Second Snapshot (Picture This Sequel: Niall Horan)

-Detached memories. [Chapter 54]

CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR- Detached memories.

Ashley Dawson:

I closed my eyes as I carefully sat down on the wooden stall. The smooth surface was cool against my bare skin as it stuck to it in distant fashion. I curled my fingers around the edge and pressed them tight underneath – just savouring the feel of it – it wasn’t anything special. It was just a stall, but somehow it felt almost as if I was going to miss it. Going to miss sitting on it in front of the mirror as I made alterations to my appearance. It wasn’t the fact that it gained frequent use from me, or the fact that even though it was so irrelevant it was also so useful. It was the fact that it was original. It wasn’t even mine. It had been there from the start. Before they sent in the expensive interior designers, before they smashed down the original wall of the bathroom to put the wardrobe in and before they even completed the swanky features of the kitchen. It was original. And it had been there from the beginning, and no matter how many changes had taken place, how much it had been moved, bruised, battered, broken, it still stayed exactly where it was.

I opened my eyes again and the bright light slapped against them. I lifted my gaze to the mirror and stared back at myself flatly. This was going to be the last time I looked in this mirror, at least I thought so, and maybe I hoped so too. As far as I was concerned, I had served my time here. I rolled my gaze across the bathroom and observed the light glinting off of the tiles and now as I moved it to the window a spectrum of light faced me. I slowly slid off the stall and rested my elbows on the window sill as I pushed the window open as far as it would go. It was like one of those movies, the sun was setting as it reflected off the glass of all the buildings of the city, throwing beams of light across the whole city, glinting in mirrors, capturing visions, blinding people for a few minutes. Suddenly I found myself digging through the various boxes piled up in my bedroom and lifted my camera from it’s box, the spare lenses falling out onto the floor as it did so. But I’d captured a moment like this before and knew it only lasted a few minutes, ten at the most. And I’d been so lost in thought who knows how long it had been in this beautiful state. The colours of wispy oranges, reds, and purples merging into each other and slipping in between the clouds, blinding if you were in the right place. I situated my fingers around the buttons and brought it to my face adjusting with the lens, saturation and zoom a fraction and then I pressed the shutter a few times and listened.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Image captured. I smiled and stumbled a bit as I turned around to see Niall stood in the doorway leant against it with his hands in his pockets smiling. For a moment I just looked at him my mouth slightly agape but he just continued to smile at me.

“H-How long have you been stood there?”

I stammered as I dropped my camera around my neck letting it fall to my stomach as I ran my fingers through my hair pushing it from my face but it just fell back so I tucked it behind my ears. He shrugged and then pushed himself up from the doorframe but he continued to stand in the doorway giving me that no teeth smile.

“Thirty seconds? Long enough to watch you take about a million pictures of the same thing.”

“I took five.”

I replied flatly and he smirked chuckling lightly he sauntered towards me brushing my bangs from my eyes and smiling down at me.

“I know,” He shrugged. “Let me have a go?”

For a moment and just looked at him and his smile, I shrugged snapping out of my daze that the beauty of the sunset had spun me into. I carefully lifted my camera from my neck and passed it to him the feel of the black plastic escaping my skin. I felt wary to pass it into someone else’s possession; I suppose I’ve always kind of almost been emotionally attached to it.