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❝ I've found a reason for me
to change who I used to be
a reason to start over new
and the reason is you ❞
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Chapter Seventeen - The Party
In all honesty, the last thing on Frankie’s mind by Friday evening was the party she had promised Colin she would attend. Within the humourous chats with Louis and Zayn, cooped up in their dorm room, getting to know each other all over again, the thought had simply passed her mind. She hated when she was forgetful like she was, and despite that, she could not help it.
Frankie was standing next to Louis in the small kitchen where the residents of the student house did their cooking. In her own complicated manner, she tried explaining to him the art of making Mac ‘n Cheese from a box. Her rapid hand movements made him laugh and her explanations confused him to the point where he was forced to grab her shoulders to quiet her.
“Calm down,” he said, chuckling, “I don’t understand a thing, ya know?”
She blushed, embarrassed. “Sorry. I-I just-“
“Frankie, I’m joking.” He replied, his eyes shining with amusement. “I can boil water and pour a box of macaroni into a pot well enough.”
She smiled her body no longer tense. Just as her mouth opened to speak further, her mobile went off and she scrambled to answer it, embarrassed once again by her choice of ringtone. Frankie was one of those people who hated sticking to one thing for too long. She would rather see and feel change on a day-to-day basis than sit around for nothing to happen. Only this past weekend, she had managed to rearrange her bedroom for the second time in three months and then switch her ringtone to melody that never failed to grace her lips with a tender smile.
Louis watched as she slid open the iPhone and answered the call, turning slightly from him and the stove to speak to the person at the other end. Her eyes sent him a look of ‘just one moment’ while her face seemed highly apologetic. He could not understand why and realized that maybe that’s just how she was. Maybe Frankie felt sorry for many aspects of her life she could not control and in spite of knowing this, her ears still turned red and her sentences became stutters.
“Oh, Colin, hi,” She greeted, the ends of her lips turning up in a knowing smile. “Yeah, sorry, it slipped my mind.” Colin, whoever he was, said something in return to which Frankie grinned broadly and replied, “of course! I made you a promise, didn’t I? I’ll be there…okay. All right, bye.”
When she turned off the phone, Louis was quick to ask, “Who was that?”
“A friend,” replied Frankie, placing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She bit down on her bottom lip, contemplating her next question. Louis noticed immediately and prodded her to ask. So she did, “how do you feel about attending a party with me tonight?”
• X •
The party was in full swing by the time Frankie, Zayn, Louis and eventually having found Liam, made it to Colin’s mate’s house. The nervous girl led her friends through the front door, gesturing with her hands to go have fun while she looked for Colin. Zayn and Liam didn’t need to be told twice and were out of the scene before she got a second look. Louis, however, remained by her side, feeling overly anxious about the whole situation. Truth is, as much of a partyer he may have been in the past – his forgotten past – tonight just didn’t fit well with him. Everything about the short notice of a house party made him uneasy and the only reason he tagged along was due to Zayn’s eagerness to attend, Liam’s nonchalant attitude and Frankie’s eyes in wonder. He did not know what part of her possessed him to do it, but somehow, just the aura of the girl made him want to do whatever she pleased, without complaint.
So now, he was stuck here, in this spacious house filled with people he didn’t know. The rambunctious stench of alcohol mingling in the air while the reverberating tone of music of the pop variety exploiting the many partyers to a night of who knows what will happen? On any normal occasion, this was Louis Tomlinson’s perfect idea of a spare Friday night. However, this was no normal occasion and he was growing tenser as each minute passed and Frankie looked around for a lad named Colin. When she spotted him, she nearly jumped for joy and raced to his side. Colin smiled brilliantly at her, wrapping his arms around the nineteen year old in a welcoming hug. Louis didn’t know what it was or where it came from, but a stinging feeling he could not name began poking fun at his heart even when he willed for it to stop.
Frankie came striding over, a minute or two later, Colin in tow. Louis inspected him as the duo crept closer. Colin was so different in facial characteristics than he was. Colin had pitch black hair, pale, ghost-like skin and eyes the colour of sapphire. He was fairly tall, too, inches above Frankie who could not help smiling when she was near him. When they finally made it to Louis’ side, Colin was the first to stick his hand out for a shake.
“I’m Colin,” he introduced himself, flashing two rows of straight white teeth at the lad opposite him. “You must be Louis.”
“I am,” replied Louis in a strictness of tone he was surprised to hear him very self.
Colin, however, seemed to have missed it because he quickly said, “my sister’s a big fan of your band. She has posters of you lot hanging all over her bedroom.”
Louis was silent and it was not the kind of silent that presented itself because he had nothing to say, rather, the kind that made him think it was better not to say anything at all than voice the words he knew he would later regret. Frankie, having noticed this, decided it was her moment to step in.
“Lou, you wanna go get a drink or something?” In her own words, she was basically asking him to go find something to do so that the awkwardness would subside. With a shrug of his shoulders and one last look Colin’s way, he started to leave, but not before staring a second longer at Frankie who gave him one of her small smiles. When he was gone, she turned to Colin who was already grinning at her. “What?”
“You’re friends with Louis Tomlinson, of all people?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not such a big deal. We became friends on The X Factor when I worked as their assistant designer. Then, after they left, I began working part time for them and part time still at The X Factor.”
“Isn’t that…a bit too much work?”
“Well, not entirely,” she explained, “I work for the One Direction because their management hired me, but I work for The X Factor because they said they need me and as a way to say thank you to the producers for letting me on in the first place. My mum is friends with one of them and I was only sixteen when I first got the job.”
“You must be something if they want you so bad.”
“I must be.” She said with a wink. “So, are you ever going to tell me anymore about yourself than I already know?”
He smiled at her. “That depends…what do you want to know?”
“Hm…” she jokingly tapped her chin. “You wouldn’t happen to be a psycho killer or a rapist, would you?”
Colin shook his head, “rapist? No.” He leaned in. “But when I was eight, I accidently stepped on an ant. It was tragic.”
Frankie mocked a stunned look. “You’re horrible! I’m sorry, but I just cannot be friends with an ant killer.”
“It was an accident!”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s true!”
“Mhm.”
“It is. I was walking home one day and it just…it just came out of know where and I couldn’t control how fast I stepped forward and…and –“
“Colin?”
He quieted. “Yeah?”
“You know I’m only pulling your leg, right?”
His shoulders slumped. “Uh…”
She laughed. “Gosh you’re cute.”
Colin frowned. “Most of the time, when a girl calls a lad cute it means she looks at him in a brotherly way.”
“But you are…you are cute.”
“Pick some other adjective, please,” he asked of her, his eyes suddenly wide, “anything but cute.”
“Okay, how’s this,” she smiled goofily, “if I had to choose between watching you and Tom Daley in a swim match, I’d pick you.”
“I’m a terrible swimmer.”
“It doesn’t matter; I still pick you.”
Colin shook his head with a chuckle. “You are so strange, Frankie.”
“All the cool people are.”
• X •
Like a sore thumb, Louis Tomlinson stood out amongst the crowd of alcohol induced teenagers partying their way into the weekend. Travelling amid them was difficult. Many pairs of vividly drawn eyes followed his every step, fathering thoughts of who knows what. He did his best to ignore them, but when the feeling became too much, he clenched his fists and hurried out of the kitchen where he had previously stood.
The only place he could think of to go was the patio outside, where, fortunately, no sweaty body lingered. The slight chill of the April night pinched his skin while the gentle wind twisted in his locks of hair. He sought a chair close by and quickly fell into it, feeling slightly glum about the entire situation.
He used to love partying.
The mere thought of a night bursting with wild, cringe-worthy music swimming through the air of an enclosed room while the partyers danced, laughed and made memories formerly sent his nerves kicking. He would look forward to the morning to shift to night, so he could put the long day of work behind him. He was a party animal and he knew it, his friends knew it and his family, well, they had grown accustomed to seeing all those distorted images on the covers of magazines in the past year. He loved to party, but he was careful in how he went about it. He had clear realization what one measly mistake, what one step in the wrong direction, could do to his career and his friends’ career. The media could change bits and pieces of him, though; his identity would never fall into the belittling hands of those who found joy in the downfall of others.
Yet now, he was here.
He was in this place where the surroundings were all so familiar, though, nothing made sense otherwise; not the people, not the music, or the idea that he would find someone absolutely marvelous and wonderful like he had some time ago. He had only begun to remember her name…Eleanor: he girl who he had fallen so hopelessly in love with when they were introduced that reckless partying night. Alas, she was simply a lost memory now and despite feeling weak in his stomach at the thought of what went on between them, the night she fled his flat for the last night, he kept himself together.
But that’s just how memories are. When they come, they come in hurdles and they beat your mind to a pulp.
“Lou?”
At the sound of his name, Louis looked up. Under the glowing porch light, Frankie was stood. She seemed somewhat concerned having departed Colin’s side in haste when she realized Louis hadn’t come back to her in a long time. She felt terrible for bringing him here; to a place he could not possibly feel better. Her selfishness made her do that sometimes.
He tried smiling back at her, as if in reassurance. “Are you having fun?”
“A little,” she admitted, grabbing a chair for herself and settling into it next to the singer. “How long have you been out here?”
“Not very long,” he said, “I just couldn’t take them looking at me anymore.”
Frankie placed a gentle hand upon his, ignoring the tinkling feeling shooting upwards her arm. “I’m sorry I made you come here, Louis. I was being self-centered and I should have asked you how you felt about it.”
“I’m okay,” Louis reassured her again, his lips turning up in a cute smile, “you worry a lot, don’t you?”
“About you,” she said lacking hesitancy, “very much.”
“My mum told me,” he began, looking up at the roof in awe, “that you and I were best mates since The X Factor.”
Frankie beamed, “we were...”
“How did we meet?”
Well…
“Honestly,” Frankie muttered, her eyes scanning the substantially large dressing room backstage of The X Factor. “They make such a mess.”
The room was, more or less, a filthy dump. It was only August and while her friends were partying it up in Canada for the final two weeks of the summer holidays before school began once more, Frankie was in England where her dear mother had successfully landed the sixteen – soon to be seventeen year old – the tiresome job of cleaning up after Louise Teasdale and her styling team. They made quite a mess that the young girl found herself cleaning over and over again. It simply didn’t seem to end. She understood, of course, The X Factor was in its final days before the judge’s houses competition. They had much to do and even more to look forward to. Frankie would just have to suck it up and do her job because that’s what she was here for. Louise promised her employment with the fashion crew if she played her part well, and lately, Frankie thought she was doing above and beyond that.
“Lou, can you – oh, sorry.”
Frankie snapped her head upwards, meeting the gaze of a slightly familiar guest. She racked her brain to recall where she had seen him last, but sadly, she came up with nothing. He looked at her sheepishly, his cheeks reddening at bit when her gaze lingered on his shirt which now carried a tear at the hem.
“Lou’s in the other styling room if you’re looking for her,” she told him.
“Oh, okay.”
However, he did not leave.
“May I help you with anything?”
Louis, his thoughts shattering, shook his head. “No, no, it’s fine. It’s just a small tear.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?” Frankie asked stepping in his direction while a tremendous heat travelled up her neck due to her bold inquisition. She should have let him go. “I know a thing or two about tears.”
Louis lifted the hem of his shirt to show her, his gaze darting between the girl and the tear. “I was running and, uh, it got caught on something.”
Frankie, now standing right in front of him, gently took the shirt in her hands. She examined it carefully and when an idea hit her, she quickly pulled her small sewing gear from her back pocket. It was always there, in case of an emergency such as this one. When she realized she would probably need to get it closer to stitch it back up, she looked hesitantly back up at Louis who was merely staring down at her.
“Do you mind?”
Louis shook his head, ‘no,’ and pulled the shirt off his chest and handed it to her. Keeping her eyes averted just so she would look as least deviant like as possible, she had mended the tear in minutes. She handed Louis the shirt back and he slipped it on immediately.
“Good as new.” She smiled and stuck her hand out for him to shake. “I’m Frankie Beauregard.”
“Louis Tomlinson.” The lad smiled back, shaking her hand lightly before pulling her in for a soft hug. It was abrupt and somewhat strange, but Frankie didn’t mind. Quite the contrary, actually, she enjoyed the presence of strange people. It made her feel welcome in their world because of the similarities. “You smell like strawberries, Miss Beauregard.”
Frankie chuckled, pulling away from him. The scent of her shampoo was pretty strong if he smelt it. “And you smell like you’re going to be late for the participants’ attendance, Mr. Tomlinson.”
Nodding his head, Louis stumbled backwards a bit, grinning at her as he reached the door. “See you, Frankie.”
“You too, Louis,” she called, smiling big right back at him.
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