My Gift Is My Curse

Demi never used to be a bitch. She was always a sweetheart, she never wanted anyone feeling hurt, she wanted only the best for everyone. Any time she saw someone hurting, her immediate response was to talk to him or her and attempt to get through to them – have them know that this was only temporary, and everything was going to be okay.

But whenever she was near Alice it was like all of that went to waste.

Everything she’d built up to make herself such a sweet, caring woman was just torn back down again.

The only thing that Demi wanted to see when it came to Alice was pure hell. She wasn’t sure why she disliked the younger girl so much, other than the fact that Niall had his eyes set on that girl and not herself.

So when she’d finally had enough, she found herself anonymously posting the picture of Niall and Alice kissing on the Internet.
She wasn’t planning on backing down. Demi was determined to get Niall Horan all to herself, no matter what childish games she had to play. This was the one boy that she didn’t have, but she wanted him – she craved for his touch, his lips all over her body, his hands caressing her.

And she wasn’t going to stop until she finally had him.

--

Immediately, Simon Cowell had the entire band flown back to London for an “emergency meeting.” He requested that the boys come in right away, and also wanted Alice to be present.

Alice was terrified of what was going to happen. She’d already made an ass out of herself in front of Simon plenty of times before, not to mention the last tour when she’d been kicked off.

People had been throwing hate her way the entire day, making her just shut off her notifications and keep her phone in her pocket. She hadn’t spoken to anybody but Louis, seeing as he was the only one out of the band who was willing to speak.

Liam was too flabbergasted to even mutter a single sound, and he was trying to search his head to find any sort of word that could describe how he felt. The only word he could think of was fuck – because holy shit, this was horrible, the shit had hit the fan.

Zayn was just being his usual quiet self. He knew that this wasn’t a time for joking or throwing around any sort of ‘vas happening?!’ to try and lighten the mood. He was just fiddling with his hands and let out occasional sighs, completely thrown off by this entire thing.

Louis was also keeping quiet, which made the entire scenario even more awkward. Even when things were tense, the strange kid always had something to say, but not in this case. He didn’t want to push Harry’s buttons any more than they’d already been pushed. He kept an arm around Alice and was trying to reassure her that everything was going to be fine, they weren’t going to be fucked, she wasn’t going to be kicked off, even though he was absolutely unsure of what could happen. Simon could just take everyone by surprise and cancel the entire tour because of this, and basically nobody could ever expect anything from him because he wasn’t easy to see through.

Niall was an absolute wreck. He couldn’t form complete sentences, every time he tried to say something it’d come out as, “I-I- um, g-guys, we should, um…” it never came out as anything coherent, just a bunch of mutters and stuttered sounds. He was nervously fiddling with the strings on his hoodie and kept gnawing on his lip, constantly shaking his head and thinking the worst of the worst. His eyes were rimmed red from all of the crying he’d done since the entire incident happened, and he was surprised they weren’t swollen shut from the amount of tears he’d shed.

“You can go in the conference room,” a tall woman with grey eyes and ginger hair tied up into a tight bun spoke, “Mr. Cowell will be in to see you shortly.” Her black pumps clicked loudly on the ground as she led them all towards the room which Alice assumed to be the conference room.

There was a large, rectangular table in the middle of the room, chairs surrounding the entire thing. The walls were painted white and there was a large window on the wall which went from floor to ceiling and was just a view of the entire city.

Everyone carefully chose their seats as they sat down. Harry sat on one long end of the table with Zayn on one side of him. Niall sat on the short end of the table, and on the other long side of the table nearest Niall sat Alice, then Louis on the other side of her and then Liam.

Paul was also present, because he seemed to follow Harry everywhere he went now. Of course it pissed the curly haired boy off, but Paul didn’t care, it was for his own good. Harry had said to him multiple times, “Oi just fuck off already, yeah? Y’ keep bloody annoying me. I’m an adult, you know! I can do what I want!” But the older man ignored him, knowing that he was just being completely stubborn.

Breaking the silence in the room, Simon Cowell entered with the same ginger-haired lady as before, a stack of papers in her hands. Simon sat at the head of the table in the chair with the longest back on it, and he took off his sunglasses, placing them on the table, clearly having just arrived from somewhere.

“I’ll have you know I am most certainly not pleased about the recent events.” he spoke, making eye contact with everyone in the room. “I thought that I could actually trust you all together again, but once more I have been proven wrong. Why does it seem that trouble follows you everywhere, Alice?”

Alice felt her cheeks burn up not only because of the question, but because everyone seemed to look at her at that moment. The boys stopped awkwardly gawking around the room and let their vision be set on her.

She raked a shaky hand through her hair and let out a silent breath. “I’m not sure, Simon.” She said. “But I am incredibly sorry for all of this, it wasn’t meant to happen, I–”

“The kiss happened a while ago.”

Everyone looked at Harry who had spoken up, and had an odd look on his face while he stared at the table. It was like he was contemplating something, having an inner battle in his head.

“Come again, Harry?” Simon asked monotonously.

Harry made eye contact with Niall and then Alice before looking back to Simon, “That kiss, the reason we’re here, it didn’t happen recently. It’s from months ago when we went to Spain for Niall’s birthday. I don’t know how or why the picture just leaked now, but I can assure you it didn’t happen recently.”

Simon let out a slight laugh and gazed outside of the window, his eyes falling on an airplane that was flying in the distance. “You know,” he said, “I told you all that there mustn’t be any sort of relationships forming on the tour. That was part of the deal, Alice, that you wouldn’t be unprofessional and toy around with any of my clients.” He turned back to look at her. “And I assume that you wouldn’t ever be unprofessional in such a way, correct?”

Alice weakly nodded and furrowed her eyebrows, confused on what was happening.

“Hm. Boys, may I ask why you two have been walking around with bruises all over the place? What on earth could you have possibly gotten into a brawl over?” Simon had a smirk on his lips, and he was clearly amused by all of this.

Alice was confused, was he trying to pretend he believed their bullshit or was he just trying to see if they came up with good enough stories to cover up the truth?

“Some massive bloke was hittin’ on Alice.” Niall said. “Was callin’ ‘er a slag ‘n mouthin’ off ‘bout the clothes she was wearin’.” He was speaking quickly and sliding over his words, trying not to stumble and show that this was complete and utter bullshit, even though they all knew it was.

“And where do the bruises come to play in all of this?”

Harry took over. “Niall and I told him to fuck off, but he wouldn’t, so I told him that if he didn’t leave her alone then I’d kick his arse. He ignored me and kept talking to her, so I punched him. And basically a fight drew from there.”

Simon let out a loud laugh and shook his head. “You lot are too good, you know that?” He picked his glasses back up and put them on once more. “I’ll have a statement released regarding the situation, using some of the bollocks you just told me. And as for the kiss, it was just a game played while intoxicated, yeah? Nothing serious, no relationships or any of that.”

Everyone nodded and thanked Simon, who just said “yeah, yeah” with a smile on his face and left with the woman. The group made their way out of the building and decided to go out to eat.

Niall and Harry weren’t necessarily on speaking terms, Alice noted, but after the meeting Harry had nodded at Niall, who nodded back, and they smiled at each other then continued walking. She wasn’t sure what the hell that meant, if they were going to finally make up or what.

While walking towards the table that the hostess was leading them, Demi asked the group what happened, and Louis animatedly explained the story. While moving around to sit down, Alice leaned in towards Demi, having finally seen her for the first time since the photo fiasco, and whispered in her ear, “That was weak. You’ll have to try harder than that to play the game.”