”What about him? What has he done?” I asked and turned towards Aida.

“It’s what he’s not doing!” she immediately exclaimed in a tone that made me jump a little.

We remained silent for a few seconds, while I searched through my brain trying to figure out something to say.

“Well,” I began, “maybe he’s still just very shy…”

“He’s an asshole, that’s what he is!” she then said looking very angry.

“Wait, you need to tell me what has happened!” I said now feeling even more confused.


At first she just glanced over at Em, who made it clear that she wasn’t going to tell me and that Aida had to be the one to do it.


“It’s…” I could tell that it was hard for her to say. “So this afternoon he texted me asking if I wanted to hang out and play a bit of music. Em was at Liam’s place so we were here all alone having coffee, smoking and having loads of fun…”


She paused for a bit and I tried to get her to tell by saying: “And?”

“When we sat on the sofa I tried you know… to look for any signs that he might want to be more than friends, because if there weren’t any I will not spend any more time thinking about it.”

“And did you find any?” I asked feeling more and more curious.

“Several times he put his hand on my thigh, tickled me and took my hand and so on…”

“Well, that’s great!” I smiled.

“But when we said goodbye at the door he just… didn’t do anything.”


I waited for an elaboration. “But. I still don’t get why you’re so upset, I mean it does seem like he’s giving you a signal or two, but that he also wants to take it slow… quite slow,” I admitted.

“That’s not my problem,” she said. “I… decided to take matters in my own hand, like you said I could do and I’m honestly sick of waiting around doing nothing. But then… when I leaned forward – and there was no doubt of what I wanted to, trust me – he turned his face away and just walked down the stairs without a word and even looking at me.” She tore up again as she said the last bit. “I just feel so humiliated!”

“Oh sweety, I’m so sorry!” I said and moved closer to her to hug her. I held her shaking shoulders while she said: “I really like him and he’s well aware of that and then he just does what fits his mood, without caring the slightest about me.”

“I know, that’s really shitty of him…” I said feeling a bit in chock by what he’d done. And very disappointed. It made a bit sense though – you can always tell how a person is by his friends and so far both Niall and Harry had now shown us some absolutely selfish behavior.

“It was the most embarrassing moment of my life!” Aida sobbed. “I immediately called Em, who got home right before you, I just needed not to be alone thinking about him once again.”

“Of course, I understand that. You can always call us anytime, you know that right?” I asked and pulled away from her to look in to her red eyes. She nodded and dried her face with the back of her right hand.

“I need a drink,” she suddenly said and both Em and I smiled, right before Em left for a moment to return from the kitchen with a bottle of red wine and three glasses.



“A toast to assholes,” Aida said and took a big sip.

Em and I laughed.

“To assholes,” I agreed. “Oh except for Em, she has found the nicest boy on Earth, good luck to you.”


She smiled at my sarcastic tone and then said: “Yeah. I have.”

She suddenly started blushing heavily and much more than she normally did and Aida and I looked at her with faces that were both filled with confusion and curiosity.


“Is there anything you want to tell us?” I asked without being able to stop myself from smirking.

“Uhm…” she began but just ended up blushing even more than before, while she looked away from us.

“You guys had sex!” Aida exclaimed and put a hand in front of her mouth and I looked at Em with big eyes and since she didn’t object to our statement we started dancing around the room.

“Wuhu! You’ve had sex, you’ve had sex, you’ve had sex!” I sang in probably the most annoying way ever.

“Jesus girls, you are such dorks!” Em exclaimed still looking away from us.

“So how was it?” I asked as I sat down on the bed again.

“Yeah, is he good?” Aida said while moving closer and closer to the poor blushing girl on the other side.

“I’m not telling you that!” she said but the huge smile on her lips told us everything we needed.

“Wow, he’s good,” I said biting my fist to exaggerate the desperate tone in my voice, which made all us laugh.

“A toast to the few nice guys out there then,” Aida said and raised her glass. “And to pulsating members.”


I immediately cracked up by her last comment and almost spilled my wine in her bed.


“Oh my God,” was all Em had to say as she raised her glass as well.

“I knew that I could count on you,” Aida then said looking around when we had all sipped from our glass. “I feel much better now.”

“That’s the thing about sex…” I said in exactly the same way as she’d done it with me when I’d been feeling terrible through the past few weeks and they both chuckled by my parody.




That night I got a message from Niall asking if I wanted to hang out the following day after work. I smiled when he wrote that he would pick me up and take me to a surprise.



The following day at work couldn’t go by any slower than it did that Tuesday. I tried to keep myself occupied by cleaning every table an extra time and having long chats with all the costumers but the entire time I always had Niall in mind – and it felt really good.


And so I kept glancing down at my left wrist to check the clock each single minute. At exactly three o’clock I practically ran towards the staff room to pull off my brown Aunt Betty t-shirt and put on my black Nike t-shirt that said “Just do it” with white letters on the back. I rolled up the sleeves and put on my military jacket and some sunglasses.


I went outside to wait for Niall’s black BMW to show up, but soon I discovered that it was already parked a bit further down the road and so went towards it to check if it really was him sitting behind the wheel. When I saw the blond hair I smiled and immediately got in, knowing that he couldn’t stand there for too long without people starting to notice him.


“Hi,” he said smiling and giving me a quick hug before driving away rather fast. I couldn’t thank him enough for taking care of not being too obvious with what we had going on, since I wasn’t at all sure of whether I wanted to be with him completely.


“Where are we going?” I asked.

“A park a bit far away, there are not as many people to interrupt a nice walk among the trees,” he said and I nodded.




It took almost half an hour before he parked the car in a rather desert parking lot in some place I didn’t know.

“Wow, this is beautiful!” I said looking around as I stood out. It’s was kind of mixture of a forest and a park with loads of trees that were all filled with bright colors like red, brown and orange.

“Yeah, I really like the park during this season. Such pretty colors,” he said while taking out a blanket from the back of the car.




We started walking down a path that went in between some trees. He seemed a bit nervous and afraid of touching, so I decided to make him relax a bit by snuggling under his arm for him to wrap around my shoulders. He smiled at my honest gesture.


We went past a small coffee booth where he got us some hot cocoa.

“This way,” he said and let me down to a more open area at a lake with fewer trees. He spread out the blanket for us to sit on, the whole scenario reminded me a lot of our first date at the sea in Denmark and I smiled widely when he pulled out a bag of Oreos.

“Want one?” he asked and I nodded.

We sat closely together since the weather had started to get kind of chilly, drinking cocoa and eating Oreos.



“You have no idea how happy I am that you wanted to come today,” he said and looked at me with a serious look. “I swear, I will do anything to make all this up to you, you only deserve the best…”

“Be yourself, Niall,” I interrupted him and he looked at me a bit confused. “The best possible way to convince me about you and I being the right thing is to be your fantastic and happy self.”

He smiled still looking a bit surprised. “God, you’re great,” he said and pulled me in for a hug. I took a deep breath in to his shoulder to smell his amazing fresh scent.



“This reminds me about home,” I said looking around at the incredible colors a while after. “The forest around my house always looked like this for what always seemed like second before the leaves would fall off them. This is when they’re most beautiful.”

“Do you miss Denmark?” he asked.

“Sometimes. Mostly my family though, London is such a great city to live in and I feel quite happy here with so many nice people around me,” I said and smiled up at him.

“Yeah, me too. You never really get completely used to being away from them, even though it might be for such a long time,” he said.

“Yeah, you probably know what it feels like more than most people,” I said and he nodded.



It felt very good to have a nice relaxed afternoon in the company of someone truly nice and relaxed like Niall. We almost acted like nothing had happened between us, even though in the back of my mind I couldn’t completely let go of what I’d been through the past couple of weeks, probably because we’d both been affected by it so much. I could sense that he hadn’t forgotten about it either, but just the fact that we could hang out and have the same kind of fun that we used to have before made me incredibly happy relieved.




“I know you told me to be my happy self,” he suddenly began when we were heading back towards his car and I looked up at him with surprise. “But words can’t describe how sorry I am for what I’ve done and for the huge amount of pain that I brought you.”

“Niall…” I tried to interrupt him, but he continued:

“I mean look at you! You’ve lost so much weight and I know exactly why – it’s because of me and my selfish behavior. And I’ve been going over and over this in my head for weeks, trying to figure out why I made this happen.”

“You don’t have to explain…” I began again but just like before he cut me off.

“Yes I do! I want to explain.” The fire in his eyes made me shut my mouth while he was talking.

“I have never met anyone like you, Maja, I don’t think I’ve ever really liked someone this much and I guess I got, you know… a bit freaked out. Having my job and living my life isn’t easy and I have to make sure that whoever I drag in to this is the right one for me and therefor likes me as much as I like her. But the thing was that I liked you a lot more than I was used to and I honestly couldn’t imagine you having the same feelings for me, not even close. I didn’t feel that good for that month here in London, not being able to get you out of my head while I kept convincing myself that you weren’t the right one anyway, even though that I wished the exact opposite more than anything.
So I tried to push you away a bit – but the minute I did that I knew it was wrong. Completely wrong. I discovered that I couldn’t hide my feelings, but instead of acting like an adult and be honest to both you and myself, I acted extremely childish and that’s what I’m most sorry for.
Liking someone is never easy in my situation for neither of us and that’s why I have to be so careful about liking you – I have to make sure that we both mean it.
But your reaction when I told you about Sheila a few weeks ago made it very clear to me that you did feel the same way – and then I was doomed, cause I thought I’d lost my chance and that you would never feel the same way about me again and I can’t blame you if you won’t…”



At that moment I made a decision. The decision that he really was worth it.

And without letting him finish his speech I took one big step towards him and crashed my lips against his.

Notes

13 votes, thank you sooo much! So, I will be out of town the next couple of days, where I won't be updating, I'm really sorry, but I will hurry home to make one for you as fast as possible! :-D
Love you <3