Zoe’s POV
“Nope, me and Alfie are just good friends” I spoke down at the laptop webcam letting a high pitched tone take over my voice as I tried to sound as positive as possible. I had already answered a question relating to my relationship status’ with any of the YouTube boys at least five times during my live YouNow broadcast and I was becoming to become sick of it. I just wanted to get away from the thoughts that something would happen between me and any of the boys before I started to believe it for myself.
I was quickly cut off from my trail of thought by the vibrations of my phone against the desk and got back to answering some more relevant questions from the chat bar whilst I carelessly swiped the unlock screen on my phone to reveal a new message.
“Can’t wait for tomorrow Smelly! .xx”
I chuckled down at Alfie’s text, excited about my trip down to London tomorrow where I would be meeting up with Alfie and Marcus to film a new Guinness World Records video with them. After seeing I’d been on YouNow just over an hour, I ended my broadcast after informing the viewers about my plans for the next day and promising I would attempt to vlog as much of it as I could.
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Later that night I was curled up on my bed looking over my tracked tumblr tags, reblogging a few of the various gifs people had made of me and others from our videos. There was one picture that caught my eye, it was just a simple image from a paused frame from one of the make-up tag videos me and Alfie had filmed in September. I thought nothing special of it at first, thinking how ugly my facial expression at the pause was and wondering why this awful picture had so many notes…until I clicked on them. There was various captions added throughout the notes all involving “THE WAY ALFIE IS LOOKING AT HER OMG” I laughed at how silly they were being until my laughter faded out noticing one of the notes:
“pointlessblogtv reblogged this from ZoellaDeyes and added:
Shush guys, zoe can’t know.”
Zoe can’t know what?!? I didn’t quite understand, well I did but I immediately pushed the obvious thought as far back into my head as I could. I knew if Alfie really liked me he wouldn’t publish it onto the whole of Tumblr knowing there was a high chance either me or someone I knew and spoke to would see it. With this thought, I slammed my laptop shut and pulled my duvet over me as I began to attempt to clear my brain and get some sleep before I met up with the boys the very next day.
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Arriving into Paddington Station, I mentally thanked my anxiety for not treating me with a visit whilst reaching into my bag to pull out my phone and call Alfie to find out where he was waiting to meet me. Despite his best efforts to send me on a wild goose chase to find him, I was eventually greeted into his slightly muscular arms for a hug snuggling my face into his chest after he had presented me with a fresh Costa take-out hot chocolate topped with whipped cream…wow, I’d missed my best friend.
As I leaned back from Alfie’s chest, I expected him to remove his arms and release me from the hug but to my surprise he kept me in his comforting hold as I tilted my head to face him towering over me.
“Where’s Marcus?” I inquired after realising he wasn’t with Alfie to greet me from my train like usual.
“He didn’t come down from Bristol in the end, Liz couldn’t make it for the recording and I didn’t wanna be all lonesome in big old London town so I just accidentally forgot to tell you we weren’t filming.”
“Oh, well in that case Mr can we pleaseee go get some food” I begged, as Alfie smirked down at me before suddenly removing his arms from around my frame and darting off in the direction of the tube station entrance. After Alfie’s rapid departure I took a second to regain posture then headed off following him down to the tube. It was 9pm and the train was reasonably crowed with people heading out for the evening and people heading home from the day at work, so we both took to standing and steadied ourselves for when the train set off to the next station. Once moving, I let a yawn escape my mouth and looked up to Alfie, whose armpit I now seemed to be stood in as he was reaching up to hold the handrail on the roof of the carriage above my head.
“Alfie, can we just go to yours and get Pizza instead of going anywhere?” I asked before letting out another yawn…it had been a long day.
“Is someone tired? Yeah, of course we can. I’m very glad you suggested that actually.” He let out a smirk after his last comment, looking proud of himself but I was unable to think anything of it as the train came to a sudden stop at its next station and I went flying into Alfie as he quickly reacted and gently grabbed my waist in an attempt to stop me from falling. As the train began moving again I realised Alfie’s hand was still on my waist and looking up to him with a quizzical look on my face he just smiled sweetly down at me as I began to appreciate his arms protective positioning around me that stayed for the rest of our journey.
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Alfie’s POV
We’d got back to my apartment around half an hour ago and I’d left Zoe curled up in the Living Room whilst she thought I was in the kitchen ordering pizzas. Now standing in the entrance of the living room, I leaned onto the doorframe as I looked over at Zoe on my Sofa. She’d managed to snooze off within the 10 minutes I’d been gone and looked far too beautiful there to be disturbed; I just wanted to watch her…obviously not in a creepy manner.
I let out a deep sigh stepping back into the Kitchen, I felt awful lying to Zoe telling her there was filming to be done today but it was the only way I could think to know she would definitely come down, alone. No one knew about my plans for today, not even Marcus. I just felt it would be much easier if I kept it too myself, I could do things my way and not have anyone talk me out of it, today was the first time I’d finally plucked up the courage to do it and I didn’t need anyone telling me it was the wrong thing to do. Besides they didn’t even know what I felt, but then that was the point…neither did she. After turning the oven off and tipping the contents of the two full pasta dishes, that I had spent what seemed like forever preparing into the rubbish bin, I turned to the table and blew out the one simple candle I had lit and told myself it wasn’t too late.
“One day she’ll know I’m in love with her.”
A/N Thank you for reading, I really hope you enjoy this. Personally I don't really like this chapter for what I had in mind with the fanfic but I needed to set the scene and get things sorted really.