Burn Me Like the Sun

It felt like someone had given me a grease facial as I slept. The puffiness under my eyes still hadn’t disappeared, even though I finally got more than two hours of sleep. But it didn’t help that I kept tossing and turning all night, eventually kicking my sheets to the end of my bed and grabbing a second pillow from the linen closet. I think it was the guilt that was keeping me awake.

Harry was the first to text me once I got my mobile back. Soon after, Niall and Zayn and Liam all piled in as well, though it was only the tiny Irishman that kept it up after three straight days of complete silence on my end. While Harry had only offered to take me out for a pint when I was feeling up to it, acutely aware of the fact that I needed space, Niall was the complete opposite. He first started with offering to take me out for food – first burritos, then Chinese takeaway, then pub grub and drinks – and all his treat, no matter the time, place, or price. When I didn’t respond, he resorted to sending me as many selfies as my ancient mobile could handle on the theory that I couldn’t ignore his “mopey face for long.” Liam soon got wind that I was ignoring Niall’s flurry of texts and admittedly adorable selfies as well, and relied on guilt to get me to text him back, claiming that ignoring the four of them wasn’t going to work.

But I definitely couldn’t be swayed to text them back. That was my plan, and I was going to stick to it.

After all, I finally got Louis to promise to leave me alone, even at such a steep price as letting him drive me to my lecture, so I couldn’t exactly stop by his house on my way to work one day and give him a drive-by scolding for snooping through my mobile. I figured that since I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore, or the rest of the boys from One Direction, it was best to leave it alone and move on. Or at least try to.

Though it was definitely difficult to do that when I got a new picture of Niall Horan pulling a weird face almost every hour, on the hour.

Fridays were always my chance to sleep in. My schedule was meticulously filled up Monday through Thursday, with my weekends free for Veal on Wheels and coursework. While Fran had an ongoing reserved time slot at the labs at Met every Saturday, for the better part of the semester she had started to sneak in on Friday mornings as well with a couple of classmates to get some work out of the way. So when I stumbled over a pile of dirty t-shirts and some socks on my way out of my room on Friday morning, I didn’t expect to hear her voice travelling down the corridor from the kitchen.

“I just can’t believe he did that.”

I squinted in the light coming from the bathroom and reached up to rub the sleep from my eyes. I stumbled forward, catching myself on the doorjamb before I shut off the light. I took careful steps across the shag carpet, brushing my fingers against the walls as I walked.

“Why do you think he’s reacting like this?”

I stopped suddenly, just a few feet from the kitchen, my interest piqued. I could hear sizzling and some shuffling, and then the scent of eggs reached my nose. Fran definitely hadn’t heard me stumble from my bedroom just seconds before, and with the way she was talking, her voice hushed when it usually reached such a volume that I sometimes thought I might need to be fitted for a hearing aid fifty years early, she really didn’t want me to listen in on her conversation. I usually slept in on Fridays, so for her to whisper like she was in a church obviously meant she was trying to hide something.

So much as a grumble from my empty stomach and Fran would hear me, so I stepped back behind the edge of the shadow the doorway created and focused on evening out my breathing.

I heard some dishes clink together, along with the scrape of silverware before Fran finally spoke again. “I just don’t know if he’s noticed yet. Blake definitely hasn’t.”

My face puckered just the slightest as I slumped against the wall. Fran had to be talking to one of the lads. It wasn’t like she was in constant contact with my father, or god forbid my mother, who now had plenty to say to me after my mobile went MIA for two days. She mostly ranted about how she was so worried about the press, especially after all the photos of me escaping the benefit hand-in-hand with Harry had popped up the next morning, along with a string of suggestive headlines.

There was some more clanking of dishes, and before I could even think of dragging my feet across the carpet to hide in the loo or stumble back into my room, Fran had rounded into the corridor, nearly slamming straight into me.

She reeled back at the last second, her jaw slack, and mumbled into her iPhone, “I’ll have to call you back, love.”

“Morning,” I croaked, brushing my finger under my nose. I sniffed once and nodded towards the kitchen. “Did you actually make yourself breakfast and manage to not burn the place down?”

“I was hungry,” Fran explained quickly, eyeing me reservedly. “And you were asleep. Or at least I thought you were.”

I shrugged, watching her as she circled around me and made her way to her bedroom, pushing open the door. I followed slowly as Fran beckoned me to join her, waving me inside around the edge of the doorway.

“Not exactly. I’ve had a rough couple of nights,” I mumbled, blinking rapidly under the lights as I stepped foot into Fran’s room.

I always felt like I had to wear sunglasses just to stand in her bedroom, as it was always bright and open, and it always smelled like lemon furniture polish. The walls were clear of anything but white paint, and her bed was always made with fresh sheets. But the only thing that stuck out from the rest of her meticulously clean room was her desk, which was just a concentrated replica of my own bedroom. There were stacks of notebooks and filler paper and old calculators and pencils and batteries and Kleenex strewn about everywhere. Foil-wrapped gum was stashed in every available place, and there wasn’t even that much extra room to begin with. Tea mugs would hang around her Mac like she was planning a séance last minute, all with old tea bags hanging off the lip. But despite the chaos, there was always room made for a couple of framed pictures on top of the hutch: one was of us last year at a catering gig, all sweaty and bright-eyed; another was with some of her mates from college. At the other end were two more pictures set in a double frame hinged together – one with her parents on some beach and another picture of her older brother Lucas.

“How much sleep did you get last night?” she asked, sifting through a stack of graded papers that teetered precariously on the edge of her desk. “Because right before I went to bed, I could’ve sworn I heard the Star Wars theme coming from the living room.”

I gave a stiff shrug. “I had to finish my marathon.”

She clicked her tongue and shook her head, giving me a look over her shoulder.

“What! You know how much I love the ewoks.”

“I’m just worried,” she told me, finally fishing out an essay from the stack. She grabbed a felt pen from a mesh cup and circled something on the page, then watched me carefully as she tossed the pen back onto her desk without a second look. “You know, that you’re not handling everything well?”

I crossed my arms and stumbled to her bed, plopping down on the mattress. “Handling what well?”

She sighed, flipping through the pages in her hands. “Louis using you. The way he keeps popping up like a bloody weed.” She sat down on her desk chair, twisting it around and pushing herself to the foot of her bed as she looked at me intently. “I mean, does that really mean you have to give up the rest of the lads?” she asked quietly, her hands folded on top of the paper in her lap.

“I’m not,” I grunted, my voice weak and defensive to my own ears. “I just need some space.”

“Love,” she started, chuckling cynically, “if space is what you need, you’re gonna have to smuggle yourself on the next rocket to the moon, because nowhere on this godforsaken earth will you be able to distance yourself from that ragtag group of idiotic boys and get away with it.”

My face crumbled and I shot Fran a cowed look. “I just feel so useless,” I finally admitted after taking a moment to double over and pull my knees to my chest. “I try so hard to keep myself safe from crap like this. And I just… I don’t want to feel like a stupid little kid again, but I can’t shake that feeling.”

“Then why do you insist on dropping the other blokes like dead weight?” she asked slowly, watching her hands in her lap. “They’ve done nothing wrong – in fact, the exact opposite.” She looked up, smiling encouragingly. “You’ve told me so yourself, love.”

I set my chin on my knees and watched Fran as she went back to playing with her fingers. She was clearly nervous, but about what, I had no clue. She never shied away from confronting me. “The idea is that if I distance myself from the rest of them, I won’t chance another encounter with Louis.” She finally met my gaze, her eyebrows cinched together tightly. “It’s simple, really.”

She cleared her throat and looked back down at the essay in her lap. “He’s not giving up, is he?”

“I gave him an inch and he took a thousand miles.” I paused, pinching the hem of my shorts between my fingers. “But he might now. He promised he would, anyway. That’s why I let him drive me to class.” Fran sighed, looking the same kind of distraught when I came home after class that day and told her what had happened. “It was his idea, alreet!” I promised, tossing up a hand.

Fran pressed her lips together, like she was trying to hold back a scolding. “Honestly?” she finally breathed out, watching me, almost waiting for my reaction. “None of this surprises me. He likes you a lot, Blake.”

I scoffed, pressing my cheek to my knees as I worked my fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. “I wish he didn’t. It would make getting rid of the rest of them a whole lot easier.”

“Why don’t you call them back, then?” she pressed. “At least let them know why you’re being so distant in the first place?”

I gave her a flat look. “That would defeat the entire purpose, Fran.”

Fran groaned, then twisted around in her seat, tossing her essay back onto her Oscar the Grouch-inspired desk. “Jesus, Blake, you’re always so upfront and honest with everyone, but when it comes to the hard things, you become the same quiet girl I met my first day at Met.” She sprung forward, pushing her chair back to her desk, and rounded on me, her hands set on her hips as she gave me a defiant look. “You’re not spineless, I know you’re not, so why are you acting so scared?”

I snapped my hand back from my hair. My stomached lurched forward and it felt like I was nursing a hangover with the sudden jolt that shot through my body, rendering my throat dry and my jaw slack.

“He means too much to you. They all do. Haven’t you realized it yet?”

I bit down hard on my lower lip as my stomached reeled again. “They don’t,” I lied, my words clipped. “They don’t. They’re just a stupid bunch of boys. They mean nowt to me. I don’t…” My voice broke and I cleared my throat as I shook my head, my eyes wide. “I don’t need them. At all, alreet? Especially like that.”

Fran shook her head dejectedly and reached over to squeeze my shoulder. I flinched, instinctively pulling back from her touch. She looked sad for a moment, her eyes soft and narrowed, before she took a seat on her bed next to me, pulling me into her side. She didn’t care that my hair was greasy and that I probably smelled like a pair of trainers, and rubbed my arm as she kissed my hair. “You suck at lying.”

I made a noise, nuzzling my head into her patterned blouse as she chuckled. Of course, not five seconds later and I was already entertaining the idea of what I’d say to Harry over drinks, as much as the idea made me want to toss my mobile into the nearest body of water. Fran could do that to anyone – make them change their minds when they’d fight so hard against it. She was cunning and convincing, and even though I was well aware of that fact, I still couldn’t help it. Fran could get me to do things other people wouldn’t be able to even if they brought back Roger Ebert from the dead. Sometimes I hated her for it, like now, but never had I regretted letting her change my mind. She had this infuriating knack for always being right.

“I can’t just, I don’t know, give ‘em all a ring and ask ‘em out for drinks. I have a prospectus and some reading and another fuckin’ essay for Lassiter, and I just—I’m not ready, not yet.”

She hummed and patted my hair, smoothing it over and twisting a few short strands between her fingers. “I know you’re not. But when you are, you know they’ll still be waiting for you.”

Even though I didn’t say it, I knew Fran was right. They would be.

|||

“That better be someone coming to tell us there’s a fire next door, because it is far too bloody early for me to be awake.”

I was only able to make a noise of agreement, as I was still half asleep, with my face puffier than a marshmallow and my hair tickling my eyes. Judging from the taste in my mouth, which thankfully hadn’t yet soured through the night, and the fact that there was no sunlight seeping through the hallway window, it couldn’t have been later than 6:00 in the morning. I pressed my forehead against my doorjamb, watching Fran as she grabbed her robe from the hook in the bathroom and tied it closed, mumbling obscenities under her breath.

The knocking had been going on for almost an entire minute straight once Fran sashayed to the door. I trailed behind slowly, nearly tripping over my own feet a couple of times as I felt my way through the dim hallway, which was only lit by the lamp in Fran’s room. She barely took a glance through the peephole before she yanked the door open, the air fanning her robe around her ankles.

A portly man in stained dungarees and a mustache peered down at Fran, the graying whiskers on his face quirking up just the slightest as his fist dropped back down to his side. He had a toolbox in his other hand, a hefty, black plastic thing that looked like it could hold a large enough picnic to feed my next catering event.

“This flat under Eaton?” he grumbled, his voice low and thick.

“Aye,” I answered, staggering past Fran as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Who’re you?”

“Joe Coyne. Electrician.” He swiped at his mustache and tugged at his name tag clipped to his undershirt, eyeing Fran and I hesitantly. “Night watch let me in. I’m here to fix your cooker.”

“Did management hire you?” Fran asked exasperatedly, leaning against the door. “Because if they did, there’s no way we’re paying for it. Like, we literally can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Nah, nah,” he drawled. He reached for his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled invoice slip, pushing it towards me as he set down his tool box. I glanced at it before handing it to Fran, then crossed my arms, fixing the man with a hefty stare. He stuck his thumbs into his braces and eyed the both of us expectantly, like Fran and I knew exactly what he was talking about.

In the least, I had a clue. There were only a handful of people that knew our cooker was broken, and there was only one person that would actually pay someone to fix it and not let us know ahead of time.

“Bloke gave me a ring, told me he’d pay me up front to fix it,” he explained tiredly. He was close enough that I could smell the coffee on his breath. “Said he mucked up the wiring quite a bit.”

I clenched my teeth. Of course.

“I mean, if you lasses don’t want me here or nuthin’, that’s fine. I’ve been paid already. Quite handsomely, so I got no qualms.”

I glanced at Fran, but she had her lower lip caught between her teeth as she tried to bite back an outright grin. She was over the moon even though she hardly ever used the stove in the first place.

“He mentioned there might be a little extra in it for me if I actually got to fixin’ it. Was willing to bet some feisty ginger would kick me out before I even got past the doorway,” he explained to Fran, shooting me a glance from under his heavy brow.

“This bloke got a name?” Fran asked, handing back the invoice slip and crossing her arms.

I tensed beside her, my hands curling into fists as I looked off to the side. From where I was standing, I had a clear view of the kitchen, and even in the dark, I could still see the mess of wires that had been teasing me for the past few weeks, which were still hanging over the lid of the stove. As much as I wanted to say no to the electrician on our doorstep, Fran would most definitely invite him in, maybe even offer to make him a cup of tea while he was working. And as much as I hated to admit it, I kind of missed having a full-working stove and oven. It’d been weeks since I’d made anything other than a fry-up or pasta of some sort. I missed baking and making bread from scratch, and it drove me mad just thinking about how much longer I’d have to go without if I sent the electrician on his way.

So before the man could mutter Louis’s name, I invited him in, squarely ignoring the excited, sleep-coated, smug smirk Fran had aimed my way.

“I’m only doing this because I want the bastard to dig a little in those deep pockets of his,” I muttered under my breath. “Maybe he’ll dredge up some common sense while he’s at it.”

Fran snorted, shooting me a knowing look. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Oi, what’s that look for?” I challenged, poking her in one of her cheeks as she shut the door.

Her face fell into such an innocent expression that could challenge any portrait of the Virgin Mary. “What?”

“That look, like you know what’s going to happen like some bloody palm reader.”

She shrugged once, reaching over and turning on the hallway light as the electrician made his way towards the kitchen doorway. “Fine. You want to know what I think?”

“Desperately.”

She sucked in her lips, shaking her head a little. “Your ego is going to get in the way, and you’re going to confront him about it because you hate it when people try to help you.” She pointed at me, narrowing her eyes. “Especially when you don’t even ask. And he knows all of this, because he’s a hell of a lot smarter than you peg him to be, and you’re just going to fall right into his little trap.”

I nabbed her finger, which she still had pointed at me, and shoved her hand back down to her side, pulling the most exhausted look I could muster. I even managed to let out a yawn and stretched my arms behind me, all the while giving Fran a pointed look.

“Could you wake me up before you leave for the lab? I’ve got work this afternoon.”

And then I went back to bed and spent the rest of the morning staring at my ceiling as I listened to the electrician work on my stove, the smile on my face not faltering one bit until I finally left for work.

Because the second I stepped out the door, I finally realized what I’d done.