Talk Is Cheap

The lads had already started interviews before Nicole woke up the next morning. They had a strict schedule and roughly 40 interviews to complete between the five of them. Some interviewers wanted all five boys while others requested specific members. Paul tried to set it up so each member got approximately the same amount of interviews, while also making time for bathroom breaks and small snacks every now and then.

Nicole was sitting in a room designated for refreshments only; she was fiddling around on her lap top and having short conversations with One Direction and their staff as the popped in occasionally. Paul had requested lots of fruit to be delivered by room service, making Nicole an extremely happy girl. She was already on her fourth banana and had eaten several handfuls of grapes.

“I should start calling you monkey.” Niall said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. He eyed the banana peels around her with an amused smirk before crossing the room and placing a kiss to her lips. He had no idea she’d left him last night after having sex. After spending a couple hours crying in the corridor, she picked herself up, wiped the tears from her eyes and climbed back into bed with him. It wasn’t hard for her to fall asleep; the entire night had exhausted her. Although Niall did things she didn’t like and said things that offended her, she still fancied him a lot. Usually he was adorable and sweet, and he’d always treated her right, but she wasn’t sure if that was enough. She wasn’t sure if her future truly was with him.

“How was your interview?” Nicole asked as he sat in the chair next to her. He’d already downed two granola bars and was now working on a glass of chocolate milk.

“Fine I s’ppose. It was with Harry so we had a good laugh. I’ve got another one in three minutes, Harry is in the loo now, he’ll be in here soon I s’ppose. He’s gonna be a right mess when he sees you’ve eaten half the bananas, he usually like to eat them all his self.”

“I’m sure he’ll make do.” Nicole replied with an eye roll.

“Love,” Niall purred, gaining Nicole’s full attention. She turned towards him and met his gaze before cocking her head to the side. “Last night meant a lot to me.”

Her lips curled into a smile at his words, and she nodded her head in agreement. She didn’t regret having sex with Niall in the slightest. She didn’t exactly enjoy his dirty-talk, but that was something she could get used to. She understood he was Irish, and Irish men have crude mouths.

“Ditto.” He pulled her chair closer to his before sweeping her up in his arms. She stood up to sit on his lap as he began attacking her neck with kisses.

“A banana a day keeps the angry boy-band member away-” Harry stopped mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing as he spotted Nicole and Niall snogging.

“Sorry mate,” Niall said, separating his lips from Nicole’s. “Didn’t know you were in here.”

“Obviously,” Harry muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets as he shifted his weight between the balls and heels of his feet.

Niall ignored Harry’s awkward behavior and turned to face Nicole, his blue eyes meeting her olive ones. “I should be goin’. Paul will throw a fit if I’m not on time.”

Nicole offered him an understanding smile before sliding off his lap and watching the blonde skip out of the room. Her gaze quickly found the floor, and she could feel Harry watching her, his green eyes gliding up and down her body.

“You and Niall are too fucking cute for words.” Harry said before taking a bite of his banana. Nicole chewed on her bottom lip, unsure of how to respond to him. “It’s practically nauseating how fucking cute you two are. Actually, it is nauseating. I could honestly be sick right not.”

“Please stop,” Nicole insisted, her eyes darting from the floor for a quick second before she decided her bare feet were much more interesting than his angry eyes.

“Will that make you feel better about yourself?”

“What do you mean?” Nicole demanded, running a hand through her hair, an exasperated sigh leaving her lips.

“After almost shagging me you go off and fuck Niall-”

“He told you-?”

“-yeah he told me, you better believe he told me. I’m the ex-boyfriend; of course he wants to brag about getting you in bed.”

“You can’t be mad, I know about Emily.” She noticed a hint of surprise in his face at her words, but it quickly vanished and was replaced with utter hatred.

“You really want to go there?” he demanded, his voice low and shaky. He was furious, and like always, it scared her to death.

“All I’m saying is you can’t be mad that I had sex with Niall when you did the same-”

“It’s not the same. For starters, I didn’t have sex with Emily. Secondly, I’m in fucking love with you and instead of admitting you feel the same you dangle Niall in my face every day—to make me jealous, or torture me for breaking up with you, I don’t know what your reasons are, but it’s all a load of bullshit.”

Nicole swallowed hard, her eyes growing wide as she stared at Harry with a blank expression on her face. He had no right to scream at her and basically accuse her of being a terrible person. Whether he was right about her loving him or not, she wasn’t using Niall to get back at him. She had real feelings for both lads, and that’s what made her life so difficult.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Harry laughed coldly, his lips curling into a snarl. “You say that I’m selfish, but you’re no better than me. You need to make up your mind Nicole, because you can’t love me and Niall. Eventually you have to choose, and I wouldn’t take too long because Niall isn’t as oblivious as you think, and neither of us is willing to wait around forever just so you’ll maybe decide to love us back.”

Before she could reply, Harry stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Nicole fell backwards in a chair and placed her face in her hands. Her heart was pounding, and she tried to hold back the tears, but having Harry yell at her like that was more than enough reason to make her an emotional wreck.

Nicole was quite aware she was being selfish by being with Niall while still have feelings for Harry. She wanted them both, but that was unlikely to happen. She knew she needed to make up her mind, and pretty darn fast before she lost them both.

“Life sure is rotten, yeah?” Louis’ sarcastic voice filled the room, and Nicole quickly lifted her face from her palms to see the infuriating boy standing less than a meter away from her. He was dressed like he owned a boat, and that made Nicole like him even less, if that was even possible.

“For once, keep your opinions to yourself and leave me alone.”

“What if I can help?” Nicole cocked an eyebrow and she pursed her lips. She highly doubted he would be any service to her. For the small amount of time she’d known him, he’d only been good at making her life miserable.

“What if I don’t have a problem?”

“I know you do, and it’s a common one. You’re in love with two-fifths of One Direction like at least 5,000 birds around the world, except you’re a tad bit special; they’re both in love with you too.”

“Stop pretending like you know me-”

“Shut up a minute,” Louis interrupted her, resting his hands on his hips. “I have something to say, because I think you deserve to know, and hopefully it will help you make the right decision.”

“I’m listening,” Nicole replied, giving-in. No matter how much she disliked Louis, he was best mates with Niall and Harry, so it was quite likely he’d know a few, some-what valuable tid-bits about them.

“I’ve known about you since boot camp.”

“Known about me-?”

“The first time I met Harry was in the loo. He was in a stall talking on the phone with you about something morbid like dying in a horror film or being dissected by aliens, I don’t know it was a weird conversation.”

Nicole couldn’t help but smile. She remembered that ‘would you rather’ quite clearly. She’d been at work when Harry called her randomly. When she took the call in the back room, his immediate words were ‘would you rather be killed gorily in a horror film or dissected by aliens in a scientific film?’ She’d choose the latter, purely because horror films terrify her.

“After he emerged from the stall, I asked if he’d been talking to his self, and he simply replied with a huge grin on his face ‘No, I was chatting with my girlfriend, she’s amazing’.”

As much as Nicole enjoyed hearing Harry hadn’t been completely ashamed of her while on the X-Factor, she couldn’t figure out why Louis was telling her this, it all seemed like useless information.

“Is there a point to this?”

“Yes,” Louis snapped giving her an annoyed look. “Let me finish.”

Nicole nodded her head, encouraging him to continue while promising herself not to interrupt him anymore.

“From that point on, I was the only one he talked to about you. It was easier to have a girlfriend that not many people knew about, because then he got to avoid the topic in interviews, he also didn’t want you getting bombarded with media attention either.

“As we progressed in the show and got put together as a band, Harry started to get really down and often second-guessed his relationship with you. He felt bad about never getting to see you, and there wasn’t much time for phone calls anymore. When he found out he forgot your one-year anniversary, he literally cried for a good 40 minutes. That was the first time he ever talked to me about breaking up with you because he honestly didn’t think he was good enough. I talked him off the ledge though, and went out with him to buy you a gift—that’s when he found the locket.

“Every other week or so he would get in one of his moods and bring up breaking things off with you again. I would always talk him out of it, because I knew he loved you, and that would only make things worse. It wasn’t until judges’ houses that he really became serious about it.

“The night after we made it through, Simon sat us down and had a long talk with us about our image and the way we needed to present ourselves on the show. He wanted us to ‘appear’ single to attract as many female fans as possible. At first, Harry was okay with it, he didn’t want people to know about you anyway because of the press and all, but that night things changed.

“The show hosted this huge party for all the contestants moving forward to live shows, and we were basically encouraged to partner off because TV viewers love juicy hook-ups on reality-shows. Harry got decently pissed and kissed a few girls. Nothing serious, no tongue, but it did happen. Obviously the next day he was utterly sick about it. He came to me crying and with no doubt in his mind said he was going to break-up with you. He mumbled on and on for hours about how you deserved a lad who could be there for you and treat you like a princess. He felt inadequate. In his eyes, you were perfect and he was scum, and that justification honestly made him sick. After a few hours, I gave up on the idea of talking him out of breaking it off. He was determined and before long he called you up and yeah—you know the rest.

“He locked himself in his room for days and cried all the time. No one understood what was wrong, so I told everyone he had family problems. Eventually his mum called to check on him because she knew something was up. He lied and told her you broke up with him because the truth was still too much to grasp. Eventually he picked himself up, though. He distracted himself with the show and girls and whatever would keep his mind off you. I caught him late at night holding that locket, though, more times than I can count. No matter how hard he tried to forget you, he couldn’t scrap your memory. He loved you, Nicole, and still does.”

Louis stopped a moment to catch his breath before finishing, “I just thought you should know the whole truth.”

Once Louis finished, Nicole didn’t have the slightest clue what to say. Every reason she had for hating Harry was completely thrown out the window. He broke things off because he didn’t think he was good enough for her, which was ironic because she spent their entire relationship not feeling good enough for him. He’d broken her heart to set her free because he felt like he was holding her back. For the first time in a long time, Nicole felt genuine feelings for him, feelings she’d had two years ago when they were happy and in love, feelings that scared her because she felt similar feelings for another lad. She knew Louis had been meaning to help her, but her head was spinning now more than ever. She had no idea what she wanted to do, or who she was supposed to be with.

“Look, I’ve got to go to my next interview. Think about what I said, and make up your damn mind because if you continue to screw both Niall and Harry in the head, I will have to sick a few Directioners on you, and I know you don’t want that.”

Nicole watched as Louis started out of the room, she was still struggling to process everything he’d told her.

“Thanks,” she yelled after him, and he turned to look over his shoulder. “That was nice of you—to let me know the truth and all.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned back around. Harry had asked him to keep all of that a secret a long time ago, but he’d never expected Nicole to enter his life again. She honestly did deserve to know. If she wanted to make a proper decision, she needed to have all the facts.

Nicole sat in silence as her brain worked over time, a million thoughts coursing through her head as she tried to force herself to make a decision. Before long, her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she grabbed it quickly, eager to distract herself.

“I’m outside your hotel, bitch. Come get me before I completely regret coming here in the first place.”

Nicole smiled as she read Sage’s text. She was in need of another female’s presence. She was in need of her best mate. Sage was always good at making decisions, and Nicole was in desperately in need of making a good decision.