Unrequited

Chapter 18 (Part 1)

Perhaps still in a shock-induced daze, I was weirdly unsurprised when Louis appeared in the seat next to me, earning himself a few lingering stares from other people sitting at the cafe. He looked at me for a long moment until I broke the eye contact, taking a big breath and repositioning my empty coffee cup in the saucer. 

“Your mother’s got half the available crew divided into search parties out looking for you, you know.” I scrunched up my eyes in confusion as I remembered the two hours cover Niall had promised me. 

“But Niall said he would-”

“He told us after you’d been gone two hours. Said you’d run off in a right state; he was really worked up over it.”

“He didn’t put it like that to Mum did he?” I asked anxiously. “I dunno,” he replied, “I wasn’t there when he told her.” He wrung his hands almost as if he were nervous. But this was Louis; he didn’t really get nervous. 

“You’ve been gone three and a half hours, Char.” I pursed my lips and nodded down at the table ashamedly as if I had known of this already. When Louis spoke again, his tone changed from the indifferent, ‘informative’ one he’d been using. “Love, what on earth happened?” He now seemed as deeply concerned as Niall had been, his thickly accented words spoken in a low voice, cutting through the casual atmosphere of the bookshop cafe so sharply that I was sure people would turn to stare again. 

“What did Niall say to you?” I asked tentatively. “Just that you were really very upset and you wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. You don’t have to tell me...but Charlotte, babe, we’re all a bit worried now. The look on Niall’s face when he’d told us - he was distraught. It makes me think something really terrible’s happened...” His watery-blue eyes looked at me in earnest, reminding me of Niall’s frantic expression. 

“It would sound trivial to you...to anyone else, I mean.” I heard myself speak, shocked that I wasn’t rejecting him altogether in the fear I would let something slip. 

“I highly doubt that. This isn’t normal for you, obviously there’s something big going on. The usual Charlotte Hawthorne doesn’t go running about strange cities, needing to be found by her extraordinarily distressed big brother Louis who just happened to step into a bookshop completely at random,” he grinned, inspiring an unexpected chuckle of my own. His slow, unwavering voice encouraged me to be at ease in his presence; he was so easy to talk to, to listen to. I swallowed, looking uneasily down at the table, knowing what was coming. 

“Hey,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand that was resting on the table. “Whatever it is, Char, it’s going to be okay. Things have a way of working themselves out you know.” I smiled through the tears that were welling up in my eyes. 

“Not this time,” I shook my head at him. With his eyes, he coaxed me into elaborating. “I met this guy a little while ago, see.” I drew in a long shaky breath, reluctant to meet Louis’ eyes just in case he could somehow already find the hidden meaning in my story. “He’s not the kind of guy I would usually be interested in; he has girls constantly fawning over him and I’m sick of liking guys that I feel like I have to compete for. But this guy was different...I still don’t know exactly why.” The world around seemed to fade as I talked about him; my words flowed without any effort on my part as I painted the picture for the boy in front of me, whose existence I’d all but forgotten. I realised I’d never talked about Harry in this way out loud before. “I guess maybe it was because he has this way of...drawing me in. I don’t think he even notices he does it.” I drifted off at the end of the sentence, thinking hard about the way Harry was so unbelievably ignorant as to the effect he had on people. 

“I’ve never been an expert with boys exactly,” I explained somewhat awkwardly. “It’s my best friend who’s always the one with the boyfriend. I’ve watched her go through quite a few relationships and I just became used to that - watching, I mean. For a long time I tried hard to find someone that would care about me like those boys cared about Sara but it was so difficult feeling like second best. I just gave up one day. I realised I would literally force away feelings I had for any boy after that because it was Sara who got the boyfriends, not me.” I could tell by Louis’ face that he was practically bursting with the need to interrupt me but he was tactful enough to let me finish. “So I drifted along with the pattern. It took me a while to realise I wasn’t exactly content with the way things were but even then, I didn’t have the confidence to change it. I tried to put things like that out of my mind, focus on schoolwork, get good marks, stay away from any potential dramas. And then I met the guy. It’s funny how you can search so hard for something, give up when you believe it’s impossible and then have what you were looking for fall right at your feet without any effort on your part whatsoever. That’s how it worked for me, anyway. He took me completely by surprise,” I murmured shaking my head slowly. “No one has ever treated me the way he has...taken an interest like he does. But...there are certain things that keep us apart and if we were to overstep the line...well, we’d both be in huge trouble. I was in a position where I couldn’t help seeing him every day and over time it just got worse and worse. I tried to remind myself of the things that would stop us from having a real relationship but it didn’t help. Instead, I grew closer to him, more attached.” I glanced up at Louis who encouraged me to continue, squeezing my hand that still lay limp on the table. “I never once entertained the idea that he would ever like me back in the same way. I mean, of course when you have feelings for someone, the ideal outcome is for them to return the feelings...but I always felt that he was on such a completely different level to me, like it was unreasonable for me to even imagine he could like me. But then little things started happening...and one night he almost kissed me. It was so surreal. Even though technically nothing happened, we both knew what nearly did. I’d been trying so hard to hold him at arm’s length and then he goes and does that. It did things to my head. It gave me ideas that I’d wanted so badly to keep myself from thinking. Then...one morning something inside me just switched on. I felt different. Brave, somehow. It was like...if I didn’t finally admit to my feelings, I would explode. When I woke up I was just so determined to forget everything that kept me from being with him. We’re the impossible couple...but no matter how severely the odds were set against us, he just had to know. I wasn’t even scared of what his reaction was going to be, I guess I was just focused on telling him the way I really felt.” I clenched my teeth and extracted my hand from Louis, unsure of how I was going to get the next part out.