Dear Annie,

Chapter 9

Then she started laughing. “God, it’s so fun to mess with you!”

Louis frowned. “You’re going to make me go insane, woman.” I barged in at that moment. Louis couldn’t have looked more relieved in that moment than at any other time. “Thank the heavens that you’re here!” he said with an exasperated tone. He pushed me towards Annie. “You take care of her. She’s driving me crazy!”

He ran out the door. Annie started laughing again.

“We’re going to go to the beach,” I let her know. “Natasha and Jason are going to be coming here soon as well. Zayn called them up.”

“Why? Is something going on?” she asked.

“Well…” I started, cringing at the thought of the paps following Annie around all day, every day, “I don’t want you to freak or anything, but…the media found out.”

She froze in her spot, no longer laughing. “You mean…about…” she slowly pointed at herself. I nodded. “Well crap. What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to ignore it. Pretend everything is okay and normal and we’re going to try and shove it up their noses.”

She snorted slightly. “Shove it up their noses?”

I nodded, very seriously. “They like to cause uproar. It’s what they live for. We want to show them that they can’t ruin anything for us.”

“‘We’ or you?” she asked intelligently.

I sighed. “Me. I want to show them that they can’t ruin it for us.”

She sat down on the bed next me and squeezed my shoulders lightly. “They won’t,” she calmly said. “You’ll see. We’ll get through this, and my memory will come back, and everything will go back to being normal.”

I shook my head. “It can’t go back to normal. But it’ll be close enough.”

“They’re here,” Harry mumbled in a low voice. It took everything I had to not turn around to look behind me.

“Annie,” I whispered. She stared up at me through her green orbs. “The paps are here. Do not look at them at all. Understand?”

She nodded, not once tearing her eyes from me. “Got it.”

“Just act the way you normally do. This isn’t for them, this is for you.”

She nodded again. “Okay.”

“Good,” I grinned, lifting her up when she didn’t expect it. “Because now I can do this!”

She shrieked as I threw her into the water. When she resurfaced, she glared at me, after rubbing her eyes. “Niall!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her. I knew I shouldn’t have, especially because she can carry a big ball of fire inside her when she got mad, but I couldn’t stop myself. She just looked so bloody cute, as she came marching up to me-completely soaked-with that cute angry look on her.

Annie always looked bloody adorable when she was angry. It made her even angrier when I tell her this every time she gets mad-which then makes her look even cuter.

It’s a never ending cycle.

I was too caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t even realize it when Annie came up behind me and started pushing me into the water to the best of her abilities. Louis and Harry immediately started dying of laughter at the sight of little Annie trying to push me into the water.

I turned around when Annie stopped pushing me, to see a cute little pout on her face. “Aw, what’s wrong, love? Not strong enough to push me?”

She frowned at me and folded her arms together. “You’re just too heavy,” she sighed.

“Or, you’re just too weak,” I teased.

She frowned again and stepped back a few feet, before charging at me, to tackle me down. I turned to give her access to my back.

Instead of tackling me, however, I grabbed her legs and held her up in a piggy back. As she pounded her fists on my back, she laughed.

A lot.

“Put me down!” she demanded.

I smiled wickedly. “Okay,” I said, dropping her into the water. She had a shocked look on her face. I couldn’t resist it.

I leaned down and pecked her lips.

At that, she grew even more shocked. I mumbled a small ‘sorry’ and she shook her head.

“That’s okay,” she said, smiling. I sat down next to her in the water, and we both watched the rest of the lads. She laid her head down on my shoulder and we watched the sun begin setting. Sighing, she said, “Thanks. For this. It’s perfect.”

I smiled as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

It was perfect. It was the way it should have been. I forgot about the paparazzi, I forgot about the lads, I even forgot that Annie didn’t remember much.

All I knew was that, in that moment, we were the way we should have been.

“They have the pictures,” Louis sighed, slapping down a magazine, late into the night the next day. “I’m almost too afraid to read it.”

I stared at it, not sure if I should open it. “Somebody else read it.”

Liam, Harry, and Zayn looked at each other for a second, before they shoved Harry towards it. “Some mates you are,” he muttered, picking it up. He winced for a second before flipping to the page that the cover directed us to. I watched his eyes scan across the page, waiting with anticipation. “Woah.”

“What?” Louis snapped.

Harry looked up. “Nobody’s giving Annie any smack for losing her memory. They’re talking about how many people are encouraging us to help her regain it and how there’s tons of support for her and…it’s all just good stuff.”

Liam hi-fived Zayn and Louis tackled me into a hug. “We’re getting close,” Louis said to me. “I can feel it.”

And I had to agree with him.

We were getting close. I could feel it too. And Annie’s birthday was coming up quickly as well.

Just two weeks. I could do something big for this. Call me crazy, but I could recreate the past two and a half years in just one day.