Frisson

Chapter 7

Hey guys, sorry for the extra long wait.  This chapter was a pain in the royal ass to write.  I'm not really pleased with it at all, but I couldn't make you guys wait any longer, so here you are.  Don't think too badly of me please!

In honor of the concert I went to last night, the songs for the chapter are:

Guns Out--Young the Giant

Firelight--Young the Giant

I Got--Young the Giant (probably my favorite of all their songs)

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*Niall's POV*

“Come on, Torres, go!”

“Use your elbow, you git!”

“Run faster, you blood—AHH —bull shit! That wanker clearly fouled him!” Louis’s screams collide painfully with Liam’s indignant shouts as they rain down abuse on the offending player.  The match is only thirty minutes along, but they’ve been screaming nonstop since kick off and I’m getting rather sick of it.

I grab one of the pillows and stuff it over my ears to help muffle their cries.

“He doesn’t even get a bleeding penalty kick?!  Are you pissing me, right now?  Take a seat, ref!” Louis continues to argue with the bus’s widescreen as the vehicle takes us across the Mississippi interstate.

Liam’s voice joins his a moment later as two players collide mid-jump while vying for the airborne soccer ball despite my attempts to press the downy pillow harder on my ears.

One more word out of either of them and I’m going to put my foot throu—

“FOUL!  That was a bloody foul, you—” Louis’s furious cry is cut short as my patience cracks and I lurch to my feet, hurling the pillow across the bus at him and adding my own scream to the barrage, “Oy!  Can yeh shut your mouths for two bleeding seconds?!”

Dead silence reigns in the bus.

Liam and Louis are frozen as they stare at me in disbelief; Harry’s snapping green eyes are pinned on me as well from the seat behind the driver whose gaze I can feel in the rearview mirror.  Paul’s face is an uncomfortable mixture of concern and disapproval at my outburst and even Zayn’s bunk is quiet, signaling his return to the waking world.

A wave of guilt washes over me when Louis leans over and whispers clearly to Liam, “Did he really just say that?”

Liam’s bewildered nod is enough to break my paralysis and send me to the back of the bus, muttering awkward apologies and halfhearted excuses under my breath.

When I reach the back room I snap the door closed sharply and flop onto the futon pushed against the back wall, rubbing my hands down my face.

What has gotten into me?  I’ve never yelled at any of the lads like that before.

It’s been four days, and I had thought being around them would help me relax and drown out the words running like a tape recorder through my mind every hour of the night and day.  But the funny part is that the words stuck on replay aren’t the ones that passed through her lips; they’re the ones that lived in her voice and in her eyes and in her hands that shook when she gave me that bottle of Pepsi.

Don’t forget me.

And I can’t.  Try though I might now that I’m being driven mad by her, I still can’t let her go.  It’s a scary thing though.  To consciously try to forget a human being.  We’re meant to be remembered, recalled, treasured, even.  So the idea of wiping her from my memory is not just a difficult one but a painful one as well.