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"What do you mean, No?"

#1: "What do you mean, No?"

I placed both my hands over my face, as I - and everyone else in the room - watched Louis on one knee, holding a small, square box in his hand and giving me a hopeful look that was accompanied by a small smile.

My head was spinning; I literally felt like the room had gotten 30 times smaller, and the temperature has risen by 30 degrees at the same time. If there was no one around me, I would surely be vomiting all over the place.

I shook my head at my weird thoughts, and peeked around; everyone - about 50 people, were watching either me, or Louis. I could make out some faces through a blur; Destiney and Maria were trying to hold in their screams, Renee had a proud grin on her face, Tom's eyes were just about to fall out of his sockets, and I could only imagine the faces of my other colleagues.

I gulped before finally looking at Louis again; his smile was slowly disappearing as I stood silent for about a minute. There were too many things going on, all at once. I needed a moment to recover from all of it for real.

After what seemed like a year, I finally managed to unglue my feet from the ground and start walking toward Louis. Instead of giving him an answer, I gripped his wrist and pulled him up, my hand flying to the back of his neck as soon as he was my height, and pressing my lips against his. If I could stay like that forever and not give him an answer, I swear I would.

People around us were clapping and cheering, even though they didn't hear my answer; I hadn't even given him one. But when people see you kissing the person that just asked you to marry them about a hundred seconds before, naturally they'd think you said yes.

Louis breathed against my lips, letting out what seemed to be a happy sigh; a happy sigh of relief. I could feel his heart pounding against my chest, he was obviously nervous that I might say no. And it broke my heart that I would have to do just that.

His arms went around my waist as we kissed, and by now I wanted to pull away and give him my real answer. He was getting too happy about what seemed to be a yes.

"Louis," I mumbled against his lips and luckily, he pulled away a couple centimeters, enough for me to see the wide grin on his face. I gulped before placing my hands on his cheeks, covering my mouth as I brought my lips to his ear.

"No," I whispered shakily, genuinely scared of his next actions.

"What?" He said through a wide smile, obviously not thinking that was my answer to his question. "What do you mean, no?" Damn.

"You know that I love you, right?" I asked quickly. "I do, I really really do. There is nothing I would want more than to spend the rest of my life with you. I'm never going to want anyone else, I'm never going to try to replace you or leave you. You're it for me."

The smile I had on my face faded away, and I gulped as I felt the tears starting to burn my eyes. "But I can't say yes. Not now, not right now. Not with everything that's going on, it's too early. I swear that's all it is. This doesn't mean 'no' is going to be my answer in a year, in a few months even. Please tell me you understand."

As soon as Louis looked down, I started panicking, "Louis, please. I'm begging you, I love you."

"Woah... woah." He looked up at me with a small smile, it looked forced beyond words but I decided to take it as a good sign. "It's okay."

"I know it's not," I said, almost messing up the words because of how quickly I was speaking. "It's not okay, I can't even begin to imagine how you're feeling, but I need you to understand. You can yell at me, throw things at walls, be angry, but I need you to understand, I... I just..."