It didn’t take me more than a couple of seconds to discover who the girl with the red hair was. Of course. It was Sheila. Man, haven’t I just really NOT missed her?

She and Niall looked like they were in the middle of a conversation and the last thing I wanted to do at that point was to talk to her, so I stayed with the rest of the guys struggling to keep my mind off the fact that he was actually smiling almost the entire time. Showing his gorgeous teeth would normally make me feel so happy inside, but now it tore me apart inch by inch, second by second.


Louis must have followed my gaze cause the next thing I feel is his arm around my shoulders slowly turning me towards the others and not Niall and Sheila whispering in my ear:

“Don’t you worry.”

He then clinked his beer with mine. ”Cheers. You were absolutely amazing up there,” he said before taking a sip and so did I. His words comforted me a bit, but I couldn’t help but count the minutes it took for Niall to get his lazy, stupid, Irish ass over here and talk to me instead. Even though I was so relieved and happy that the concert went so well and blushing from all the praise and positive response people walking by kept throwing at us, my mood was lousy. Really shit.


When I reached 2 minutes and 32 seconds I heard Niall’s voice from right behind me.

“You are fantastic, you know that?” he breathed in to my ear and wrapped his arms around my waist. I turned around to face him and he kissed my lips before pulling me a bit away from the others. I kept letting my eyes travel around the room to look for Sheila but her red head wasn’t visible anywhere.

“I just spoke to Sheila,” he then said when the rest of the guys wouldn’t hear our conversation. “She’d come to hear you guys play.”

“Yes, I saw that,” I replied showing no emotion at all.

“I told her everything,” he said looking completely relaxed and like his normal happy self.

“Everything?” I just asked feeling a bit confused now.

“Yeah, about us. About nothing should have happened between me and her, I was with you now and that there wasn’t a thing in the world I would to do to change that.”

His words took me by surprise, I had to blink my eyes several times trying to take in what he told me.

“Oh… Okay,” was all I managed to say. “Uhm… What did she say?”

“She was really cool actually. No bad feelings.”

“That’s nice,” I admitted even though what I really wanted was to hate her forever. Suddenly a slightly shrill voice sounded from the door to the ladies’ room:

“Maja!”


I turned my head to see Sheila come walking towards me. I had no idea how to react on seeing her, this was definitely unexpected, especially when she pulled me in for a hug and a kiss on the cheek.


“Well… hello,” I said trying to smile, thinking that that would probably be the only thing that didn’t cause any trouble, though I had multiple other and more rude things in mind to tell her, but I swallowed by pride and sat up straight towards her.

“You guys are some really talented musicians,” she gushed and even she made me blush, and so I felt my tense body loosen up a bit. “Niall is lucky to be with you.”

Not a single word came across my lips, I honestly had no idea what the hell to say to her.

“Well. Uhm…” I stumbled. “That’s… nice. To hear.”

“Who’s doing the PR for The Rookies?” she asked and once again took me by surprise.

“Uhm… No. No one does,” I answered. “I think. I mean, no.”


Out of my canthus I could see Niall smiling kindly at me and my foolish behavior and he put an arm around my shoulder to make me relax a bit.


“What?” Sheila exclaimed. “You can’t have a band with no one to advertise you!”

“I don’t think we can really, you know… afford that. At least not yet,” I said.

“Well, things like that is always an investment. You see, if you hire me I promise you that it will pay off, here’s my card, then we can arrange a meeting sometime…”

“Sheila. Sheila!” I almost had to yell to drown her constant speaking. “It’s really nice of you, but I just… don’t think that we will spend so much money, if we haven’t even made them yet, it’s a bit too dangerous, I think. But thank you though, I will keep your card if we one day might need you.”

“Oh,” she said looking a bit stunned. “Well. I guess you were right then, Niall,” she added while pulling out her phone.

“Right about what?” I asked skeptically.

“About you being too stubborn and demanding to let me help you,” she blurred out like it was the most normal thing in the world to tell other people.

“Excuse me?” I said feeling a frown forming on my forehead as I turned towards Niall pushing his arm off me. What the hell had he exactly told her?!

“What?” he just asked Sheila and he actually looked like he honestly was in chock with what she’d just told me. “Where did that come from?”

“Wasn’t that what you just told me?” she asked looking at her phone like she was checking her makeup in the camera and not meeting any of our eyes at all. I still just stared at Niall feeling hurt and waiting for him to bring up and extremely good explanation.

“What the fuck?” he yelled in a tone that literally scared the hell out of me. “When you suggested it to me, I told you that she would probably say no, because she and the girls were too independent and probably wanted to do this themselves. That’s what I told you!”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” she asked. Her cold and careless person started to really get on my nerves, but at the same time I started to feel a bit relieved that it was her mistake and not Niall being an asshole.

“God, you’re too much,” he just said wrapping his arm back around my shoulder and leading me back towards the others. “What a bitch,” he mumbled on the way before kissing my cheek. “I would never ever say something like that. You know that, right? I have no idea why she did such a thing, she seemed so cool earlier, but I guess that was just a façade.”

“No, I know you wouldn’t do that,” I said brushing his face to make him calm down a bit, I didn’t like seeing him this angry and tense, so I grabbed his hand and brushed it lightly. “It’s okay. She’s probably just a bit upset about what you told her, I guess.”

“I hope so, cause that was really weird,” he mumbled.


We’d now reached the others and so I handed Niall a beer as well wanting to finally get the celebration properly started and trying to ignore the glances that were sent at us from the rest.

“Cheers!” I exclaimed to change the atmosphere from this awkward and tense one. “Thank you all for coming, you guys are the greatest.”

“Cheers!” they all hurried to join in obviously getting my longing for a party with happy moods and not this. It didn’t take me more than a few sips to empty the bottle, but before I got the chance to look around for a bartender to buy another one I got one stuck in my hand already and I looked up to see Eric, Sophie and Adam stand in front of me.

“Hey there, you little star!” Eric smiled and hugged me.

“Hi you guys! Oh I’m so glad you wanted to come and watch us play, that’s really nice of you,” I said as I was moving on hugging the other two people.

“No problem at all, you sounded so fantastic,” Sophie said and Adam nodded agreeing with her.

“Thank you so much,” I replied. They all went on greeting the people around me whom they hadn’t met before. I noticed a slightly cold shine in both Niall and Harry’s eyes as Eric shook their hands.



“So now I know how you feel about Sheila,” Niall mumbled in my ear a few moments later when the three of my other friends had left to go home.

“What?” I asked surprised. “That’s so not the same thing! Eric is a friend. Sheila is apparently not.”

Luckily he took my words the way I wanted him too since he immediately started laughing. “That might be true,” he said.




We spent about an hour more in Dirty Dicks drinking beers and giving out lots of phone numbers to quite a remarkable amount of strange people giving us their cards wanting us to play at different other places. I couldn’t wait to get some more jobs like this, it felt so incredible to be performing in front of all these people.


After that we decided to go to a nearby club requested by a slightly tipsy and very loving Em who was in the best mood after our concert. And so Harry agreed to show the way to a huge club nearby where a load of people were standing in line.


“Damn, this is goin’ to take a freakin’ long taaame…” Aida started mumbling with her famous ghetto accent that made me chuckle despite the hopeless scenario we were staring at.

But right then and there we experienced one of the first benefits of dating celebrities; we skipped the line, and got inside right away through the VIP entrance. On the way in I turned around and sent Em and Aida a gushing glance and they just looked like they were enjoying every moment of this kind of treatment. Niall’s arm was wrapped around my waist as he led me the way to a big round table where we sat down.


Only a few seconds later Liam and Em arrived with shots for everyone, probably requested by Em as well, she was really ready for a night tonight, I guess. I couldn’t help but think that I didn’t quite fit the dress code, since I was wearing such relaxed clothes which was the completely opposite of what I saw the other girls in the club wearing – or lack of same. It was mostly some very, very short and small dresses that made me feel extremely old fashion.


I realized that I needed to get relatively drunk to make the best out of this night as possible. And so I drank. Shot after shot, fizzy drink after fizzy drink, beer after beer. Luckily we were all thinking the same, since suddenly I looked around feeling the effect of all that alcohol to see Harry and Niall having something that looked like quite a deep conversation, Zayn had decided to talk with that Indian accent that always made all of us laugh, while Eleanor looked quite dizzy as she sat there on Louis lap with him rubbing her back in comfort.


“Girls, we need to dance!” Aida suddenly shouted when the sound of Beyoncé’s Single Ladies came across the room from the DJ’s console and she didn’t have to say that more than once before all of us, including Eleanor, got up and hurried towards the dance floor.

This was a song that Em, Aida and I had been dancing to for years and so we really worked it feeling relieved that we were wearing flat shoes and not the heels that the rest of the poor girls were struggling with. I saw that both Eleanor and Perrie were admiring our moves cause only God knows how many times we’d been dancing like this.

That Miley Cyrus’ We Can’t Stop came on right after didn’t calm us down at all.


But then, after that song, we were faced with the inevitable confrontation that had to happen sometime, and even though we’d all been well aware of this it still took us by surprise when What Makes You Beautiful played out of the big loudspeakers in that club.


We all looked at each other having trouble deciding whether we should be dancing to this or not, but probably due to my drunk condition I didn’t spend more than a few seconds on considering that cause I just immediately started screaming along with Liam on the first and so the rest of the girls quickly joined in.


Em, Aida and I remembered all the times we’d been doing this either when we’d been going out of just back home in our old rooms in Denmark, the boys would probably have gotten really scared if they’d ever found out how much we’d been obsessed with them, even though I think that we were acting that exact way right at that point on the dance floor.


I glanced over towards the table to see all of them sitting with their mouths open just staring at us, which made all of us girls laugh. I pointed at Niall and sang along with Harry’s voice:

“That’s what makes you beautiful!”


It did hit me a couple of times if they just thought we were some sorts of freaks that were only with the boys because of their fame and because of our apparently quite hardcore fandom and I couldn’t help but consider whether we’d gone a bit too far and that it would too much, but luckily before I got to rethink my behavior again they’d joined us on the dance floor jumping around to their own song. Even Zayn, who’d never been much of a dancer, moved around to the music.



We were truly having fun. Everybody was being silly and not trying to make any dance moves pretty in any way, it was all about laughing and making this as hilarious as possible and at some point, when Harry did a really dorky and ugly move I think I did a little wee in my pants by laughing so hard. I was a bit relieved when the others also started heading back towards the table so that I could hurry to towards the toilet, Eleanor and Em following me close behind.
And what a relief that was! I washed my hands and corrected my hair trying to give it a bit of volume but of course without any luck at all. I might as well just give up.


“You are so beautiful, Maja,” I suddenly heard a voice say from behind me, Em’s reflection was now next to me in the mirror.

“YOU are beautiful, Em,” I said.

“I’m… so drunk,” she mumbled.

“Me too,” I agreed as I felt my feet stumble around and having no idea why.

“Does anyone know what time it is?” Eleanor asked as she walked out of the toilet to wash her hands as well.

I glanced down at my brown leather watch spending quite a lot of time trying to read it. “Almost half past three,” I ended up saying.

“Damn it’s a good thing I have nothing to do tomorrow,” she said.

“You’re not feeling sick, are you honey?” Em asked rubbing her back kindly. Man, that girl really was feeling incredibly loving tonight.

“I’m fine, yes. Just starting to feel a bit tired,” she smiled.



Luckily for her it didn’t take too much time for the rest of us to decide that it might be time to call it a night, and so around four o’clock in the morning we pulled our tired, drunk asses out on the street to get some taxis to go home in. We were all heading towards the same place, which was the boys’ building.


Outside there were multiple journalists and paparazzi’s taking photos, they’d probably gotten a hint that the boys were going to be there. I felt my mood drop a bit, I really didn’t feel like having to listen to all their stupid questions and getting blinded by the lights.


“Have you and Niall broken up?” a man asked me.

“Why would we have broken up?” I asked frowning at his stupidity.

“Then what about the pictures of you two? And the breaking news from Hollywire?” he asked.

Notes