Just Consider It

I woke up groggy and disoriented. The room was dark, but I could see some soft gray light filtering in through the curtains. Someone was lying beside me, breathing softly. It was probably Maggie, who lately had been in the habit of climbing in bed with me and shoving her cold feet all over mine.

I blinked, rubbing my eyes, and then I saw a poster on the wall that said DERBY COUNTY FOOTBALL CLUB with a ram in the middle of it. That was weird, because Maggie didn't even know who that was. Maggie had a poster of a puppy in our room. The only place a poster like that would be in was . . . Niall's room.

I sat up quickly before pulling the covers over me as soon as I realized I was wearing a bra and underwear and nothing else. Someone who was not Maggie snorted softly and I slowly turned and looked at the lump lying beside me, my heart pounding. Very gently, I lifted back the covers and saw . . .

Niall. I pulled them back even more and saw that he was shirtless. And who-knows-what-else-less.

I stifled a gasp and sprang out of bed, yanking on the first shirt that I could find, which happened to be one of his white Ramones t-shirts.

"No, no, no, no," I mumbled, tip-toeing across the room to the mirror on the wall. Maybe nothing happened, maybe we'd been too drunk to do anything, maybe I could leave and we could forget this ever happened.

As soon as I saw my reflection, I knew this was nothing we could pretend never went on. My hair was a rat's nest, but not in the way it usually was whenever I woke up in the morning. More like . . . someone had messed it up.

In addition to sex hair, I had bruises all up and down my neck. I had a bite mark on my hip and on my shoulder. There were bags under my eyes.

"Jesus," I whispered. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, why?" Needless to say, Jesus didn't answer, but with another snort, the lump in the bed shifted around and then Niall raised his head, bleary-eyed and yawning.

He blinked, looking around for a few seconds, before he looked at me and his eyes widened a little bit. He sat up. "Hero?"

"I . . . oh my God." I took a step back.

"Wait, wait. Hold on." His voice was deep and thick with sleep. He picked up a pair of boxers on the floor and I swallowed hard. Jesus.

He yanked on the boxers and got up, walking over and standing next to me so we were both looking at each other in the mirror. His hair was equally messy, sticking up everywhere. I tried to ignore the bite marks and bruises all over him.

"Do you . . ."

"Do I what?" he asked softly.

"Do you remember what we did?"

He nodded. "Yeah, some of it. Do you?"

I remembered dancing at the club, dragging him through campus by the hand, kissing, kissing, kissing, and . . . yeah. Yeah, I remembered some of it too. "Yeah," I answered hoarsely.

"We were really pissed, H."

"I know." I looked at his lips and felt them on mine, on my neck, on my shoulder, going down my stomach, and remembered how good they made me felt. And suddenly I couldn't stand there any longer. "I need to go."

"Hero."

"I can't be here right now," I insisted. "I have to go back to my room."

"Okay," he said, sighing. "But we need to talk about this, all right?"

"No, we don't," I answered, but I knew we did. "Fine, fine, fine, okay. I just need to go, Niall. I need to sleep."

"Okay," he said again, "okay. Go. Just . . . call me. Please. We need to talk about it."

I didn't even respond, running out of his room and down the hallway of his dorm room, my clothes thrown over my arm, my shoes and bag in one hand. A few people peeked out of their rooms to see what all the noise was, and as soon as they saw it was me, I could see the giant thought bubble forming over all of their heads: They finally fucked, huh?

I hurried across campus, ignoring the freezing cold, and burst into my dorm room. Maggie was sitting on the bed, typing on her laptop. Apparently she had pulled another all-nighter. As soon as she saw me, her eyes widened. "Holy shit," was all she said. "Holy shit."

I was breathing hard. "Maggie," I whispered. "Maggie, oh my God, Maggie."

"Hero . . . what the fuck happened?"

Before I could answer, she was up and over to me in an instant, guiding me over to the dresser and pulling out a pair of pajama pants and a sweater. I put the clothes on, tossing Niall's shirt aside.

"Okay," Maggie said, obviously reading my hysterical expression. "Okay, um . . . calm down. Take a deep breath. Tell me what happened . . . although by the looks of it, I think I already know."

I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut. "I don't . . ."

"Look, Hero," she said gently. "You had sex with Niall last night. You went out and got smashed and had sex and there's no taking it back. The only way we can figure out what to do is if you accept that."

"I accept it," I said through gritted teeth. "Now please, please tell me what to do."

"Well, did you talk about it with him?"

"What is there to talk about?"

She gave me a you're an idiot look. "If it was a mistake, if it wasn't a mistake, if you're dating now, if it was a one-time thing . . . God, Hero, don't you want to know? Don't you wanna date him?"

"No." Yes.

"Well, you're a liar, then, because I know you like him a lot. Are you at least planning on talking to him?"

"He asked me to call him, but . . . Maggie, I don't know," I said softly. "I don't know if I'm ready to handle this again."

"Oh, Hero . . ." She gave me a hug, sighing. "Look. I can't tell you when you're gonna be ready to get back out there, but honestly? I think despite everything, it was always Niall, and I think deep down, you knew it too."

And although I didn't want to admit it, she was right. Niall and I had only known each other for a short time, but the way we fell into each other, even when we didn't like each other, was kind of amazing. And even when I hated him, there was always some part of me that enjoyed the challenge and had some sort of grudging admiration and respect for him. I could vaguely remember when I was dating Tyler, all the times he'd grumble, It's like Niall is your boyfriend instead of me, because of how much time he and I spent together and how well we knew each other.

It was like there was a magnet between me and him, pulling us together, making it impossible to tear us apart. I thought of a day shortly after Tyler had dumped me, when Niall had grabbed my face and pressed his forehead to mine. "You're my best friend, Hero. I won't let anything hurt you, you know that? I promise."

So, yeah. I knew what I had to do. But because I was stubborn and stupid, I decided to wait a bit. And then a bit more. And then, before I knew it, a week had gone by and Maggie was fixing me with her half-disgusted half-disappointed look nearly every minute and I still hadn't called Niall.

Finally, I couldn't put it off any longer. I scrolled down my contact list and came to a stop at Nialler Fuckface LADS, which was the result of both he and I editing his contact name. After a moment, I pressed CALL.

He answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

"It's me," I said as a way of greeting.

"Oh. Hi."

"So, um . . ." I cleared my throat. "I'm ready to talk about it now."

"You are?"

"Yeah. Can we, uh, meet now? At the dairy bar?"

There was silence on the other end for a while, and then he said, "Yeah. Of course. I'll see you then." We hung up and I took a deep breath.

"Good luck," Maggie murmured as I left.

I tried to go as quickly as I could, but when I arrived, I saw he was already sitting there, in the table we'd been sitting at the day I kind of realized I liked him. How ironic.

"Hey," I said, sitting down across from him.

He looked up from his phone. "Hi. How's it going?"

"Fine." I hesitated before I added, "You look good." He actually looked pretty tired, but somehow he made it work.

"Thanks." His expression remained neutral. Everything was awkward. "So . . . how do you wanna do this?"

I shrugged. "You go first."

"Okay." He chewed his lip. "I just have one question."

"Shoot." I tried to prepare myself.

"Was the other night . . . do you consider it a mistake?"

"A mistake," I repeated.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Like . . . do you wish you and I didn't have sex that night, is what I mean."

I looked at him. The afternoon light was catching on his hair, which he'd attempted to gel but apparently gave up halfway through. And it was like, whoa, because I hadn't seen him in a week and then suddenly he was hitting me like a freight train. And then I rememebered that I had to give an answer, and I decided that for once, I was going to be totally honest, because it had gotten me pretty far with him already.

"God, no."

He raised his eyebrows. "So, it wasn't a mistake?"

I shook my head. "No. Uh . . . was it a mistake for you?" I felt like I had to ask.

He gave me a look, like I'd asked a dumb question. "Of course not," he said, rolling his eyes. "God, of course it wasn't. What's your problem?"

"Just checking, just checking," I said, throwing my hands up.

"All right, all right. Now that we've got that . . . where do you wanna go from here? Like . . . do you want to . . . " He trailed off, eyeing me hopefully, and I knew exactly what he meant.

"Can I be honest with you? Like, 100%?" I asked.

"Of course you can. You know you can."

"Okay. Okay." I drummed my fingers on the table. Do it. "So, I like you. A lot. And I think I've liked you for a while now, but I was just kind of too dumb and too preoccupied to realize it. And like, I really want to date you or whatever . . . but things are just kind of . . . weird right now. Like, I'm not sure I want to put myself back out there, you know?"

He nodded. "I know."

"And it's not that I can't see myself dating you or whatever, because I can. I'm just not sure I want to take the risk." I averted my eyes, looking down at my lap. "So, uh . . . yeah."

There was a pause, and then Niall's hand was sliding across the table and enveloping mine. "Hero, look at me." I raised my eyes to his face. He was smiling at me. "I know things haven't been easy for you. Believe me, I know. But I really think we should try this. We don't have to do anything you don't want to do. We don't even have to call it anything. But like . . . I really just wanna take you out and hold your hand. You know? And . . . I would never, ever dream of hurting you. Trust me on that."

"I know," I mumbled.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to do this?"

I looked at him for a minute before Maggie's voice appeared in my head. "I think despite everything, it was always Niall, and I think deep down, you knew it too." I was finally getting everything I wanted. I smiled a little. "Yeah, okay. Let's do it."