An Empty Everything

The first time Kinsey and I showed up in a magazine together was about two weeks into our strange relationship. It was the first real time we’d gone out, and I’d called her and insisted we went on a proper date. We hadn’t been bothered when we’d first arrived at the restaurant, and it was an upscale enough place that no one was terribly star-struck that I was there. There were some craning necks to look at Kinsey, though; whispers and raised eyebrows wondering who she was. The first thing I blurted out when we were seated was, “Do you like wine?”

The corner of her mouth turned up with a little half smile. “I’ve been known to drink a glass or two.” She shrugged.

I blinked at her. “I…well, I was asking because I was going to order us some,” She shrugged and smiled again. “I don’t think you’re as hard to impress as you try to come off, love.” I smirked and put the wine menu down. At this, she grinned. It was like she was always testing me.

Two glasses of wine put a bit of a flush in Kinsey’s cheeks and made her giggly, which I enjoyed. She laughed at me a lot, so naturally I liked to wait until she’d put food in her mouth to make a comment and watch her reaction. It was usually a combination of attempts—trying to eat, trying to hold back her laughter, and trying not to choke. She sipped her wine and smiled widely at me.

“You’re doing that on purpose!” She laughed, hands resting in her lap.

“Of course I am!” I replied. She laughed again, and her laugh was one of those that you encounter only in a few people; it didn’t necessarily make you laugh along with her, but it always drew a smile. It was full and loud, not held back, and I admired that. With her quiet little smirks, she seemed like her laugh would be more of a snicker. Anything I seemed to guess about her was wrong, but that was all the same to me.

The waiter approached and asked if we would be having dessert, and Kinsey looked at him like she had just seen a unicorn. She quickly ordered a slice of chocolate cake and I put my hand over my heart. “I think I’m in love.” I said dramatically. She giggled, and I told the waiter to make it two pieces of cake. Kinsey took a sip of her third glass of wine.

“Wey hey, love, you’re going to be right pissed.” I cautioned with a chuckle. She heaved a sigh and put the glass down.

“You did right on the wine, I’ll give you that.” She propped her chin in her hand. “Well, you did right on about everything, actually.”

I grinned, beyond glad that she’d deemed the date a success. She did come off as hard to please, mostly because it seemed like she didn’t care about anything, but there were little signs she gave that it was a fake little shell. The shy smile she’d tried to hide when she first walked up to me outside the door was one, and how it grew when I told her she looked beautiful. The way she held my arm when she walked beside me, too; and, of course, the pure bliss on her face when she was presented with a mountainous slice of chocolate cake. There were little things about her that she tried to hide, I could tell, but I’d give her time. More than anything that was all I wanted from her: her time. It’d only been a few weeks that I’d known her, and I was completely fascinated.

When we began to leave I noticed the crowd outside the door, camera flashes spurting here and there once we got into sight. I knew we’d be in some gossip rag the next day. I held her tightly around the waist and told her to keep her head down as we left, gripping her tightly and ignoring the questions being shouted at me. And, sure enough, the next morning Harry deposited a copy of The Sun in front of me with an enormous grin on his face.

“Care to explain why your cute little mug’s on the cover of Britain’s top gossip magazine with some fit redhead?” The picture was Kinsey and I leaving the restaurant, me frowning and staring ahead, an arm tight around her; her face was lowered and shaded by a curtain of her large reddish curls, the typing below the picture some rubbish about me and the date from the night before.

“Let’s see what they’ve got to say about it,” I insisted, flipping to the page. I looked pointedly at Harry when I cleared my throat, reading the article aloud. “One Direction’s very eligible Irishman Niall Horan—that’s me, by the way,” Harry rolled his eyes. “—May not be so eligible anymore. He was spotted last night having a very romantic, very expensive dinner with the mysterious girl pictured here—Harry—Harry look, that’s us,” I pointed to the picture in the article, another of Kinsey and I leaving. Harry sighed and I grinned. I cleared my throat again. “Although nothing has been confirmed, it certainly seems that the two were quite cozy and enjoying each other’s company. Restaurant staff tells us the pair enjoyed some wine and looked to be having a lovely date, one worker stating, ‘They really fancy each other, you can tell.’ Oh, isn’t that cute.” I skimmed over the rest of the article and shrugged finally, flipping it closed and nudging it back to Harry.

“They can tell you really fancy each other,” Harry snickered. Then, in response to me telling him to fuck off: “Well, what’s going on? You gonna say anything or not, mate?”

Harry wasn’t looking at me judgmentally or mockingly, just with a bit of curiosity and amusement. I scratched the back of my neck. “I mean…I mean, I do fancy her,” I mumbled awkwardly, able to see his expansive grin even without looking at him. “Her name’s Kinsey, if you want to know.”

“What’s she like?”

I breathed out and looked at him with a small smile tugging at my lips. “She’s—she’s something else.”

Kinsey came over that night, beaming when I mentioned the article and brushing it off easily. I wasn’t used to her at all; nothing about her was what I expected. She wasn’t seeking attention out and didn’t seem to care at all that I was one-fifth of the world’s most famous boy band. Although she had seemed a little overwhelmed by the swarm of paps—and who wouldn’t be?—she dealt with it easily and chuckled at the words written about her. She had the capability to ignore the sudden explosion of her twitter mentions and looked with disinterest at the pictures of her showing up on the internet or briefly in other magazines. Really, the whole thing didn’t bother her at all. I was a little taken back.

“You’re taking this pretty easily,” I noted, putting an arm around her and turning on my television. She shrugged.

It had only been two weeks that I’d known her, just two weeks for me to completely fall all over myself for this girl. Our relationship was already so much different than anything I’d had before. The way I felt about her was different, too, and it was honestly a bit scary. I didn’t know what to do with myself. But this was only the beginning, it was just our first real, proper date; even that small event had been made a front cover feature on the biggest celebrity news tabloid in the country. And because of this and the way I felt about her, I felt the need to warn her.

“Look, love,” I said softly, my mouth set in a line as I thought. Kinsey turned her face to me, an unreachable glint always present in her hazel eyes. “I…I know it seems a bit silly to you, all of this, but I think I need to warn you that it won’t always be this easy. It’s not going to be fun and cute all the time. I—I really fancy you, and I want to be able to spend more time with you, but I don’t want you to get scared off. I mean, if…if you…” I couldn’t find the right words without making it sound too heavy. “If you want to be with me, I’d really like that. But I want you to know it’s going to change a lot in your life.” Christ almighty, what a speech. I felt like a sappy girl in a date film.

Kinsey looked at me thoughtfully, the way a puppy looks at you when it’s trying to understand what you’re saying to it. She tilted her head as she listened, eyebrows knitted together a tiny bit, her heavy-lidded hazel eyes fixed on me. She frowned when I finished what I had to say, a confused sort of frown. She looked down for a second and blinked, than looked at me again and said so simply: “I know.”

My mouth opened but I wasn’t sure what to say. Kinsey wiggled in her spot and looked at me again. “Niall, I know,” She laughed gently. “I know all that. I knew that when you came to talk to me at that party, and when I sat down with you at that little diner, and certainly when I went on that date last night. I—I know it won’t be easy, but I can’t say that I care. I like being around you. So I’ll take whatever that comes with.”

I nodded. “Alright,” I thought about what she’d said and pushed a hand through my hair. “Alright, brilliant. Perfect.” I smiled at her, pulling her legs into my lap.

Kinsey looked at me again like she was thinking, that little frown creasing her eyebrows for a second, but then she put her hand against my cheek and pulled my face to hers. She smelled delicate and clean, and tasted sweet as she kissed me. She alone had the ability to stop time for me and she did it then, making everything around me slow to focus on her; focus on the softness of her hair between my fingers, or the way she perfectly formed her lips against mine. She had turned a switch in me that made everything electrified, my entire body made into live wires that sparked at the touch of her skin, and my fingertips left tingling paths of tiny jumping sparks as I brushed my hand across her hip to pull her against me. There was nothing but Kinsey, just her everywhere: her body, her face, her smell, her lips. Energy flowed through me and sang her name in my veins, making me ache to have more of her, and I kissed her hungrily. My heart beat hard and my breath was quick, and I had to stop myself. I pulled away. Kinsey looked at me with a glimmer of satisfaction flecked into the endless colors of her eyes, a lopsided smile pulling the corner of her lips upward.

I had only known her two weeks. Just 14 days of Kinsey in my life. There’s that cliché phrase, “I’ve never felt this way before”, but I reckon people say it for a reason. And I understood it then, kissing Kinsey on my couch 14 days after I met her, because I had never felt like that before. That feeling doesn’t know how long you’ve known someone or how long that someone will stick around, that feeling doesn’t go by the rules of any other relationship in your life because you’ve never felt that way before. And I had never felt what I felt when I was with Kinsey, not even performing on stage. It was close, of course, in the sense that I was filled with excited happiness and felt damn near invincible. When I felt the slowing of time and the overwhelming of exhilaration in my body in a way I had never experienced before, this new exotic high, I knew more than ever she was going to become vital to me. She was a drug that danced in my head and swam in my veins; she twirled in loops around my heart and sighed easy breaths across my skin, the promise of that indescribable feeling singing forever in my mind. It was easy for me to say, with certainty, that I hadn’t felt this before. And I was addicted to the feeling of her.