disasterology // l.s.

| 03 |

Louis had not checked his phone in three days, for it seemed he had misplaced it. That is, until a certain girl pulled it right out of her pocket and placed it into Louis' small hand, an innocent look resting upon her face. Whether it was genuine or not, Louis didn't know, but he liked to think that in the week and a half she had stayed with him, he could read her fairly well.

He couldn't; there wasn't a single difference to him in her happy face and her sad face, and that's what made her a stranger to him.

"You've gotten, like, four calls in the past three days," her shrill voice almost made Louis cringe, but instead a look of annoyance overcame his features, mixed with a nervous glare. It wasn't that Louis was a private person - he was quite open, in fact - but he was not too fond of the girl as a whole and seemed to always be finding things about her that made him tick. "I didn't answer them, if that's what you're thinking," she added before Louis had the chance to say something, which would have most likely turned into yelling. You'd think they'd been together for years by the way they fought every single waking minute, but that was not the case; they'd only been together a week and a half, baggage from a rocky past scraping bitterly at their ankles.

"Don't take my phone," Louis grumbled coldly, meaning every sharp syllable that left his mouth. His intention was not to hurt her (because he could never really intentionally hurt a human being without a valid reason) but he did not love her. Yet, here he was, standing mere inches away from her and pretending that everything was okay. Pretending that she, a girl he knew as a stranger - their past no vaguer than a dream, to Louis - was the one that he loved. Oh, how his lies cut deep into his skin, hooking into his mind and weighing him down and blinding the blue-eyed boy until all he had was his own beating heart to guide him.

If only his heart beat a little faster, a little louder; but Louis was not in love with the girl in front of him, and knew deep down, that he never, ever would be.

The girl giggled stupidly, making Louis clench his fist in annoyance, "Whatever," she brushed him off, as if it was some sort of game they were playing, but Louis did not want to play; he wanted to be alone right now, truthfully. Unfortunately, the oblivious girl kept talking. "Also, why does Harry," Louis flinched as though the name was a curse word and he was a naïve young child boy, ears unintentionally catching the exact way the name rolled so casually off of her tongue; but the girl did not seem to notice, "Have so many hearts next to his name? I don't have that many hearts next to my name. Actually, I don't have any at all!"

Louis tuned out her mindless babbling (That's what he called just about every word that came out of her mouth) and slowly fit the pieces together in his brain. The girl Louis so easily despised must have taken Louis' phone to pry into his contacts and see who he was texting (Again; since she had a "right" to do so, apparently). Louis had not texted the green-eyed boy in a while and he remembers deleting their conversation a few days ago (Louis forced himself to; he deprived himself of sleep rereading all the texts and eventually he knew he had to let go, but he didn't feel any better afterwards, truthfully, but you'd never hear it come from Louis' mouth). The situation then clicked in his head.

He called me, Louis thought almost giddily, though trying to keep any trace of excitement or happiness off his face (Because after all, Louis does not love Harry), but found himself being carried up the stairs by his own two legs, and into the bedroom, leaving the babbling girl behind, but she did not even notice his absence, her simple mind being occupied by the littlest of distractions. He closed and locked the door, as if his brain was in autopilot, and sat down on the bed with a large creak. It was in that moment that Louis noticed he was sitting on what used to be Harry's side of the bed. Now, the bed is always half empty, because even when the girl he swears he loves is asleep next to him, he forces them both into one spot on the bed, no matter how much Louis does not appeal to the idea of even thinking of her. Louis says the empty bed space is out of respect. The truth says it's because if he is going to sleep, he does not want to know that Harry is not there.