not in love || l.s. ✔︎

CHAPTER SEVEN

HARRY/PRESENT

We were lying on the floor. Cordelia and Bedelia were dressing Arthur up in Darby's scarves and scrunchies. He sat there being poked and prodded with the quiet desperation of lapdogs everywhere.

Darby had her legs wrapped around my torso, cradling my head against her chest, while Liam looked through a folder of old photos on my laptop. We were trying to decide on photos for the memory reel at the wedding. On the eve of the wedding, when it got dark, we planned to screen a photomontage of our lives before and after we met. Darby had a collection of photos from high school and her college days at Vassar. I didn't finish high school because the band took off before I entered my senior year. My pre-Darby montage would consist mostly of life on the road with the lads.

"We used Capcam at our wedding," said Liam, "but with the amount of photos you have here I would recommend Fotor. You can create collages and edit them within the program itself..."

Zayn's eyes glazed over. It was just like old times.

There were millions of photos of me online but it didn't feel right using press shots for something like this. I wanted to use my own pics, which were personal and catalogued my messy real-time experience on the road—a mixture of boredom, exhaustion, mania and complete euphoria.

Liam clicked on a selfie I took of us onstage in Cape Town, and a snapshot of me asleep on the tour bus, a string of drool connecting my mouth to the pillow. Darby pinched my cheeks. "Awwwww. Yes to that one FOR SURE."

Then, accidentally, he clicked on a picture of me and Louis.

I heard myself gasp. Zayn shot up like he'd been hit by lightning and Sophia dropped the apple cups she was preparing for the girls.

It was taken in the green room on our first US tour. We were lying together on the couch with our arms entangled, Louis' lips gently grazing mine. My eyes were closed, my mouth open and expectant.

"That was," I stammered. "That was taken... I was... We were... It's not."

I was never good at this. Not in interviews when I was required to lie, paid millions to lie, and not now that the cost was much higher: Darby's heart.

Liam was my safety net then and he was now, though I could tell that the lie was wearing on him too after all these years. Our band's shiny veneer was slowly cracking.

"Oi, boys, we used to mess about, didn't we? Lou staged this shot while Hazza was asleep, I think. Remember that, Zayn?"

Zayn nodded in agreement before Liam finished posing the question. Then he blurted out, "I made out with Liam once."

Sophia looked at her husband in shock. She'd heard the rumours, like everyone else in the world. Fans called them Ziam Mayne, a ship so beloved that millions of people swore it was real, including respectable news outlets. Despite Liam's insistence that he was in fact straight, Sophia always suspected that there was something he wasn't telling her. What she didn't know was that Liam and Zayn's fake gay love story only existed to cover up my and Louis' real one.

"Yes, yes! Ha ha! We were a bunch of wankers," Liam laughed. Pressing the escape key over and over until the picture mercifully disappeared from the screen.

"Just a bunch of laddy lads doin' lad stuff," I added.

Darby's grip around my waist tightened. I was afraid to turn around and see her expression.

At that moment Bedelia held up a terrified looking Arthur covered in lipstick with a maxi pad for a hat,

"Look mommy."