Elodie’s POV
The next morning, Lauren is waiting near our bus as we finish up with the trainers. It was the first thing I’d gone back to doing when I was feeling healthier. There was no better therapy than leaving yourself too exhausted to think.
“Hey, will you do me a huge favor?” she asks as Liam and I approach the bus.
“Uhhh depends?” I say cautiously. “What is it…”
“Will you take Louis somewhere for the afternoon? I need him to be kept away.”
“If you guys are fighting again I--”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” she replies quickly, shaking her head. “I wanted to start doing covers again and I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Oh…” I say, not quite sure what that meant. I vaguely remember her mentioning something about Louis making a contest to meet her and a youtube account, but I thought she’d said she deleted it.
“Yea, I was hoping that maybe you could force him to go exploring with you or something.”
“You want me to take your boyfriend out on a date…” I trail off.
“Yea, I guess” she laughs. I shrug slightly, looking over at Liam to see what he made of all this.
“You’re not worried I’ll try to steal him?” I ask, smirking slightly and raising an eyebrow. This seems to amuse her more than it worries her and she looks between Liam and I.
“Nah, I’m good.” she says with a grin. “Thanks.”
“Well I’m going to go shower now if I have to go out in public,” I say nodding back over at the bus.
“Ok, I’m going to shower in the other bus. I’ll meet you over there?” Liam asks and I give a small nod before Lauren buts in.
“You’re not going with,” she tells him.
“What?” he asks startled and frankly I’m surprised also. I had assumed Liam would be coming with also.
“He can’t come with,” she repeats. “Louis will feel third wheeled if he does and will try to cut it short or will leave early. You need to keep him occupied until he needs to be at the venue.”
“Why would he feel thirdwheeled,” I ask baffled. She just rolls her eyes and doesn’t answer.
“It’s fine.” Liam assures me. “Besides, it means I can talk to her about what we were talking about the other night.” The rush of dread fills me, but I nod my head anyways. Lauren looks between the two of us in confusion, but I don’t mention it now.
“Fine. I’ll be over in 15 minutes,” I say bluntly, heading back into the bus to shower. When I get over to the other bus, Liam is already out and sitting on the couch playing Fifa with Niall.
“There you are!” Lauren exclaims when I walk in. “Louis, I told Elodie that you’d help her pick out something for her sister’s birthday.”
“What?” Louis asks in surprise.
“What?” I ask, echoing him, not realizing she’d come up with a reason for the two of us to be out by ourselves.
“Why can’t Liam?”
“Liam doesn’t have younger sisters,” she replies in a tone suggesting it was the most obvious thing.
“What about Zayn?”
“What, you don’t want to hang out with me?” I ask, feeling slightly irritated that he seemed to be trying to get out of doing this with me, even if it was a fake excuse.
“No, that’s not it,” he says quickly backtracking, letting out a sigh when he looks over at Lauren to see her raising an eyebrow at him. “Yea, ok. It’ll be fun,” he says. He takes a couple seconds to get his shoes on before opening up the door and holding it so I could head out.
“So what does your sister like?” he asks as we get into one of the black cars they always seemed to have around.
“I dunno,” I say with a shrug. I was getting bored already. My sister’s birthday was 2 months away and I hadn’t gotten her anything for her last birthday anyways so this excuse was just going to be tedious.
“Well does she like toys?” he prompts.
“I guess…” I say with a shrug. What kid didn’t like toys? He frowns, but leans forward to say something to the driver and soon we’re off. We fall into silence as we sit there and I can sense him wishing he’d stayed back.
“So…” I say, breaking the silence.
“So…” he repeats.
“I heard you really fucked up when you and Lauren first met,” I blurt out. Not quite sure what else there was to talk to him about. I’d never took the time to get to know anyone besides Zayn and recently Liam. Louis snorts and it quickly turns into a chuckle as if surprised by my choice of topic.
“You could say that, I told her that just because her brother is famous, doesn’t mean she can play with the expensive recording equipment,” he says with an amused grin. “I remember, after it happened, I was trying to go see her brother because I figured he could help me find her so I could apologize. Well he lives in the gated community right? And I didn’t have anyone inside inviting me in and the security guy was an ass so I ended up climbing over the wall and dropping down into Rihanna’s yard.” Now it’s my turn to let out a snort of amusement. “She was really cool about it though. Told the security guy that I could stay and told me how to find Hunter’s house.”
“Wow,” I say with a chuckle.
“Yup,” he grins, nodding his head. “I flew back to his hometown with him and she slammed the door in my face.” I burst out laughing now. I hadn’t realized how much spunk she had. I’d really only thought of them as a couple. The car comes to a stop and I glance out the window to see we’re at a toy store. “I came here last tour to get some gifts for my younger sisters. Thought maybe they’d like the same things.” I nod, following him out of the car and into the store.
“How many siblings do you have?” I ask as I glance around the store.
“Four sisters. All younger.”
I let out a whistle. “Shit. And I thought having one was hard.”
“It’s not like that,’ he says with a shake of his head. “I love them all. I love when I get the chance to go home and see them. I’m missing seeing them grow up and it sucks.”
“Well lucky you. You got a good family then,” I grumble, not really wanting to get into this. Luckily he goes silent, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walks beside me. He spends the next 15 minutes sullenly pointing out different toys that his sisters liked while I gave an indifferent shrug to each.
“Why am I here?” he finally asks exasperatedly. “It’s obvious you’re not looking for a birthday present.” Goddammit, I think, rolling my eyes. I’d been starting to wonder how long it would take for him to realize that. And I still had to keep him out for another couple hours.
“Is it really so hard to believe that I want to hang out with you?”
“Yes,” he says bluntly and I know he’s right. I’d been on tour with these guys for almost 2 months now and I hadn’t once spent time with him without someone else there also.
“Shit fine. I’ll tell you, but I swear to god you better act fucking surprised when we get back,” I threaten. He raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest, not saying anything. His lack of response causes me to mimic his stance as I stubbornly wait for him to agree. Finally, he sighs and nods his head, his hands dropping to his sides.
“Fuck. Fine. Lauren wanted to make one of those fucking covers for you as a surprise and now you’ve just gone and ruined it.”
“What?” he asks, the surprise evident on his face.
“Yea. Way to go sherlock. Now can we get out of here?”
“She deleted her account,” he continues, still stuck on that.
“Yea well… Surprise.” I say with mock enthusiasm.
“When did she remake it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What song is she doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Country I’m assuming.”
“I don’t know!” I say exasperatedly and he finally seems to get the hint. He shuts his mouth, a smile beaming on his face. Apparently Lauren had found the perfect thing to surprise him with.
“So what do you want to do now?” he asks, now content to be kept out all afternoon.
“I dunno,” I say with a shrug. I highly doubted he’d be as easy to convince to go spray paint a building.
“What about a movie?” he suggests. That sounded perfect. Didn’t have to worry about keeping up a conversation with that.
“What’s out right now?” I ask. He shrugs and I roll my eyes before pulling out my phone and looking up the movie times for the nearest theater.
“Anything good?” he asks as I scan the list.
“There’s no way you’ll want to see it.” I say as I read the list.
“What is it?” he asks in amusement.
“Frozen,” I say, silently daring him to laugh. He does laugh though and I just glare at him.
“Sorry,” he apologizes as his laughter dies. “It’s just. I didn’t expect that from you at all.”
“Yea well.. are we going or not?” I ask crossly.
“I can’t. Sorry. I promised Lauren I’d take her. She really wanted to see that.”
I sigh, nodding my head in understanding. “I’m sure Liam would take you,” he offers. “He likes Disney. Maybe the four of us could go on our next day off?” I feel uneasy nodding my head. That sounded an awful lot like a double date to me and I don’t do dates.
“So what should we do instead then?”
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So what do you think? Everyone else is starting to notice how much time they're spending with each other. I just saw Frozen for the second time today. I love that movie. But yea! Let me know what you think! Comment/Vote/Fan please!
Dedication for this chapter goes to ForeverOreo. I agree with you completely about the realism thing. It's my goal with my stories, to make them as realistic as possible and to give them the time it takes to actually develop real feelings.