Bella POV
Louis offered me a drive home. I slid into his silver Prius and he turned on some mindless radio. “Wanna go somewhere?” he asked winking at me.
“Sure” I said playing it off like I never wanted to leave his side. He drove past the neighborhoods and onto country roads. Where were we going? We drove past the place where Zayn and Sadie crashed and I got goose-bumps. Louis noticed.
“You cold?” he asked flipping on the heat.
“Thanks” I said softly. One hand was on the steering wheel while the other was running through his hair. Why was he so god-damn sexy? He reached his muscular arm to adjust the mirror. He glanced over at me and smiled. Shit. He caught me staring. Awkward. He reached his hand over and it rested on my knee. He parked on the side of the road. He plugged in his iPhone and turned on a playlist. He got out and hopped up on the hood of the car. He patted the hood next to him and I hopped up. ‘Closing Time’ by Semisonic spilled out of the car. This was perfect. He laid back and rested his hands under his head. This kid actually had a lot of swag. It made me squirm, I never got nervous. He looked over at me.
“Do I make you nervous, Bells?” I hated it when people called me Bells, but I was really okay with him doing it. I rolled my eyes at his arrogance. He grinned and I scooted closer to him. We looked out at the lake. Lucy and I used to come to this lake when we were like twelve and spend whole days here. I was reminiscing on a memory of Lucy teaching me how to do a back flip off the little dirt ‘cliff’ when Louis interrupted my thoughts.
“I KNOW WHO I WANT TO TAKE ME HOME” he sung/yell/screamed. I never noticed how cool and a little eerie the echo was out here. There was basically nothing around us but a long, winding dirt road and the big lake. He sang/yelled to me until I was uncomfortable enough to sing back at him.
“Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…” We looked sarcastically and longingly into each other’s eyes before I started laughing at him. He leaned back on the hood and rested his head on the windshield. I rested my head in his stomach. We laid there as the music streamed from the car. He played with the curls in my hair and made me shiver. He twisted them around his fingers and tickled my ear with the ends.
“What happened to us?” I asked
“What do you mean?” he asked, distracted by my hair
“Well just, I don’t know, this isn’t me, you know? Like we used to be passionate and had sexual tension and like. I don’t know. It was hot. Now I’m lying with you listening to soft rock as we look out at the lake. It’s just…if someone had told me a year ago that I would be here, with you of all people… I would have, I don’t know-“
“Punched them?”
“No, hahaha. Well maybe I don’t know, but I definitely wouldn’t believe them.”
“What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with being here and what’s wrong with ME?!” he teased
“Nothing I guess, it’s just not how I imagined…it…?” I tried to explain
“It?”
“You know. It.”
“Isabella Nicole Jiovani. Are you trying to say you’re in love with me?” he asked, pulling my face up to look at me.
“No! I mean not yet, but, I definitely think I’m falling for you, or something.” He smiled “I swear to God, Lou, if you tell ANYone that I just said that, I’ll rip your fucking head off.” I wasn’t smiling.
“I know you will, babe.” He slowly leaned his head towards mine. I breathed in, slowly catching the smell of his breath. It smelled like spearmint. He was always chewing spearmint gum. Our lips touched gently and his hand moved to my cheek, barely touching me with the tips of his fingers. It tickled and I giggled, breaking the kiss. He smiled and I just looked at him for a second before-
“I have a confession.” I said, looking down at my knees.
“What’s that?”
“Well. Remember a while ago, when we were at Sadie and Liam’s and had that huge fight and I said ‘you were like my…’ and trailed off and just left?”
“Yeah and you told me at the lake house that you were going to say something about Brooke and Felix and One Tree Hill or something?” he looked confused. I laughed nervously. Was I seriously about admit this?
“Yeah, um , well, I wasn’t really going to say that. What I was really going to say, and I knew this all the way back then, before we even started…whatever this is… was that you were like my escape from all of this. You made me forget about all the shitty stuff in my life. It’s like, when I’m with you and you’re making me laugh hysterically or kissing me or even just in the same room as me, you have this effect on me that I can’t really explain. You just…you fix me or something. I mean look at me. I’m changing already.”
“Bella. Do you really feel that about me?” He asked with an almost pained look on his face.
“Yeah.” I broke his gaze and looked down at my knees again. He put his finger under my chin and pulled my face up to his. He kissed me again, but this time with more passion. With more feeling. “Thank you.” I said simply. He chuckled and kissed me again as we lay back down on the hood of the car.
