Left My Heart Out

Back when I was sleeping with Liam, my friendship with Harry suffered because I was spending all my free time either shagging Liam or thinking about shagging Liam.  But now that that’s all over and done with, I can start thinking about other things again, like how terrible I am at video games.

“Liam’s been looking for you,” Harry tells me one afternoon when we’re over at his flat playing FIFA. His roommate, a bloke called Ashton, isn’t here because he’s at his storage unit, where he keeps his drum set. I’m sure Harry wouldn’t mind the noise if he played them here, but the neighbors definitely would.  The woman who lives in the flat about Harry almost moved out when she found out Harry and Ashton were moving in; that’s how much she hates uni students.  But then she decided to stay, and now she floods the bathtub at least once a month because (Harry insists) she knows that it drips through the floor right into his bed.

“What are you talking about?” I ask. I’m losing really badly, which is half because I don’t understand the rules of footie and half because I don’t understand how to use the controller. Harry doesn’t seem to care, though. I think he gets off on beating me.

“I saw him yesterday at the pub and he said he’s been looking for you in all your usual spots, but you haven’t been in any of them,” Harry explains, not seeming to understand that I don’t want to talk about Liam or think about Liam, much less see Liam anymore. I know we agreed that we could stay friends, but I’ve discovered what all girls who get involved with friends with bennies eventually must: it’s really hard to stay friends with someone once you’ve seen their dick. And it’s extra hard if they’ve broken your heart, too.   

“Oh. Well, I’ve changed my routine a bit,” I tell him, trying to keep my focus on the game, which is hard because I don’t really even understand what’s happening on the screen.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. I didn’t say it’s because you’re avoiding him, though.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I say, rolling my eyes. “So what’s he want?”

Harry shrugs. “Just a guess, but he used to be your best mate. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

“You’re my best mate,” I remind him. This is true: Harry’s been my best mate longer than Liam has. He’s been around since the very first day of uni, when we bumped into each other in the hallway and he invited me back to his room to play Fifa. At first I thought he was hitting on me, but I realized quickly that I’m not his type (my tits are much too small).

Harry rolls his eyes without taking them off the telly.  "He’s your other best mate, then.“

“Hmph.” I turn back to the screen to let him know that I really do not want to keep talking about this, and, luckily, he seems to understand. Harry doesn’t say anything else and we go back to playing the game, and he doesn’t mention it again when I leave a few hours later. But I’m still thinking about it, which might be why I’m not surprised to find Liam waiting in the hallway outside my flat when I get home.

“Liam,” I say as he scrambles onto his feet. Liam is wearing these baggy, dark jeans with a chain hanging from the belt loops. I used to think these trousers were sexy, but now they look a bit silly and unstable to me, like they’re about to fall off and expose him. It wouldn’t be anything I haven’t seen before, but that doesn’t mean I need to see it again.  

“Hey, Q.” He follows me inside and stands awkwardly in the kitchen, watching me unload my Sainsbury’s bags into the fridge.

“What are you doing here?” I ask when I finish and turn around to see him still standing there. I’m suddenly irritated with him, annoyed that he’s come here out of the blue (even if he was on my mind and I wasn’t surprised to see him) to (I’m assuming) beg me to be his mate again, when I’m still busy getting over him. What a twat.

Except he’s standing there looking so sad and pathetic with this puppy dog look on his face, and I remember that he’s not a twat. He’s the boy I used to be in love with, and he’s my best friend.

“I thought we needed to talk,” he says, looking at the floor.

I don’t say anything, but I hold out my arm and gesture toward the living room. He takes a seat on the couch, and I opt for the armchair, a safe distance away.

“I’ve missed you, Q,” he says after a terrible minute of silence. His voice cracks, and I pray to God that he’s not going to start crying on me. I’m not sure I could handle that. “We used to be such good mates and now we never even see each other.”

“Liam–”

“And I want to know why. I want you to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me.” He looks so sad and pathetic sitting there on the couch taking up half a cushion. I watch him stare at his lap and realize that I can’t lie to him. So I don’t.

“It’s because I fancied you,” I say. It’s easier to say out loud than I thought it would be, and maybe that’s because I’m getting past it. “On the day you said we should stop seeing each other, I was getting ready to tell you the same thing, because I knew that you were never gonna fancy me back, and it wasn’t good for me to keep sleeping with you anyway.”

Liam’s looking at me like I’m speaking another language, and that’s when I realize how utterly clueless he is. Everyone but him knew that I was head over heels for him. Everyone but him. God, what an idiot.

“You fancied me?” he asks, sounding baffled. “Is that why you kissed me at that party all those months ago?”

He means the party where we first hooked up, the one that got us into this whole mess. “Yes, dingbat,” I say, trying really hard not to roll my eyes. “I wasn’t as drunk as I was pretending to be.“

"Hmm.” Liam leans back on the couch with his hands behind his head, looking pleased, a silly smirk on his face. A few weeks ago, I might’ve found it charming, but now it just looks ridiculous. That asshat, he’s probably feeling extra good about himself now that he knows that I had feelings about more parts of him than his dick.

“I don’t feel that way anymore, just to be clear,” I say sharply. He’s not looking at me anymore, he’s just staring off into space, so it’s hard for me to tell if he’s listening.

“I guess I understand,” he says after a minute. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and meets my eyes. “Why you haven’t wanted to see me lately, that is. But I want to be mates again, like old times.”

“I don’t know if we can be like old times again,” I say. Which is why I’ve been avoiding you, you idiot.

“Well, we can try,” he says, forever a dumb boy. “And for the record, I’m sorry that I didn’t fancy you back. That must’ve been hard for you.”

Hard for you. The wanker broke my heart, and he thinks it must’ve been hard for me? But I don’t say that out loud. Instead, I wrinkle my nose and say, “You don’t have to apologize for that. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Liam doesn’t argue with me. He just nods and stands up from the couch, indicating that we’re finished with our conversation. He never has been very good at talking about things, especially when about feelings. I get up to follow him to the door, but before we get there, he stops and turns around.

“And one more thing,” he says. “I just wanted to let you know that it’s okay with me. That you like Niall.”

I like Niall? That’s news to me. But I decide not to argue with that part. I’ve got more pressing matters, seeing as I’ve just agreed to try to be Liam’s mate again, and he seems to have forgotten how to do that.

“I don’t need your permission to like Niall,” I say. “You and I didn’t date, Liam. You don’t get to play the ‘jealous ex-boyfriend’ role. You don’t get to have a say in who I like or who I kiss or what I do with my body, or any of that.”

His face falls. “Not even if I’m your mate?”

I shake my head. “Not even as my mate.”

Liam shrugs, a small smile appearing on his face. “I suppose I deserve that. I didn’t mean to be a jerk to you, you know.”

“I know,” I tell him, though I’m not really thinking about him anymore. I mean, I am, but I’m mostly thinking about Niall. The obnoxious, blond Irishman who used to be nothing to me but my best friend’s flatmate.    

Why would Liam think I like Niall? How would Liam even know that I’ve interacted with Niall at all? He certainly wasn’t paying any attention to me at the party the other night; he was way too busy with his new brunette friend.  And there’s no way he knows about the lift incident.

Unless he does. Niall and Liam are flatmates, so maybe they’re friends. I mean, they are friends. I guess I never really thought that they talk to each other, though, because it’s been weeks since I’ve even seen my flatmate, the crazy, vampiric Lucia. But Niall and Liam are probably normal flatmates, the kind who hang out together every once in awhile and maybe even eat dinner in the kitchen together sometimes. And maybe they even talk to each other about girls.

That makes me feel weird, the thought that Liam and Niall have been talking about me. But it’s also strangely flattering. I’m interesting enough to be talked about. What a concept.

“Liam thinks I like Niall,” I tell Lila as we’re leaving architecture history lecture on Tuesday.  We’re walking towards the library and it’s snowing, which means I’m putting a lot of my energy into making sure I don’t slip and go sliding across the quad, ultimately landing on my arse.  It’s happened to me at least once each winter, and I’m determined not to repeat it this year.

“Do you?” Lila asks, looping her elbow through mine.  She’s wearing a ridiculous hat with ear flaps and tassels, and instead of letting them hang, she’s tied them below her chin.  She looks like a Swedish snowshoer out for a bit of afternoon exercise.     

“No,” I say, wrinkling my nose for effect.  I think of Niall sitting beside me in the lift, talking about traveling through Europe, and the way I kept asking him questions to keep him talking.  You were only being nice so he wouldn’t die, I remind myself.  My behavior had nothing to do with his accent or the impossible depth of his blue eyes.  “I don’t think I do.”  

Lila smiles.  “Are you sure?  You’ve been spending a ton of time with him lately, and you’re wearing his scarf.”

“It matches my outfit!”  I look down at the scarf, which I’ve paired with my black wool coat, black leggings, and an oversized grey jumper.  The scarf was a last-minute addition: I didn’t even think about whose scarf it was when I glanced out the window and saw snow falling.  I just put it on and left.  Well, I left after I stopped in front of the mirror in the hallway and made sure it was perfectly arranged.

“You’re wearing neutrals, Q.  Everything goes with neutrals.”

I don’t answer her. I put all of my attention on my feet, making sure I’m stepping on the driest spots of cobblestone as we walk. Cobblestone is the slipperiest type of ground, you know. I really think they ought to stop using it.  

“It would be okay, you know,” Lila says suddenly. We’re almost at the library, and I expect that she’s waited until now to speak so I won’t have a chance to respond. “If you had a crush on Niall.  Nobody would blame you for it.”

“What?”

She lets go of my arm as we come to a stop outside the building. “I just meant, he’s cute and sweet and he obviously likes you. So if you have a crush on him, you should let yourself. I know you got used to this whole unrequited love thing with Liam, but it doesn’t always have to be like that.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. Lila’s opening the door to the library, which means I’m running out of time. She doesn’t stop walking to answer, so I speed up a bit and grab her sleeve, pulling her to a stop. We’re in the lobby, which means we’re still allowed to talk, but I lower my voice anyway. “Lila. Tell me what that means!”

She grins. “It means, if you like Niall, you should tell him.” Then she disappears into the library before I have a chance to answer her, leaving me standing in the lobby with an idiotic look on my face.   

It takes me a minute to follow her inside, and as I trudge up to the third floor to find my favorite study area, I swear I see Niall out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn, it’s not him, just another blond bloke with freckles on his nose.  

“Idiot,” I tell myself as I continue my journey to the third floor. I know what this is. It’s happened before, way back in year 10. My best mate at the time, a girl called Lola whose hair color changed with the seasons, told me that Tommy, the bloke who sat behind me in maths class, had a crush on me. I didn’t know whether or not it was true, and I had barely thought about Tommy before, but suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  And before I knew it, I was head over heels.

And I know that’s going to happen to me this time, too.  I barely know Niall, but give it a few hours, and I’ll be imagining myself wearing his t-shirts and riding the tube with my hand in his and traveling to foreign countries, ones I’d never even dreamed of visiting before, together.  I’ll be thinking about what his hands feel like underneath my shirt, skimming the edge of my bra, and what my name will sound like when he whispers it and –

I skip the last step onto the third floor, shaking the thought out of my head.  I’m heading into dangerous territory, and I don’t just mean the library.  The last time I started thinking like this, I ended up in Liam’s bed with my heart in my hands.  I don’t want to fall into another relationship like the one I just got out of, barely alive. The embarrassment still hasn’t worn off.   

I make my way to my favorite study spot and spread my things out on the table in front of me, and I take out my lucky pen and put my mobile on silent for optimum focus, but none of it helps, because suddenly there’s only one thing on my mind, just as I predicted: Niall.  I try to push him out of my head, but even picturing a mop erasing his face from the floor of my mind doesn’t help.  So after an hour of failed studying, I gather up my things and leave the library.

My mobile says it’s about the time I usually head to the coffee shop, but I don’t want to do that today.  I’m not ready to face Niall, not after what Liam told and what Lila said and what my crazy brain imagined.  If Liam thinks that I like Niall, then Niall probably knows that Liam thinks that I like him, or maybe he just thinks that I like him.  Maybe Niall was the one who thought it first, and then he told Liam, rather than the other way around.  

Either way, this is embarrassing for me.  It’s always embarrassing when other people think they know your feelings before you even know them yourself.  I can’t see Niall again until I’ve figured out what’s going on inside my head – except, if things go the way they usually do, the longer I spend thinking about Niall, the more my brain will like him, because he has that cute accent and sunlit laughter and tiny freckles on his nose that you can only see if you’re sitting close to him, like just across the table at a coffee shop.  

I’m halfway across campus, heading towards home, when I change my mind.  I can’t avoid Niall forever, just like I couldn’t keep avoiding Liam.  And, if I’m honest with myself, I want to see Niall.  I want to hear his voice and, if I’m lucky, his laughter.  I want to see how he looks at me today.  So I spin around mid-step and head in the opposite direction of my flat, barely avoiding crashing into the person who was just a couple of steps behind me.

“Sorry, excuse me!” I shout, not even looking up as I keep going.  Suddenly, I can’t wait to see Niall.  I wonder what color scarf he’s wearing today.

But I pause outside the cafe, hesitating for a minute.  I look in the window to make sure that Niall’s there, and sure enough, he’s sitting in the back, at a table with four chairs.  He’s sitting on one, his backpack is on a second, and the other two are empty, as if they’re waiting for me.  

Before he has a chance to look up and spot me, I take off his scarf and shove it in my bag.  He doesn’t need to know just yet how warm it makes me.  Once my bag is zipped and back on my shoulder, I take a deep breath and go inside.  There’s a small queue to order, and I join it, grateful for the few minutes it’ll give me to gather my thoughts before I have to talk to Niall.  

I decide that I’m not ready to ask him about what Liam said, not yet.  Instead, I’m going to pretend that everything is normal.  I’m going to pretend that nothing’s changed.  I’m going to pretend that I haven’t thought about what Niall’s lips would feel like pressed against mine, and it shouldn’t be that hard, because Niall himself hasn’t changed.  He’s still the same annoying prick he’s always been.

“Afternoon,” the barista says in greeting when I get to the front of the queue.  “What would you like today?”

“Um.”  I glance over her head at the menu, blushing.  I spent all my time in the queue thinking about Niall instead of decided what I want to drink.  “Just a small coffee, please.”  

The barista nods and presses some buttons on the register.  I’ve got my arm in my bag up to my elbow, digging for my credit card, when somebody steps up beside me and hands a fiver to the barista.  I don’t even have to look up to know that it’s Niall.

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him, finally extracting my credit card.  I hold it up triumphantly.  “I’m good for it, you know.”

“I know,” Niall says, shoving his hands in his pockets, maybe so I can’t force the fiver back into his palm.  His cheeks are pink, and I try not to think about why that might be.  Then his mouth quirks into a smirk, and I realize he’s realized I’m staring at him.

“Well, thank you,” I mutter, turning my head away.  The barista isn’t paying us any attention; she’s too busy counting out Niall’s change.  When she hands it to him, he dumps it all immediately into the tip jar.  She barely reacts to that, but it makes my stomach flutter.  God, what a prick.  A nice, caring prick.  

“How are you, Q?” Niall asks me over his shoulder as I follow him to his table.  “I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t going to see you today.”

“You were?” I ask quickly, too quickly, I realize, when Niall turns to me with a questioning look.  “I mean, well, I was trying to work in the library, but it was a bit too quiet for me.”  

Niall nods.  “Thought maybe you’d decided you’re too cool for me.”  He sits down easily in his chair, and I sit down across from him.  

“Oh, I am,” I say easily, “but I needed caffeine, so.”

“So,” he echoes, raising an eyebrow.  There’s something in his expression that I can’t quite read, or maybe I don’t want to.  

“How’d your essay turn out?” I ask him so that I don’t have to think about it.  I reach for my bag and busy myself with getting my things out so I won’t get distracted watching Niall’s mouth move as he talks.  I’ve never done that before, but knowing me, it’s a habit I could quickly develop.

“It was alright, not my best,” he says.  I feel his leg brush against mine underneath the table, and my heart skips a beat, but I try not to let it show on my face.  When he doesn’t move it away, I realize it isn’t an accident.  “You’re a bit of a distraction, Quentin Presley.”

“Am I?” I ask, pressing my leg against his.  I can feel the seam of his jeans through my leggings, and my breath quickens when I think about how close we are right now. 

“Q–”

“Small coffee,” a voice says.  It’s the barista, setting my coffee down on the table and spinning away before I can manage to utter a thank you.  But it’s enough to make me realize what I’m doing.  I pull my leg away from Niall’s and sit up straight in my seat.  

“I’ve got lots of work to do,” I say, keeping my eyes on my music theory book as I pull it out of my bag and open it on the table.  I don’t let myself look at the expression on Niall’s face.  

“Sure,” he says.  There’s something else he wants to say to me, I can tell, but whatever it is, he keeps it to himself.  

I can’t stop thinking about it, though.  Liam thinks I like Niall, but maybe Liam thinks that because Niall’s the one who likes me.  Or maybe this is one of those tricks where Liam knows that Niall likes me and he’s just trying to get me to like Niall by planting the seed in my head.  

And if that’s what he’s trying to do, it’s working.  I manage to stay seated for half an hour, drinking my coffee and fidgeting in my seat, before I decide that I can’t stand it any longer.  Niall’s eyes keep flicking up from his laptop to look at me, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I keep staring at him too.  It’s hopeless: I’m not going to get any work done here today.  

“I should be going,” I blurt out, standing from my chair so suddenly that it nearly falls over.  I begin shoving books into my bag, conscious of Niall’s eyes on me as I do so.  “I’m supposed to have dinner with my flatmate.”

“Alright,” Niall says.  It almost sounds like he’s laughing at me, like he knows I’m lying, and when I finally look up at him, he’s smiling.  I smile back, and then I flee.  It takes all of me not to look back at him as the door shuts behind me.    

My heart beats in my ears as I cross campus and walk the few blocks to the flat.  I can’t believe myself.  I’m pretty sure Niall flirted with me, and instead of brushing it off or rolling my eyes or telling him how annoying he was being, I flirted back.  Why did I do that?  Why?  I’m not even sure if I like him.      

Safe at home, I heat up some canned soup and spread my books across the kitchen table.  But the words swim in front of my eyes, and the only thing in my head is Niall.  After a while, I accept that I’m not going to have any luck with my reading and change into my pajamas.  Then I gather up my laundry and carry it down to the basement.  While it’s spinning in the machine, I queue up a film on my laptop, and that distracts me well enough.  By the time I bring up the dry clothes up to my room and dump them on my bed, it’s nearly 8 o’clock.  It’s certainly too early to go to sleep, but my body doesn’t seem to care.  I fall asleep surrounded by my warm laundry before my film finishes.   

When I wake up, I’m covered in sweat, my chest heaving, my body tingling like someone was just touching it, ghosting his fingertips across my skin, up and down my torso.  I stare at the ceiling, trying to recall my dream, and all of a sudden it’s there, clear as if it were real and not a figment of my overactive imagination.  I blink, trying to clear the image from my mind: Niall’s fingertips on my stomach, his nose brushing against my thigh, his bright laughter echoing in the room – my room, my bedroom, a room Liam never even set foot in.  The symbolism of that is too much for me.  

I turn over, longing to forget, but the sound of Niall’s laughter remains.  I reach for my mobile, eager for a distraction.  It glows in the darkness, telling me that it’s the middle of the night, and when I shift into a sitting position, I realize that the lump that I’m lying on is a pile of my unfolded, now sweaty socks. Great.