant.

"Uh, I'm not to sure honey." she replied, making it seem like she wasn't lying but I knew that she was.

"It's a shame," My dad continued on with our conversation.

"It's amazing at how far he's come though, almost winning Xfactor, becoming a huge boy band with the four others." My mom replied, to my dad.

"It's a real shame as to how he hasn't even tried contacting me the past 8 years." I mumbled, getting up and walking to my bedroom.

I opened up my laptop and scrolled through my twitter feed, coming across tweets from all the drama going on in the fandom lately.

My phone buzzed as soon as I closed out of twitter with of course, a twitter notification, letting me know that Niall just had tweeted and what he had tweeted.

"@niallofficial: Looking through some old photos! So long ago! If you have any photos of me in my earlier years, tweet them t me!"

Instantly, I thought of the picture with chalk covered all over us, playing soccer. I took a picture of it on my phone and put it in a tweet, back to Niall.

"@LaurenAslin: @NiallOfficial remember me, Lauren? *picture here*"

I hesitantly pressed send, not expecting anything like a reply from him or anyone at the least. I closed my twitter and hopped into the shower.

I let the hot water flow onto me for a good ten minutes, for me to just think. Think about why my mum and dad were lying to me about everything to do with Niall, why Niall hasn't tried talking to me and of course the stress from school even though I'm almost done.

I finished up washing myself and jumped out into the cold air that hit me like a ton of bricks. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my body and then wrapped one around my hair.

While I walked into my room, I could hear my phone buzzing out of control. All twitter notifications..

I picked up the phone and scrolled through my mentions that were blowing up at the moment.

Then I realized Niall had saw my picture and tweeted me back.

"@NiallOfficial @LaurenAslin : Lauren! Long time no talk! Hope your doing good, love! By the way, we were pretty artsy, weren't we."

butterflies swarmed into my stomach as I reread the tweet over and over again until I finally decided to reply.

"@LaurenAslin: @NiallOfficial if you call coloring ourselves with chalk artsy, then we sure were!"

I pressed send and the noticed Niall had followed me, causing more of a frenzy.

Scrolling through my mentions was actually pretty cool. Everyone was saying how cute we looked and that long lost friends should reunite and stuff like that, but honestly, why would Niall do that? He's has a perfect life without me, I mean why miss me?

Minutes later, I received a Direct Message from Niall,

"Hey, we should catch up sometime eh? How are you doing?"

I quickly replied with,

"Considering we haven't talked to each other in about 8 years, we should yeah. And I'm doing good, how about you?"

I pressed send and eagerly waited for a reply, but of course, nothing for the rest of the night and finally, I gave up, and went to sleep. I knew it was too good to be true.