She's Not Afraid

Over the next week I tried to focus on my job, rather than that… moment with Liam at the club. Not much changed in our friendship either luckily. We still hung out and had movie nights when we both had down time at hotels, but it wasn’t awkward.

I did notice, however, that every time he came into a room my stomach would do flip flops or I’d get ridiculous butterflies. It was the most annoying thing in the world, honestly. Also, I noticed that every once in a while he’d look at me this certain way… I can’t explain it, but the look made me feel… funny, for lack of a better word. And sometimes we’d touch… like a hand would linger on a shoulder longer than necessary, or our knees would touch under the table when we were all out to eat. Or like…

Okay, so maybe some things did change, but neither of us voiced it or acknowledged it. Which was fine with me!

Focusing on my job though wasn’t hard. I had a lot of editing to do with the Little Mix tour diaries and the 1D ‘Day In The Life’ series. I was still working on editing Zayn’s and it’s been over a week. I was a perfectionist and sometimes that was my worst quality.

On top of that, we had 3 shows in Glasgow, which I got to shoot both Little Mix and One Direction. 1D already had their own photographer, Jeff, but he let me tag along to get my own shots. This was such a great experience, this tour, and I don’t know how I’d ever make it up to Jesy for pulling the strings to get it for me.

People started recognizing me too. Like whenever I went down to the photo pit between the crowd and the stage, people would shout for my attention, and scream questions at me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been noticed before since I had been there, in Jesy’s, corner through X-Factor, and being friends with the girls over the past few years and being part of the ‘Little Mix’ family, but now people really knew me. They even brought me gifts. Me! I’d gained so many followers on twitter and my tumblr, and people were spreading my photos around, it was amazing.

But with all that came the negative too. I’ve seen some nasty things said about me online as well as the good. People were convinced I’d slept with someone to get the job, or hooked up with one of the members of One Direction to be able to shoot them too and the web series. But I couldn’t be bothered to care about that. People were going to say what they wanted and sadly I couldn’t change that. Plus I had my 4 best friends to help me through it and tell me how to stay strong. Little Mix knew better than anyone how nasty One Direction fans could be.

I just did my best to play nice with everyone. If they called my name, I’d wave. If they gave something to me, I’d take it if I could. I did what I could to not fuel the fire.

Luckily I could take a short break from all things One Direction and Little Mix. At least for four days. We’d just gotten to London this morning, four days before we played 3 shows here. It was good to be home, much needed down time. Jesy had already high tailed it to her boyfriend’s flat so, knowing her, I’d have our shared house to myself the whole time we were off! I was already planning to just sit around and do nothing. Or… call a friend to hang out.

I was knee deep into catching up on all my DVRed shows when Niall called to interrupt me. “Can I help you Nialler? We just got home, miss me already?”

I heard him chuckle, “Yeah, what are you doing today?”

I shrugged, pausing the tellie, “I planned to just sit here and catch up on tellie.”

“Let’s hang out, I’m bored.”

“And do what? We’d just end up bored together.”

“I don’t know, but I’m bored and everyone I’ve called is busy or out of town.”

“So I was the last resort?” I asked, faking hurt.

“No, more like 5th in line.”

I rolled my eyes, “Whatever. But sure. You can come over if you want.”

“I’ll bring food.”
I laughed, “Of course you will.”
*****
“I’m starving!” Niall groaned. We had been at my house for a few hours now, completely veged out on the couch watching tellie. We’d watched most of what I had DVRed and now were catching up and the last few weeks of Grimmy’s ‘Sweat The Small Stuff.’

“Well maybe you shouldn’t have eaten the crisps you brought over so quickly.” When Niall said he’d bring food, I’d assume he was bringing more than a bag of crisps, but alas, I was wrong. His excuse was he didn’t want to stop anywhere and figured I’d have stuff here. But, I’d been on tour with him, and hadn’t been to the store, so my fridge was empty.

He sat up, “Let’s go to the store, we can make something.”

“We can?”

He glared at me, “Yes. We can. I’ve got one of Jamie Oliver’s books, I can pretty much cook anything now.”

I barked out a laugh, “Oh this should be good.”

*****

Shopping with Niall is an experience. Putting the stares and people following behind us aside, he was a complete spaz when it came to shopping. He’d changed his mind at least 10 times on what he wanted to make and kept throwing random things into the trolley then taking them back out moments later when he’d change his mind.

“Niall, pick something to make and stick with it! The longer we’re in here, the more crowded the store is getting,” I said glancing around. It was true. In the past 20 minutes we’d been here the more packed the aisles were getting, and the more stares we were getting.

He sighed, “Fine. We’re making fettuccini. With chicken!”

“Okay, fine. No changing your mind. It’s set, we’re making fettuccini. Now let’s go.”

We started going around the store again getting all that we’d need. “You think Jesy is coming back? How much pasta do we need?”

I shrugged, “Probably not. She and Jordan have a month’s worth of catching up to do,” I winked.
He fake gagged, “Thanks for that imagery.”

“Anytime!”

He grabbed a bag of pasta and tossed them in the trolley, “So what about you? Don’t you have someone to ‘catch up’ with?”

“No, not really. I mean, I’m sure if I was really desperate, there’s a friend I could call or something.”

He looked at me oddly, “A friend? Is that what you call them?”

“It’s what they are,” I shrugged.

“Not boyfriends or ex’s, huh?”

I shook my head, “I don’t have any ex’s. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

He nodded, “Yeah, that’s still hard for me to believe. You’ve never wanted to just be with one person? Give them your all?”

“Nope,” I said popping my P.

“Not even Liam?”

I sighed, “Not you too.”

“What?” He shrugged, “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t notice the way you two look at each other? Or how he always seems to have a reason to touch you? Because believe me, I’ve noticed. We all have.”

I shook my head, “It’s not like that.”

“Maybe not yet.”

“No.”

He nudged my arm with his elbow, “Come on Jazmin. What’s wrong with Liam that you won’t even entertain the idea of maybe liking him more than a friend.”

I shrugged, “Because I don’t need a reason to be distracted from my life goals. Or give people more of a reason to think I got this job because I slept with someone.”

“Don’t read things about yourself online,” he sighed.

“I don’t seek it out, it just happens.”

He threw his arm around my shoulders, “There will always be haters Jaz.”

“I know.”

Once we had everything we headed to checkout. As he was loading the stuff onto the belt I noticed the rather large crowd of teenage girls outside, plus a good amount of paparazzi. “See! Look, we’re trapped.”

He glanced over his shoulder and sighed a bit, “It’ll be fine. I’ll stop and sign some things and we can get through it quick, just stay close to me and you’ll be fine.”

I groaned inwardly, “Yeah, sure.”

As predicted, Niall refused to let me pay for anything. What was with these boys and not letting me pay? I had more than enough money to buy books and pasta! I just rolled my eyes at him and shoved my wallet back in my bag.

When we walked out of the store it was nothing but chaos. People were shouting for Niall’s attention, shouting things at me, snapping pictures. He sighed as many things as he could that were shoved in front of him and posed for pictures. The paps were yelling if we were together, as were the fans and we both replied with simple no’s.

After about 15 minutes of this, I needed to get out of the crowd, it was suffocating. “I’ll be at the car,” I tried shouting at Niall, but I wasn’t sure if he heard me. I maneuvered my way through the crowd and hustled to my car, I put the bags in the back seat then sat in the driver’s seat and waited.

As I was flipping radio stations for something to listen to my phone rang and Liam’s name was flashing on my screen. “Your mate is being mobbed in front of a grocery store right now,” I said once I answered.

There was a brief moment of silence, “What?”

“I’m at the store with Niall and we were mobbed on our way out. I’m sitting in my car waiting for him now.”

“Wait, you’re with Niall? Why?” He had a weird tone.

“He called me earlier wanting to hang out. Then we got hungry and he wanted to make something because apparently reading a Jamie Oliver book makes you a fantastic chef.”

Queue another short pause, “He’s making dinner for you?”

I don’t get why he was acting so weird, “Yeah I guess so. We’re having chicken fettuccini, wanna join?” The last part was an afterthought to try and take the edge out of this conversation. Why there was tenseness to it, I had no idea.

“No thanks, I don’t want to play third wheel on a date.”

“What?” I blurted out. “It’s not a date, we’re just making dinner. Why are you getting all snappy?”

I heard him sigh, “I’m not I just didn’t want to impose.”

“Well you’re not,” I insisted. “You should come over. I want you too.”

There was a pause, again, “Alright. When should I come then?”

I glanced over at the crowd where Niall still was, “Well it looks like the crowd around Niall is thinning out, wanna come over in like 20 minutes?”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.” Then we hung up. I think that may have been one of the oddest conversations I’d ever had. Maybe he was having a bad day or something.

I went back to messing with the radio as I waited for Niall. After 3 songs and a few commercials he was sliding into the seat beside me, “Sorry about that.”

I shrugged, “Its fine, I understand. Liam’s coming over for dinner too by the way.”

“Cool, is he on his way now?”

“I think so,” I nodded. “He was acting a bit weird though.”

“Weird how?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know, he was a bit snappy and not as talkative. He through he’d be the third wheel on our date.”

Niall laughed, “Well then, I guess there’s your answer.”

“What?”

“Are you really that daft Jaz?” he asked looking at me like I was mental. “He was obviously jealous. He thought we were on a date!”

I scoffed, “He’s not jealous, he has no reason to be.”

“Oookay Jaz. Sure.”