Look at Me

I take a week off from the studio and from Candice’s pitying eyes. She texts me several times, begging me to come into the studio with her and work on my album, the one she’s so sure I’ve already written most of, but I ignore her messages. I camp out in my apartment for the first few days, cleaning everything from floor to ceiling. There isn’t much to clean, but I manage to occupy myself with the task anyway, scrubbing the grout in the shower with a toothbrush and shooing dust mites out of corners I never knew existed.

And then I walk. Los Angeles is not a very pedestrian-friendly place, with its fast drivers and vast swaths of concrete parking lot and freeways running like veins through the fabric of the city. But like with cleaning things that aren’t dirty, I manage it. I drive to parks I’ve never been to before and wander their pathways. I park my car in unfamiliar neighborhoods of the city and zig-zag through the streets. I leave my phone in my glovebox and ignore Niall’s texts and calls.

Every night I go home exhausted, thinking that tonight, finally, will be the night I don’t dream of Niall. And it never is.

Instead, I spend late nights writing, trying to make sense of why this hurts so much. Niall didn’t break up with me, didn’t tell me the things he felt for me were gone or were never really there. No, what he did is worse somehow. He didn’t fight for the song that we wrote together, that we both put pieces of ourselves into. And in choosing not to fight for the song, he failed to fight for me, too.

I pour all of that into my journal. Even though I shared this book with Niall before, I can’t imagine showing it to anyone else again. A part of me thinks that when I gave Niall access to what I’d written in it, I gave him permission—and power—to break me.

After a week has passed, I take to the studio. Candice makes sure to book a different room, not the one Niall’s using, and we spend ten-hour days writing and recording and re-recording and re-writing.

“Take that, Niall Horan,” Candice says to me one night after we play back the day’s work. “I think this is your first single.”

I can’t control the smile on my face. This is what it’s supposed to feel like. Everything I wanted to do is finally taking shape, coming together, and I did it on my own. “I think you may be right.”

I don’t pull away when Candice pulls me in for a hug.

I don’t stop writing, though. At night is when everything I’ve been ignoring all day bursts to the surface. I don’t need Niall to write music; I’ve proved that to myself. But maybe my heart needs him. Maybe it needs to be taken care of, and maybe Niall’s the one to do it.

That’s why, before I can talk myself out of it, I open up my laptop and send Niall the song. “Limerance,” it’s called, a word that refers to what it feels like to be infatuated with another person. It’s about him, but it’s also about me and the realization that I can do this on my own.

My pen’s just run out of ink when someone knocks at the door. I glance out the window, surprised to find that the sun is rising. My eyelids feel heavy, like maybe I’m finally exhausted enough to sleep.

But then the knocking sounds again.

I cross the short distance to the door and pull it open.

“What are you doing here?” I ask Niall. My surprise at his presence wears off immediately, maybe because I’d just been thinking about him, writing about him. I read once that when you dream about somebody, it’s because they’re thinking about you. Maybe Niall woke up this morning dreaming about me.

“Can I come in?” Niall asks. He holds two paper cups in his hand. He passes me one and keeps the other, no doubt tea, in his hand.

I don’t say anything as I step back to let him inside. My apartment is small and poorly decorated, no doubt a shambles compared to where he lives, but I refuse to be ashamed of it. The vulnerability I showed Niall is something I can’t take back.

If Niall’s presence isn’t a surprise, what he says next practically floors me.

“I told them I’m not recording the song if I can’t record it with you.”

I gather my shock up off the linoleum to ask, “What? Why?”

“Because after you left, I realized that the song does mean a lot to me. More than I told you. It means a lot to us, so it won’t be the same unless we sing it together.”

“Us?”

“Yes, Minna, us.” Niall takes a step into my space, crowding me into the small kitchen. “But they said no. They said the song is gone, they already sold it to Shawn Mendes—”

Despite my anger, a giggle slips out. “You’re going to sing a duet with Shawn Mendes?”

Niall catches my laugh and smiles. “God, no.” He shakes his head. “He’s gonna sing it with some girl that he knows, I’m not sure. The point is, I’m not singing the song either.”

I bite my lip, unsure. Is this the better scenario? Now Niall’s not singing our song with someone else. Now he’s not singing it at all. Neither of us are. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“No.” Niall catches my hand and weaves our fingers together. He’s so close to me now that I can feel his body heat. A few more inches and he’d reach me. “But hear me out. I think we should write together again. You should keep writing your album, of course, because it’s bloody brilliant, but we should write together again.”

I don’t say anything. I just keep staring at him, tracing my eyes over the freckles on his nose and the wrinkle on his forehead and the curve of his lower lip. I see the scar on his left cheek that he got when he fell off his bike as a kid. I see the spot at the corner of his mouth that I kissed just a few weeks ago. And I feel my anger dissolving.

“Not just one song,” he continues. “All the songs. Every song. Until we run out of songs to write.”

“How long do you think that’ll take?”

Niall’s eyes wrinkle at the corners as he smiles. “Forever. I think we’ll never run out of songs to write.”

“You’re pretty confident about that,” I say. With my anger slipping, looking at him becomes too much, brings too many of my feelings to the surface. So I look away, letting my eyes drop to the floor.

“How could I not be?” he says. “This is rare, you know that? The way we work together, the way I feel about you, that doesn’t happen a lot. We need to hold onto it.”

I feel my eyes beginning to water, so I blink, trying to hold back the tears. I have a question to ask, but I still can’t bring myself to meet Niall’s eyes.

“How do you feel about me?” I barely get the words out before the tears begin to slide down my cheeks.

“Minna,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, his palm brushing against my cheek. “Minna, look at me.”

Slowly, I raise my gaze from the floor. I feel Niall’s fingers swiping against my cheekbones, brushing away my tears, and I meet his eyes.

Niall’s eyes, so bright and clear and blue, say a thousand things that his mouth doesn’t. They say that we’re good together and he’s not going to let us go easily and he can already nearly hear the beautiful, magical songs we’re going to write together. I try not to look back and think about all the songs I’m going to write about him, about the way he makes me feel.

“I was so scared when you told me you read my journal,” he says, stepping impossibly closer to me. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to know, but I was so scared. You know why I never put any of what I wrote in there into my songs?”

I shake my head slightly, reluctant to move away from Niall’s touch.

“It’s because it was so personal,” he explains. “I was afraid of being judged, afraid of what people would think if I was somebody other than who they expected.”

My breath catches in my throat. “I never judged you.”

Niall’s thumb brushes against my mouth, shushing me. “I know that. As soon as you gave me your journals to read, all that fear disappeared. Because if you could see me and then be vulnerable with me in return—” Niall shakes his head, breaking eye contact with me.

Now I’m the one pulling him back to me. I slide my hand up his neck and run my fingers through the strands of hair at the nape. “Look at me, Niall.”

When he does, when I look in his eyes, I see what I’m feeling reflected back at me.