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around his shoulders as he sits up.

He‟s never really talked about his whole thing with Harry. He‟s told

Zayn and Niall some of the better stories about ridiculous places

they‟ve fucked and mentioned the times they spend together just

hanging out by way of recounting some joke Harry had made the night

before, but he‟s never actually put the last few months into words. He‟s

not even sure where to start, if it goes all the way back to that day in his

classroom with the box of cables or the first time they kissed or

somewhere in between. He tells Stan the abridged version, the

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highlights, all the parts that are easier to talk about. None of it is really

easy to talk about, not now, but maybe it‟ll be good for him to get it all

out. Maybe if he can condense it all into a story for Stan it will start

feeling more like a few ridiculous months and less like a giant fucking

weight on his chest.

So he explains it all, right up to closing night and how happy Harry had

looked when he told him about the internship, like he‟d expected Louis

to be happy for him too, like he couldn‟t think of a reason why he

wouldn‟t be. Stan listens quietly, which is a miracle because typically a

story involving this much sex would be getting a much more animated

response from Stan, but he seems to understand that Louis isn‟t in the

mood. Eventually Louis just trails off, staring at his toes and hating the

word “internship” and the way it tastes in his mouth. Stan waits for him

to say anything else, but he doesn‟t. There‟s nothing else to say.

“Have you considered the possibility that he might not take it?” Stan

says carefully. “Or that he might want you to go with him?”

Louis sighs and pulls a pillow halfway over his head. The thing is, he

has considered that. He knows that Harry cares about him. They don‟t

talk about feelings, and Louis has never—at least not until recently—

liked to think about it much, but he‟d have to be completely blind or

very stupid to think that Harry didn‟t care about him. But Harry cares

about a lot of things, and he cares about him the same way he cares

about everything else: intensely, and not always for a long time.

So, yeah, Harry cares about him, but in a way that comes easily to him.

Harry cares about him in the way that somebody cares when they don‟t

really know yet how the hard and dirty parts of life work, and Louis

doesn‟t believe Harry knows what it means to be invested in him long-

term. As long as he and Harry are in the same place, Harry is going to

give this—whatever it is—all he‟s got, but things change and Harry

isn‟t tied down to anything.

A lot of Harry‟s life is about experiences and sentiment and memories,

about holding onto moments while he keeps moving, and Louis knows,

really, that he‟s just another stray that Harry‟s picked up. He‟s another

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bit of color on Harry‟s wall to remember, oh, Manchester, wasn‟t that

fun, I was with Louis then. And Harry might think that he cares about

Louis differently now, but that‟ll change too. Louis doesn‟t have any

illusions about himself, he knows he‟s bitter and unlovable and not the

kind of person you build a life around. All he is to Harry is this moment

in time, and all he‟s going to be in the future is a story.

“He‟ll take the internship,” he tells Stan, half-muffled by the pillow. “I

know Harry, and he never met a risk he didn‟t like. And he never even

told me he was applying, so I doubt he ever had any plans of taking me

with him, so if he does ask, it‟ll just be an impulsive thing, and I know

he won‟t really want me to go. Even if he thinks he does. He won‟t

have thought it through, and then if I went he‟d just realise he‟d made a

mistake and get sick of me and it‟d be even worse. There‟s no happy

fucking ending. He‟s leaving and I‟m staying and there‟s no reason it

should be any different.”

“I can think of one,” Stan says.

“Well, I can‟t,” Louis says. “And I‟d be an idiot to think otherwise. An

idiot who never learned a damn thing the first hundred times around.”

“Lou,” Stan says, “I mean, I know you‟ve got every right to doubt, but

it doesn‟t always have to be that way.”

Louis huffs out a humorless laugh and turns sideways, burrowing down

into the armrest with the pillow still over his head. “It already is that

way.”

“Christ,” Stan says. “You‟re proper miserable, aren‟t you?”

Louis doesn‟t answer, just grits his teeth against the feeling in his

stomach, and after a moment he feels Stan‟s hand on his knee as he

pushes himself to his feet.

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“All right,” Stan says, pacing in front of the sofa. “We can talk about it

later. Right now what we need is, number one, pizza—” he‟s got his

phone out, already pulling up a number in his contacts “—and number

two, all day FIFA tournament. You think you can handle that?”

Louis groans, but yeah, he can handle that.

Thankfully Stan lets the subject drop for the rest of the day, and when

he leaves, Louis decides that‟s it. That‟s the last time he talks about

things with Harry. It‟s the last time he lets himself access those

feelings. And this, right now, back in Doncaster—this is the last time

he lets himself care. As soon as he gets in his car and points it toward

Manchester, the armor goes back on.

It should be easy, because Louis‟ done this before. Louis spent years

behind walls, and he knows how to build them. He can‟t have gotten

that far from where he was when he met Harry, settled into his lonely

life. It should be easy to shut all of this off.

It should be easy.

Harry keeps texting him, and Louis just replies that he‟s sick and he‟s

staying with his mum until he‟s better and he can‟t talk on the phone,

and he ignores the sad emoticons and promises to make him feel better

because he cannot fucking deal with that right now. Instead he stays

busy so that he doesn‟t have time to think about anything, because if he

doesn‟t think about going back to Manchester and facing reality and

having to do any of this then it‟s not real and it won‟t happen and he

can just keep avoiding it.

At least the girls are having a good time, because his fear of sitting still

for too long means he‟s constantly offering to drive them around and

take them shopping and braid their hair and play with them out in the

garden. His mum can tell, though, he knows by the way she keeps

looking at him, the way she purses her lips when she stands in the

doorway of the kitchen and watches him dyeing Easter eggs with

Phoebe and Daisy, his fingers stained bright green.

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“I‟m fine,” he tells her when the girls have gone. “I‟m fine.”

“I didn‟t ask,” she says.

The days drag by, and between all the texts he‟s been dodging from

Zayn and Niall, it‟s hard to forget about everything, but Louis decides

it doesn‟t matter. Eventually those texts start to fade away anyway, and

Louis gets a sick stab of pleasure that they‟ve given up. Good. Fewer

conversations he‟ll have to grit his teeth through.

The faster everyone lets go of this, the better.

Zayn can‟t write.

He‟s been trying. He‟s sat down and tried to make some headway more

times than he can count over break. His editor is breathing down his

neck and he has a draft deadline coming up, and he‟d been counting on

these days off to be a chance for him to catch up, and now he can‟t

write.

He‟s tried everything. He stared at a blank Word document for a few

hours, took a Moleskine to every coffee shop in town, and even hauled

out the typewriter he impulse-bought as a university student with little

spare money and less sense. The cursor just blinked at him accusingly,

the sugary-sweet coffee set his brain on edge, and it turned out the ink

ribbons in the typewriter are all tangled anyway. He got high in front of

a notebook and just ended up doodling ten pages of dragons. He hasn‟t

written a usable word in weeks. He‟s considering switching to

parchment and quill pen if this keeps up.

Part of it is distraction. Louis has been evasive all break, and even if

Zayn hadn‟t known him for years, the way he vanished after curtain

call at Grease still would have raised more than a few red flags. It

hadn‟t been until Louis had dodged his calls for a few days that Zayn

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had remembered the good news Harry had gotten that night and put two

and two together.

His best friend has a broken heart and refuses to talk about it, and for

all Zayn knows he‟s on some destructive bender that Zayn‟s going to

have to clean up. Admittedly, that‟d probably be pretty difficult to pull

off at his mum‟s house, but Louis Tomlinson is nothing if not

inventive. Give him access to a chemist‟s and enough motivation and

he could be cooking meth in his mum‟s bath inside a week just for the

hell of it.

So yeah, Zayn‟s worried about his friend, and that‟s part of his block.

It‟s not all of it, though. There‟s also—as there always is—Liam.

Liam had come with him to see the final show on Saturday, and Zayn

had really, truly, honest-to-God thought that they were getting

somewhere. Like, okay, sure, Liam probably had as much stake in the

show as Zayn by that point, so maybe it‟s not that surprising that he‟d

want to go, but Zayn had asked him specifically to go with him, and

he‟d said yes. Well, all right, Zayn had found out that Liam was

planning to go on Saturday and had asked if he wanted to sit with him,

but still. There had been a plan. Just the two of them. That foretold only

good things, surely, but—well.

It‟s not like anything had gone wrong, exactly. It was very fun and

Liam was lovely and was adorably enthralled by the entire thing, but

that was it. He hadn‟t wanted to come to the cast party, saying he had

work in the morning and begging off, and had sort of awkwardly

wobbled around before offering Zayn a fist bump as way of saying

goodbye. A fist bump. That‟s how much work there is left for Zayn to

do, apparently. Months of effort have only graduated him to a fist bump

level of intimacy.

Normally, feeling down about Liam would only fuel one of Zayn‟s

occasional writing binges, one of those lost weekends where he comes

out the other side with little memory of what happened, a lot of empty

takeaway containers around his flat, a few new chapters written, and,

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on one memorable occasion, a new tattoo. Not this time, though. This

time he just feels tired.

After half a day of writing zero new words for his novel but several

dozen tweets about the ineffable impossibility of creation, he decides

he needs some fresh air. Well, what he really does is toss his phone

across the room, shout “Fuck it,” then go check to make sure his phone

is okay, but then he decides to go for a walk. At least he can pretend

he‟s being productive if he‟s doing it to put himself in a writing

headspace, right?

That‟s how he finds himself in town, walking past a street of twee little

shops that sell things that he can mock right now as being useless and

materialistic but would probably like to use to tastefully decorate a

studio if he were being honest and had the money. Whatever. He has a

classic wardrobe and a certain je ne sais quoi. He doesn‟t need a mirror

with a frame shaped like tree roots. He doesn‟t.

He crosses the street, whose other side is populated primarily with

restaurants, pubs, and cafes, including two different coffee joints he‟d

stopped by in his campaign for inspiration. Remembering that one of

them made particularly delicious blackcurrant jam to go with their

particularly delicious scones, he stops consideringly outside. It‟s not