Even though I quickly felt quite exhausted I couldn’t sit down again. I had to keep walking and feeling the amazing rush of liberty and relief form finally not being tied down to a bed or a wheelchair.


I laughed the entire time and people out in the hall looked at me probably thinking that I must’ve been smoking something. Niall and Harry both followed me closely behind still not trusting the strength in my legs enough to let me go out on adventures on my own. It wasn’t hard to keep up with me though since I could only manage to take one tiny step at the time.

I headed towards Cara’s room and I was still smiling when I walked inside to see her sitting with a girl’s magazine reading an article about One Direction as far as I could tell.


“Cara, look!” I exclaimed and she smiled up at me.

“You can walk again!” she said and stood up. I noticed her cheeks turn red when she saw the boys coming in as well, especially when Niall showed his gorgeous smile saying: “Hi Cara.” I knew exactly how she felt as I too felt my knees get even weaker than they already were every time I looked at him.


Then the doctor came in as well. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check up on you. Don’t forget to relax and rest your body – remember your legs haven’t been moving this much for a while,” he said.
I nodded at him still not able to concentrate about what he said through my ecstasy of joy and freedom. The only thing that brought me back to reality was the pain in my ribs complaining about all this exercise. I also felt my chest going up and down rapidly from a heavy breath caused by the one minute walk as I decided to slowly sit down on the nearest chair.

“How on Earth did I run before?” I sighed. “I’m exhausted.”

“That’s how I felt working out with you,” Niall said.

“Well, I guess that won’t happen again,” I replied. “I wonder when I get to go home…”

“Easy there, Forest Gump,” Harry smiled. “You’ve only been walking 22 steps.”


“So how did your weighing go yesterday, Cara?” I asked her a few minutes later when I’d gotten back a normal breathing.

“Not good,” she answered not looking up from her magazine.

“Okay,” I just said knowing that I shouldn’t ask about it no more.





It turned out that I had to stay in the hospital for three more days, before my doctor declared me ready to go home. I almost moved around like normal, except for the fact that it still hurt a bit. I got better every day though and that Sunday – after having stayed in there for more than 10 days – I got the news that I could leave in the evening.


I don’t actually know what I thought. I mean, of course I was incredibly happy to get back to my apartment, my friends and my job, but as Cara couldn’t stop herself from crying when I told her, I felt so guilty to leave her.


“Don’t worry, sweetie,” I tried to comfort her. “I’ll come visit you soon, I promise.”

“What am I going to do when you’re gone?” she sobbed in my chest as I’d pulled her in for a hug.

“Get better,” I said. “And learn to play music.”

Niall had given her a guitar to play on when we wouldn’t be around to play for her. He’d taught her a few chords so that she was now able to play some songs. The sight of the two of them practicing together was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.


He, Harry, Aida and Em were the ones that picked me and my stuff up to go home. I’d called my boss, Betty, to tell her that I was going home and that I would be ready for working in a couple of days, but that I wasn’t sure for how long at the time though. She was, as always, very understanding and said that I could just start out as slow as I needed to.


“Are you ready?” Em asked as I closed the last of the two bags of clothes, books and other stuff that they’d brought me during my stay.

“This is weird,” I said looking around the room where there now weren’t any more people sitting in the furniture, no more smell of Zayn’s many flowers and no sound of music or voices.

“Are you going to miss it here?” Aida teased and I immediately exclaimed: “Hell no!”

“We parked the car at the back entrance, it seemed like there were not as many people there,” Harry informed me as we walked down the hall.

“How bad is it?” I asked suddenly feeling quite concerned.

“It wasn’t that bad in the beginning, but I think they quickly noticed us spending a lot of time here so since then there has just more and more,” he answered, which didn’t make me feel any calmer at all, remembering how I had reacted the last time I ran in to dedicated fans of that boy band. But yet I was determined to deal with this in a cool and calm way, not only for my own sake but also for Niall and me.

I felt the warmth of his hand in mine comforting me, but as we got closer and closer to the back entrance I couldn’t stop my heart from skipping a beat or two.


Harry opened the door and went outside followed by Niall and I. The sunset blinded me and I closed my eyes as I took my first real breath of fresh air in what seemed like eternity. God, it felt amazing.

I waited a few moments before opening my eyes again to see something I definitely wasn’t expecting.


“Well, this isn’t so bad, Harry,” I concluded looking around at a big deserted drive way.

“Of course not,” he laughed at me. “They won’t let any people in here, so they’re mostly out at the parking lot.”

That made me shot my mouth again, swallowing a big lump that didn’t seem to want to go anywhere but my throat. My humping down the drive way didn’t exactly speed up at the thought of so many people that might be standing behind the gate I had my eyes glued on the entire time. My palms started to sweat so much that Niall noticed it as he whispered in my ear:
“Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine, I promise.” He gave my hand a light tug and his breath hitting my ear calmed me down a bit as we reached the gate to the parking lot.



And Harry was right; the outside was absolute madness.

Girls shouting the boys’ names, phones and cameras taking pictures and also a few very pushy journalists asking questions.

“Just keep on walking,” Harry told me. I glanced over at Aida and Em who both looked completely calm like they’d already gotten used to this.

Among all the noise I couldn’t help but catch up a few sentences that were thrown at us, especially when Harry grabbed Aida’s hand to drag her through the masses.


“Is that your girlfriend, Niall?”

“What happened to her?”

“Why are you with him?”

“Don’t you think you’re a bit too ugly to bit with a famous pop star?”



I tried my very best not to get affected by them and just keep on walking, but some of those words were so rude and hurtful that I instinctively looked up to see who they came from and Niall would then have to drag me along.

I was really surprised to see Em looking confident walking past every comment with her head held high. At that point it was very clear to me just exactly how much she cared about Liam. And it also made me realize that maybe it wasn’t that difficult to learn to lock out all unnecessary noise and therefor also decide whether Niall was worth it or not.

I tugged on his hand and as his eyes met mine I smiled at the thought of being with this exact guy. He smiled back at me looking a bit relieved that this was my reaction and not the opposite.
The flashes from cameras and shouts kept on coming at us but from that moment I barely noticed them, it was like everything around Niall and I went blurry.


Before I knew it I was sitting in the back of Harry’s car with him behind the wheel and Em and Niall on each of my sides.


“And you guys had to go through that every time you came to visit me?” I asked looking out the window at the people standing close up against the door.

“Why do you think we never wanted to leave you?” Em teased and I hit her shoulder.

“Bastard,” I laughed.

“Actually it wasn’t that bad today,” Niall said which made my eyes fly open even wider. “Right in the middle of your time here it was worst, but it has faded a bit here in the end, when they realized that we would spend entire days and nights in there.”

“I really don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys,” I suddenly said. “I have no idea how I’m going to pay you back in any way for what you’ve done for me the past ten days.”

“Cook dinner for all of us,” Niall said without giving it any further thought and we all laughed at his innocent and honest manner.

“Deal!” I exclaimed before pecking his cheek not even trying to restrain myself from gushing over his cuteness. “Tomorrow night?”

“Deal!” Em mimicked and pecked my cheek as well. Guess she was in a bit of a teasing mood, I thought as I felt the need to hit her again.

“But…” I then began, “we definitely don’t have room enough for all those people.”

“Then just make the dinner at my place,” Harry suddenly said. “I’ve got a big dining table.”

“Guess you can’t back out now, there’s no excuse,” Niall smirked at me.

“Well, all right then,” I gave in.



It took about half an hour to drive back home to our apartment in West End, where there were also people waiting for us outside, who wanted to know a ton of stuff that I didn’t bother listen to at that moment. I guess our apartment had become a well-known spot as more and more of us were dating a rather famous guy.


Niall and Harry drove home to their own place when they’d dropped us off, since they had to get up really early the next morning for recording, so it was just Em, Aida and I sitting in the small kitchen drinking coffee and I lid up the first cigarette in quite a while.


“God, I’ve missed this,” I said and they both looked at me smiling. “You know, sitting here with you guys.”

They nodded agreeing.

“It’s been empty here without you,” Em said.

“What have you guys been up these days other than work?” I then asked suddenly realizing that we hadn’t been talking too much about their lives while I’d been in the hospital and I couldn’t help but feel a bit bad about that.

“Uhm…” Aida began looking like she was going through the things that had happened in the last two weeks, “well, we’ve been writing a couple of songs – for the gig at Dirty Dicks in two weeks.”

“Oh great!” I exclaimed and felt the lump in my chest from worrying about that lesson a bit.

“And we’re booked up for the entire weekend,” she added.

“What’s happening then?” I asked.

“There are a couple of exhibitions in some galleries that I would really like to go to, one of them on my work. And we need to get some more furniture, especially for your room, Maja, since you haven’t been home to go shopping with the rest of us,” Aida answered and I nodded knowing that she always knew best when it came to stuff like that.


I loved the fact that we all sat talking like always like nothing had happened at all. That had to be one of the signs of the truly great friendship I had with these two girls.



The following day I got up quite early since I wanted to go to Harry’s place to have enough time to make a delicious dinner for my friends. Aida and Em had just left for work so it was quiet in the apartment.

Harry had given me a key to lock myself inside today, since he’d be recording with the rest of the boys until six o’clock.


I put on some black skinny jeans and got a big chock.

I hadn’t had them with me at the hospital so it had been a while since I wore them last time - and they weren’t exactly skinny anymore. Wow. Guess I really did have lost some weight. Even though I was usually a bit cranky in the morning, this time I felt nothing but delight; for the first time in my entire life I was losing weight and not putting it on. This had been a dream of mine my entire life, but never implemented – at least until now.


I kept the now loose black jeans on, just because it had become a symbol of my victory in the battle against my hips, and added a Batman t-shirt with black sleeves, some old school black Vans and my leather jacket. I put some hairspray in my hair hoping to give it a bit more volume and curl. I’d probably try in vain.

I grabbed an apple on my way out but then stopped, suddenly remembering yesterday’s craziness outside our apartment. I quickly ran to the window to see just a few people walking around on the sidewalk like always, but just to make sure I put on my old school Ray Ban sunglasses.


At first I felt relieved that there weren’t any people outside, but only a few elder people taking a walk in the crisp morning air. The joy was short lived though when suddenly some girls started to appear from all sorts of directions and now walking towards me really fast. They’d probably hid in order not to seem too obvious.


I felt like I was in a computer game where the girls were some monsters that you had to run away from and I just managed to restrain myself enough to keep acting cool heading straight towards the tube station.

As they began asking their usual rude questions and taking pictures I did nothing but trying to lock out the noise just as I had done yesterday and I actually did quite good, only a couple of the most remarkable words penetrated through my scalp and in to my mind.


“Where are you going?”

“Are you going to visit Niall or Harry?”

“Are you hurt about your best friend stealing one of your boyfriends?”

“Or you might just share all of them?”



God, people could be really mean, I thought to myself as I kept my mouth shut the entire time even though I had an earful or two pressing on my tongue most of the walk to the tube station.


It wasn’t until the train started rolling in the underground I felt a bit safer, since the about ten girls at least hadn’t followed me in there.

The whole trip towards Liverpool Street Station was completely quiet except for the folk music I had playing in my ears and I almost didn’t want to get off when I had to about thirty minutes later. As I walked out on the platform and further through the giant station some people unfortunately started noticing me again – it was almost only teenage girls, but that didn’t make it any less scary at all. No matter who I bumped in to I didn’t look up, listened to a word or say one sentence.



As I arrived at Harry’s place I had to two big bags of food in my hands having done the grocery shopping on the way. I locked myself inside the apartment on the fourth floor and I literally couldn’t wait to get to sit down for a bit, since all this lifting and walking made its marks on my still a bit weak body.


His place was very similar to the room that he’d shown me in their summer house in Denmark a few months ago; very neat and clean with some classic furniture and clean lines – it also looked a bit like our living room, it was only three times bigger. At the sight of this I couldn’t wait to get in to the kitchen to see what that might look like. I grabbed my plastic bags of food and walked around the apartment to find it. On my way I decided to go for a tour around the entire place.
First I found a small hobby room with a couple of guitars, a piano, a computer and some weights for working out. I went further to the next one which was a bathroom painted in some bright white colors making it look hygienic and beautiful.


And then I opened the door to what looked like the bed room. It was an enormous room with some beautiful tall windows that led in tons of light from outside. There was an arrangement of a sofa, an end table and two chairs in my end that were in the same classic style as in the living room, but it didn’t look nearly as neat and clean; clothes were thrown all over the floor.
Still has a bit of a teenager left in him, I thought to myself as I glanced at the mess suddenly noticing something that I immediately hoped didn’t belong to a guy.

A red bra with associated panties in the same color lay in the middle of it all. And then I saw two pairs of skinny black jeans. And then a black flannel shirt that I’d definitely seen before many, many times.

Notes

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