“Mr. Horan, great year. Congrats on all your success. We’re all very proud,” a big, fat man shook Niall’s hand. You overheard part of their brief conversation as you walked back towards the bar, happy to down another drink if it meant making the time go even a minute faster.
You nodded at the bartender and murmured your request, an elbow leaning onto the bar counter as you shifted your weight and regretted your decision to wear stilettos. Sure, they made your legs look great in that cherry red dress you reserved for only the most special holiday occasions, but two hours in it didn’t seem nearly as good of an idea. Had anyone even noticed your defined calf muscles? Probably not.
You sighed and turned to face the room again, both elbows now planted on the bar behind you as you waited for your drink. When was it that you’d become such a scrooge? You gave a bitter chuckle to yourself. Probably somewhere right between desperately loving your job and realizing you’d fallen in love with your boss’ boss with no hope of reciprocation. You were pretty sure being an assistant was already a special ring of hell, but add on to that an undying admiration for your boss’ boss and, well… sometimes it was enough to almost make you want to quit.
Not that working for the “One Direction Corporation” was bad—it honestly wasn’t. The boys were all personal and thoughtful and terribly wonderful, and that trickled right down to the nobodies such as yourself. But sometimes you thought that made you hate it even more, because then you couldn’t even ENJOY hating your bosses. You literally loved them and that was your problem. Being a nobody and loving a somebody is a problem.
Your eyes scanned the room, ending up hovering around Niall as usual. The big man from before was still chatting with him and had a big hand on his shoulder, the other extended as if to show writing in the sky—no doubt proposing new ideas even here at the annual Christmas party. Couldn’t they give it a rest for a few hours? The men in suits always seemed to have something to say, another way to make more money, another request for this or that. It all got a bit tiring to you, and you weren’t even in direct contact with them.
Or maybe you were just in a cynical mood. Actually you knew you were. Usually walking into a room with seven Christmas trees made you all kinds of happy, but that night you had an overwhelming feeling of “I’m in a funk, leave me alone or be happy listening to me complain about the latest episode of the Walking Dead and ask you repeatedly if you think if I killed someone if the blood would ruin my couch.” Which, as everyone knows, after a few too many appletini’s turns into, “Well screw this. If I have to be here I might as well look sexy while doing so. Bring on the back pain, stilettos. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
And, quite unfortunately for you, just as your mind made this switch, Niall seemed to notice you over the man’s shoulder, so your first ridiculously over-the-top sexy smize was accidentally sent to him instead of the creepy guy with the mustache in the corner who was residing just over his shoulder. Immediately you regretted your last two appletinis and wished you’d had chameleon skin to fade right into the wooden bar. You weren’t one to blush, but you did awkwardly redirect your eyes upward as if the black ceiling was the most interesting thing you’d seen all week.
When you finally got the nerve to look back over, you found Niall still stealing glances over the man’s shoulder at you. When he caught your eye again, he gave a dumb pucker face and raised his eyebrows. Your eyes popped open and you looked away again, totally embarrassed. You’d hoped perhaps he’d somehow missed your stupid advances, but he obviously hadn’t. You turned back towards the bar and leaned down again, taking a deep breath and stirring your new appletini. What were you supposed to do? Why was he playing along? Well, duh. He’s Niall, of course he did. He was just good natured like that.
And then something just sort of clicked. The ball was already rolling, there was no turning back, right? At least not after that many appletinis, anyway.
