Us Against the World.

I just watched Louis pulling Quinn away with a secret smile. Was it weird that I was feeling a little too excited over how easily they bonded with each other? Liam and Sophia had also walked off somewhere, leaving only me, Harry, Niall, Zayn and Perrie. I turned to my right when I felt someone nudging my side and smiled questioningly at Harry who was giving me a look. “What?” I asked. He just shook his head, grinning widely. I tilted my head to the side and poked on his cheek, grinning. “Do you know that dimples are actually a form of facial muscles defect?” I stated, laughing as Harry’s face fell and a pout formed on his lower lip.

“People like these dimples,” he retorted, frowning and I had to laugh at that, pulling my hand and brushed my hair out of my face.

“I’m not saying that I don’t like them. I just think it’s interesting that something that’s supposed to be a defect can be something pretty,” I replied, shrugging. He smiled again at my words and looked away. I thought I caught him blushing but decided to ignore it.

“Hey, check this out,” Niall said, showing me his phone. My eyebrows knitted together as I saw Louis had tweeted a photo of them hanging out at our flat last night. There were a lot of retweets and replies. Most of them wanting to know who the two girls in the picture. “I must say I looked amazing in that pic,” Harry commented, carefree as ever. “You have Twitter account, Mel?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I haven’t been on it for months,” I replied distractedly and I was glad for that. Not many people know of my Twitter and I knew Louis definitely didn’t follow me so he couldn’t tag me if he decided to post another pictures of us. Quinn had gained thousands of followers just because of a little picture she took with Louis and I didn’t want that. My tweets were mostly me ranting about my boss and they were mostly pretty embarrassing.

“Give me your username. I want to follow you,” Harry said.

“MelTheGreat,” I replied and received a snicker from both Niall and Harry. Harry took out his phone, opened the Twitter app and typed in my name. “Done!” he announced, beaming. “Your last tweet was two months ago!”

“I told you I haven’t been active on it. I’m busy with work and all,” I replied.

“So Harry said you work as a technician,” Perrie interjected, linking her arm with Zayn’s and leaned her body towards him. Zayn just smiled sweetly at her. I nodded. “How’s it?”

“It’s alright, I guess,” I answered vaguely, shrugging. “You two look cute together,” I commented, gesturing towards both her and Zayn. They looked at each other and I could see the care through the way they stared at each other and I felt like I was intruding in some intimate moment or something.

“Thanks,” Zayn replied bashfully, looking down. “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. I bit my lower lip at Zayn’s question. I really didn’t like talking about my personal life with anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I loved making new friends but I wasn’t the kind of person that open up easily. I was a friendly person, I could make friends even if I were thrown into a sea of people in the middle of nowhere. But that didn’t mean I was comfortable talking about myself. Usually, I would just throw in some random jokes or some interesting trivia I read on the net or in the magazines to use as a conversation starter.

“No, I don’t,” I replied shortly, trying to make my smile seem less forceful. Harry put his arm around my shoulder and blinded me with his usual bright smile. “Come on, let’s walk around,” he said, inclining his head towards the fair. I glanced over towards Zayn and Perrie who by now had completely ignored the rest of the world as they stood facing each other with their foreheads touching and whispering things to each other. I didn’t want to intrude that so I followed Harry, waving off to Niall who was still scrolling through his phone, occasionally snickering. I hoped he wasn’t reading any of my tweets.

Harry took me to a stall selling cotton candies and bought me one. I wanted to pay but he insisted so I just accepted it. “Louis told me you have sweet tooth,” he said as we walked side by side, me pinching the cotton candy and put it in my mouth, smiling around my fingers. He chuckled and ran his fingers through his curls.

“Want some?” I asked, offering him the cotton candy. He accepted it and we shared it together. “A haunted house,” I stated as we stood in front of a tent. There was a ‘Haunted House’ sign at the entrance and in the poster, there were various pictures of what could be expected to be in there. Harry turned to look at me mischievously and raised his eyebrows at me. “What?”

“Want to go in?” he inquired. I bit my lip and looked at him in doubt.

“I don’t know. This seems lame,” I replied.

“Come on, it’s just for fun. Besides, if you get too scared, I’m here, you know,” he said, thrusting out his chest and patting it lightly a couple of times. I laughed and slapped his arm playfully.

“Trust me, I’m not scared,” I responded, shaking my head and let him lead the way towards the Haunted House.

*~*~*~*~*~*

I was laughing too hard that I had to clutch onto my stomach. Apparently, the Haunted House was proven to be too much for the young boy. As soon as we got in, we were greeted with lame eerie background music that was always used in horror movies. Then, there were these women in white and supposedly blood spots on their clothes. And there was a little girl with gross-looking doll. All in all, I had to say, my initial thought was right. This place was lame. But Harry had screamed out loud when a vampire suddenly appeared from a coffin that was perched on the wall near the entrance. And he had clutched on my hand so tight when something flew pass our heads.

By the time we walked through the exit, Harry’s face was almost white as if he had seen real ghosts in there. “You okay, there, kiddo?” I asked, trying to contain my laughter. Somewhere in the haunted house, my cotton candy had dropped because Harry had accidentally knocked my hand when he was too shocked as a mummy appeared before us. Harry glared at me accusingly.

“You’re the one who’s supposed to get scared,” he said, pouting slightly.

“I told you, I wasn’t scared,” I replied with a shrug. “Come on, let’s get blood back to that pretty face,” I continued, pulling on his hand and dragged him forward. After a couple of minutes of walking, Harry’s face had somewhat returned to its normal colour and he was now laughing with me.

“That was pretty embarrassing. Please don’t tell anyone about it,” he pleaded.

“I promise,” I said, crossing my chest in all seriousness but it didn’t last long as we both ended up laughing again. Harry suddenly stopped and tugged at my arm. I shot him a quizzical look. He pointed ahead and my head perked up in excitement.

“Want to get on that?” he asked.

“It’s so cliché, going to a carnival and getting on a Ferris wheel,” I replied just to be difficult but I kept the smile on my face to let him know that I was only joking. He gave me a lopsided smile.

“You don’t like cliché?”

“Are you kidding me? I love cliché.” As those words left my mouth, he linked his fingers with mine and pulled me towards the long line of people waiting to get on the ride. As we stood behind an older couple, I withdrew my hand from his grip and turned away when he shot me a questioning look. “Anyway,” I started after a few minutes of silence. We moved forward a few steps and the line moved. Harry waited so I continued. “Thanks for coming over last night,” I said sincerely, looking up at him with a genuine smile on my face. He scratched the back of his head and bit down on his lower lip.

“I just wanted to cheer you up. Did it work?” I nodded. “Good. Do you mind me asking why you were so upset?” The smile on my face faltered a bit as I pressed my lips tight. As if sensing my unwillingness, he quickly put both his palms in front of him. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” he said quickly. I gave him a small smile.

“It’s just… it’s not that important,” I replied finally, shrugging. There’s no reason for him to know about my little boring problems. I ignored the look he was giving me as we moved further along the line. After about fifteen minutes, we got onto the gondola. We took seats next to each other. Then, it started moving.

“Are you a spy?” His question caught me off guard as I sputtered and just looked at him as if he had grown two heads. Where did this come from? “It’s just that I feel like it’s too hard to get to know you. You’re pretty friendly and you can joke around but when we get to actually talk about you, you would try to change the topic or you would just avoid it all together,” he continued, frowning. “Come on, let’s get to know each other better.” I quirked an eyebrow at his direction and he smiled. “Let’s play twenty questions game.”

“That’s really childish, Harry,” I responded, smirking.

“Come on!”

“Really. Besides, I’m not all that interesting. I bet you’ll run out of question after the first one,” I said.

“Just humour me, okay?” Staring into those green eyes, I finally sighed in defeat and muttered a quiet ‘fine’. He beamed so bright and then the smile vanished when suddenly the gondola stopped moving. “What happened?”

“Is that considered as the first question?” I asked playfully. But seeing the serious look on his face, I just patted his knees comfortingly. “The wheel may be stuck. No worries, it happens all the time at carnivals like this. We’ll be fine as long as no one decides to be Superman and tries to fly or something,” I explained easily.

“Aren’t you even a little scared? We’re at the highest gondola, you know.” I shook my head. He let out a sigh. “Well, at least we have the game to occupy ourselves,” he said decidedly. I rolled my eyes at that. This kid was persistent, there’s no doubt about that. “So first question, your favorite movie?”

“Don’t laugh,” I warned and he nodded. “Lion King,” I replied, fighting the urge to blush. He cooed and I swatted him away, making him laugh. “I hate you,” I said without venom in my voice as I laughed along with him.

“Who knows the mighty and brave Melanie has a soft spot for children tale.”

“Oh, shut up. It’s an amazing movie about family and courage,” I defended myself. “My turn.” I made a thinking face for a moment and stared at him for a while. “Haven’t you ever thought of cutting your hair short?” I asked randomly, combing my fingers through his curls a few times before letting my hand drop when I realized he’s staring at me with such intensity that made my stomach churn.

“My hair is a part of my charm, so no,” he answered. I snickered at that but didn’t comment. Well, he was right anyway. His curls were kind of endearing. “You play any instruments?”

“Guitar but I suck at it,” I admitted without shame. He laughed heartily at that.

“You are honest, aren’t you?”

“It’s my best quality,” I replied cheekily. “If you’re not a world-famous singer, what do you reckon you’d be doing now?”

“I’ll probably be off in some school studying to become a lawyer.” I tried not to look too annoyed at the word ‘lawyer’. He caught the change in my face though as he asked, “why, what’s wrong?” I just shook my head. He sighed. “My next question to you is, why, what’s wrong?” I gave him a pointed look. Clever boy, clever, indeed. With a sigh, I began to answer.

“I have a… personal vendetta with that career.”

“Why?” I smirked at him.

“Nuh-uh… my turn,” I responded, sticking out my tongue towards him. He looked annoyed but for only a few moments before he shrugged and motioned for me to continue with my question. “What’s your fear? Aside from ghosts.” His eyes narrowing at me but I ignored him and just grinned teasingly at him.

“Snakes,” he answered. “Why do you hate lawyers?” I sighed. He would never let it go, would he?

“My sister’s a lawyer. And my brother’s also studying to become a lawyer right now. My parents thought that it’s the perfect profession. They never really like me entering the technical field. So I guess I’d spent my whole life, trying to show them that I’m not a lawyer material. And apparently, because of that, I’m a disappointment to the family.” My voice was void of any emotions. He went to take my hand and squeezed lightly but I quickly pulled away, not wanting his pity. “Favourite colour?” By now, I was just randomly asking the question.

“Blue and orange. Past relationship?” I stiffened at that. That was another touchy subject that I really wanted to avoid.

“Harry… I really don’t want to answer that,” I said, not wanting to look at him.

“Mel…”

“Seriously, Harry, no!” I snapped, but quickly shut my mouth when I saw a hurt look flitted across his face. I pressed my lips together and looked away, thankful when at that exact moment, the gondola started moving again. We just stayed silent until our gondola reached the ground and the worker opened the door for us. I quickly bolted and ignored Harry’s call. When I finally spotted Quinn with Louis sitting at a table on a secluded area, I made my way towards them.

“Mel?” Quinn asked, shooting me a questioning look.

“Mel… look, I’m sorry.” Harry had caught up to me but I decided to just ignore him.

“Quinn, I want to go home,” I said.

“Mel…” Again, I ignored Harry’s call and turned to Louis. “Louis, please take us home.” The man in front of me looked conflicted for a moment before he finally sighed and nodded. “Alright, come on,” he said. I pulled Quinn with me.

“What happened?” Quinn whispered. I shook my head and she knew not to push me.

“What happened, mate?” I heard Louis asked and a faint “I honestly don’t know.” Coming from Harry.