Peeping

New Year's Eve 2024

Life wasn't supposed to be like this.

Louis sighs, staring into the mirrored wall across the bar. His reflection is blurred and segmented by the glass shelving that holds the bottles of rainbowed spirits in every size and shape imaginable.

How did he even end up here?

He had a plan, see: study hard, play hard, work hard. If his childhood had taught him anything, it was that money mattered. He'd experienced a life without the advantages others had, and he didn't want that for himself. He doesn't consider himself a greedy man, but he wanted to be comfortable, to not live paycheck to paycheck, to be able to help out his family when they need it. And he's doing his best, he just hadn't factored in how utterly soul-draining that was going to be.

Accounting had seemed like a solid career choice, and it is. For most people, that is. Louis just isn't one of them. He hates numbers (which really should've been a red flag right there), and spreadsheets, and meetings, and wearing a suit, and his coworkers. As a result, he's actually pretty shit at his job. How he made it through uni he'll never fully understand.

At Hudson & Williams, he's on the bottom rung of a seemingly insurmountable ladder and (if he's being completely honest with himself) he's unlikely to reach the next step partly because of the aforementioned lack of skill, but also because he truly can't be arsed.

It's just mind-numbingly boring.

What he really wants to do is teach. Always has. But teachers earn even less than he does, which is certainly saying something.

He takes another swig of his beer because it's there, not because he needs or necessarily wants it, and glares at his reflection. He just needs to stick it out for another 5 years and he'll own his home. That's if he keeps throwing every pound he earns on the mortgage. It just doesn't leave much cash for anything else.

He plays footy on the weekends and trains during the week. He hangs out with Niall and their crew of footy mates at the pub. He has a roof over his head and food in his belly. His life is fine, good even, it's just not great.

Another group of New Year's revellers pass by the pub and Louis raises his gaze from his beer. Their glittery outfits shimmer briefly through the fogged-up windows as they continue on their way to the next destination.

His eyes trail a path across the floor, confetti and streamers and burst balloons, squashed into the dark wooden flooring and twisted amongst the bar stools and table legs haphazardly placed around the empty main bar.

It's gone midnight and then some. He's still here though, waiting for Niall, his best mate and owner of The Heartbreak Haven. They're not childhood friends. Not the type of friends where you're thrust together randomly because of when or where you were born, because you share the same desk or bench at lunch, or because there's no one else to become friends with. No, he and Niall chose each other much later in life, right here in this very pub as a matter of fact.

It was 3 years ago to the day when Louis had wandered into the pub for a piss on his way home from the hands-down worst New Year's Eve party of his life. What is it that makes NYE such a shit night anyway? Is it some cosmic force that mandates that the universe has to drag you down to the lowest point before you embark on the new year?

Louis had walked in and found a group of staff sitting around a high table winding down from their hectic evening. They'd forgotten to lock the door and when one of the staff had called out that they were closed, it was Niall that had locked eyes with him. Louis had apologised and said he'd just been in need of the loo. Niall had given him a onceover to size him up and then offered for him to relieve himself and join them for a drink.