Forget December

I woke up well before Niall the next morning, but it wasn't by choice. My phone was ringing incessantly. I snatched it off the coffee table and brought it to my ear, Niall grumbling beside me to go back to sleep.

"'lo?" I mumbled.

"Ashley, love, everything all right?"

My face crinkled in confusion. "'s fine, mum. Why? What's wrong?" I could pick up the panic in her voice even an hour away.

She sighed heavily. "Look outside, love."

 I extracted myself from Niall's death-like grip and walked over to the front door.

Outside was like a winter wonderland, the kind of thing I would have dreamt about as a kid waking up on Christmas Eve morning. But now, just shy of 20 and with my parents stranded in Dublin the day before Christmas, I was less than thrilled.

"The car won't start and there aren't any trains. Your father and I are going to stay here overnight and try again tomorrow. We're sorry love."

I played it off like it didn't matter and reassured my mum I'd be fine. "Really mum, it'll be fine. Just be careful, yeah? I'll... See you tomorrow, I guess."

When we hung up, Niall was awake and watching me carefully. "Everything all right?"

I sighed and shut the door, the chill of outside suddenly too much. "Not exactly," I mumbled before making my way back to the couch. "That was my mum. They're stuck in Dublin for the night.”

Niall frowned. “That’s a shame. What are you going to do for Christmas eve then? Can’t just stay home alone.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes, because that was exactly what I was going to do. “They’ll be home tomorrow. We’ll have Christmas and everything will be fine. I’ll just get all my wrapping done today or something. It’ll be fine.”

“Ashley! ‘s Christmas eve! You can’t just sit around and do nothing!”

I sighed heavily and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Well what do you want me to do, Niall? I can’t magically make my family appear.”

He grinned happily. “Nope, but I’m here, and I’m not leaving until you’re jolly and in the Christmas spirit!”

I thought that was a bit of a stretch--Nialler had family to go home to as well, family he hadn’t seen much of and who he should have been spending Christmas Eve with. But stay he did.

He left shortly after we woke up to head home for a bit to let his mum know what was happening, and when he came back, both of us freshened up and ready for the day, he wasn’t empty handed.

In one arm, he clutched his guitar and a bag of goodies and in the other he had two plates of food balanced on top of each other.

“Niall, what in bloody hell is all of this?” I asked him as he once again barreled into my home like he owned the place. I took what I could so he wouldn’t drop anything and led him into the kitchen.

“My mum wanted to make sure you had something to eat tonight, so she made up a plate of food. I also grabbed my guitar, and then this,” he said, holding up the plastic bag and grinning, “is for later!”

I sighed and shook my head, but put the food in the fridge and then followed him into the living room.

We got comfortable on the couch once Niall popped in another Christmas movie to occupy us.

When the credits started rolling, I couldn’t help but laugh. “The Grinch? Really Niall?”

He turned his head with a giant grin to look at me and nodded. “This is the first movie we watched when we started doing this, so I thought it was fitting aye?”

I couldn’t deny that. I nodded. “I remember that. The first year was...” I trailed off, trying to find a word.

“Rough?” Niall filled in a moment later, and I chuckled.

He wasn’t wrong. The first year Niall and I had decided to do our Christmas eve celebration, I had been a bit of a trainwreck. The boyfriend I was with at the time had cheated on me, and I found out a lovely week before Christmas. Needless to say, I hadn’t exactly been in the best mood, so Niall had popped in The Grinch with a grin and tried to cheer me up. And it worked, of course it did, because he was Niall and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I think if it hadn’t been for you,” I said a few moments later while the cartoon played, “I probably would have went and vandalized Mark’s car or something.”

Niall laughed. “I know. That’s why I didn’t leave until the next morning. That was how the tradition started, aye?”

“Suppose so. Guess we have trashy Mark to thank, yeah?”

Niall grinned and nodded. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and we continued watching the movie.

When the movie finished, Niall didn’t waste a second before he popped up off the couch and made his way to the kitchen. “What are you doing?” I asked, peering over the top of the couch.

“Stay there,” was all he said.

When he came back, he had a plate of cookies in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. He handed me the milk before setting the cookies on the couch between us and grinning. “Remember two years ago? The cookie disaster?”

I barked out a laugh before I picked up one of the pretty sugar cookies I was positive Niall had not decorated himself and took a bite. “I remember finding flour in random spots in my kitchen for the next week after, yes.”

Niall threw his head back and laughed before taking a cookie of his own and biting in.

Our second year of doing our annual Christmas eve tradition hadn’t gone much better. We’d tried to make christmas cookies from scratch--I wanted to make them for my boyfriend at the time, someone I thought I was in love with, and Niall was just in to anything that had to do with food--but it hadn’t exactly gone as we expected.

We made a mess, spent the rest of the night cleaning so my parents would be none the wiser, and then the cookies had burned. Coincidentally, Jake had broken up with me a few weeks later. I was left with nothing but the memories of a dirty kitchen, burnt cookies, and a broken heart.

It hadn’t been my finest moment, but I was realizing that Niall and I were around for each other whenever that happened, always.

“God,” I said finally when I finished my cookie, trying to forget how it made me think of my ex-boyfriend, “You’ve witnessed me at my worst these past few years haven’t you?”

Niall shrugged and looked down at his cookie. “‘s what mates are for, yeah?”

We popped in another Christmas movie and finished off the plate of cookies, curled up on the couch next to each other. We were comfortable and content and I couldn’t ignore the feeling I got when I realized it was Niall making me feel that way.

***

Eventually the movie ended and the cookies were gone and Niall and I were left to relax on the couch while he strummed random chords on his guitar and I listened happily.

It wasn’t the perfect Christmas Eve, but I was pretty happy with it.

“You should probably head home,” I said finally when the sun was setting and the snow outside was picking up once again. “Don’t want you to get stuck here, and you should be with your family.”

Niall shrugged and looked down at his guitar. “Suppose. But if you can’t be with yours, then maybe it’s only right yeah?”

I rolled my eyes but smiled, because he was Niall, and it was sweet.

“Wait!” he said finally, hopping off the couch. This time I did follow him out into the kitchen, where he was pulling yet another thing out of the fridge.

I grinned. “You already got me wine, Nialler. Didn’t have to get anything else.”

He shrugged and popped open two cans of Stella before handing one over to me. “This is what we drank last year. I was gonna get another bottle of wine to make up for the years I didn’t bring any, but this felt better.”

I couldn’t ignore the twist in my stomach thinking of how we had drank two six-packs of Stella last year and I had gotten sick, not able to accurately hold my liquor at the time. “Last year was the worst,” I murmured, taking a gulp of my beer and trying not to think about it.

Niall nodded. “It was, but now look at you. A year later and you’re as good as new! You didn’t need that tosser in your life, Ash. Never did need anyone ‘cept yourself, yeah?”

I shrugged and took another drink, not looking up at Niall. Last year had been the worst, by far. I was completely in love with my boyfriend at the time, Josh, and we’d been together for almost a year. It was the longest relationship I’d had up until that point, which maybe seemed silly to other people, but it felt right to me, finally. But then he was breaking up with me on the 22nd of December because he wanted to have some fun, and I was heartbroken.

And there was Niall, with two six packs of beer, a plate of cookies from his mum, and The Grinch to try and cheer me up.

“You never needed those blokes, Ashley,” he said finally, his voice much quieter. “I think you thought you did, but you didn’t. You would have been fine on your own.”

“I may have been fine, but it wasn’t because I was on my own,” I said, finally looking up at him. “You were always right there to make sure I was okay, weren’t you Nialler?”

He shrugged.

We finished our beers and then I told Niall he really should head home. He gathered his things and with my help, we carried them out to his car.

“Thanks for this,” I told him once he shut his door and we packed everything away. “You didn’t have to, but you did, and I really appreciated it.” Like always, I added in my head.

“Always,” Niall echoed with a grin. “Let me know if your parents don’t get home tomorrow, aye?”

I assured him I would and then ushered him into his car. “It’s freezing out! Have a happy Christmas, Nialler. Tell your mum thanks for me, yeah?”

He nodded and then I waved before hurrying towards my front door. As soon as my hand wrapped around the doorknob though, I stopped, because Niall was calling my name.

“I’m in love with you Ash,” he called out across my front yard. “I’m in love with you, and I’m not just going to go home and let another year go by where I don’t tell you how I really feel because you’re crying over some other bloke who has treated you like proper shit.”

His words hit me with the force of a semi-truck. I felt like I couldn’t turn around to face him, but then I did, and he was right there, millimeters from me and closing the gap between us. “Tired of pretending I don’t feel this way,” he said quietly, his breath hot against my skin. Before I could even process what was happening, his arm was wrapped around my waist, pulling me into him and his lips were on mine.

I wanted to push him away, ask him what in the bloody hell was he doing, but I also couldn’t hide the way butterflies suddenly came alive in my stomach and our lips fit together perfectly. So instead, I just wrapped my arms around his neck and held him close.