When I wake up, my naked chest is pressed against Kay’s back, our legs tangled together, my arms around her waist and my face hidden in her neck, breathing her perfume. For a second I don’t move and I just enjoy the feeling of her naked body next to me, of her warm skin in contact with mine, of her scent embracing me and making all my cells to come alive. And the best part is that I don’t even have a hangover because Kay made sure to give me some of her miraculous pills before we started with the heavy drinking. I’m thirsty, but my head is not killing me and I can rejoice in the peace and wonderfulness of this moment. For a few moments this feels perfect and I can’t think of a reason to pull back and raise my walls again.

Why do I fight Kay when it’s so easy to be with her like this? When it feels so great to have her with me? When waking up next to her is this sublime?

Oh right… because I can’t trust her.

I sigh deeply and close my eyes again. Is this how all girls feel? I’ve seen films and I’ve heard complaints… I’ve even read some fan fictions where they portray me as a player and the girl is always afraid to fall in love because she can’t trust the guy to love her back. Is this what all those authors tried to portray? Is this how chicks feel when they fall for the player? This fear? I know it would be so easy to let go and just give in and have this on a daily basis, but I know Kay is not the one who would stay and I don't want a fling. I do believe in serious relationships, I’m not the kind that lives of one-night stands. But Kay is, she has always been and I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted that. It’s so obvious she will get bored and leave me after a while, she’ll meet someone interesting and say goodbye. And then what?

No matter how easy it would be to fall for Kay, it would never work out and I rather avoid another heartache. I already had enough for a lifetime with Eleanor. I’ve come to terms with it… I think. I mean, I know I can’t blame all women for what happened and I can’t exactly hate Eleanor for finding someone better when I didn’t even fight for her, but I can’t exactly forgive her for giving up on us and going to Eric. I’ve realised some things, I know that not all women are awful and not all of them will go as soon as someone better appears. Not all of them will find someone better. But not all of them will stay. Kay would eventually go not maybe because there’s someone better, but because she can’t just settle down. She doesn’t do serious relationships and I don’t do summer flings.

Kay moves in my arms and I think she purrs and stretches before she opens her eyes, then she turns around in my arms until we’re face to face and I try not to smile, but I can’t. She looks so beautiful, her skin is kind of glowing and her smile is the best makeup she can wear. No matter how sappy that sounds, it is true. When she smiles she is so beautiful and I feel my heart racing in my chest. Kay cups my face and without saying a word, she pecks my lips.

“Morning,” she says in a whisper, her hand still on my cheek. “How do you feel today? Hangover?”

I shake my head slightly and her smile widens. “You?”

“Not at all and I’m really glad that you are still in bed with me,” replies Kay and next she cuddles in my arms. “It’s nice waking up like this. So nice.”

For some reason her words squeeze something inside, maybe my heart, I don’t know. It’s a different kind of pain… longing maybe? Because I recognise a big part of me wants this to be something regular in my life, not just this time.

“I don’t have anywhere to go, it’s my flat, after all.” I ruin the moment because she tenses in my arms. “I’m not kicking you out, though,” I say lowly and I feel her relaxing against my chest, I even feel her letting her breath out. Was she holding it? Was she really scared?

“Lou…” She starts, her index finder drawing patters on my chest. “What if, just for today, we pretend?” Perplexed by her words, I take her chin and make her look me in the eyes, demanding for an explanation. “I mean— what if we pretend there’s no tomorrow and we just have today. Nothing else matters, no one else exists. Just you and I. Forget everything just for today and be with me and if by the end of the day you still don’t wanna be with me then… then I’ll give you space. I won’t nag you anymore.”

I blink up at her proposition… thinking. It doesn’t sound hard to forget everything, to pretend this day is all what we have. No consequences, no fears; just this moment. But then the day will end and I’ll have to face a decision… and what if by the end I do want to be with her? By the end of the day the fears will come back, the risks and the imminent truth: Kay would never stay.

But then I think what this day could be. Just Kay and I, nothing else. No need to push her away, no need to fight what she makes me feel. This day could be a break from everything, from every painful memory, from every depressing thought, from every hurtful word. This could be all what I need to put myself together and finally move on.

Kay is staring at me and I see she is nervous, but she relaxes a bit when I slide my hand to her hair, stroking her face along the way and tangling my fingers with the blonde strands. “Okay,” I agree in a whisper and I see shock in her expression.

“Really?” Kay blinks and her surprise amuses me, so I chuckle and nod. And that’s when her smile becomes the brightest and most beautiful smile I have ever seen and it touches a part of my soul, warming up my whole body and I didn’t know until then how cold I was. “Yay!” she cheers and she is so excited that she can’t control herself. She climbs on top of me, pinning me against the bed and before I can say something, she kisses me deeply.

I kiss her back immediately, my hands on her bare back, stroking her soft skin and then sliding down her legs. I push aside everything else on my mind and put it in a box with the ‘shit I’ll deal later with’ label. Right now, today, it’s all about Kay.

“This is gonna be the best day of your life,” she promises against my lips and in all honestly, I don’t doubt it.

+ + + + +

After a very eventful morning in my room, Kay and I dress up. Well, she only wears my shirt and her underwear whilst I wear a new pair of pants and some sport shorts. She makes brunch for the two of us and she makes sure to have the music always playing. She is so graceful. She moves around my flat at the rhythm of the music, singing along and always meeting my eyes as I watch her. She is not a great singer, she often hits the wrong note, but she is still adorable. And she is a fairly good cook, considering I barely have things to work with. During that time, she makes me dance with her, sing along to the Jonas Brothers’ Hold On, she steal kisses and makes my head spin. I laugh a lot at the things she does and tells me.

Later, she asks me if I want to know how the documentary is going on so we use the iMac I have and using DropBox she shows me bits and pieces of the documentary and tells me more or less what she is trying to do. She has great shots, I see some pieces and I must admit that it has Kay’s essence. Like you can feel her hand on those scenes. They feel alive, like they are telling you a real story. I see parts of myself and I notice that I never smile. In all the scenes I look dead serious, angry, hateful. When I see myself on the big screen of my computer, I understand why the lads have been so worried about me. This is all what they have seen, a dead version of me… of course they got worried. I would, too. I never thought I looked so bad… almost as bad as I feel.

I hug Kay —she is sitting on my lap— and hide my face on her back, ashamed of myself. She fells my discomfort because she turns to hug me tightly without asking a single thing. She just hugs me as I try to breathe and put my mind in order.

She takes my face and looks at me with such a beautiful and compassionate smile but she doesn’t say anything, she just turns to the computer and looks for something and the next thing I’m seeing is a scene where Niall, Alex, Harry and I are laughing at something the blonde did when we were in Germany. Alex is actually crying and Niall is with his cheeks bright red but he is happy. I’m on the floor, practically rolling. We were laughing at Niall because he tried to impress Alex saying he had learnt to do something with his computer, but he just killed it. It didn’t turn on again and Alex had to fix it. Since then Niall promised he would never attempt to be a geek. Ever.

Clearly, the Louis of that scene is not the same Louis that was at rehearsals with Prodigy, this Louis has life in his eyes.

“You have changed,” Kay says looping her arms around my neck. “I know you still have loads to do, but you need to know that you’re not the same guy I met and I know you’ll get over all this. You’ll be fine, completely fine. You won’t be the old you because you’ve grown, but you’ll be yourself. It’s not the same.”

I breathe in when I hear her words because I’ve always felt like everyone wants the old Louis back, but that version of me doesn’t exist anymore and it infuriates me that I can’t be that person again. I thought this bitter version of me was all I could ever be; but Kay makes me think that it’s not everything, that this is not really me. She makes me feel like I’m just in the process to finding myself again.

Could she be right?

I kiss her because I don’t know what to say, because my head is spinning and I don’t even know what to think and today we agreed I would forget everything. I’ll deal with all this later. Today it’s just Kay and I. There’s no tomorrow; there are no consequences. Just the two of us.

The rest of the day goes by smoothly. We just do normal things like watching a film and even playing FIFA. Turns out that Kay is not very good at video games, but she is very passionate as she tries to understand how to play. She shouts and threatens to take all the players off of the game and I can’t help laughing at her antics. She ends up with a hoarse voice and breathing heavily, and with a shameful loss. I won eleven to two, and it was just because I let her score once and the other time I was too distracted laughing at her.

By dinnertime I’m dreading the moment we’ll have to face that the day is over and our little pretence has to come to an end. It has been an amazing day, I had fun and I really relaxed, but most of all, I felt free and light. I enjoyed myself and I had so much fun with Kay. And it hurts because it makes me think it could be so great to be with her, to actually have a relationship with her.

I didn’t think I could ever consider the option of having a relationship again, not after Eleanor and what happened; but after today I kind of want this to be the first of many more days together. But then I look at her and I remember all the small things I know about her. Today I could’ve asked her about her life, her past, but I didn't want to, because getting to know her better would make things harder later. Getting to know her better would make me hope she may stay, that maybe I can be her only exception. But I can’t afford myself to think like that.

Kay is like a bird, like this magnificent bird that you can’t keep in a cage because you know it will wither and die. Kay is a bird that needs to fly high. She is all about freedom. She is carefree, she is optimistic, she is happy-go-lucky. She can’t stay, it’s not in her nature. She was meant to fly. I can’t expect her to betray her nature just because what we could have is great. She may like me now, probably because I’m the only guy who has ever resisted her and that makes everything more exiting for her. I guess I’m her hard-to-get. But once she gets me, she’ll get bored and leave. This is not because she is a woman but because she is Kay.

I don’t tell her these things I’m thinking but she sees them, because Kay sees through me as if I were an open book. I know she does because her smile drops and she looks at me with sadness in her eyes, sadness that makes me think she really wants me to give in.

“You already made your decision,” she says after we washed the dishes. We ended in a water battle and after I while, I just kept staring at her… thinking of all this. “And I can’t talk you out of it, can I?”

“I—” I try to speak but I don’t really know what to say. “I really can’t.”

“But a part of you wants,” she tells me and I look away. “Well, at least I have that. I won’t nag you anymore, you can have all your space, but I know a part of you wants this. A part of you wants us. And that’s all I need. Someday you’ll realise we could be great together and you’ll come to me and I’ll be waiting. I can be patient.”

“Don’t,” I say but it’s a mere whisper, because I’m not that sure of what I’m saying.

She smiles and shakes her head before she takes a step closer and cups my face between her hands. “Later, Louis. Enjoy your break,” she says before standing on her tiptoes and kissing my lips one last time before she walks to my room. A few minutes later she comes back in her clothes and I haven’t moved from the kitchen door. “Bye, babe.”

And she leaves and I don’t know exactly what to think or what to believe. Luckily, I have other four days to figure things out and pull myself together before I have to go on with the tour… and with Kay around. It won’t be easy, of that I’m sure.