Second Snapshot (Picture This Sequel: Niall Horan)

-Golden keys and black deaths. [Chapter 27]

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN- Golden keys and black deaths.

Curling my fingers over the windowsill I observed how the sunlight that was streaming through the window was tinted with colour after Harry and Louis decided to do a little bit of an experiment on painting windows with translucent paints. How it played out across the carpet in thin and wispy lines where the paint wasn’t applied evenly, just normal, just the everyday. The cool marble flooring was cold against my feet as they slid about with the sweat that was beginning to cleanse against my skin. It was scorching hot today, for some reason, some kind of fluke weather as last night it was torrentially raining resulting in everything being all cool and dripping early this morning and now two hours after midday it had all been cooked off under the dense and muggy late September heat.

I wondered how long it would be before Niall came to find me and force me to my next therapy session. He made me swear that I’d be ready to go by quarter past two and when he got out the shower. Maybe I was ready, maybe I wasn’t, this all depended on how convincing he was that I needed to go. Really, right now every day I was less motivated to make an effort and to enthuse in any of my treatment process. At first I was having therapy that was provided by the hospital’s intensive care unit but after two weeks of that having no effect my father insisted on forking out for someone apparently professional who has a real different, innovative and effective approach. How lovely. I’d heard from a few girls that I worked with at the Secret positions go-see a few weeks ago that this woman was completely off her rocker and had them doing all kinds of extreme and completely not eating related exercises. One girl said this therapist, Anne Bell is her name, made her strike 10 matches and sit in the middle of them with a completely slowed heart rate while the fire licked at her toes, apparently the idea was that you can come so close to trouble, to fire but it doesn’t mean you have to get burnt or feel threatened. In my opinion, that is a serious health and safety hazard and I had no idea how she was morally aloud to do that. And I have already concluded that if she asks me to do something like that I’ll get up and walk out straight away.

For a minute or so I turned around and stared at the farthest wall to my right. Covered in colours, blue, pink, red, yellow, green and so many more colours just abstractly cast out across the white wall covering it in scribbles, splashes and anything but straight lines. And as I settled my eyes in the middle of the wall I had a flash of the day when me and Niall did that. And there was proof as our names were painted in thick black block text over all the colours, bold and contrasting I remember Niall holding me as we painted that on.

Ashley Dawson and Niall Horan Art work of the century 21.07.12 <3

It stayed there too; over a year ago we stood there. Next to each other flinging paint at both each other and the wall as the late July sun spilled through the tall glass windows at either end of the huge ballroom. After being appointed with the task of painting the room it was needless to say Liam wasn’t very happy when he came across our ‘feature wall’ that we so clearly tagged with a thick paintbrush and words. But in the end he learned to laugh it off like the rest of us and embrace our artwork. And then afterwards when we finished and were both covered in paint we began to spray each other with the hose to clean off but when that didn’t work we resorted to jumping into the pool and flooding the clean water with paint. Oh last summer, what an amazing seven and a half months that was.

They could have cleaned it off, painted over it. After I left Niall and moved to New York and showed no sign of coming back. But they didn’t. Why? Because Niall wouldn’t let them.

Turning back around and pressing my palms back against the cool white windowsill I stared through the thick glass window and down onto the garden. The grass was slightly wet and sparkled in the light from the rain last night but it was all very picturesque. As I let my eyes begin to close I could almost see Niall and I doing so many things in this garden, this house last year. The pool water glistened in the sun at the bottom of the garden and as I closed my eyes I could actually see the colours floating about in the water, so vivid as we bobbed up and down together in the water. Almost bare naked as we kissed, hugged, whispering to each other that we loved each other and that we made each other so happy.