Long Time Gone

“I need a favor.”

Louise figures she should just be as direct as possible, make it a short, clean cut when he sends her away with cold words in an unrecognizable tone. He isn’t the Harry that used to pull splinters out of her palms or teach her how to jump across the creek on the rope swing. His eyes are darker and so is his skin, there are wrinkles in his shirt and under his eyes. He feels as cold as the moon when she swore she used to revolve around him like he was the sun.

He laughs again, cold and harsh, head thrown back. Humiliation bubbles under her skin and burns her cheeks. She should’ve known he wouldn’t make it easy for her, she didn’t deserve it.

“What? What more could you possibly want from me, Louise?”

She swallows the lump in her throat and her last ounce of pride, “A job.”

“A job?!” he’s cackling, loud and unfamiliar, and setting his mug on the porch railing, stepping closer, “Nashville not treatin’ you like you’re right royalty lately?!”

She wants to break, she wants to tell him the truth. She wants to tell him that Nashville did just what he’d said, dragged her in, chewed her up, spat her out. Nashville never gave a damn about her. Nashville never made her happy.

But she won’t. She can’t. There’s no longer a point. And even if there was, Harry would never hear it anyway.

So she ignores it, “I heard you could use an extra set of hands.”

“Who the hell have you been talking to?!” he scoffs, jaw clenched.

“My mother.”

His features soften almost instinctively. It gives her some sort of sick satisfaction because she knows he’ll lose his attitude. Harry would never risk anything he said being taken as ill against her mother.

“Just give me a yes or a no, Harry,” she shoves her hands in her pockets, looking down at the dust beneath her boots, “And I’ll get outta your hair.”

“Get outta my hair?” he snorts, “You of all people know how small this town is.”

“Yes or no,” she prods, refusing to look up. She just needs to hold her ground until he tells her ‘no’. Then she can cry in the car and all the way home and tell her mother how damaged beyond repair the one good thing she ever had still is.

She needs Harry to say no, she realizes. She needs to have the last string cut. She needs to cleanse herself of him. She’s realized the only way to do that is to prove to herself that there’s no turning back, she burnt their bridge to the ground. She needs him to prove he’ll never forgive her. Maybe then, after all these years, she can get a grip on her life and herself and start new again. Even in the town they once swore was their kingdom.

The silence is thick and heavy, like the heat they grew up side by side in. It chokes her like the dust they used to kick up beneath their boots, beneath their tires. She deserves it, she tells herself. It’s the least she deserves.

“Yes.”

She’d think she was hallucinating if it weren’t for his tone, laced with cruel humor. He knows something she doesn’t, he’s in on a joke she doesn’t understand. It never used to be like that.

Her head snaps up, eyes scanning his expression for something, anything, “Y-yes?”

He’s too close all of a sudden, the tips of their boots nearly knocking together, not at all like they used to when they were kids. That slow burning flame of anxiety in her gut begins to wind its way up her chest, curling around her ribs and her throat and her brain.

She knows it’s revenge, it’s as plain as day in his eyes. She knows she deserves it too, after all she’s done and still been stupid enough to come back after. But that doesn’t make it any easier. She’d been counting on a ‘no’, two simple little letters.

“Yes, Louise,” he sneers, face so close that she can count his freckles and his pores, “I think it’s the least you owe me, don’t you?”

Louise doesn’t know how to play this game. This isn’t a Harry she’s ever been familiar with. This is the Harry she’s had nightmares about for years, the one that could wake her up in a cold sweat in the middle of July. He is everything she’d always hoped she’d never make him be, cold and callous and cruel.

She swallows harshly, manages a small, single nod. She thinks if she speaks, she’ll cry or vomit. She’s not sure which would be more humiliating.

“Look at that, little Ms. Self Righteous balancing the scales of the universe,” he’s throwing it all back in her face now, the way she used to dream when she was sixteen longing for something more, “How humbling.”

Her nails dig into her palms, leaving red crescent marks behind. She can’t take it anymore, even if she deserves it. She can’t take him like this. She can’t handle meeting the monster she made when she left him behind.

“When?” she insists, voice strained. It’s the last answer she needs before she can flee like a child.

“Tomorrow.”

That's only fair. She manages a nod and spins on her heels before he can see the tears threatening to spill, before he knows he’s won.

“Bring sunscreen, Nashville,” his voice is just as cold and careless as before, “And a hat. Doubt you're acclimated to this sun anymore.”

Shame burns like a wildfire from her cheeks to her ears, down the back of her neck and spreads across her chest. He’s probably right.

It's second nature, almost automatic, to start the car and get it in gear and be out of his sight before she lets the tears fall. Her head is spinning, her brain is in overdrive. She can’t comprehend anything she’s just witnessed, let alone the magnitude of what the next morning will bring. All she knows is that her chest feels like it’s caving in and if she doesn’t run, if she doesn’t put miles and miles between her and him, she’ll implode.

It’s not the same, tearing out of his drive in her shitty little Honda instead of her hand me down Ford, but the tears streaming down her cheeks are. It feels like every fight they’d ever had rolled into one. It feels like every time she’d left to prove a point. It feels like the time she left and never came back, something she refuses to ever feel again.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows she’s speeding. It doesn’t hit her though, not when she pulls back onto the main road, red dirt kicked up behind her. Not until she catches the red and blue lights in her rearview mirror.

“Of fucking course,” she hisses, resisting the urge to slam on her breaks. Instead she slows down and pulls off on the side of the road, knowing she’s in the wrong.

Not even twenty four hours back in the county limits and she’s already on the verge of a mental breakdown and a speeding ticket.

She watches, hands gripping the steering wheel, as the officer steps out of his car, hat hiding his identity. The last thing she needs is word to get around that she’s back, let alone that she’s managed a speeding ticket already.

She swipes the tears from her eyes, inhales a shaky breath, and rolls down the window. Dense, sticky heat hits her so fast that it takes her breath away.

“Ma’am,” the officer’s voice is almost familiar as he approaches her window, “Do you have any idea-”

He cuts himself off and her head whips toward him. Liam Payne.

“Ouiser!” his face lights up just like she remembers it, though his skin is tanner and a little more worn, “No shit!”

Before she can stop him, his big arms are reaching through her window and wrapping around her. If she weren’t in such a state, she thinks it might’ve been just as comforting as it had been growing up.

“H-hi,” she mumbles, willing her voice not to shake.

He hears it though, of course he does, and pulls away with lines between his brows, “Are you comin’ from Harry’s?”

She feels shame creeping across her cheeks again as she nods.

Liam just shakes his head knowingly, as if it hasn’t been years since they’ve spoken, “Come out tonight with me and Sophia. Niall’s bartending at The Bullet now. We can all catch up. Drinks on me.”

She nods. The burnt bridges between her and her friends seem more repairable than the ones waiting for her at home. Home certainly doesn’t have whiskey (and she certainly can’t afford her own drinks).

*

The first thing she notices about The Bullet is that it hasn’t changed at all since she’d started sneaking in at sixteen. The second thing she notices is Sophia. Pregnant. When she scolds Liam for not telling her beforehand, Sophia just throws her head back and laughs and Louise suddenly realizes why they call it a pregnancy glow.

The oversized bump beneath her flowing sundress is a visual reminder of how much has changed in the past few years. Thinking about it is easily drowned out by two Jack and Cokes. The way Niall mixes them, extra strong with a knowing smirk on his lips, hasn’t changed a bit.

She’s telling them about the first time she got booed offstage in a bar reminiscent of The Bullet, when the door opens and something catches the corner of her eye. She feels the moment slow down in time; her breath catches, her words trail off, her half empty glass drips sweat on the bartop, her group goes silent and the loud, twangy music just becomes a rush in her ears. She isn’t sure if she wishes she was completely trashed, or that she hadn’t come at all.

“Shit,” Liam drawls, setting down his beer, “We invite him every Friday night but he never shows. I had no idea, Ouiser-”

She shakes her head, tearing her eyes away from his torn up flannel and scuffed boots, “I believe you. M-maybe I should go so you guys can-”

“No way!” Sophia swats her bicep with the hand that isn’t holding an RC Cola, “I can’t stand another night in the boys’ club alone!”

But Louise feels terribly out of place all of a sudden, despite knowing their shared friends just as long as Harry has. The tipsy part of her tells her that she has just as much of a right to be there as him, she grew up there too, with them and their scraped knees and sunburnt skin. But the still sober part of her knows better. Three years is a long time gone.

The bar isn’t big enough to avoid him, so she turns her back to him and drinks. She listens to Niall’s stories and looks at pictures on Sophia’s phone of her and Liam’s wedding, but mostly, she drinks. She drinks until she forgets why her heart hurts, why her chest is tight, why she can’t sleep at night.

She drinks until she’s forgotten him completely, sat in a corner booth alone, and has found herself being bullied into drunken karaoke.

“Noooo!” she whines as Liam drags her up to the little makeshift stage at the end of the bar. It used to be for real performers only but according to Niall, Friday is now designated karaoke night.

“One song!” he pleads, “For old time’s sake!”

That tugs at her heart, “Fine. But I get to pick the song.”

Whose bed have your boots been under?

The bar is spinning as she sings to Liam, refusing to look anywhere else when she can feel his eyes on her.

And whose heart did you steal, I wonder?

She drowns him out with the words of one of her favorite songs, music swelling around her.

This time did it feel like thunder, baby?

Liam throws his arm around her as he dives into the first verse, mostly to keep her from tripping off the makeshift stage but she can’t be bothered to care. She can’t remember the last time she sang for fun, let alone with someone else. For the past three years singing and performing have become a necessity to survival, a means to an end. It feels good to let herself go, let her hips sway to the music and laughter fall from her lips. She’s forgotten why she loves it so much.

When the music stops, she’s unexpectedly disappointed despite the clapping and laughter from her friends and strangers alike. She can feel a familiar something running through her veins, a craving for more, a need. Performing had always been addictive.

She lets Liam tug her along, only because she’s drunk. Her fingers are itching for the microphone again, for one more song.

“That was incredible!” Sophia’s giggling and wrapping her arms around Louise, “You can even sing wasted!”

She giggles, hoping it’s true, “Shut up!”

Liam orders them both another drink, despite Sophia’s protests and Niall’s wary look, because he’s nearly as drunk as she is. Someone else is singing karaoke now, she thinks maybe an old classmate doing a drunken rendition of a Garth Brooks song, so she tugs Liam out to the dancefloor. Her head is spinning and she just wants to enjoy herself.

They dance for a few songs until he leaves her for the bathroom. If she was anymore sober, she wouldn’t keep dancing alone. She’s disappointed when the music and the bodies around her slow down a bit but she doesn’t stop dancing because she knows if she does, she’ll want another drink.

She’s nearly forgotten all about him, losing herself in a song that feels equally familiar and heartbreaking though she can’t recall half the words. Her body knows the beat though and her brain seems to latch onto the words when she hears them in her ear, in a once familiar voice.

She spins around, heart beginning to pound. There he is, a drunken smirk on his face and something unfamiliar in his eyes.

“H-Harry-” her eyes dart around, looking for Liam or Sophia or anyone to rescue her.

“Dance with me.”

About five minutes prior she’d thought she was the drunkest one in the bar but clearly, she was wrong. Clearly he’s shitfaced. Clearly she’s stupid for even contemplating it.

She knows she should stop him when his hands land on her hips, but her arms have a mind of their own, wrapping around his neck as if years haven’t passed. They sway to the music naturally, just like they used to as teenagers, drunk on cheap beer and the taste of each other.

“What’re you doing?” she looks him in the eye for what feels like the first time all day. They’re clouded over with alcohol, the result of too much whiskey, but still the same familiar green. But she can’t read them anymore, not like she used to. She can’t slip past them and into his brain and decipher his thoughts. She used to know him like the back of her hand, like her favorite song, inside and out. Now he’s a stranger. He looks at her like a stranger when he’s sober.

“Shh,” he hums, dipping his lips to her shoulder, hovering over the exposed skin, “Dance with me.”

Eventually, just his forehead lands on her skin, his face hidden from her. She can’t tell if it’s disappointment or relief flooding her system. His touch is still familiar, still wanted. She’s known him her entire life, up and leaving in the middle of the night for a dream no one else believed in doesn’t change that. It doesn’t change her love for him, despite how much she wishes it had. There’s no way he can ever look at her sober with anything that closely resembles love again.

“Harry,” she mumbles after a few songs, her brain in overdrive, “Can you ever forgive me?”

“I want to, Lo. Fuck, ‘m trying,” he breathes out, “But I don’t know how.”

Her blood runs cold at the nickname and his words. The moment is shattered.

She stumbles two steps backwards, eyes wide and stomach churning. All of a sudden she feels a little too sober, though she knows she isn’t. She shouldn’t have let him touch her, she shouldn’t have said anything. She shouldn’t have even come to The Bullet.

“Lo-”

She shakes her head, unable to put enough distance between them as the room spins around her. She needs to get out, she needs to run, that’s what she’s good at. That’s what he expects from her.

She pushes her way past drunken bodies and makes her way to the bar with shaky hands and wet eyelashes. Liam and Sophia are nowhere to be found and the sinking feeling in her stomach amplifies. Niall’s calling last call.

“Niall,” she breathes, hands landing on the bar to support her weight, “Wh-”

“Liam’s out back puking, they’ll be back in a-”

She shakes her head, “I need you to take me home.”

He takes her in, bloodshot eyes and smeared makeup and broken heart as if she’s sixteen again, “Go sit in the kitchen. I’ll kick everyone out.”

She finds herself on a crooked barstool, tears on her cheeks as she digs around in a plastic jar of stale pretzel sticks. She thinks she’s hit an all time low. Lower than trading in her pickup for a four door, than pawning her guitar, than being evicted her from her tiny Nashville apartment. She was stupid, to think she could just come home and right her wrongs, rebuild her burnt bridges. Everyone hates her. Her dog has forgotten her. Her sister can’t look her in the eye. Her parents speak about her only in hushed whispers. The former love of her life can only stand her when he is absolutely shitfaced.

She is pathetic.

When Niall returns the tears on her cheeks are still wet so he hands her a napkin and wraps his arm around her, “C’mon, Ouiser. Let’s get you out of here.”