With a Lack of Wanderlust

Another week following the revealing of my past, Louis and I continued to spend time with each other every night. After that day, we’d only gone on one other walk, and the rest of the nights were spent in the backyard speaking about everything imaginable. It got us to better understand each other and we became closer and closer with every hour of darkness passed.

I’d gotten closer with the rest of the boys too, spending the majority of my time with them. They’d all been so nice to me after I'd allowed Louis to tell them all of what had happened to me. I didn't feel that it was out of pity though, because it was the same niceness that I was graced with since I had met them. However, I was finally starting to feel like I was part of the little "family" that they had.

One morning, my brother shook me awake, relentlessly and somewhat violently. "Get up, you whore!"

"What are you calling me?" I asked, my eyes barely opened. I was confused as to what exactly was going on.

"You're a whore." I saw him shake his head and smile at me, "There are five boys waiting for you at the door. I think they want sex."

I laughed, still tired. I was now aware of who was here, but still didn't know exactly why they decided to come to my house in the morning. It seemed that they had all gotten up so early every single day. At least this time they had decided to have someone wake me up instead of just waiting in the house for me to get up myself.

It wasn't long before I realized that this was the first time my brother had actually been in contact with them, "What do you think?"

"Huh?" Nick asked, "They're waiting, Izzy."

"Fine, fine." I stood up and began to shiver. Quickly grabbing the hoodie of Louis' that I'd grown so attached to within the last week and putting it on, I made my way to the steps. Before I descended them, I noticed all of the boys standing there, somewhat impatiently. Niall, Louis, and Liam were bickering, while Zayn and Harry stood awkwardly, a large, brown paper bag in Zayn's hands.

"I'm not going to let you get away with not doing it!" I heard Niall say.

"He doesn't have to!" Liam said defensively, a frown on his face.

"I don't know why, but I don't feel like I should ye--" Louis caught himself as he noticed me coming down the stairs.

I heard my brother trailing behind me and I let a small smile appear on my face. They all smiled back at me, uncomfortably waiting for someone to speak.

"HI ISABELLE." Niall broke the silence.

"Hey, what's going on?" I asked, my grin never fading. I gestured for them to come in.

Louis looked at me as he stepped forward, appearing to be choosing his words carefully. "Well," He sighed, "Since I can't take you out, we thought we'd bring the restaurant to you."

"That's nice of you." I gave him a quick hug and turned to my brother. Nick rose his hands up to his chest and smirked at me, laughing. He ran up the stairs before I could say anything.

We all sat down at the kitchen table, each of the boys working to set up the breakfast that they had apparently been working on for weeks. It definitely was nice of them to do, but something hadn't felt right. Every time I would look at Niall, the same smirk my brother had given me would be on his face, and when he spoke, he enunciated his words in the same obnoxious, pressing tone that he always used when a bet was about to be carried out.

"So, Louis, Isabelle doesn't exactly live up to her bets either." He said once we started eating, allowing for my beliefs to be considered true. Louis turned to me with a shy smile as Niall continued, "And her bet wasn't even that hard!"

"What was it?" Liam inquired genuinely, not a hint of knowing in his voice.

I turned to Niall and begged him with my eyes not to tell the truth, since I had realized by then that I actually did have feelings for Louis. He opened his mouth and I closed my eyes, waiting for it. "Just that she had to tell Louis that--" Quickly, my eyes snapped open and I reached over to put my hand over his mouth. He attempted to bite it.

"Gross!" I laughed and pushed him away, but soon went serious, my voice hinting the bit of anger I was feeling, "Niall, can I speak to you in the living room please?"

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH." All the boys said as we stood. I shook my head at them and led Niall to where I asked him.

The smirk never left his face and he jumped up and down once we were out of sight, "You fancy him!" he whispered. I continued to shake my head. "I was going to say that you had to tell him about what happened to you, by the way. Since he knows you technically told me first.”

“I don’t like him. And that would mean I did live up to it.”

“Oh,“ He looked down, “Well good thing you stopped me then.”

“Don’t say anything.” I muttered.

“If you didn’t like him, it wouldn’t matter.” His smirk was back and he began rocking side to side triumphantly. “But hey, he likes you too.”

“Really?” I smiled to myself.

“HAHA! SEE YOU DO FANCY HIM!” He said a little too loud and then cleared his throat, “If you don’t tell him in the next two days I’m going to sneak into your room. And when you wake up, you will see me lying there in my underwear. Got it?”

“I’m locking my doors.”

“I can break in,” He said mischievously before turning and running back into the kitchen. I chased after him with laugher.

“With what? Your forks that you can flip?” I continued to giggle.

“Yeah! And frozen chicken fillets!” He grinned at me, taking a piece of bacon and biting a piece of it off dramatically. I attempted to grab it out of his hands but he held it far above his head. Something that me, a short, five foot, two inch girl, could not reach for my life.

“And his penis.” I heard Harry snort, unaware of what he was even making a comment on. The rest of the boys laughed along with him and I looked over to see him with his eyebrows raised, looking at me. He sipped his water discreetly.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to Niall, “Stop killing animals!”

“MY STOMACH NEEDS THEM!” Slowly, the look on his face changed as he began to get an idea. He brought the bacon back down and attempted to stuff it in my mouth. I scrunched my face up, shaking my head. “EAT IT OR I’LL TELL.”

I pushed him back long enough to tell him how cruel he was, and he continued to attempt to shove it down my throat. “HEY LOUIS!”

“Stop it!” I cried and grabbed the food from him, putting it in my mouth. It stayed there, and Niall looked at me with a cocked head, waiting. It felt like a whole minute had passed before I chose to spit it back into a napkin.

“Louis, Isabelle fancies you a lot a lot.” Niall quickly said, wiggling his eyebrows, just as I made my decision.

Without thinking, I stood and fled the room, the heat raising to my face. I could barely see the floor beneath me as I hurried to get up the stairs and to my room, where Nick was lying on the floor, continuously throwing a soccer ball in the air and catching it. Once he heard me bound in dramatically, he stood, off-guard, putting the ball under his arm.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa what’s up?” As quickly as he’d gotten up, he dropped what he was holding and pulled me in for a tight hug. I didn’t answer him, fearing that I’d cry if I did.

In the kitchen, a fear washed over me that Louis was probably just like every other guy that I’d ever liked, along with the other four. They were planning on being nice to me until they could carry out whatever joke they were going to finalize our relationship with.

Nick rocked me to each side in his arms for what felt like only a second before I heard footsteps come up behind us. His head, which had been resting on top of mine, shot up, and I saw his caring eyes turn swiftly to hatred. He let go of me. When I turned around, Nick was walking toward Louis, pushing him out into the hallway.

“What’d you do?” He growled.

“I didn--”

“I’m so sick of you fucking assholes fucking my sister up.” I saw Louis try to look around him to, most likely, beg me for help. I only looked down, picking at my nails. My brother continued to angrily yell at Louis and after a short while, I began to pity him. I hurried to tell Nick to stop, but by the time I did, he had already backed Louis up to the stairs. From what I could see, he appeared to have not noticed them and fallen.

The other four were surrounding him and helping him to his feet as my brother looked down apathetically. “Get out of my fucking house,” he said just loud enough, turning back to me. He noticed the worry in my eyes and mouthed a “sorry,” taking me back to our room as the boys filed out the front door.