Her Name is...

Chapter 19

I woke up shivering. A quick check to my left revealed we had all fallen asleep on the livingroom floor, the television  once alive with the like of ABBA was dark. The reason for the chill was the back door which was swinging open and closed letting a breeze in. 

Who the hell had taken a midnight walk? Sliding out from underneath the limbs of boys I realized Louis was missing. Either he was the midnight walker or he had been kidnapped. 

"Lou?" I whispered to the room but there was no response. So I padded over to the door slipping on a pair or crocs that were way to large to be mine and poked my head outside. 

"Louis?" I asked louder this time. I closed the door behind me so that it wouldn't wake anybody else up. It was only a few moments before a light from a phone cued me to where he was. Crouched underneath the gable in a little ball. The blue light from his phone was slightly contained by his frame which was slouched over it. He looked so small. 

"Hey" I greeted walking up and sliding down the wall beside him. 

"You should be asleep," Louis said with a sigh. He closed his phone and tossed it haphazardly to the grass.

"So should you" I warned him,

"I am your elder," he stated, but his heart didn't seem invested in the playful banter. 

"Is everything okay with Hannah?" I questioned, the memory of his expression at the lake pryed the question out of me. His head snapped up a concerned look on his face, 

"how did you...?" he trailed off, "girls man, they know everything" he shook his head. 

I didn't want to press him to say something he didn't want but the boy was obviously going through something. "It's sorta my turn to therapize you" I reminded him. He had offered his services to me the previous night. 

"Thats not a word" he mumbled deflecting from the reason we were crouched in the grass at 2 AM. 

All I had to do was raise my eyebrow for his facade to crumble. 

"We broke up okay? It's no big deal, and I don't want to tell the lads yet" his thick accent and rushed way of speaking took me a second to process. But once I did I held out my arms for him, the poor guy had been going through it all alone. 

"I'm so sorry, do you want to talk about it?" I asked him. He seemed to ponder the question biting at his lip mercilessly. 

"I broke up with her yesterday" he offered up and I stayed silent urging him to go on but he didn't. 

"Why?" I asked tentatively. This part he seemed to think about even more. 

"I didn't like her anymore," that seemed a valid enough reason. I realized the other night as we had been talking he mentioned he had never loved anybody. I guess he realized that Hannah wasn't working out. 

"Okay... did she not take it too well?" I inquired. If he had done the breaking up with I couldn't understand what was taxing his mind so heavily. 

"She took it fine, saw it coming even. I mean even she knew" he said burying his head in his hands. 

"What did she know?" I felt like a horrible person trying to get this information out of him and decided after this I wouldn't ask anymore questions. The cool air brushed over my legs and I shivered again wrapping my arms around my body. 

"That I didn't... that I couldn't like her" Louis said. His voice was cracking and his chest was moving quickly as if he were about to cry. I didn't understand what he was saying but took an arm and wrapped it over his shoulders rubbing it as comfortingly as I could. I had been there for all my mother's breakups, seen her distraught over countless men.