One Direction One Shots

It Used to Be Me

It used to be Niall. He used to be the one that would make her smile like that; the one that would make her eyes light up and laugh her musical laughter. He would give her presents spontaneously and treat her like a princess. But then he stopped; he would always be moody and distant. And then one day, he just left. He left his princess heartbroken.

That day was the worst day of Julia’s life. It was the day she was going to tell Niall that she loved him, only to find him gone. Where he had gone, she didn’t know; she didn’t know where he was either. She just knew that he was gone; gone from her life forever. It hurt her a lot. He was her first love, how could it not hurt? But she had eventually gotten over it. She had met a nice boy in high school and they were high school sweethearts; it was just pure fate that they were in the same college. Julia thought that everything was going swell; she would graduate college and then get married to Todd, maybe have a kid or two later in life.

But all of that changed when she saw him again. Niall Horan. The boy that broke her heart all those years ago.

She was perusing a book store, Todd somewhere else in the store too, when she bumped into somebody. “Oh, I’m so- Niall?” she questioned cautiously, taken aback. “Is that you?”

“Julia!” he exclaims, a wide smile spreading across his face. “I haven’t seen you for years! You look so different; but still beautiful as always!”

“Yeah, where have you been? You just left one day and I never saw you again,” she said, wanting to see if this got any reaction out of him.

His eyes flickered with sadness and his shoulders slumped. Bingo. “Oh, well, I had some things to do.”

“Mmm, don’t we all?” she replies contemptuously.

“Julia, I never meant to hurt you all those years ago. I was doing what I thought was best for you,” Niall whispers, stepping forward as he frowned.

“It doesn’t matter,” Julia says to him, taking a step back. “I’m over it. I’m in my first year of college with my boyfriend and I couldn’t be happier.” Until you came along, with your sad eyes and whispered apologies.

“Oh,” he states, stumped. “Well, I’m happy for you. You know, back when we were together, we always thought it used to be me you would say that about.” Stupid! Of course she has a boyfriend. I shouldn’t have abandoned her all those years ago.

And with that, he walked out of the book store, hood covering his face as he reminisced about his past and pondered about what could have been.

~*~*~*~

It had been a week since Julia had bumped into Niall at the bookstore, and she just couldn’t get him out of her head. He had matured and looked quite attractive. No Julia. You have a boyfriend. Stop that. But that spark she felt when she had first gotten together with Todd wasn’t there anymore. But she didn’t know what to do. She thought that she had everything figured out. Niall’s words echoed around in her head.

“It used to be me.”

~*~*~*~