Voir Dire (N.H.)

twenty

There are certain phone calls you don't want to receive in your life. For some, it's the dreaded voice of a telemarketer asking you to buy their product. For others, it's the 2 am phone call from their ex who is plastered at the bar. For Niall, it was the angry voice of Mike, his agent, asking who on earth the girl was he was papped with the night before.

"Wait what?" Niall asked, his mind trying to comprehend the endless attack of words coming at him from the other side of the phone. He's not sure he's ever heard this kind of anger leave his agent's mouth before.

"The girl. Who is she Niall?"

Niall was silent for a moment. Who was Kelsey? Who should he say she is? Would it be better to come clean? Explain that this was a girl that he was developing feelings for and that this relationship was far more real than anything the PR team could have written up? Or should he write Kelsey off as a nobody and hope that the team puts it to rest?

"She's..."

"She's not your girlfriend, Niall," Mike interrupted before Niall had a chance to say otherwise. "Michaels wants to meet with you. 1pm. If I were you I'd come bearing an apologetic face and some sort of solution to this PR nightmare." And with that, the phone call ended.

Niall slammed his phone down on his crisp white bedspread with a thud. Then he sat down, setting his head in his hands. This was the worst case scenario. This was exactly the situation that he had been trying to avoid.

"What's wrong?" Kelsey asked, entering the room from her shower with a towel wrapped around her torso and her wet hair forming a small puddle on the floor.  She wasn't sure she'd ever seen a face like this on Niall before, this look of fear. Almost as if he'd seen a ghost.

Niall pondered whether or not he should bring Kelsey into this. It wasn't her fault that they were caught by a camera or that they'd even been in that situation in the first place. If he leaves her out of it, he can be in and out of a meeting with Alan Michaels at Capitol without her being any the wiser. Taking that route keeps Kelsey from having to worry, or worse feeling guilty for going out to dinner in the first place.

But then a different thought crosses his mind. Maybe this wasn't a problem at all. Maybe this was an opportunity. Maybe this was just what they needed to have a shot at a real relationship, the kind that didn't involve baseball caps and restaurant back rooms and sneaking around as not to be spotted.

"It appears that our outing last night was not quite as stealthy as we had hoped," Niall admitted, eyeing Kelsey carefully to gauge her reaction.

Kelsey felt her stomach drop. Last night had been perfect. It had been the first time that she truly felt like what she and Niall had wasn't just some hidden behind-the-scenes love affair. It felt like a normal date. The things a normal couple would do. And now, the thing that Niall had feared the most had come true.

This was all her fault, if she hadn't pushed Niall. If she hadn't been so insecure about the standing of their relationship they never would have been put in this situation.

"Don't you dare start thinking this is your fault," Niall seemingly read Kelsey's mind. He comes over where she is standing, grabbing her hands and squeezing them between his.

"I..." Kelsey began to argue back but then realized that was exactly what she was thinking. "Well, What are you going to do?"

"I think that maybe..." Niall paused, hardly believing he was about to say the words aloud. "I think maybe we tell them about us."

"What?" Kelsey exclaimed. "Are you crazy?!" She couldn't believe that Niall was even considering the idea, especially with how he'd described the label's representatives so far.