Take My Hand

Chapter 2

“So,” Declan began, taking a deep breath as he sat down on the opposite couch, grasping his hands together. “I’m sure you’ve notice us being a little odd since we got back.”

“Weirder than normal,” Lucas added with a smirk in my direction. I unwillingly cracked a quick smile.

“Well, while we were gone, we sort of started to figure some things out,” Leo said, not quite looking at me.

 I waited, but no one elaborated on the subject. I collapsed into the cushions. All the scenarios were running around my head. “You guys are going to be too busy for things to continue as they were… I get it,” I choked out, closing my eyes to try to keep the tears in. But there was no stopping them. Everyone had told me this day would happen eventually, but I didn’t want to believe them.

Then I heard laughing. Five laughs that I recognised, that I knew. I opened my eyes to see all five laughing hysterically.

I began to hiccup, my emotions confused. I was crying, but I didn’t know why any longer, and it was getting hard to breathe. I must’ve been going crazy. My hiccups got worse as the boys continued to laugh.

Soon, I was hiccupping more than I was breathing, and I began to freak out a bit. The boy’s laughter died down as they realised that I still didn’t know what the hell was so funny.

They all rushed over and wrapped around me; Leo and Calix on my sides, Lucas kneeling in front of me, Declan and Wes perched on the back of the couch rubbing my back.

“Calm down hun,” Leo said, taking one of my hands. Calix put his arm around my shoulders and slowly, I began to breathe normally again. Wes got up and grabbed a box of tissues and held them out to me. I smiled at him, trying to meet his eye; one of his cheeky grins would make me feel infinitely better at this moment, letting me know that maybe, just maybe I was overreacting.

But he didn’t meet my eye. I glanced at all of their faces. Even though I just thought we were having a moment of normalcy between all of us, I realised I was wrong. I felt the panic rising, so I squeezed Leo’s hand tighter. 

“Lads?” Leo asked. They all nodded.

Lucas was still kneeling in front of me and he leaned forward up on his knees a bit. We were exactly the same height, his deep navy eyes staring right into mine as he took my hand demanding all my attention. “So the thing is,” He said, looking down at our hands, “The five of us realised something while we were away. We’ve actually been fighting with it for quite some time. But it was brought to our attention and when we finally admitted it, we weren’t sure how to handle it. So we’ve been acting weird, trying to figure it out, without worrying you. We thought that it would be obvious to us once we got home. Being away, thoughts get jumbled. People get confused and make mistakes.”

My body tightened as I sucked in air. Calix tightened his grip around my shoulder.

“But we realised, that it wasn’t obvious.” Leo said. I turned from Lucas to look at him, his face inches from my own. “In fact,” He looked from my eyes down to my lips and back up. “Being back has actually made it even harder.”

“We decided that it was time to say something to you, because we knew that we were hurting you by not. And we’re sorry about that.” Wes said as he sat down on the table to the left of Lucas.

I felt Declan slide down on the couch behind me, leaning against me, his own interpretation of a fully body hug. I watched Leo lean forward to look around me at Calix and turned to see that Lucas and Wes were too. I felt Declan’s head turn and knew there was nothing else I could do. I slowly let my gaze turn and rest on him, finding him looking right at me, waiting.

“We said once, in an interview, if we ever fancied the same girl, we’d play a game to see who gets her…” He swallowed, glancing down for a second before his eyes locked with mine again. “But being in that situation, we realised, it doesn’t work like that...”

I heard everyone’s intakes of breath, including my own, even though I hadn’t quite figured it out yet. I felt all ten eyes in the room turn to me, waiting. I looked at each one of their faces and slowly, it began to dawn on me what he meant.

“You’re kidding me…” I whispered.

Breathing was hard again. And then everything was black.

I came around a few seconds later alone on the couch with Leo’s arm around me, all the other boys having jumped and were now staring at me from where they stood with various expressions on their faces. “Sorry.” I murmured, pushing myself out of Leo’s grasp and sliding a bit away.

“Here’s some water,” Declan said, handing a glass out to me. I took it, watching them with my eyes narrowed over the brim as I took a sip.

“Are you going to say something?” Wes asked after a few more minutes of silent staring.

“You guys are joking right?” was my response.

They all looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Rae, each one of us is in love with you.” Calix said softly.

I nearly spit my sip of water out hearing him use the L word like that.

“We know what happened before makes this a shock. But it doesn’t matter now and we don’t know what to do about this, we need your help. We need you to pick,” Wes said, trying to keep his voice casual.

“No. No no no. No. No!” I exclaimed almost dropping the glass in my agitation. “That’s not fair to me. At all. You can’t ask me to do that. No. You guys are being crazy. You just need to relax. You were really stressed on your trip. You missed me. You missed everyone here. You were homesick. You’re still adjusting to the fame. You don’t mean this. No.”

“Yes we do,” Declan said, biting his lip. 

“You don’t think we tried to come up with every possible reason before we said anything to you?” Leo asked. “We realise that this is completely unfair to ask of you, but you needed to know. We can’t go on pretending to not feel this way, and to keep acting like everything’s okay because it’s not. We all want the same girl. You have to pick who.”

They all looked at me expectantly. “I’m not picking now! I’m not picking ever! That’s completely ridiculous and you are all out of your minds! I’m not accepting this. All of you go back to bed, get a lot of sleep and talk to me when you’re feeling a little more sane. I can’t. I won’t. I’ve told you before, I pick all of you! That was the deal...”

“We can’t be just friends with you anymore Rae. Not when we all feel this way,” Wes said, pleading in his eyes.

“I think we all deserve a chance for you to hear us out,” Calix added softly.

“No. Because I don’t feel that way back, it will just mess things up! We’re just best friends. All of us. That’s it.” I said, struggling to make them understand.

“Being our best friend, you know you’re not fooling us. Come on Rae, we know that you’ve thought about it,” Lucas said with a cheeky grin, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

“Sure, once maybe, a crazy caught in the moment thought. But not actually ever considered it as something serious! I need to get out of here.”

I stood up to leave and headed towards the door. “Rae, wait,” Declan said, making me stop again. 

“At least think about it?” Leo shrugged at me.

I sighed. “Yeah, whatever.”

All the boys walked up to me. “We love you,” they said, wrapping me up in a big group hug just like they used to. When they let go the tears were back, a moment so reminiscent of the past but now so extremely different. I glared at each one of them hoping they understood that they spoiled it and for the first time since we started throwing that word around, I didn’t say it back.