not in love || l.s. ✔︎

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A/N: I'm dedicating this chapter to @flourish for all her encouraging/hilarious comments!

HARRY / PRESENT

By the next morning, Zayn's disappearance was our second problem. There was a hurricane passing through Florida and Darby's parents' flight was grounded until further notice. Her youngest sister, who had come home after backpacking through Southeast Asia, was stranded with them.

My father was on his way in from London as scheduled but he had thrown his back out prior to flying and was on a buffet of pain pills.

The stag and doe was the next night and they were calling for rain.

Darby was pretending not to freak out, but honestly told she was a wreck. I was fussing about the office, making her photocopies and tidying up so she'd have less to worry about.

She'd lightened her hair a shocking shade of white blonde for the special day. It was very high fashion, but now with her pale, worried complexion, she looked ghostly.

I tucked a wild strand behind her ear. "Snow White."

"Snow White had black hair," she said.

"Snow... Uh... Snow."

The maypole ribbons she ordered online had arrived via UPS and she tore open the box like a kid on Christmas. They were the wrong ones-a quarter inch too thin. She sat in her chair, holding them and staring blankly out the window. I thought she might have a nervous breakdown.

I laid a new stack of papers on her cluttered desk, neatly moving away her notes.

"Sweetheart, you know we can postpone the wedding."

Her lip quivered. "Do you not want to do this?"

"No, no, no. I mean, yes, yes, yes of course I want to get married! I just mean that money is no object. We can cancel vendors and flights and rebook. I know you want everything to be perfect."

"I don't want a perfect wedding. I want to be married. To you," she cried. Darby sniffed into the braided bracelet on her wrist-a gift I got her when we first met that she never cut off.

The only thing that seemed to bring her back to herself was her work. She poured over old articles, photographs and video footage.

One concert caught my eye. Oslo 2012. It was outdoors, a festival, and we were on the main stage. I was singing to a girl in the front row and ran backward to join Zayn center stage but miscalculated and crashed into Louis instead. We laughed. As I moved to leave his hand lingered on my forearm. I stayed and sang into his mic while he strummed on, grinning.

There was nothing conspicuous about the old videos and photos, but if you looked closely enough you could see that Louis and I are standing next to each other in every shot until June 2012 of that year, after which we were never photographed next to each other again.

Darby noticed a shift in our demeanor but she couldn't quite put into words what it was she was seeing.

"I'm interviewing Niall today," she said.

"Today? Don't we have enough on our plate? I was sure there was some pre-wedding something-or-other we had to attend?"

"Yeah, brunch with my family. But they're not here," she retorted gloomily.

Niall had been shopping all morning, or rather he went to the addidas and Nike store, which I didn't consider proper shopping.

He had a legendary sneaker collection. The Nike Zoom Kobe VI, Pierre Hardy's Powerama's, Hussein Chayalan's 2011 Puma's, Damien Hirst's 2010 Converse, The Dunk Supreme's in blue and white, and 1982 Reebok Freestyles. There were probably more articles written about his sneakers than his music.