Chapter Twenty-Two:
Zayn
The last concert before our break was one of our best, the energy was off the charts because we were looking forward to the week we got to be at home. I had originally planned on going home to Bradford for the few days, but the silence from Joelle had been too much. There was only so much I could take before I got fed up with it, and I knew I had two options. Delete her number, assume the worst about her, move on. Or option two, go talk face to face with her. There was no way I had worked so hard to get her to be comfortable around me that I was going to give up now. She meant too much to me.
"Are you going to tell her?" Harry asked as we took our last ride to the airport for a week. Liam had already left, as well as Niall. It was just Harry, Louis and I left in the tour bus.
Louis whipped his head up so fast I thought he'd break his neck. "Be careful."
There had been an argument in my mind for the past twenty-four hours on whether or not I should tell Joelle. I love you were three really simple words, but would it make her run away? She stated from the get go that she didn't fall in love. But was it possible that she had changed? We had an undeniable connection, did she feel the same way?
"Nah, I don't think so." I responded after a moment of thought. I didn't want to risk anything. It had taken me four months for her to accept just dating me, I didn't want to put any more pressure onto that weighed down rope.
"I heard you and Capris wrote a song," Louis brought up and his shoulder shrug tried to make the question seem offhanded, but I knew him better than that.
"We started one," I said as monotone as I could. I didn't want this song to be sung on the album, I wanted it to be something special for Joelle. Something that showed her how much I cared, without telling the whole world. She didn't like that attention.
"What's your issue with Capris, Lou?" Harry shifted the attention from me to the older boy who suddenly looked like a deer who was about to get ran over. "You bring her up in almost every conversation but ignore her when she's around. She thinks you hate her."
"She does," I concurred with my friend. She had said it so off-handedly, but the way her eyes crinkled up when she said it made it obvious that she was a bit hurt by Louis' indifference front.
"I don't," Louis defended himself as he cast his eyes downward. "I don't even know her."
"Neither do we, but we don't go offending her every few minutes." Harry deflected his excuse easily.
This midnight conversation was becoming quite serious, compared to our usual bus ride talks of how many inappropriate signs we could spot in the audience that night. There were nights when we sat on the couch and discussed things that really mattered, but it was rare. We spent so much of our time trying to be good role models that we didn't want to act adult when we were together. We all knew how the other felt, to a point, so we just goofed around with the five of us.
