Liam and I practiced for three hours that night. I was planning on staying in tonight instead of going out, I wanted to write some more articles of the shows and edit some of the photos. I ordered from Ezozas Kitchen and got myself some hummus and a gyro pita. It had been ages since I had Greek food and I had the biggest craving for hummus.

My food was delivered and I sat down in front of my laptop. I started editing photos of the recent shows and came to one of Niall. He had so much skin showing and he didn't have a single tattoo. I never realized that he didn't have any tattoos, I thought that all the boys had them. I decided that it would be fun to edit some tattoos and piercings onto him. Forty minutes into editing Niall, I got a text on my phone.



Minutes later, there was a knock on my door. I opened it and Niall was standing there with bags of chips and a bag of chocolates.

"My hero!" I said as I grabbed the chips from his hand.

He walked in behind me and jumped onto the bed.

"So, what are we going to do? Watch a film? Horrible late night talk shows?" He grinned up at me.

"Oh, we’re going to watch some horrible cable films and we're going to mute it and make up the script."

"Brilliant."

"Ireland, want to see the editing I did on a photo of you? I added some tattoos and a couple piercings." I winked at him.

"Oh my, did you really?" His eyes lit up like a little kid.

I nodded at him and I pointed at the laptop. The screen glowed with a photo of Niall manipulated to look like a proper bad boy with tattoos, piercings and I colored a bit of his hair to look purple like mine.

"Stevie, that is brilliant. Have you done that to anyone else's photos?"

"Nah, you were the only one that didn't have tattoos, so I wanted to add a little extra bad boy to you. Louis always says you're the good one. Church boy, I believe he called you?" I stuck my tongue out at him.

We watched a rerun of a Lifetime movie, The Choking Game. I know that making funny voices and setting our own script to a sad movie was probably in poor taste, but listening to Niall doing American accents was probably the best thing that I had ever heard. He was without a doubt one of the best people I had been around in months.

"Ireland." I looked at him very seriously.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for being my best friend on the road. I would have probably quit the first week if it weren't for you." I plopped my head onto his stomach.

"Anything for you." He started playing with my hair.

A commercial for another Lifetime movie played and it was about a musician that got kidnapped by someone that rescued her from a car accident. Niall and I were both kind of intrigued and made a date to watch it when it came out in a couple of weeks.

---

I woke up at around 4 in the morning, my bladder screaming at me. I got up, my eyes still heavy and I started dragging my fingers along the uneven wallpaper. I finished up in the bathroom and slumped back into the bed. There was someone else in the bed. Niall and I must have fallen asleep. I turned my back to him and pushed myself up against his chest. He maneuvered his arm under my own, falling right beneath my breasts and pulled me closer to him. I instantly fell asleep.

---

Around noon I opened my eyes and shuffled my hand on the side where Niall was lying to find that he had gone. I stretched my arms over my head and wiggled my back until I heard a little pop and felt a crack in my lower spine. Today was the day of the show and I wanted to get some more exploring in. I had 6 hours before I had to be at the stadium. I decided to go to the botanical garden near by and stop to smell the flowers.

That lasted all of five minutes.

Paul sent me an email asking me to send him at least 100 shots from the past 4 shows by tomorrow and he wanted me to show up to the stadium in the next 3 hours. I still had to go through over 4000 shots, select the best ones and then edit about 60 more shots. I sat down in the chair and pulled my hair away from my eyes. I scrolled through the shots from Washington D.C. and starting picking ones that I really liked. I realized that I still had the film left in my camera that I needed to get developed. We moved around so much, I hadn't even thought of finding a dark room to process the film.

There was a knock on my door. I rolled my eyes so hard, they certainly hit the back of my skull.

I opened the door to find Liam standing in front of me with an iced coffee.

"Practice?" He grinned.

I felt my head slump to my shoulders as I groaned.

---

"Stevie, you're thinking too much about the next move and you're missing the next note because of it."

"Maybe I don't have the fingers for this. I should just accept that I will never learn my favourite instrument." I pouted.

"You will get this if it kills me. I promise."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

My fingers hovered over the keys, trying to memorize the next step. Maybe this was like chess, think two steps ahead. I had to defeat my brain from tripping me up. I started to play and it was like my fingers had their own mind, they were playing the keys and I was just watching them from above. I hadn't messed up and I got all the way to the chorus and then I lifted my fingers. I turned my head to look at Liam.

"Was that right?"

"Stevie, that was absolutely brilliant!" He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and squeezed tight.

"I don't even know how I did it. I just… played."

"If you keep that up, you're gonna be better than me."

I reached for the keys, but wound up placing my hand on his. I went red hot instantly, I felt it.

"Oh, I - Sorry!" I muttered

He smiled, that beautiful smile of his.

"Jesus, it's almost 3, Paul wanted me to get to the stadium early. Do you have to go over now too?"

"Yeah, we have to do our sound check and we are doing the meet and greet before the gig."

"Now I understand why he wants me there. Makes sense. Wanna ride together?"

"Always."

---

Paddy was in the front seat of the car as he usually was when we went anywhere. I was in the back, taking selfies and putting them on Instagram. I asked Liam if I could take a picture with him and he agreed. Instead of being a normal human being and smiling, I pushed up my nose with my finger, distorted my mouth and stuck out my tongue. Much to my surprise, Liam furrowed his brow and his mouth went slightly down on the left side where he stuck out his tongue. This would be my new favourite picture.

I wanted to lean my head on his shoulder while we were sitting in traffic to get into the stadium. I wanted to run my fingers along the palm of his hand and learn all the lines engraved in his skin. I felt my left hand stretching out towards his, but I wasn't looking at him. We both were looking out the windows of the black SUV, drinking in the views of the city. We hit a really hard bump on the road that caused us to lift out of our seats and as my hand smacked against the leather seat, Liam's hand landed on top of mine. Don't look, then he will take it away. Just remain calm, Stevie.

He let our fingers intertwine and as I turned to look at him, he let go and the shine in his eyes dulled.

"We're here, let's go." He forced a smile at me.

---

We wrapped up the meet and greet and the guys were getting ready to do their sound check. The gates were going to open in the next hour and they had to rush through it. I took some random photos of the boys, Louis making faces at the camera as I clicked away.

We headed to the backstage area that they had set up for the night, there were piles of veggies and wraps next to bowls of M&M's and Skittles. There were cookies that were laid out and tempting me to take one. I could feel that eating all this food on the road was starting to make my jeans a little snug.

The stagehand came into the room and gave us a 30 minute warning.

I wandered over to where Niall was playing his guitar. Zayn was sitting next to Liam and playing video games. Harry was watching a video on his phone and Louis was nowhere to be found. I listened to Niall practice some chords for the show tonight and watched as Zayn kicked Liam's ass at Fifa.

"Stevie, do you have plans after the show tonight?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, Paul wants some of the shots from the past few shows, so I have to finish some editing."

"What about tomorrow?"

"Um, we're going to be on the road."

"Hmmm. Okay." He said as he walked away.

I looked at Niall to see if he was listening to this and he just shrugged his shoulders at me.

---

The boys were 20 minutes late going on the stage tonight because Louis was nowhere to be found for nearly an hour. Paul was furious and throwing things backstage. A full water bottle barely missed my head.

There was a little bit of tension for the first 4 songs of their set tonight. It was very apparent in all the photos that I took. I wouldn't be able to use any of these shots. I tried to stay as close as possible to Liam and Niall because they were at least trying to make the show a great one. The other three wore the frustration on their faces.

Liam caught a glimpse of me pointing the lens directly at him and he grin and winked. He thrust his hips and the entire crowd lost their minds. I felt myself getting hot. I had to tell Liam how I felt tonight. If I didn't, I felt like I was going to burst. I was definitely feeling something for him. I wasn't sure what it was, but it was certainly more than friendship that I wanted.

---

The encore ended and the boys and I headed backstage. I grabbed my camera bags and packed my lenses and the body of my camera. I slung the bags over my shoulder and I started heading towards the dressing room where the boys where. I took out my phone to check the time and looked up as soon as I heard the clicking of high heels on the concrete flooring. A gorgeous girl in a skin tight black dress walked right up to Liam and grabbed him by the shoulder. As soon as he spun around a smile spread on his face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply.

Notes