The Dates.

I said goodbye to Jake and Em and we parted ways. Without Jake slapping the back of my head every three seconds, it was easier to think about the forthcoming interviews and the inevitable dates that would follow. I couldn't decide who I'd want to take on a date from the girls I'd already talked to; none of them really clicked with me in the way I expected. But then, what did I expect? I'd never really been in love before; I thought I'd been in love with Gemma.

Sure, I was pretty hurt when I saw her with that guy and I'd moped about for a while but it didn't feel any worse than other ordinary, day to day occurrences, like the family cat going missing for a week or a favourite television show getting cancelled. I think I behaved the way I did after I found out because I thought I could trust Gemma, not because I'd lost the love of my life.

As I was fumbling in my pockets for my keys, the door opened and my mum framed the doorway with two mugs of tea in her hands.

"Opening the door with a drink for me? Sweet." I said, stretching out my hand to take the mug from her. She snatched it back carefully, trying not to spill the hot contents over herself.

"This isn't for you. It's for Jake." she said, stepping aside to let me in. "How come you didn't walk back with him?"

I dropped my bag on the floor near the coat pegs and turned to her. I must have heard her wrong.

"Did you say Jake?"

She nodded and before either of us could say another word, Jake bounced down the stairs from my room and took the mug from my mother's hands.

"Cheers, Mrs. D. Hey, Andy. What took you so long?" he asked, grinning.

I gaped at him as my mother patted my cheek. She pattered off into the kitchen with her mug of tea, leaving me without one and Jake smirking smugly at me from behind his. I shook my head in disbelief at my mum before rounding on Jake.

"What the hell are you doing here? How did you get here before me?!"

He pressed a finger to his lips and motioned for me to follow him upstairs. Humouring him, I kicked off my shoes and climbed the steps to my room. When I stepped through my doorway however, I immediately stumbled back out.

There were pictures of One Direction. Everywhere.

My bed was adorned with dozens of round, smiling faces of teenage boys. I couldn't even see a slither of my bed sheets from behind those unnaturally happy faces. As well as the atrocity of my bed, my walls were slathered in yet more photographs and newspaper cuttings of the group, my computer had a window opened up of some gossip magazine website and there was an actual cardboard cut-out of one of the members. I had to remind myself to burn everything when Jake left.

"Are we really doing this, Jake? Like, really?" I sighed, tugging my fingers through my knotted hair as I walked around, trying not to step on a few stray pictures on the floor.

"Yeah. Why?" he said innocently, fluttering his eyelashes at me like he hadn't just turned my bedroom into an adolescent girls dream.

I pointed at the boyband, as if it said it all. "They're wearing brightly coloured blazers and everything, man."

He didn't say anything. I watched him pull out a pencil from his bag before he draped an arm around a giant flip chart that he'd hidden behind the door.

"Where did you even get all these pictures from? Didn't we only just have the conversation about this today?"

He shuffled his foot against the carpet and stared down bashfully. Behind him, my mum walked by on the landing with a tower of laundry and slowed her pace as she took in the sheer horror of my room, her aghast face fixed on the multiple images of One Direction until she disappeared behind the wall. That was going to be one hell of an awkward discussion at dinner later.

"I kind of already thought about looking at them for ideas the other day, actually." he explained. "My sister - she's a huge fan, you know. It's where I got this stuff from - has all these pictures plastered on her walls and it got me thinking. These guys have so many girls after them! What makes them any different from you or me?"

"Money and a sense of fashion?" I muttered darkly.

Jake went on like he hadn't heard me. "All we have to do is try and replicate what they're doing."

I raised an eyebrow and strolled over to the cardboard cut out. "You want me to look like this guy - "

"Zayn." Jake added.

I resisted the urge to slap him and carried on. "Okay, you want me to look like Zayn. How am I meant to achieve that exactly? I look like me and he looks like, well...him."

Jake wagged his finger at me knowingly and flipped over the top sheet on the chart. Underneath was a blown up photograph of me with several cut-out items of paper clothing and hair beside it. I guess you can't fault him on his efficiency.

"We're going to give you a make-over. A real one. I borrowed some magazines from my sister, looked up the latest trends in men's fashion and I've practiced how to tame curly hair so you don't end up with a comb sticking out of your head again. Trust me, this is going to work."

I was speechless. He was serious.

"Trust you? Trust you? Last time I did that, I was finding plastic comb in my hair for days."

Jake tutted and stared away from me thoughtfully. Before I could figure out what he was doing, he jumped forward and shoved me so that I fell back on the bed. Amidst the magazine tear-outs of One Direction that were flying through the air, I could make out Jake standing over me, his finger jabbed into my chest.

"Ouch!" I cried, smacking at his hand.

"You will try out this make over! If you hate it once I'm done, then fine. Cool. You can go back to wearing baggy jumpers and crappy jeans - "

"WHAT? I have the same jeans as you!"

"- and I won't say a word. But just give it a go. I've even got Em to help out, she's in charge of your hair." he said merrily, pulling out his phone to check the screen. "Speaking of which, she'll be here in ten minutes. She had to get some hair stuff from her house."

I groaned and threw my head back onto my bed. I suppose Jake had made a fair point. I could give it a go, to keep him quiet if anything else, and if I didn't like it, no big deal. I could go back to looking like me, a normal teenage boy, and no one would be any the wiser. It was just going to be me, Jake and Em. I can't believe I was letting him talk me into something else crazy after the comb incident.

"Fine. You and Em involved. That's it. I'm surprised Em's even going along with this." I told him, sitting up and brushing off a load of posters from my bed.

"Oh, when she found out I was going to try and style your hair, she thought it would be kinder to you if she just did it, even if she does disagree with what I'm doing." he said without inflection, like he wasn't bothered by his girlfriend disapproving one of his outlandish (or brilliant, in his mind) ideas.

He clapped his hands together loudly, making me jump, and directed my attention to the flip chart again. He was suddenly business-like, addressing me in the same tone he had when he proposed the interviews. He struck the pencil against the flip chart, using it as a pointer.

"Right, so you see this here." he said, circling around the photograph of me. "This is a guy who has clearly given up on himself - "

"Hey!" I chirped but he relinquished the pencil, deciding it served better as a missile aimed at me than a tool to point with.

" - and needs a tweak in terms of style. This is where the magic of One Direction comes in." he flipped the chart again so that we were faced with yet another image of the band. Which reminds me, why are they even called a band anyway? Do they play instruments? Surely they're just a group?

"Look to Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry and Louis. See how they wear matching outfits? How they coordinate their waistcoats to their shoes? Look at their upturned trouser leg bottoms. They're not even wearing socks. This is the future. This is style, Andy. You need style."

I didn't know whether to laugh or hit him. I accommodated by snorting.

"Grandad shirts with braces. Braces, Andy. No, they're not just for your grandad any more - we're getting you some, mate, so don't laugh." Jake warned, pulling another sheet of paper over the top of the chart. Another picture of One Direction.

"Let's look to winter-wear. Think pea-coats and knitted jumpers with shirts. They're top buttons are done up, they're not scruffy like your typical, everyday guy. I repeat: they are the future!"

Jake paused. He scratched his cheek as he thought.

"I suppose it'd help if your accent wasn't generic. Like, it's just normal. Harry has a bold accent, he's from Cheshire or something and there's the Irish guy, too. Okay, so Liam has that unfortunate West Midlands twang but I think girls still love that, you know."

"Jake? Do you think you're the one in love with them, not your sister?" I asked with mock concern.

He spoke louder, drowning out my voice as he tapped a finger against the chart. "Colourful trousers. Not just jeans. We're talking bright, like a rainbow. Red, yellow, powder blue, green. I've looked at a bunch of magazines and know where to get them from. I have a pair here, actually - " he said, yanking out a scrunched ball of lime green fabric and throwing them at me. "You might have to iron them, I didn't have time to fold."

"Jesus." I whispered, holding the trousers away from me so I could look at them properly.

"Hair." Jake continued. "A problem, in your case. Sure, you've got that Harry Styles do going on but something tells me we're just not gonna get it right. We'd have to give you a comb-over or something and that wouldn't look great. Your hair is a little too curly. Em and I thought it would be better to straighten it."

Jake's phone beeped and he whipped it out again, grinning. "Speaking of which, Em's here. Let's get this make over started!"

I grimaced when he dumped more stuff out of his bag onto my bed.

"I've got a shirt, a jumper and some combat boots in my bag too. When we're done with you, people will think you're a member of the band. Girls will be all over you."