Anonymous

“So,” Elena started Monday at school, plopping her butt next to mine at our usual lunch table in the cafeteria, “how’d it go?”

“Glad to see you’re so curious about it,” I laughed. “If you really cared that much, you would have called on Sunday.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “I didn’t call on Sunday because I was too busy running errands for my mum. Plus, I wanted to see your face when you talked about it. Tell me, Jess, are you madly in love with him? Are you going to get together and have hot sex every weekend, and have a whole little Tommo family?”

I gave her a glare as I took a bite of my sandwich. “Okay, I’m getting a condescending vibe from you right now, but I’m going to ignore it because I’m in a good mood, and I’m not going to let you ruin it.”

“Is that a yes to either of those questions?”

I snickered. “No. I’m not in love with Louis, and we’re not having hot sex.” After a short pause, I added, “Yet,” teasingly.

“Well, this just became less interesting. What happened then?”

“Nothing much. We went out for lunch, we talked a lot, we watched One Tree Hill-”

“Wait, what?” Elena interrupted, her eyes widened in absolute shock before narrowing once again to express her irritation. “I’ve been trying to get you into One Tree Hill for years, and you never gave me the chance. But all it takes is a bat of those blue eyes of his, and you do whatever he wants?”

“Pretty much,” I confirmed. “And it’s actually not that bad of a show. I started getting really absorbed in it by the end.”

Elena put a hand to her heart and sniffled a little, just to be a little more dramatic. “Words that I never thought I’d hear. Dear lord, I need to meet Louis and shake his hand.”

“He thinks you’ll cut off his balls if you meet him.”

She snorted and flipped her hair off her should before giving me an incredulous look. “Well, not anymore. He obviously makes you happy, and that makes me happy.”

“Aw, Elena!” I cooed, grinning like mad at her. “You’re just too sweet. You’re rotting my teeth right out of my skull.”

“It’s not my fault. The kid hit my weak spot.” She grumbled something unintelligible under her breath, which was definitely intentional, before she followed up with, “So which episodes did you watch? I’m sure I’ve seen them, since I’ve seen every episode ever made.”

I started to give her the best description of the episodes I could, considering it had been a little hard to concentrate while I was so close to Louis, smelling his natural boy scent, feeling the warmth of his arm around me. But she picked up the episodes immediately, finishing my plot summaries before I got out so much as a sentence.

“Ugh, you didn’t even watch any of the really great ones,” she told me exasperatedly. “We need to get together one weekend, and I’ll make you watch all my favorite episodes. It’ll be fun.”

I almost groaned from habit before sighing and saying, “Alright. If you want to.”

“Awesome!” The bell rang loudly through the open cafeteria, and everyone got to their feet, scraping their chairs across the floor, chatting and laughing, mobbing their way out into the hallway to join the rest of the school population.

Elena and I were among the last out, and we walked together to our next class, which was up a flight of stairs and down the hall. “Oh, when are seeing Louis again?” my best friend questioned suddenly, shifting around the books in her arms.

“Can you not?” I hissed, looking around at the students gathering around us. “I kind of don’t want this to get out. People might beg me for autographs or stalk my house or cut off my hair.” I really had no idea what kind of fangirls lurked around the school, so any of the options were possible.

“Please,” she scoffed, rolling her light blue-green eyes. “How many Louis’ are around here? Like, a million?”

“There are not,” I grumbled. “It’s really not that common of a name. At all.”

“Whatever. They’re not going to jump to the conclusion of Tomlinson, so it doesn’t matter. Are you going to answer my question or what?”

“I’m seeing him this afternoon. He’s coming over to the house, and we’re going to…talk to Maria about the situation.”

“What do you mean by that?” she laughed, her eyebrows pulling together in confusion through her smile.

“We’re going to try to blackmail her into staying quiet about Louis being in One Direction. Because when I introduce him to my parents, I want to pass it off like he’s a kid from school.”

“His accent is kind of different from ours,” Elena pointed out.

“My mother’s from Italy, and my father’s from Ireland. They won’t notice.”

“Oh, right. Well, good luck with that one. I can’t believe you’re already introducing him to your parents. You’ve been on one date.”

“Sure, we’ve only been on one date, but we’ve been talking for months. And it’s not like I’m walking him down the aisle.”

“Whatever you say,” she sing-songed as we walked into French together.



“Maria!” I scolded, picking up the piece of black clothing off the floor and heading to her room, where she was on her computer, watching a video game tutorial. “Will you not leave your bras lying around?” Granted, it was just a sports bra, since she thought regular bras were too girly and uncomfortable, but it was a compromise we’d had to make.

“Why?” Maria snuffed, eyeing the piece of fabric on the floor briefly before turning back to the screen. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter, actually,” I sighed. “I’m having a friend over, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to see all our girl stuff everywhere.”

“He?” Maria laughed loudly. “Wait, is this a boyfriend?”

I shook my head and turned to walk away. “Just keep your bras out of the living room.”

“Oh my God,” she gasped as she hurried out of her room after me. “How the hell did you get a boyfriend?”

“Maria, go down and play your Xbox. Don’t worry about us.” In reality, I just really didn’t want to tell her anything before Louis got there, since I knew she’d shut down the idea immediately if she knew it was just coming from me. But maybe Louis, who she just knew of would be more convincing.

“Whatever,” she snickered before disappearing down into the basement, the groan of the springs in the old couch audible when she sat down.

I wiped down the counters in the kitchen, stressing big-time about the place being clean. Although my mother was a neat freak, she hadn’t been home that day, instead spending the day shopping with my aunt, so there were a few things here and there that looked…lived-in. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Louis’ hotel room had looked so pristine, and I didn’t want him to think I was a slob.

Once I finished, I washed my hands and gnawed on my lip, checking the clock again. Three fourteen. We’d never really specified a time, but I figured he would have been at the house at three o’clock, just to be a smartass.

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and I rushed to answer it. After wiping my slightly sweaty palms off on my jeans, I pulled open the door and smiled at the boy standing there.

Instead of a hello, the first words out of his mouth were, “Let’s do this.”