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fourteen

Niall sends me his e-mail, having three pictures attached. I smile and download the pictures to my external hard drive. We edited some pictures and already found titles for the pictures. The one of me is called "processing", the one with Mere is called "la carcajada", which means "laugh" in Spanish. I decided we should bring that in since Mere is part Hispanic, her father originally coming from Mexico. She's actually a native Spanish speaker. I love it when I'm at her house and she speaks Spanish with her parents. Niall found some pictures of his little sister playing on a playground. It kind of makes me happy to see that he has such pictures. Niall also has one he took of Wesley where Wesley is hugging Lilian. It's shot in the middle of the street with the sun going down. It seems so staged but it's not. That was after the first party of the year, as far as Niall explained. Lilian was just saying goodbye to my brother and he captured the picture because he thought it would be an amazing memory since it's their Senior year and they all are going in different directions after school.

"So, do you have like a folder with the edited pictures and a separated one for the unedited ones?", Niall asks me, as he sees me disconnecting my laptop and hard drive from each other.

"Yes, I do. It's the best way to stay organized", I answer.

"Smart", he smiles, as I put everything on my desk, "Do you want to fetch some coffee down at the Brew and come over to my place? My sister is home with my Mom but she's leaving soon for a business trip, following my Dad to Dubai."

I look down at my hands, playing with my fingers. Well, going over to his place means explaining myself to the girls and Wesley and I'm certainly not in the mood to deal with that. I don't even like Niall. It's not like we're best friends or something and we never will be. He's friends with my brother and he hurt Meredith. That's enough for me to stay distant. I mean, yeah, he saved me and he's doing the project with me. But it's not like we have to be best friends now. Of course, I like making new friends but it's Niall.

"No, thanks, Niall. I appreciate your offer but I can't. I still have a lot to do for school", I tell him.

"Okay, but you owe me a coffee date", he smirks.

"No, I don't. What makes you think that?", I chuckle.

"Well, I won our bet yesterday. So, you owe me a favor", he explains.

Well, I actually do owe him a favor. This is going to follow me all of the time until I do the favor for him. I roll my eyes, remembering what we did yesterday. I should've never agreed to get that drunk. I was basically an open target for anyone. I was so stupid and I still am.

"I guess so", I mumble.

"You do", Niall smirks again.

I roll my eyes but smile this time.

"How about Monday after Photography?", I suggest, trying to get this done soon, so I don't have to explain myself to my friends and Wesley.

It's not that I don't want to hang out with Niall, it's just Mere and the others always assuming things that aren't even real or close to being real. I still can't believe I hid the thing between Tobias and I without anyone noticing.

"Yeah, Monday is great", Niall smiles.

"Good, so should I bring you down or will you go to Wesley?", I ask.

"Nah, I'm good. I can find my own way out. It's not like I've been here a couple of hundred times already", he answers with a slight chuckle.

I nod and walk over to my desk to get my Math text book out to do some homework. Niall says his goodbyes to me before closing the door behind himself. I smack my head on the desk top, sighing. What am I even doing? I told myself that I wouldn't behave like I actually like his existence and now I've ruined everything I worked my ass off for. I don't like Niall and now he's involved with me more than I wanted. This is so confusing. It's not like I want to do more stuff with him, it's that I'm forced to do stuff with him. This stupid project is his fault, Wesley is kinda fault, Mere is kind of fault. If Wesley never became friends with Niall, I'd probably not have this problem right now. And to be honest, Niall is quite a friendly guy. I mean, he went looking for me at the party after I ran off from him. My brother trusted him enough to make him look after me while drunk. Wesley doesn't trust people easily but with Niall it seems that he trusts him more than he trusts me. It's nice to see that Wesley has a person he genually trusts but why does it have to be Niall Horan? He's got a reputation that I don't even understand. He's the heart breaker and girlfriend-stealer, sex god and most likely the cockiest person but then he was all sweet and cuddled me when I felt like shit this night. He made me feel comfortable. He cared about my well being and stayed up the whole night, not sleeping at all but rather making sure I was okay. I mean, who in the world does that as a heartless fuckboy? I don't understand Niall's intentions. Does he just want to sleep with me? Or does he genually care about my feelings? I'm confused. And to top that, Wesley told his guy friends to stay away from me but Niall seems to be closer to me than Wesley wants, making Wesley a little mad probably. Is he trying to mess around with Wesley? Or is he just messing with me to make Wesley's protective-brother-monster release? I don't know what is going on at the moment. We've been in school for one week and so much already happened, it's crazy. I take my phone from my bedside table and unlock it quickly before receiving about a hundred notifications since I didn't have my WiFi turned on on my phone. Mere, Riley and Mia continued the conversation but nothing interesting happened. Wes send me some memes and I also have some Snapchat notifications, seeing Mere and Lilian snapchatted me. It's nothing all too interesting, so I put my phone away again and take my laptop to watch Netflix. I decide to watch Pretty Little Liars. I'm on season five and it's crazy. I kind of lost track over who's done what and what is actually happening but it's still fun to watch.