Burn Me Like the Sun

“What are you doing?”

I looked up from the pile of clean laundry in my hands that I had been rifling through on the settee. I gave Fran a quick look over my shoulder before I went back to throwing clothes across the sofa, not even caring that I knocked down a pile of neatly folded t-shirts that she had left there late last night after I had retired to my bedroom to gather myself.

“I can’t find my mobile,” I muttered, scrambling to pile all the clothes back into the basket. “And I need to leave in five fucking minutes and I don’t know where I had it last.”

“Did you bring it home with you?” Fran asked, coming into the living room from the mouth of the kitchen. She had a steaming cup of tea in her hands, and her blonde hair was piled into a lazy bun at the top of her head. “Maybe it fell between the cushions last night. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time—”

I started frantically digging my hands between the cushions mid-sentence, but all I dredged up were a few crumbs and a five pence coin. In my frenzied search, Fran had made her way to the arm of the settee, where she sat down precariously on our second-hand love seat, her eyes focused on me as I rushed to find my dreaded, aged mobile.

“Fuck. It’s not here.” I tossed up my hands after pocketing the coin, turning to face Fran as my expression crumbled. “I must have left it in Harry’s car.”

“Oi,” she quietly muttered, rolling her eyes. “Do you want me to call him? I have his number.”

“Of course you have Harry Styles’s number,” I mumbled distantly, piling Fran’s shirts back together before I could start to feel guilty for making such a mess.

“Shush, now. Do you want me to call him or not?”

I shook my head and brushed past Fran for the kitchen, where I’d left my rucksack and the last half of the granola bar that I’d eaten before I remembered that I hadn’t grabbed my mobile. I slipped my bag over my shoulder and snatched my breakfast in one hand, reaching for my thermos and its lid next to our aged coffee maker with the other. “I can call him when you get back from class,” I offered, screwing the lid onto my coffee in one swift motion and popping open the top. “But right now I’m about five seconds away from having my name written in permanent ink on Lassiter’s shit list and losing my chance of getting a double first by this time next year.”

Fran rushed to plant a sloppy goodbye kiss on my cheek before I flew out of the kitchen, a little coffee dripping onto my hand as I ran to the front door and pulled it open.

I laughed heartily at the sight that greeted me, throwing my head back as I grinned scathingly. “You must be shitting me, mate.”

Louis had his fist raised to the door as though he were about to knock, his mouth agape in surprise. My heart hammered at the absolute sight of him, dressed head-to-toe in black save for his slippers, a faded maroon number with scuff marks at the toes. His hair was a mess atop his head and I could see the reddish stubble poking through his upper lip and chin. He looked proper exhausted, his eyes puffy and his skin shining under the fluorescents with sleep oil.

“Blake,” he finally got out after I’d circled around him, not even caring that my rucksack nailed him in the gut. I shut the door behind me, not bothering to lock it while Fran was still inside, and headed straight for the stairwell, Louis hot on my heels.

“Blake,” he tried again, his voice hitching just as I pulled open the heavy door to the stairs. It shut behind me quickly, but not before Louis stuck his hand out last second, pulling it back open with one eager thrust.

“Blake, please, just listen to me!” he pleaded from the top of the stairs.

I skidded to a halt at the platform between the floors, looking straight up at Louis. He had one hand planted firmly on the rail, his other hand working to make a more tangled mess of his hair, which was already a bird’s nest to begin with.

I twisted my rucksack over to my hip, depositing my granola bar into the nearest pocket I could grapple at without looking down. I’d suddenly lost my appetite, and I was sure my coffee would go cold and untouched for the rest of the morning, as I was definitely awake now with the welcome surge of anger that was throttling through me, a shot of adrenaline following every heartbeat.

“You don’t deserve it.” I laughed bitterly, taking one step back up the stairs. He visibly flinched, his fingers dancing nervously on the rail. “You’re a fucking joke, Louis Tomlinson.”

He didn’t argue. He just stood there, staring me down, his eyes wide and sad and pleading. He swallowed once, his lips parting and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he struggled to wet his throat.

“Blake—”

“And what’s worse is that I actually fell for it,” I admitted slowly, taking another step. I fumbled with the lid on my coffee, staring down at my trainers.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he finally sputtered, his voice, thick with sleep, coming out like a backfiring engine.

“Oh my god,” I exclaimed quietly, looking off to the side.

“I am!” he promised. He chanced a step forward, but I took a step down as well, making him freeze in place. “I-I regretted it the second you walked into the room. When I saw you, I just felt so worthless. And you were just so… So happy.” I swallowed hard, rubbing my lips together. “Honestly, I couldn’t even breathe.”

The softest whimper escaped my throat, instantly chased by a blush that stained the tips of my ears. I took an unsteady sip of my coffee and cleared my throat before I continued like he hadn’t just admitted everything like that, like all of this was just one giant regret to him.

“But it wasn’t just last night, was it?” I challenged. When he didn’t answer, I took another sip of my coffee to appear nonchalant, even though it felt like I was standing knee-deep in a pile of quicksand while Louis stood by, emotionless and unnerved as I begged for him to pull me out of the trap he’d built himself. I licked my lips, messing with the lid again. “You’ve been using me this whole time, haven’t you?”

He let my words echo around us in the stairwell, and it felt like I had been standing there and staring at my thermos for hours before he said anything.

“Blake…”

My head shot up, shaking whatever front I’d decided to slap on, and I clenched my teeth, muttering sharply, “Just answer the question, Louis.”

He breathed in deeply, his chest rising under his black t-shirt, the uneven sleeves of which he’d sloppily rolled up. “Yes.”

I laughed once, but he continued anyway.

“But not this whole time!” he explained quickly, ignoring me as I groaned and rolled my eyes. “We were starting to become mates, and I thought… I-I thought…”

“You thought you could play me like I was just another bloody piano? Is that what you thought?”

“No!” he gasped, creeping down another step. I reciprocated, stumbling back onto the landing.

“Don’t you dare come any closer, you insufferable wanker,” I seethed. “I’ll fucking smash your teeth in, and your dentist will certainly have his work cut out for him then.”

His face crumbled, and he reached up and dug his fingers into his temples. For a second, it looked like he might cry, and the sight made me feel a new kind of powerful yet still brittle and hollow to the core, like I was carrying the weight of the world with the bones of a sparrow.

“But, in the hall...” he started, sounding hopeful and all at once defensive. “Weren’t you the one letting me run your hands through my hair? Weren’t you the one that was telling me I should step up my game?”

“Yes, I was!” I agreed heatedly. I scrambled up the stairs until I was just a couple of steps away from Louis, far enough that I wouldn’t be able to take a swing at his unusually dour face but close enough that I could smell the leftover stench of alcohol mixed with his ginger cologne. “But finding out that the only reason you wanted to keep me around to begin with was to make Vic jealous – that’s the issue!”

The shame hit Louis so hard that I thought he might double over with exhaustion. His eyebrows instantly pinched together, his nose scrunching up as he turned his gaze to his slippers.

“God, Lou, there’s not much I wouldn’t do for my mates, but our entire friendship has been built on something that never fucking existed. You never wanted to be my friend. You wanted me to serve a bloody purpose!”

“But—”

“Had yer fuckin’ gob and listen to me!” I shouted, my anger getting the best of me as I stamped my foot. “Just because I said it was a purpose I wouldn’t mind helping you out with because we’re friends doesn’t mean I want it to be the reason we’re friends in the first place!”

He looked absolutely floored, almost in the need of taking a seat on the stairs. My chest was rising and falling at a quick pace, and my fingers buzzed with an onslaught of fresh adrenaline.

I licked my lips, watching Louis as he ducked his head shamefully, his fingers tracing the outline of the rope tattoo that curled around his wrist. I stared at him carefully, my ensuing words rolling out in droves, each one hitting him so hard that he was sure to stumble backwards.

“There’s a bloody difference, Louis. You’re just too thick in the head to see it.”

I scampered back down the steps before I could watch his reaction, before he could say another word, before he could argue any further. I felt sick and flustered and shattered, like I had a mechanical claw stuck in my chest, twisting and crunching my ribs until I could hardly breathe. My hand slid down the handrail as I spun around to start back down the second set of steps to the floor below, my head throbbing with each step. But before my feet hit the landing, Louis finally spoke, his voice strangled and crackling like a brilliant, terrifying wildfire.

“Thanks for enlightening me.”

I paused for only a brief moment, dragging my lower lip between my teeth as I replayed his words in my head. They snarled inside my brain like little monsters, dragging their claws against the back of my head, leaving tender marks in their path. They stretched to the hollow of my throat, scratching me raw until it felt like I’d suddenly stopped time and swallowed the sand from the hourglass itself.

So this is where we’re ending it, I thought bitterly. “Thanks for enlightening me.”

Out of all the scenarios that I’d ever played over in my head thinking how our friendship might inevitably end, this had definitely never crossed my mind – my dignity shattered, anger throttling through me like a drug. Louis giving up on me. I never thought he’d just quit. I’d always thought that I’d push him far enough away so I’d have a head start in order to shake him off before I scrambled out of his grasp.

I was right about everything, except for the part where Louis stopped trying.

The thought made me cringe, and my stomach started to swoop back and forth, hitting my spine and making it nearly impossible to ignore the urge to double over. He still looked like the same infuriating, annoying, albeit charming bloke I knew just twenty-four hours before, and it made me sick. I wanted to escape. I just wanted to get as far away from Louis as possible. He was nothing more than a sour memory of all the time I’d wasted.

I finally unclenched my fingers from the handrail, my knuckles a ghastly white, and before Louis could leave me behind and shove his own grand departure in my face, I sprinted down the stairs, fast enough that I ended up tripping down a couple steps before I finally hit the ground floor, my whole body inflamed.

I was lucky enough not to completely lose my footing and smash my face in, but even if I had, at least I’d still have beaten him to the bottom.

|||

“What did you want to do for lunch?”

Fran shrugged next to me, flipping through the channels for what felt like the tenth time. When I suggested a movie when she got home from class, she flat-out refused, claiming there was a Hollyoaks marathon block on in just a few minutes. What turned out to be a marathon was just a recap of all the episodes from last week, all of which Fran had already seen twice over. We resorted to channel flipping, as I was too snug in the corner of the love seat with a quilt covering my legs to move and search for a movie for the both of us in my mess of a room. Fran was too eager to agree, as I tended to watch the same films with her when we were bored.

“Full monty if you’re up for it,” she suggested offhandedly, her fingers stilling on the remote when she landed on an entertainment news show.

I hummed once. “Got the rest of that leftover loaf from Liam’s. I think we have another can of beans. Maybe some tomatoes, but that’s it. Can you do without sausage?”

“I suppose. You know I’d rather Harry Styles’s sausage for lunch anyway,” she muttered, smirking a little.

I groaned and reached over to punch her in the shoulder. “You and Niall have the same exact sense of humor. Why don’t you go after him instead?”

She rubbed the spot where I’d hit her, shrugging once. “I guess you have a point. I gotta keep my options… open?”

Fran stuttered to a stop, her eyebrow quirking as she eyed her mobile on the coffee table. She snatched it up before I could see who was ringing her, her fingers fumbling to accept the call.

“I hope some twat hasn’t stolen your mobile in a fucking horrible effort to weasel his way past me for my best mate in a fit of half-arsed apologies.”

I swallowed hard, aiming my eyes at my feet. I hadn’t told Fran about Louis running into me this morning, but I was sure she’d heard his voice. It wasn’t like he was a quiet bloke to begin with, and he had hurtled my name after me down the corridor a few times. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had been planning on asking me about it while I was stuck behind the hotplate making lunch. I’d change the subject or lock myself in my room if she asked me any other time, but I’d surely be anchored to our lack of stove, and Fran knew it. Just the thought of her cornering me made me want to skip out on lunch altogether and lock myself in my room while I still had the chance.

“It’s for you.”

I snapped out from my daze and looked up, eyeing my best mate bemusedly.

“Who?”

She shot me a concerned look, her eyes dark with disquiet, before handing me her mobile and pushing off the sofa, heading straight for the kitchen.

I took a glimpse at the caller ID before I brought it to my ear, already knee-deep in a panic, my brain twisting in all sorts of directions. It was Liam’s face on the screen, a photo Fran must’ve snapped at his flat last week, but I couldn’t be so sure that it was Liam who was actually calling. I wouldn’t put it past Louis if he had hijacked one of his mates’ iPhones when he saw I hadn’t answered my own mobile all morning. In fact, he probably had called me before he came by earlier. Either Harry found my mobile in his Range Rover and hidden it somewhere Louis couldn’t find it or he hadn’t come by it just yet.

I could only hope Harry was smarter than I’d initially pegged him and turned it off and hidden it deep inside his sock drawer. The last thing I needed was Louis finding another excuse to see me again sitting in Harry’s cup holder.

But all of those possibilities didn’t stop me from biting out a heavy threat when I brought Fran’s relatively ancient iPhone up to my ear.

“I swear, you twat, you’re just making it harder for me to swallow the urge to throttle you the next time I see you.”

I heard a laugh on the other end, full and faintly nervous. “I knew you were angry with me, but I didn’t know you were that angry.”

“Fuck,” I mumbled, holding my head in my hand. “I’m sorry, I should’ve known. Liam?”

“I think you’re giving Louis more credit than he deserves,” he said. “I know you’ve only known him for like two months, but you should’ve noticed by now that he’s not always as smart as you peg him to be.”

“He tricked me, didn’t he?” I offered softly, glancing at Fran as she came back into the living room, two glasses of water in her hands. She offered me one, and I took it, gulping down as much as I could before I felt like I was drowning, as my throat had gone dry in the anticipation that Louis had slipped his way past Fran.

“Because he’s an idiot.” Liam sighed. “It doesn’t mean you’ve got no brains to speak of, Blake. It doesn’t say shit about you but it says loads about him.”

I took another careful sip of water, nodding my thanks to Fran, who had settled herself on the coffee table. She kept her eyes on me, silently supportive and abuzz with curiosity.

“Why did you call Fran, then? Did Harry tell you I forgot my mobile in his car?”

“No, no, I haven’t heard from Harry since last night after I dealt with Louis.”

“What do you mean you dealt with Louis?” I balked, setting my water down. Fran’s eyes widened, and she scooted closer on the edge of the coffee table.

“Try not to sound so surprised,” he said, laughing awkwardly. “I confronted him, yeah. I couldn’t help it. That’s actually why I called. I didn’t know if you were going to answer your own mobile, because, well… Anyway, so I thought I’d try Fran’s. I wanted to see if you wanted to have lunch. Just you and me. I wanted to talk.”

I snorted like I’d just sprouted horns and someone had flashed a blood-red handkerchief in front of my face. “You want to talk, do you? Well, there’s not much stopping you right now, mate. You’ve got me here,” I reminded him, my voice rising subtly. “Tell me – truthfully now, Liam – did you know what he was doing?”

He sucked in deep breath, weighing his answer against how much of my anger he thought he could handle. I didn’t put it past him, as I’d given quite a show. “No,” he quickly promised, his voice softening. “I’ll leave it at that for now, but I swear I’ll explain everything. As long as you promise to meet me.”

“I’m not in the mood for getting accosted by the paparazzi again, if you haven’t noticed,” I shot back sourly, instantly regretting it when I heard Liam sigh dolefully.

“Oh, I’ve noticed.” He chuckled a little, though it was strained and gruff. “That’s why I’m letting you choose where we meet up.”

I smiled to myself, a warm surge of appreciation making my heart swell as I glanced up at Fran and hummed once. “I hope you feel like driving.”