Chapter 7 ― Havi

“You look kinda nervous, Havi,” my friend Joy commented looking at me with a cheeky smile and I just snorted. I couldn’t help myself, I was really nervous as we waited for the boys to come to the radio station. They were coming to record some publicity for the contest, which meant that we were officially starting with the whole thing and I was really excited. But, of course, that wasn’t the only thing that had me that nervous, it was the fact that they were coming, specifically, he was coming.

It had been a whole weekend since we spoke last but Louis Tomlinson invaded my mind like no one else had ever done before. It surprised me and kind of scared me a bit because I wasn’t sure what that meant and I didn’t know if I was going to like the meaning of this once I found out. Everything pointed at something that wasn’t going to be easy. Never. Probably I should’ve stop thinking of him, but that was easier said than done.

“Are you nervous because you’ll see Mr Tomlinson?” Asked Joy and I almost choked.

Of course my best friend had noticed that I found Louis the most attractive of the lot and that my eyes tended to wander to him more than usual and that I talked more about him. In fact, she made me aware of that with several jokes during the weekend that made those days quite hard for me. According to her, I fancied Louis but I was in denial and there were two possible outcomes for this situation. One, I’d know him better and this little crush would fade away. Two, I’d fall in love with him. And from those two options came many more, but I stopped listening by then and went to do something else far away from her and her crazy theories.

I didn’t fancy Louis and I just couldn’t. He was mega famous and someone like him would never date a normal girl like me, plus, he probably had a girlfriend and was totally in love with her so any kind of crush on him was futile and it would lead to a heartache. So no, thank you very much.

“Shut up!” I snapped as I took a sip of my coffee. It was just the first of the day so it was okay.

“Don’t be, think of him as a normal boy and not the super mega famous popstar whom you have a crush on,” she trailed off and I almost choked again.

“Don’t do that when I’m drinking! You bitch!” I cried out glaring daggers at her.

“I love you too, babe,” she replied blowing me a kiss. Normal people would get offended if someone called them ‘bitch’. Not us. We replied with love or with an even worse word. Yup, that was how our relationship worked.

I just laughed and drank again waiting for my phone to buzz telling me that I had an incoming call and that it wasn’t from my mum. By the time my phone did this, I choked again and I started to consider that it wasn’t a good idea to drink coffee when you were, nervously, waiting for something. Not healthy.

I looked at the screen and it was Louis. My heart did a little leap in my chest and a stupid grin was plastered on my face, I think that Joy saw and for which I was hit by her elbow. “Hi,” I replied shooting daggers at her and picturing her death in my mind. A painful death.

“Hi, Havi. We’re here in the station. Just letting you know, we’re heading to the conference room.” Maybe it was me that was too excited, but it seemed like Louis was a bit off.

“Sure, we’re waiting here,” I replied and waited for his answer, but he only mumbled an okay and hung up. Well, maybe it wasn’t me and something was indeed wrong with him.

Immediately I got worried and started wondering what could it be. Maybe something happened, maybe he had a fight with someone dear to him, maybe they boys argued for this contest, maybe he regretted this whole thing, maybe–

“Are you freaking out? You had this look you have when you’re panicking,” Joy cut me off in the middle of my train of thoughts and I looked at her, probably with all my worries clearly showing in my features.

“Louis sounded odd,” I told her and she frowned slightly.

“Probably it’s nothing, don’t worry. You’ll see him in five seconds and you’ll see he’s absolutely fine. C’mon, smile! You don’t want him to see you like this! He must believe you’re sane,” she replied shaking me a bit and I just giggled, my mood changing immediately.

Well, she was right, I didn’t want Louis, or any of the boys, to think I was mad or something. No one would trust someone who seemed insane.

A few minutes later, the doors of the conference room opened and five boys walked in accompanied by George and another man who probably was from security. They should be the ones who were going to be with the lads during this whole contest. I was okay with that, I liked George and this other guy didn’t seem to be mean; in fact he was joking along with Liam and Zayn as they made their way in.

“Havi, Joy!” Niall exclaimed being the first to give us hugs. Then came Harry, Liam, Zayn and finally Louis who was indeed acting weird, he barely touched me when he hugged me and he stepped back almost immediately, avoiding my eyes all the time. Well, the problem seemed to be with me because he acted almost normal towards Joy and I couldn’t stop wondering why. Did I do something? But everything seemed fine when we said goodbye the last time we saw each other.

“Girls, this is Paul. He’s part of the security group and will be with us all the time during this contest,” George introduced the other man who smiled at us.

“He’s our favourite,” Harry added with a big smile and so did we.

“Okay, so how are we gonna do this?” Liam asked with a kind smile. He seemed eager to start and the look he had the first time we met him had completely disappeared. It was obvious that he was totally in this time.

“Come with us,” Joy instructed standing up, we followed her and I couldn’t help noticing that Louis kept avoiding my eyes.

* * *

“Hello, we are One Direction,” all the boys said with happy voices into a microphone. Joy and I were looking at them, really excited. “And if you’re listening to this, you have the opportunity to win a chance to meet us and see us play in an exclusive gig,” Liam continued.

“What to do? Easy. Just call during Up To Date and reply to this easy question,” Zayn went on.

“Why do you think you should meet us?” Harry asked in his low and slow voice and we giggled because Joy and I had been mocking him for this reason. He looked at us and stuck his tongue out in a very childish way. We did the same.

“Be honest because we’ll select the winners.” It was Niall’s turn and he put so much energy in it that even I wanted to call immediately.

“Five winners will be picked every week, and you might be one of them” Louis spoke, his eyes still avoiding mine. “Call and we’ll see you soon!” All the boys chorused with big and bright smiles.

It had been the seventh time we recorded this and finally they got it right, without messing their lines or bursting out laughing. We had recorded a few other messages from each boy and we could finally say that we were ready to start the contest.

“Great job, lads!” Joy congratulated them walking out of the booth as they took off their headphones. I stayed there a few minutes more, just saving the recording and glancing at them from the corner of my eye. I saw Louis smiling but purposely giving me his back.

I knew something was wrong, that I did something because it couldn’t be normal that he was avoiding me, only me. He acted just as his usual self with Joy so I knew I wasn’t being paranoid. I needed to talk to him, if we were going to spend so much time together in the near future, we had to clear things up. I was going to apologise for whatever I did. All this, my time with them was purely professional and as such, I needed to have a clear relationship with them. All of them. We couldn’t work together if he didn’t dare to look me in the eyes.

I walked out of the booth and went right to Louis and poked his shoulder to call his attention. As he was giving me his back, he didn’t notice I approached and his expression was sheer surprise when our eyes finally met since he got to the station.

“Hi,” I said as professionally as I could. His cold behaviour didn’t hurt me, I kept telling myself. “Can we talk?” I asked and even if I whispered it, the rest heard us and I felt all the eyes on us. He looked uncomfortable, but probably he saw that all the attention was on us and he couldn’t just ignore me without giving some kind of explanation to all of us.

“Um, sure,” he said but he sounded all except sure.

“Follow me,” I told him and walked out of the room where we left the rest looking at us, expecting to know more. I knew Joy was dying to know what I had to talk to him about and probably she noticed too that Louis had been ignoring me.

I led Louis to another room, a small one where sometimes Joy and I went to talk in private. Almost no one went there so it was totally fine, we could talk without anyone bothering or interrupting us. I closed the door and turned around to see Louis, he looked even more uncomfortable and he was avoiding me again.

“Louis,” I called him and he looked at me after a few seconds. “Look, whatever is going on, I’m sorry. I don’t know why you’re avoiding me or if I did something, but we’re gonna spend a lot of time together in the weeks ahead, so I think we should clear things up. If I did something, I’m truly sorry, but I thought we were getting along pretty well,” I said holding his gaze and he seemed like he was guilty about something. I didn’t understand what was happening.

“You did nothing wrong, Havi, and you don’t have a reason to apologise,” he replied confusing me even more.

“Then why have you been avoiding me all morning?” I asked and I couldn’t help my voice from sounding hurt as it did.

“Because I’m a dick?” He suggested and I made a sound that even an animal would be ashamed of. I felt my cheeks burning but he smiled like I just did something very cute. Weird boy. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you, um, uncomfortable. I was just trying to protect you.”

And if I was confused before, I had no adjective for my state in that moment. “Pardon me?”

He snorted and messed with his hair, fighting to find the words. “You know how our fans tend to react very badly towards the people, especially girls, we hang out with, right? And I thought that maybe if we treated you just as someone whom we work with, you’d be safe,” he tried to explain but I just frowned still confused.

“Then why are you only acting like that? Plus, no one can see how you are acting inside the station,” I reasoned and he blushed.

“Let’s just say that it’s a tad bit more complicated for me how our fans react,” he mumbled and I felt so lost because I couldn’t follow his reasoning.

“Look, if that’s really what it’s all about, we don’t need to hang out outside the station or even be friends,” I said, though my heart ached with those words and he looked at me like I just said something shocking. “For this month to come, we’re just co-workers and no one will know that you know me or Joy. So everything will be fine, your fans won’t know about our existence. So you don’t have to avoid me when you’re here. Is that better?” I asked but my heart still ached. I, despite my opinions about them at the beginning, really wanted to be friends with them. With him.

“I–” he mumbled, his eyes looked so unsure and I didn’t know what to think. “I guess you’re right. That’d be better,” he agreed and his words were like daggers piercing my heart. “Co-workers then.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake it.

“Co-workers,” I agreed accepting his hand and looking in his eyes.

Why did that hurt so much?

 -:-:-:-

Shout out for @XxCookie_4_1DxX for being an amazing reader, as all of you but I can only dedicate the chapter to one person only. Favourite comment gets dedication and shout out!

Follow me on twitter! @BelWatson

Bel, xx