Pawn Shop Blues

Olivia McGuiness was many things, but out of all of those, perhaps the thing she was the most was lonely.

She would try her hardest to convey otherwise, with laugher and limitless kindness and listening abilities unparalleled. On any given day, she spent hours keeping herself busy to distract from how everyone around her was at arm’s length, just beyond her grasp. She threw herself into club after club, overloading her schedule with classes so she could learn more and more about the one thing she knew she loved: art.

At a young age, she learned that life did not have one set course that you would travel along aimlessly for the rest of your life. There was not one set way of doing things, a way you could skip yourself like a stone across a river and hit every milestone along the way. You would meet people. You would lose people. You would accomplish things. And inevitably, you would fail. But Olivia didn’t like to think like that.

Olivia McGuiness was a positive person. A hopelessly, miserably, perhaps inadvisably positive person. So that’s why when an American girl with a little grey cloud over her head appeared in her dorm room one September afternoon, Olivia McGuiness couldn’t help but see how sincere her sad eyes were and how she walked with her feet turned just slightly in an arrow, pointing her forever in the right direction.

One September afternoon, Olivia McGuiness met Daria Holmes and knew that they would be best friends for the rest of their days. And for the rest of their days, so they were.

“You’re the first real friend I’ve had in a long time, Liv,” Daria murmured one night as they lay in their standard issue beds, staring at the ceiling as the light from the moon formed slats that moved with each passing car. “I just… thank you. For everything you’ve done for me so far.”

Olivia smiled, releasing a little giggle to lighten the situation. “And I’ve only known you for just a heartbeat,” Olivia teased. “Imagine what I can do with you before we ship you back to America in December.”

Olivia McGuiness thrived on the happiness of others. If she could somehow put a smile on someone’s face, for whatever the reason, she felt like she had accomplished a purpose. There was nothing more rewarding than watching the transformation from little grey cloud to blossoming flower, at least in Olivia’s eyes. So when there was an opportunity to get Daria out of their dorm room to make some new friends, Olivia couldn’t let her pass it up.

“Yes!” she exclaimed when Litzy from down the hall asked them to go out in London. “A hundred times yes!”

But she didn’t know how much her life would change that night at Blaze. When she slipped into that little black dress and led her new friends in Irish drinking songs on the way from Birmingham to London, there was next to no way of her knowing.

The first time Olivia McGuiness saw him, she was dancing to some unromantic song in a nightclub in London. The first time Olivia McGuiness saw him, she nearly choked on her drink from the surprise. The first time Olivia McGuiness saw him, some part of her, deep down inside her little Downpatrick-bred heart, knew right away.

He was wearing a white v-neck and a pair of jeans, white high-tops at the bottom of his long legs and the blue strap of a snapback placed lazily across his forehead. His thin, pink lips curved when he set sights on her from across their massive entourage. And his voice was sweet as sin as he pressed them to her ear in an effort to speak above the music.

“I’m Niall. And you have got to let me buy you a drink.”

And right then she knew. Niall Horan had her, hook, line and sinker.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to be so lonely anymore after all.