Zoe’s POV
I woke up confused, feeling a small pattern being gently traced onto my lower back. The confusion was quickly lifted though as memories from the previous night filled my mind. I gently turned onto my side to find Alfie just as I remembered him from the night before; along with a new messy bed-head hair style.
“Morning, you’re looking rather…ugly.”
I jokily slapped Alfie round the face as he mocked me before he placed a morning kiss on my lips. Our kiss quickly became a short peck as we flew apart after hearing Louise just outside the door, speaking to Matt as he left for work.
“Yeahh, I’m just going to see if Zoe’s awake, enjoy your day!”
As the door handle turned Alfie had managed to get out from under the duvet and sat across from me at the opposite end of the bed, looking as though he’d just entered the room after waking up on the sofa in the living room…where Louise will have assumed he had been spending the night.
“ohhh, good morning Alfred! “ Louise was understandably slightly surprised to see Alfie on the end of my bed in just his boxers, yet she quickly shrugged it off.
///
With the weather just as nice as it had been the previous day, myself and Louise dragged Alfie out of the house to take Darcy out for her to appreciate the summer sun despite his best efforts to attempt to stay at Louise’s and edit a vlog that he was going to upload in a couple of days’ time.
We’d been walking through the country estate grounds near to Northampton for just under half an hour when we came across an opening to a beautiful lake. Darcy immediately became fascinated by the wildlife on the water pointing to the various birds she spotted. Climbing out of her pushchair she pulled on Louise’s hand for her to take her down to feed the ducks.
“Alfie will take you baby” Louise nudged Alfie is the side as he let out a light chuckle before swooping Darcy up into his arms and grabbing the bag of bread we had brought with us, heading carefully down to the lake edge.
“Did you speak to him then, he seems much happier today.” I hadn’t been listening to Louise; being too busy watching how sweet Alfie was being with Darcy, so I quickly had to try piece together what she had just said. After eventually working out what she meant I replied, having completely forgotten about Louise’s worry about Alfie.
“Oh yeah, I did…he said it was all sorted now, he didn’t say what it was in the first place though.”
I hated lying to Louise, it didn’t feel right and I’ve never kept anything from her…especially something this big and important.
///
Finding myself alone later that evening, I headed into the study (my adopted bedroom) to find Alfie working on the vlog that he had wanted to edit earlier. With Matt still at work and Louise preoccupied feeding Darcy her dinner it was the perfect opportunity for me to finally talk to Alfie about where we now stood with each other.
“Alf, you got a minute?”
A smile spread across his face as he looked up from his laptop before worry began to set in, obviously sensing the urgency in my voice.
“Yeah of course I do, is everything okay?”
“I just wanna talk about, y’know, well, us?” I spoke as I perched down on the bed. I seemed to not be able to put my thoughts into words. My seriousness made Alfie’s worry worse; I could see he was beginning to have flashbacks from our conversation at the train station.
“Well, you know I really like you…and I think, well I hope you really like me to. I don’t think we should put a label on us or anything though Zo, well obviously we could if that’s what you want, but I just don’t think we need to.”
“I’m so glad you think that too, we just need to see what happens, yeah?”
Alfie’s worried expression immediately left his face as I spoke, confirming that I felt the same. Watching this, I curled up on the bed to sit next to Alfie as wrapped his arm around my waist and pulling me in resulting in my face snuggling into his neck. Seeing Alfie more relaxed gave me the confidence to say what I did next, unsure of how he would take it.
“Also, you know what we were both saying last night…about how he wanted this to work?”
“Yeah?” Alfie’s reply was a lot less wary than it would have been 10 minutes earlier, obviously more trusting and confident now.
“Well, I feel like for now…while we try, we shouldn’t make this completely public. No posting about it on the internet and such. I just think it’ll be better that way.”
“Okay well in that case, maybe we should just keep completely between us like not tell anyone. Not Louise, not Marcus or Joe or our parents, no one.”
I gave Alfie my answer by placing rushed yet passionate kisses on his lips. For the first time, we’d realised just how much this meant to the both of us and how much we really wanted to make it work. It was going to be hard; we were going to have to be clever; sneaky at times, but we wanted this and that was all that mattered.
///
“Zoe? Alfie? Are we going to do that YouNow show?”
I wasn’t sure how long me and Alfie had been laying there for but Louise’s calls for us confirmed it must have been a reasonably long time. Setting up to his laptop on Louise’s dining table, Alfie joined the queue and after tweeting and sharing links we were ready to go. The next hour was filled with questions and laughter. Around half way through the live show, one viewer asked Alfie if he had any hidden talents which then lead onto him plaiting my hair…which was apparently his “talent”. This of course meant the chat was now full with “Awhh Zalfie!!!1!!”, but it didn’t bother me like it used to. The comments had caused Louise to giggle before addressing the 15,000 people strong group of viewers.
“Guys, you do realise Zoe and Alfie aren’t actually together right?”
Hearing Louise’s comment sent my mind into overdrive thinking about easy would be to tell everyone there and then, but then I thought about how well this could work out for the both us. If we were strong enough to keep it a secret, we were strong enough to make it work. Alfie, who was still stood behind me doing my hair, quickly squeezed my shoulders as Louise said this causing me to tilt my head up to him. A knowing, discreet smile filling both of our faces…this was actually happening.
