Anonymous

There was a long pause from the other side of the phone. Immediately, my heart started to race. What the fuck had I been thinking? She just finally decided not to give me half a chance, to go back on her decision to avoid me completely, and I made the jump toward asking her for coffee?

God, if the guys had found out about this, they’d have thought I was bonkers.

“Are you…” Jess’ voice finally started before she cleared her throat delicately. “Are you asking me out?”

“If you want to think of it that way,” I admitted uncomfortably. “Or it could just be as friends. Whichever.”

Another span of silence followed, and I wasn’t quite sure my heart could take it. But finally, she expressed in a voice just above a whisper, “Okay.”

My entire body sank forward in relief. “Okay? Like…okay to what?”

“We’ll…” she started slowly, and I could hear in her voice that she was biting her lip, trying to figure out what she was going to say. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

“Fair enough,” I concluded. “Listen, I have to get ready to do an interview with a local radio station. But I’ll Skype you later.”

“Oh, alright,” she answered quickly. “I’ll go online around eight o’clock, England time. Will you be around by then?”

“Yeah, that’s great. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay. Bye, Louis.”

“Bye.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the End button before throwing away my phone, watching it bounce a couple of times on the bed.

The second I lied back to stare at the ceiling, trying to get a quick minute of relaxation, the door flew open, and Zayn poked his head inside. “You ready to go, mate?”

I gave a small groan and opened my eyes before sitting up and running a hand through my hair, making sure that I didn’t mess anything up. “Sure. Let’s get going.”



Later that night, I set up my laptop and logged onto Skype. Even though I was later than I’d promised Jess I’d be, since the boys wanted to go out for a couple of drinks, she was still waiting online. I felt bad for lying to her, but I was glad that she was giving me an opportunity to explain myself.

“Hey,” I greeted when she answered the call.

She was lying on her bed, her face titled up at the camera. “Hi,” she responded with that big grin of hers. “How was the interview?”

“It was fun,” I replied simply, shrugging my shoulders. “It was basically the same interview we’ve given a million times, talking about how we got our start, how Simon put us together, the new album…”

“That sounds extremely dull,” she giggled. “I don’t know how you’d do it. I’d probably be all diva-ish and demand for some new questions.”

“We’ve debated it,” I joked. “Never panned out, though.”

“Ah, bummer.” There was a short moment of silence before she spoke again. “You’re late, by the way. It’s nearly nine thirty.”

“I know. And yet you were sitting by the computer, waiting for me to call.” I smiled at her shortly before sighing. “Yeah, I’m sorry. The boys all wanted to go out to the pub and have a few drinks after the interview. And I couldn’t come back without them because they started in on me.” I stopped the story there, figuring it would be better not to include how they were ripping me apart for being addicted to her.

So I’d stayed to prove a point. I’d had a couple beers, I’d laughed at Harry making a damn fool of himself, and I’d let Niall lean on me to make sure he didn’t fall on his arse as we made our way out of the place.

Not that my mind wasn’t fixated on Jess the entire time. I kept worrying about whether she was going to hate me for being late, whether she was still going to be on the computer, whether she was going to warm up to me in time. Getting distracted by the chaos around me worked for a while, but it could only hold my attention so long.

“Louis?” Jess’ soft voice called out.

I blinked a couple of times, bringing my eyes back to the beautiful girl on my screen.

“You okay? You were spacing out.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” I assured her with a smile. “So how was your day? Do anything interesting?”

She let out a long sigh. “Um…I kind of broke it to Elena that I started talking to you again…” she trailed off uncomfortably.

I winced and sat back against the wall behind me, propping my laptop up on my legs. “How’d that go?”

She made a twisted face that made me laugh, though I tried hard to contain it. “It…could have gone better.”

“Did she completely freak out?”

“Not freak out…” She moved her pursed mouth over to one side of her face as she pondered, her eyes focused up, as if she were replaying the scene in her head. “Alright, so I guess it could have gone worse. But it definitely could have gone better.”

“You going to tell me the details?” I questioned. Normally, I wouldn’t have asked, but her hesitance surrounding the incident piqued my interest.

“You don’t want to know. Trust me.” For a second, she turned her head to the side and laughed, showing off her small, sloped nose, her tiny ear that was decorated with a dark purple feather earring, the slight blush to her cheeks, the way her hair fell just perfectly around her face. God, she was gorgeous.

She turned back to face me, her dark brown eyes boring into the camera. “Alright, I have school tomorrow, so I should get going. But I’m glad you called.” Color flooded her face, and she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear to try to hide it. “And I hope I can talk to you again soon.”

“Definitely. I’ll try to ring you tomorrow. It might just be on your mobile, since we have a busy day, but…at least it’ll be something, yeah?”

“That’s fine,” she assured me. “Goodnight, Louis.”

I grinned widely at her. “’Night, love.”

With that, the stream was gone, the video black. I let out a sad sigh and closed out of the window before closing my laptop and putting it down the side of my bed.

Liam walked in, the only one of the boys who didn’t get completely drunk at the pub, and shut the door behind him. “How did your conversation with Jess go?” he asked nonchalantly.

“What makes you think I was talking to Jess?” I responded, trying to mimic his off-handed tone.

“Because you have a cheesy grin on your face, mate. Few things make you smile like that.”

I tried as hard as I could to clear my expression, but it simply wasn’t possible. My cheeks didn’t protest at all, as they usually did when I smiled for prolonged periods of time.

“God, Louis,” Liam snickered as he climbed into his bed and shut out the light, “you’ve completely fallen for her.”

And as much as I hated it, something deep down inside of me knew that Liam was right. And I could only hope that Jess was starting to feel the same way, too.