Counting the Stars

"Good morning, New York! We have a very special guest with us here this morning!" The Z100 radio announcer spoke into her microphone.

For someone reason that was unknown to me, New York's hottest radio station requested an in studio interview with me. Management was confused as I was, offering to have all five guys go in for the interview. They were persistent, though, and kept pressing to have me being the one interviewed. Which left me here. I wasn't exactly complaining, but I wasn't too keen on the idea. I wasn't anything spectacular, so there was no reason to interview me.

The studio was just like the one in New Jersey. I sat around a table that was cluttered with electrical equipment, there was a host, and people sat around typing away on computers. The only noticeable difference was the walls were now an obnoxious green color instead of gray. Except this time the guys weren't surrounding me, talking animatedly like the pros they were. This time it was just me, all of the pressure was on me.

"Thank you so very much for having me," I responded with as much enthusiasm I could muster up.

Since the "NIINJ" (The Niall Incident in New Jersey,) as Eleanor liked to call it, I was always moping around. I was trying to be happier and not let it affect me as much as it was, but that didn't seem to be going my way. Whenever we weren't doing band related things, Eleanor was taking me out and about around the towns hoping to take my mind off of things. For not being my happy, go-lucky self, I was doing a pretty good job at faking enthusiasm. Since the beginning of this tour, I felt like everything I felt was fake.

The radio announcer sent a smile my way, "Well, let's get the interview started. What's it like being the only girl on the tour?"

"Technically, I'm not the only girl. The boys' hair stylist, Lou, is a girl. There's a few makeup artists that I haven't gotten to know yet, but they're girls. There's also Louis' girl friend, Eleanor, is a girl. So I'm not totally surrounded by testosterone... But once El leaves, the long bus rides with only guys will drive me absolutely bonkers," I laughed at my answer, hoping I wasn't rambling too much. This was my first interview, so it was a new feeling. I could have talked for another 10 minutes about what it felt like to be the only girl on tour.

"Yeah, those rides won't be the best. Now, how'd you of all people come across getting the job?" She read off of her paper.

I shrugged, "My brother was the original drummer, but he got sick and returned home. Management was flipping out trying to figure out who would go on tour with the guys and my brother happened to mention something about me also being a drummer. They had me do a quick little audition in Los Angeles, and shipped me back to the East Coast with Niall."

The radio announced laughed a little, still smiling like crazy. Her enthusiasm for all of this made me question whether she was human or a robot. Beside's the crying fans at concerts, I have never seen someone so.. Happy. It was almost sickening to think she was so positive about life.

The interview continued on in the same fashion for another half an hour. She'd laugh at my response, regardless of whether it was funny or not, and then ask me another question that I'd try to respond to in less than a paragraph. I couldn't help that I was a talker. Once the interview was done, one of the other security guards that worked for the boys escorted me out to the SUVs that drove us around.

There was a group of about 20 fans standing outside of the radio station's studio's, all with pissed off expressions on their faces. It was like a bad scene in a vampire movie where all of the vampire's start to emerge from the shadow's and come in herds. Except this wasn't blood-sucking vampires, they were self-confidence sucking teen fangirls. I waved at all of them, smiling brightly. I had to mentally remind myself to stay on their good side.

"Don't act like you don't know what your'e doing," One of the girls shouted. I turned around to look at her. She couldn't have been any older than 16. She had the undersides of her hair dyed hot pink, both her nose and lip were pierced, her eyeliner wings were the size of wings on an airplane, and she was wearing tighter skinny jeans than any of the guys ever wore.

"Excuse me?" I asked, trying to stay polite. I didn't want to sound rude, but I was genuinely confused by her statement. I wasn't aware that I was "doing" anything.

She rolled her eyes, "You just skipped onto this tour and thought you were the coolest thing ever because you were a girl on tour with One Direction. Now you're getting close with Niall and trying to ruin his and Caroline's relationship, hoping that Niall would come crying to you because only an ugly guy like Niall would go for an ugly girl like you."

It took a few moments for what she said to sink in and after it did, it pissed me off. Who was she to judge me and my actions and be so rude to Niall. The security guard that was sent with me told me to not worry about it and to get in the SUV, but I didn't listen.

"Listen here, you can insult me all you want. You can form an opinion of me based on the things you have seen on my Twitter, since that's practically the only way you know something about me, and I am perfectly okay with that. You can insult, belittle, degrade, and judge me all you want. I'm a big girl, I can handle it. But don't you EVER insult Niall. Especially, if you're going to call yourself a fan of the band. He works his tail off to be the best he can for you guys, the fans, so he does not deserve to be treated that way. Have a great day," I lectured to the girl in particular, but made sure all of the other girls were on the same page. I waved once more and stepped into the front seat of the SUV.

The security guard looked over at me and gave me a thumbs up, "I"m quite glad you finally told one of those girls off. I want to strangle them half of the time."

--

"Callista, did you seriously tell off a group of our fans outside of the radio station today?" Harry questioned me.

After coming back from the interview, I was hoping to get some time to myself, but that proved to be impossible. Harry was waiting in my hotel room, on my bed as soon as I walked in. When I left the hotel room this morning, the bead in my room had been neatly made and left untouched. Harry had clearly taken it upon himself to mess up the bed and make himself at home. For the first half an hour I completely ignored him, taking the time to shower and get ready for the rest of the day. But as soon as I was done taking care of my personal business, Harry was already pestering me.

"How did you find out about that already?" I sighed.

I already knew how he knew, I knew that the One Direction fan base worked fast. As soon as anything remotely interesting happened, every "Directioner" and their mother and neighbors and they neighbors mailman knew all about the newest happening. Whether it be something relating to the guys themselves, the backing band, crew, or just people within the fanbase. They were all worse than the popular group in middle school.

"Yes, I did. You have the most psychotic fans in the world. If I wouldn't lose my job, I would probably beat them up whenever they did something stupid. Which is just about every time they open their mouth" I shrugged.

Harry began to laugh, which in turn, made me laugh. His laugh was no where near as infectious as Niall's hearty chuckle, but it still made me giggle.

"Why do I feel like this is the first time we've had an actual conversation?" Harry asked after he finally stopped laughing.

I rolled my eyes, "Maybe because it is?"

The more that I thought about it, the more that I realized Harry and I had never had an actual conversation. We shared a few words here and there, we were always apart of the same conversations, but never had we talked one on one. It was weird to think that we had actually never talked since we'd been on tour together for almost a month now.

Harry smirked, "Let's change that."

"And how do you expect us to do that?" I asked curiously, raising my eyebrows.

The smirk on Harry's face never left, "Let me take you out tomorrow night. We can go out and explore the city together, then get dinner. We don't have a show for another two days, so it's the perfect opportunity to spend time together."

I almost declined the offer at first. Somewhere in my brain, my conscious was telling me not to go because I wasn't over Niall and that would be leading Harry on. Another part of my brain told me to ditch Niall's sorry ass and go out with Harry.

I grinned, "Yeah, I'd like that."