The Way We Learned to Love ✓

28 - liam

june 2018 : 2 years and 3 months ago

Liam was nervous about how Lily was going to look when he showed up at her doorstep for one reason: he was bound to think she was beautiful and he didn't know how to go all night without telling her that.

If he thought that anticipating her to render him speechless would result in such not happening, he was sorely mistaken. Lily answered the door looking like something out of a dream - his dreams - and he was mere milliseconds away from already losing his bet with himself that he wouldn't call her beautiful when his mind distracted itself by reminding him of the last time he was in this same spot. Him showing up here with a bundle of sunflowers, Henry answering the door.

That was so different from the present situation that it was almost comical, but Liam wasn't any less nervous this time around and the thought of Henry now being across the country was sobering. Lils was so quiet the past few weeks. Liam knew that she had been thinking about Henry, but he had been thinking about her. He spent more time than he would ever care to admit out loud hoping that she was okay.

"You ready?" he asked.

"Oh no, this is just what I wore out on my errands," she teased as she stepped out onto the porch. "I dress like this every day, haven't you noticed?"

She was careful as they walked down the couple of porch steps, taking caution not to lose her footing in her heels. But once they were back on flat ground, she glanced back over at him and gave him a small smile. "You look nice," she added more softly.

"You, too."

In the car, he wasn't sure where their conversation should go. They could talk about the elephant in the room, that he was so into her and she felt the same way according to everyone else but neither of them were doing anything about it. Or they could talk about the other elephant in the room, that Lily was most likely in a deep pit of melancholy from missing her favorite person. But Liam didn't want to make her upset or confused or uncomfortable. He wanted to spend a nice evening together and forget about their problems for a couple of hours.

"So, I'm not really sure what to expect here," she admitted.

To an extent, he wasn't either. In years past, he was always either at his parents' heels like a loyal puppy or drifting through the crowd like a ghost and trying not to be seen. But even as detached from common life as his parents often were, he still couldn't imagine them expecting Lily to be a social butterfly and talk to strangers.

"I think we can do whatever we want, honestly."

"Oh, good," she nodded. "I was hoping to get drunk and sing karaoke."

He grinned, trying and failing to envision Lils getting drunk. "Almost anything," he amended with a slight laugh.

The hotel was located in one of the most upscale parts of town, so every year since he was old enough to drive, he found himself incredibly relieved that he wasn't responsible for paying for the valet parking. He handed over the keys and opened Lily's door for her, offering his arm so that she could hook hers through the crook of his elbow.

When he glanced around at some of the other arriving guests, Liam was unsurprised to observe that he and Lily were probably the youngest, although some of them didn't look more than a few years older. But what the two of them were lacking in age they could make up for in confidence; although he never felt like he fit in at these things, already knowing his way to the ballroom through the maze-like ground floor of the hotel helped give off the impression that they belonged here.

"People go all out for this, huh?" Lily observed quietly, her heels clicking on the floor as she glanced at the people around them.

"Just wait until you see inside."