Funny Kind of Friendship

Chapter 33: Confusion

The movie ends and I wake up to Louis' voice, but I still keep my eyes close.

"Wake up, Justine." He says running his fingers through my hair. I let out a light groan as I tighten my grip around his waist. The girls were already upstairs helping Nan with supper.

"Suppers almost ready." He says.

"Good, cause I'm starving." I say sitting up.

"Louis! Dan is here!" Fizzy yells down to us. Louis' jumps up and grabs my hand.

"Who's Dan?" I ask.

"Mums boyfriend, he's nice. I think you'll like him." He says guiding me up the stairs. We get upstairs and Dan had just walked into the door and Jay hugs and kisses him. The girls greet him from the kitchen and obviously Nan had to go greet him at the door too. Grandad gets up from the couch from watching the football game and shakes his hand, Then he looks over in our direction.

"Hello Louis." Dan smiles and he grips Louis' hand firmly.

"Always good to see you, Dan." Louis smiles.

"And you must be Justine." He says going in to shake my hand. "I've heard so much about you."

"Good things I hope." I joke, he laughs.

"Yes very good things." He looks back at Louis and winks. Louis let's out a silent laugh. I look up at Louis in confusion.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask Louis.

What do you mean?" He pretends to act like nothing just happened.

"You know what I mean..." I say and he shakes his head.

"I don't know what you're talking about, you must be imagining things." I lightly elbow him in the side and he chuckles.

"You came at the right time Dan, supper is ready everyone." Announces Nan. We all go and sit around the table. I sit myself in between Louis and Phoebe. We all make little dinner conversation. They ask me about my studies and they seemed pretty impressed that I came all the way to England from America. About half way through supper, Ted comes and sets his head on my lap from underneath the table. He stared up at me with big puppy eyes. The image of Liam flashed through my mind, the way he would give me puppy eyes. The next thing I know Louis nudges me with his elbow. I look up they're all staring at me waiting for me to answer.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I ask.

"I asked what the weather was like in Minnesota this time of year." Repeats Dan.

"Oh, um... Well, we usually get lots of snow, and it's very cold." I reply. Nan starts a different conversation and I begin to play with my peas with the tip of my fork. I feel Louis' hand lightly touch my arm, his head comes close to mine.

"You feeling alright, Justine?" He whispers.

"Yeah why would you ask?" I whisper back.

"You just seem, a bit out of it." I was a bit out of it. Louis always knows when something's wrong. It's one of those best friend intuition things we have for each other. I take a deep breath and quickly let it out to pull myself together.

"No, I'm fine." I smile in reassurance. He raises an eyebrow and narrows his eyes.

"Okay..." He says unconvincingly and lifts his hand off my arm.

After we were all finished eating, I volunteer me and Louis to do the dishes. We begin to clear plates and we stack them by the sink. I wash and rinse the dishes while Louis dries and puts them away, since I don't know where anything goes. The rest of the family was in the living room watching the rugby game that had just started.