All That I Can Think About

“Been texting Harry all morning?” Liz questioned Renée as soon as she saw the large grin on her face as the younger girl entered the flat.

“Yeah. You can tell now, eh?”

“You’ve always got this huge smile on you.” Liz told causing Renée to roll her eyes a bit and tap away on her phone. “I’m guessing he can’t sleep,” She added on after a moment, Renée nodded her response.

“Says I remind him of home,” Renée cooed, her smile growing.

“One day you’re going to realize that boy is hopelessly in love with you.”

“He really isn’t. I’m just a girl that he can actually trust because I knew him before One Direction.”

“Which is why he is hopelessly in love with you,” Liz insisted, tugging a Midnight Beast sweatshirt over her head to go along with her sweatpants and Vans so that she wouldn’t be going to her class in an undershirt.

“But he isn’t, Lizzy. We need to find you a boy toy so you can stop trying to analyze mine!” Renée teased her older friend, glad to be home from her lesson to take a lunch break before her next one sometime in the afternoon.

Liz rolled her eyes a bit and muttered under her breath about how wrong Renée was and grabbed her satchel, pulling it over her shoulder with her laptop bag before calling a goodbye and heading out the door. She piled into her car and drove off to the university.

At eleven sharp she arrived at her first course of the day, which was Drawing II as she’d aced Drawing I the previous year. It was the beginning of the term so there were notes on different techniques all over the board and the professor was going over multiple variations of the devices used to enhance the sketches. Liz pulled out her laptop and began quickly copying down the notes. It was easily the most boring class she had attended in a long time.

When the clock in the corner of her screen said noon the students began packing their belongings and Liz followed suit. She headed to a small and close by coffeehouse getting her something strong and bitter to keep herself awake. She shuddered as she sipped at, not even close to enjoying it like she should be. It was cheap, bitter, and much too strong, but it would keep her awake to go to her Studio Studies class that afternoon.

Studio Studies was easily Liz’s favorite class. The goal was simple and easily attainable – for her at least. There were different items and you would draw them with the assigned tools. When she went into class today, there wasn’t an item though. There was a photograph put up on the wall and it was of a single Lily flower within a dark background. The photograph had very particular lighting and overall it was a beautiful image.

“This was taken by another student attending our school,” The professor announced, pointing to the Lily photo. “You may choose whatever you please – pencil, watercolor, oils – just recreate the image. That is your assignment.”

Most of the students chose pencil or pen, but Liz went straight to her favorite, charcoal, and began filling in the shadows of the image very first. When class was over the professor practically had to toss the girl out. Liz scrubbed her hands clean of the black dust that coated them, but it was still stuck under her nails, which she’d grown used to over the years.

When she arrived back at the flat, Renée had her nose stuck in some text book, likely for an assignment for one of her classes and Liz huffed, tossing her satchel to the floor. “Renée, I’m thinking about just quitting going to my classes. I don’t even want to do any of this stuff anyway,” She sighed, pulling her hair into a bun on the top of her head.

“Are you going to go off about those doodles again?”

“They’re not doodles; they’re tattoo designs.”

“You have so much more talent, Liz. Why waste it?” Renée didn’t intend on the words coming out as bitterly as they did, but Liz had whined about the subject so often it was easy for her to tire of it.

“God, you sound just like my mum,” Liz muttered, wondering how Renée could be her best friend and her worst enemy at the same time. Liz took her laptop and stormed to her room, easily over dramatizing the situation. It was around four and she was – for some reason she didn’t quite understand – hoping that she would catch Louis online again.

Louis, Harry, and the other boys had been up for a little over an hour. It was just past nine in the morning and they were in an interview. Harry’s phone was buzzing and Louis and Liam were nagging him for texting Renée while they were supposed to be “working”.

“She’s upset though!” Harry had protested, sighing as he sent quick responses back to Renée.





Harry looked back up at the interviewer as they asked about traveling across America. “If I could do a road trip, I’d just like to get a really old American car and just drive. Do the whole thing; do as much of America as I could.”

“I always thought about that, but don’t you think the driving would get a bet tedious?” Louis questioned, his phone suddenly beeping in his pocket. Normally he’d ignore it, but it was the tone for the chat application on his phone and a little tug in his chest told him he really hoped it’d be Liz.

Louis pulled out his phone and looked down at the message from her.





Louis easily lied, trying to split his focus between the messages and the interview.

“I think if you were going to do a road trip you should start off in Europe first,” Zayn interjected.

“America with a car and Europe without a car,” Harry stated, again focused on his phone, sending a comforting text to Renée before promising to call her later as well so they could talk about it more. He missed her. A lot.

“Roller blades. We’ll do Europe with roller blades,” Louis suggested, his signature smirk lighting his features, gaining laughs from the other boys in the group. His phone beeped again and he didn’t hesitate to take a look at it.









“Well, you’ve just got that phone glued to your hand, Louis?” The interviewer questioned, “That’s your girlfriend, huh?” They teased, giving Louis a wink.

“Oh, right, sorry,” Louis muttered, his cheeks turning the slightest shade of pink. “She’s not actually. We’ve just met.”

“I think that wraps it up. You’re free to go guys,” The interviewer announced, standing to leave.

Liam gave Louis and Harry both disapproving looks, but it was ignored. Harry was already dialing Renée’s number.

“Hey, Ren. How’s my favorite girl?”

“I’m worried about her, Harry, that’s all. She doesn’t see it; she thinks I’m trying to pry. She can be a real prick when she wants.”

Harry laughed a bit then sighed. “Well, Renée, just wait until she calms down a bit and explain it to her. Tell her you just care about her and want what’s best.”

“I know that deep down she knows it, but still, Harry, I just can’t stand the thought of her upset with me. She looked like she was going to cry.”

Louis had perched himself onto a comfy looking couch while they waited for the next interviewer to come in and was waiting for Liz to reply.



Louis chewed his lip a bit, debating whether it’d be a good idea or not, but ended up sending her his phone number anyway. Seconds later he got a text.







Liz laughed a bit at her own reply, but she knew it was what she truly wanted. She loved her art and it was all that mattered to her.





Harry and Renée were both laughing into the phone when Harry was being waved over for the second round of interviewing. “Ren, I gotta boot. ‘Nother interview.”

“Text me later!”

“Bye, love,” Harry said quietly before hanging up his phone and heading over to sit with the other boys.

The next interviewer was a girl for some company asking about when the boys toured Canada two weeks ago. Harry thought she should have interviewed them while they were actually there, but apparently that didn’t fit into the schedule. Her first question was something along the lines of stereotypes they expected to see, and of course Louis had some smart mouthed response.

“I expected everyone to have maple syrup.”

“Carry little bottles in their pocket,” Harry added on.

“’Do you have any-‘ ‘Actually, yes I do.’” Louis went on, mimicking getting a bottle of syrup from his pocket.

The ditzy interviewer let out a rather annoying giggle, then asked about the boys’ biggest fears. Which for Louis and Harry were quite obvious, birds and snakes respectively.

“One once flew into my bathroom window, right? I went in to have a wee, minding my own business Jesus! Whoa. There’s a bird in the bathroom,” Louis chuckled, shaking his head a bit. “It was fluttering around in there like crazy,” He went on, making a motion with his arms meant to reenact his version of the bird’s actions, gaining more laughs and another high pitched annoying giggle from the interviewer.

And then the next question: “If you could go back in time where would you go and why?”

“I’d go back to the 80s. That’d be a cool time to go to,” Zayn answered.

“I’d love to be in the 50s like Sinatra,” Niall said after a short pause of thought.

“I’m gonna go quite standard and say that I would love to go back – even if it was just for one minute – to see dinosaurs,” Louis stated, peeking down at his phone once more to see that he had another message from Liz.



Louis let out a chuckle before biting his lip and typing back a response.



Liam smacked Louis in the arm and muttered for him to put his phone away. Louis sighed, rolling his eyes a bit before shoving his phone in his pocket and finally giving the interviewer his full attention.