Chemistry [One Direction: Harry Styles Romance]

:Chapter Seventeen:

                In the end, I ended up asking, “What do you mean, ‘he chose me’?”

                Louis shrugged it off effortlessly. “I meant he chose you as a friend out of all of those millions of girls.”

                “Exactly,” I mumbled, my heart dropping a bit. “A friend.”

                He stayed silent for a moment, and I knew I had won the argument. I could like and crush on Harry all I wanted, but at the end of the day, millions of girls lived off of the fantasy that they would someday just be noticed by him. I couldn’t compete.

                A few minutes of silence passed before Louis offered, “Do you want to go round to mine? Harry is there, and he was wondering where you were.”

                I nodded, “Sure, sounds cool.”

                “We were going to go in the pool,” He informed me. “Bring a bathing suit.”

                “Okay.”

                We walked to the front door together, and I let him outside. We had agreed that he’d give me a minute to get everything together for our weekend day out of my hotel, and I’d meet him in the car out front. As I was about to shut the door, though, a squeal of my name came from outside.

                My eyes widened and my breath caught in my throat. I knew exactly who that was, even though I’ve tried to forget about her ever since I moved to London. I opened the door again to check and see if it were indeed her – and like we were still best friends, she grabbed me and squeezed me.

                “Fawn!” She squealed, squeezing me tighter.

                My eyes widened even more. “Isabel?”

                She let me go and smiled at me, throwing her arms out as if showing off her outfit to me. “I’m here, in London! My dad’s on a business trip and he called a few people and figured out where you were staying! I thought we could hang out while I’m still here.”

                I didn’t know what to say, so I went with, “How long are you staying?”

                “Two weeks!”

                I groaned internally.                

                Two weeks. With Isabel.

                This was going to be awful.

                “Um, I was about to go to my friend’s house, actually,” I said nervously. “He’s waiting to pick me up down in the lobby.”

                Isabel smirked, “Awesome, I’ll come. Where are we going?”

                She was acting like she had when we were best friends. Inviting herself places, trying too hard to be ‘hot’ or ‘cute’ – whichever she was in the mood to be called – and annoying. Shrill, actually. So I told her we were going to Harry’s house, and she smirked wider, saying that sounded awesome and she couldn’t wait to meet my friends.

                As I was throwing things into a bag, she started twirling her hair and talking about how cute she thought Harry was. My fists were clenched and I was trying not to react and give her the satisfaction that this was bothering me – if she wanted to play pretend and act like my best friend for two weeks, so be it. I wasn’t going to fall into her little game.