what happened with this chapter lol oops
the song they dance to is at the side >>>
- i'm falling for your eyes
but they don't know me yet
23rd December
Screaming wakes Louis up the next morning.
He throws himself out of bed, stumbling into the spare room in only his pyjama bottoms. "Sophie?" He yells, flicking on the light switch.
She's trembling, drenched in sweat and tangled up in the sheets. Her eyes are shining and she takes a shaky breath, closing her eyes briefly, the tears spilling over and streaming down her face. Louis doesn't know what to do, or why she's crying or what's upsetting her this much, but he folds her into his arms anyway.
"It's okay." He whispers. "It'll be okay."
She only shakes her head against his chest. "No. No, it won't," And that's the last thing she says before breaking down into broken, muffled sobs. So Louis doesn't tell her that anymore, because she's probably right.
"Tell me?" Is what he says, instead, and as soon as he does she tenses, and he knows he must have crossed some sort of line - why did he say that? - and he silently swears in his head.
"I - I can't, I don't -"
"Okay. It's fine." He says.
Sophie nods and pulls away, wiping her eyes furiously with the heel of her hand. "I'm sorry, Lou." She whispers, sniffing.
Louis shakes his head, breathing in deeply, looking for something to say desperately, anything to distract him from the fact she sounded so much like Eleanor when called him that. . "It doesn't matter.Look, I haven't put up a tree up this year - and I thought maybe, I mean we don't have to, but if you like... You could help me put one up?"
Sophie smiles a little through her tears.
"Okay. Okay."
**
"Are you sure you don't need my help?"
Louis watches, amused, as Sophie stands precariously on top of a chair, two plastic boxes and a sofa cushion, stretching to place the glittery star on the top of the tree.
"Nope!" She says indignantly, and as if to prove her point, stretches that last bit - the boxes she's standing on dangerously close to toppling over and squishing the tree - and reaches the top, dropping the star onto it with a flourish. "See?"
Chuckling, Louis puts the small cardboard box on the coffee table in front of him. The Michael Buble Christmas album that Niall guilt-tripped him into buying is playing (it's not half bad) and he just wants to take this moment and put it in a jar, wants to keep it forever.
"What's that?" Sophie asks, while he unwraps the tissue paper surrounding the glass ornament in the box.
He holds it out for her in answer. A frosted glass bell, the Disneyland castle sculpted on the top of it and inside, a tiny, sparkling, Tinkerbell.
"That's beautiful." She breathes.
"I got it last year in Disneyland." Louis says, not wanting to finish that sentence because he bought it with her, thinking she would still be by his side when he put it on the tree. Sophie seems to understand, though, because she takes it from his hands gently. "Lets put it near the top, yeah? Next to the star." She does so, standing on her tiptoes, before moving back to stand beside him.
"I love Peter Pan."
"Me too. I always wanted to be Wendy."
Louis smiles at her as the sound system changes track. With a flourish of his arms, he bows, holding out a hand for her. "Care to dance, Wendy?"
She rolls her eyes but takes his hand anyway, laughing a little. "I'm terrible at dancing, I warn you now." She says as Louis spins her around in time to the music. He only laughs, smiling brightly and feeling his heart race as she smiles right back, a real one, genuine.
"Well that makes two of us," Louis says.
They stumble over some fairy lights that trail across the floor, giggling, and there's that feeling again in Louis's chest, where he can't breathe and everything's all warm, and he's thinking just how beautiful Sophie looks like this, cheeks flushed and eyes bright while she throws her head back laughing.
The song speeds up, and suddenly he finds his face millimetres away from Sophie's, staring into her eyes.
She seems to realise a split second after he does, pulling her hands from his and stepping away quickly. Her face is flashing with a hundred different emotions, and she breathes in shakily. "Louis, I - I can't - " And then she's turning and running away into the spare room.
Louis feels his heart sink a little.
**
"Louis?"
He looks up from his book, glasses falling off nose a little as he takes in Sophie, dressed as if she's getting ready to go out. Her scuffed Converses are done up, laces carelessly shoved into them. She's wearing her hoodie from the day before yesterday, and a pair of his gloves and an old scarf of Eleanor's, that Louis didn't have the heart to throw out because it smelled like her. And underneath the hoodie, is a maroon jumper with a white anchor over the left sleeve.
He wants to hurl, because though he said that if she needed clothes then what was his was hers, but her choice of clothing is horrifically painful, because that jumper was Harry's.
"Yeah?" He croaks, voice cracking. He closes his eyes briefly, wishing she wasn't actually standing in front of him looking so beautiful in Eleanor's scarf and Harry's jumper, for Christ's sake.
"It's your birthday tomorrow."
"Um. Yeah."
Sophie watches him, blinking with tired, green eyes. "I saw it on the calendar. In your kitchen, I mean. And I realised that you've got this whole other life and I'm kinda intruding and you've already done so much for me. You've probably got plans and there's me thinking that maybe we're the same, but you're like, a popstar. And I can't stay here any longer."
"I'm alone this Christmas, I told you." Louis whispers. He refrains from adding 'like always' onto the end of that sentence.
"Yeah," Sophie says, voice cracking, "But it's your birthday."
"So? Without you, I'd spent it alone. Again." Louis feels his eyes prickle a little, and he's praying that she's not going to go, not going to leave him like everyone else. "And I'm tired of being alone."
Looking down at her shoes, Sophie fiddles with her hands. "I don't - I don't even know you. Isn't it weird, having a stranger in your flat?"
He doesn't know what to say to that.
"You don't even know my last name."
"What is it?" Louis asks quietly.
Sophie bites her lip. "Mann." She says after a moment.
Sophie Mann. The girl who tried to take her own life, before Louis saved her. The girl who, apparently, takes five sugars in her tea and wears bobble hats indoors. The girl has gotten under Louis's skin in such a way that no one has in so long.
"Don't go." He says, standing up. "Please."
"I have to. I'm sorry, Lou, I shouldn't have done any of this, I shouldn't have gotten so..." She trails off, fiddling with the hem of the jumper.
So close to me, Louis thinks, and all of a sudden it clicks into place and he slumps back onto the sofa.
"You really are leaving me alone for Christmas."
"I'm sorry, Lou." She whispers one last time, leaning forward to kiss his cheek before leaving quietly, the front door clicking gently behind her.
Louis wants to cry, but he doesn't. He just puts his head in his hands, sighing deeply, as the radio carries on playing into the silence of the flat.
It'll be lonely this Christmas...