Yay! 17 my lucky number!
Anyway, this is dedicated to AllOurHearts, who won the Best Cover category of my One Direction's Undiscovered Gems Watty Awards! Congrats, Shelby! No, I wasn't congratulating myself. Her name is also Shelby. So, go check out her stories! Especially Truth Be Told (I'm a character in it along with my best friend Katy [Harvard1943], and another awesome writer Bai [xBaiKiss]) ;)
xx Shel
Chapter 17
I stood in the center on the dance floor of my old studio, just staring at myself in the mirror. It felt likes it had been years since I stood in this room. Now that I thought about it, this was the only studio that had ever felt like home. That’s why I had insisted on coming here since Paul had let us come back to London for a week for me to get to know my dad before continuing the US tour.
I poked at my hip bones that were exposed by my gray crop top, wrinkling my nose at them. Niall was right, I needed to eat more. I shook my head and pressed play on the remote, starting the song on my iPod. We Cry by The Script filled the room, flowing through me as I forgot the world and started to dance. It was the first time I had really danced in almost six months.
My eyes closed, everything around me disappeared as I turned and leaped and rolled across the floor. As the song ended I threw myself on the wooden floor, panting as my heart pounded against my chest. I hadn’t felt so me in such a long time, but in that moment I felt like I was the happiest girl on earth. It was as though I had never left, like my mom had never come back. I was just Kora, not Niall Horan’s girlfriend that happened to be a dancer like I had been seeing all over Twitter.
The next song started to play and I pushed myself to my feet, melting into the beat again.
*****
“I figured I’d find you here.”
I lifted my head off the cool wooden floor to see Riley standing across from me. I rolled my eyes and laid back on my back. “What do you want?”
“I saw you were back in town and I thought I’d come see how you were doing.”
“What do you really want?”
He sighed. “Kayla dumped me and I came to see if you wanted to go back out with me.”
I pushed myself into a sitting position. “You’re joking, right?”
“You’re famous now. It’d get me noticed.”
“Wow, you’re not even trying to hide your shallowness now. Sorry Riley, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a relationship that I’m very happy with.”
He stepped forward. “Come on, Kora. You weren’t able to resist me before, what happened?”
I stood up, grabbing my belongings and slipping on my shoes. As I walked past him I said, “I stopped being an idiot.”
He grabbed my arm and pushed me back in front of him. “You know you still want me.”
“At the moment, I want you to go jump off the top of the London Eye.”
“Kora, we both know you’re just playing hard to get.”
I raised my eyebrow at him. “We both know I don’t play games. Now let me go.”
“Not until you admit you need me.” He tightened his grip on my arm.
Quoting Ed Sheeran I said, “You need me, I don’t need you.” With that, I kicked him where it hurts and walked away as he doubled over in pain.
Danielle came through the door right as Riley yelled, “You’ll regret this, Benson!”
Dani looked back at Riley then at me. “Are you okay, Kor?”
“Fine and dandy now. Let’s go.”
*****
“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this,” I told Danielle as she squeezed more dye onto the ends of my hair.
She chuckled. “You already colored it red, what will a little blue hurt?”
Danielle had decided I should dip-dye my hair from about the bottom of my shoulder down, so after bleaching the red out of that area, she was now squeezing the cobalt blue color on it. I was kind of excited by how it would turn out, but also a little nervous at the same time. There wasn’t anything to be nervous about; I had already drastically changed my chocolate brown hair to cherry red.
“Okay… done. Now we wait thirty minutes.” Dan sat the empty bottle of dye on the bathroom counter next to me and inspected her work. “I think it’s going to turn out brilliant.”
“If it doesn’t, you’re paying to get my hair cut, deal?”
She laughed. “Deal.”
I got up out of the kitchen chair she had made me sit in and stretched, feeling all my newly sore muscles. It was the best feeling in the world.
“Hey, Kor?” Danielle called as I walked into the kitchen to get a water bottle.
“Yeah?”
She appeared from the bathroom. “Why was Riley at the studio today?”
I rolled my eyes at the reminder. “His latest girl dumped him so he came to see if I wanted to go out again. Well, actually, he came to see if he could use me to get famous. He wouldn’t take no for an answer so I kicked him between the legs and that’s when you showed up.”
“He honestly thought you would take him back?”
“Apparently.” I shrugged. “I told him I was done being an idiot and was quite happy with my Niall.”
Danielle smiled a goofy smile that made me blush and stammer out a, “What are you smiling at?”
“You called him your Niall.”
My blush deepened, but I smiled at the ground. “Well, he is…”
Danielle went to say something, but my phone made a sound that cut her off. I pulled it out of my pocket to see I had a text from Zayn. I clicked it open.
I took this earlier when he was on the phone with you. Look how happy you make him. X
Below the words was a picture of Niall with his Blackberry pressed to his ear, smiling a huge smile as he ran his hand through his blonde locks. I grinned at the photo, immediately saving it and setting it as my lock screen.
“Was that Nialler?” Dani chuckled.
“Zayn,” I corrected her. “He sent me a picture of Niall.”
“Can I see?”
I handed her my phone and she started to gush. “Aw! That’s so sweet!”
“I have a similar picture of Liam like that one time when he was talking to you. I’m pretty sure I tweeted it.”
She laughed. “I remember that!”
The timer on Danielle’s phone went off, signaling that it was time to wash the dye out of my hair. I jumped in the shower real quick to make sure I got all the dye out then toweled dried my hair and looked in the mirror. My red waves now ended in a bright blue that actually looked sick. I did a happy dance before yelling to Danielle that she had been right and did an incredible drop coloring my hair.
I couldn’t wait to show it to Niall when he came over for dinner later.
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Dancing Alone (DI1D Sequel)
FanfictionIt's been almost five months since Kora was forced out of London and had to move back to New York. She hates her life there almost as much as she hates her mom for forcing her to move back. She just wants out of her contract at the Joffrey Ballet Sc...
