Anonymous

Maybe being in a boy band had made my ego too big. For some reason, I’d expected Jess to answer somewhat immediately. It seemed like we’d hit it off when we were talking on Skype.

But maybe it had all been in my head. Because, three hours after I sent my text, while everyone else was sleeping and snoring loudly around me, I was still sitting up in my bed, my phone in my hand, waiting for her to respond.

Ugh. I was being pathetic. Since when was I the kind of guy who sat around, waiting for a girl to call? Metaphorically, anyway, as I was actually waiting for a text message. But the principle was the same.

I was being pathetic. If I wanted Jess to text me back, then I had to do something about it. I couldn’t just wait for her to reply. Especially since it seemed like she wasn’t really planning on doing so.

The second I thought about her rejecting me, I pushed the idea out of my mind. If she was going to reject me, she would have done so already. I think. She could have hung up on me on Skype, she could have given me a fake number instead of her own…

Oh my God, what if she gave me a fake number? Was I was texting some random person? Good lord, my text probably looked mental.

Feeling ridiculously embarrassed, I picked up my phone and typed out another text. sorry is this jess? if not im sorry for the text earlier. that must have been weird.

Figuring that I had gotten to the root of the problem, that Jess fed me a false number, I put my phone on the table next to my nightstand and crawled under the covers of the hotel bed.

And just as I felt myself falling asleep, my phone exploded with light and vibrated, alerting me that I had a reply.

no sry im not jess hope you find her tho

Yeah, that definitely wasn’t Jess. As a writer, she always wrote with proper spelling and grammar. That text would have probably given her one of those brain aneurysms.

I put the phone back on the nightstand and turned away from it, shoving the thought of disgusting brain maladies into the depths of my mind. Lord knew that wasn’t what I wanted to dream about.

And although I tried as hard as I could, knowing that the boys and I were flying to The Netherlands the next morning, I couldn’t make myself fall asleep. Not even for a second.

I was too busy moping about the reality that Jess had officially turned me down. I went out on a limb for her, risked everything I had, and she just turned her back on me.

Unfortunately, I guessed it was only a matter of time before the story broke in the local tabloids.



“Is there something wrong with you?” Harry asked as the plane finally leveled in the air. I hated the feeling of taking off in an airplane. It seemed to make all my organs move up into my throat, and I always had to squeeze the living daylights out of the armrests in order to keep myself from having a mental breakdown.

Flying, ironically, wasn’t something I liked to do very often.

“I’m okay now,” I told him, wondering why he was asking me. All the boys were quite familiar with my phobia at that point. It wasn’t anything new.

“Not with the flying,” Harry corrected. “With you. You look knackered, like you haven’t slept all night, and I’m not sure you’ve said more than a couple sentences this morning.”

“That could probably be linked back to the tiredness,” I responded slowly.

“Any specific reason you didn’t sleep last night?”

I hesitated. If I told Harry the truth, he’d probably get a kick out of it. After all, none of them thought it was a good idea to go after a girl I met on the internet. Talk about the ultimate I told you so. Ugh.

But lying wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So I leaned over and filled him in on the current state of the union in a low whisper.

While I had expected Harry to look happy with himself that he’d predicted a trainwreck of an outcome, he looked at me with nothing but sadness in his eyes. “Aw, Lou. I’m sorry, mate.”

“You’re sorry?” I repeated. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because that sucks.” He gave me a confused look. “Why wouldn’t I be sorry?”

“I dunno. I just figured that you’d feel really accomplished or something, that I’m miserable.”

Harry gave a kind of laugh, but it was more of pity than happiness. “I’m your friend, Louis. It doesn’t matter if I predicted that this would blow up in your face. It didn’t mean that I actually wanted it to. I just kind of hoped that I’d be wrong.”

I let out a sad sigh and put my head back on the seat, closing my eyes for a second.

Harry must have thought that I was trying to go to sleep because he stopped talking to me. After a couple minutes, I heard him going through a bag, muttering under his breath as he wondered where his mobile was.

In the new silence, I felt my mind slipping back into self-pity mode, and my whole being was overwhelmed with a sense of regret. I should never have told Jess the truth, thinking that everything was going to work out perfectly. I should have known that people never do turn out like they seem.

Crossing my arms over my chest for warmth, I curled up against the wall and begged for some kind of sleep to wash over me, even if it was only for a short time.

Just as I could feel myself slipping into a state of unconsciousness, I felt a smack against my shoulder, followed by a hurried whisper of, “Louis!”

“What?” I grumbled, trying my hardest not to snap at my best friend. But he was certainly testing me.

"You have to see this,” he insisted.

I sat up straight, my body hissing in protest, as I turned to look at what was so direly important that I had to deprive myself of sleep again.

A sense of extreme fright washed over me. That was it. Jess had moved quite quickly, leaking this story of utmost importance to the press. And suddenly, instead of feeling upset about her rejection, I started to hate her. How could she do something like that to me, even if she was uninterested, after I poured my heart out to her, laid everything on the line for her?

But when I looked down at Harry’s phone, I saw a picture of a small yellow lab puppy doing a handstand.

“Isn’t that incredible?!” he borderline screeched with excitement. “How do people train their pets to do stuff like that?”

“I can’t believe you just woke me up to show me that,” I snapped, turning back over. “I thought it was actually important.”

“This is important.”

I thought about punching him, but instead, I just closed my eyes and tried as hard as I could to get to the sleep to come again.

Although it was difficult, considering Harry wouldn’t stop singing under his breath, I finally got there in the end.