The Rusty Old Minivan

Chapter 27

It wasn't before nine pm the following day that Louis saw Harry again. He'd driven off while Louis was out for his fag last night and Louis hadn't wanted call, nor text him. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Part of him always wanted to have Harry near, even when he didn't much feel like speaking to him. Part of him always wanted to reach out and sometimes that part was stronger than his own integrity.

But Freddie had been stroppy all night, unwilling to sleep or keep quiet, so Louis had had his hands full. Without Harry there and with Tabatha out at a friend's house for the night, Louis had no one to take the baby off his hands, not even for a minute. He probably would've caved, probably had, probably couldn't get the itching urge to call Harry out of his head all night, but it was no use when Freddie was being so fussy that Harry wouldn't be able to hear Louis if he did. Call it a blessing in disguise. Call it whatever you want. Louis wouldn't have the time to care.

Around noon, Freddie finally seemed to have found peace. Louis was sitting in the livingroom in his sweats, baby sound asleep in his arms, watching an old episode of TOWIE. Katie Price was currently sobbing about her acrylic nails or summat and Louis was sat there with a four-month-old in his arms, worried about gathering less than the cost of said nails to pay back a dangerous drug-lord. He supposed their situations were somewhat similar.

"Hello?" a voice called out from the hall as the front door was opened.

Nobody ever bothered locking it, not even Tabatha herself, but Louis supposed she had the money to pay for a new tellie if she had a break-in. Then he glanced at the flatscreen-telly again and wondered how much he could get for it if he stole it right now.

Then Harry called out "hello?" again and walked into the livingroom.

"Hey," Louis muttered, not moving his gaze from Katie's scrunched-up HD-face.

"Oh, hey," Harry said, as his walking-pace slowed down, ever so indescretely, the second he layed his eyes on Louis. "You watching TOWIE?"

"Yeah."

Harry rested back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. "God, she's got some crazy veneers, in'she?"

"Yeah," Louis muttered, and then couldn't stop himself from adding on, "had to change the channel before 'cause Freddie was going blind just from watching her."

Harry gave a low cackle.

They went silent for a bit, even as the commercial break came on and a woman with a stitched-up face was trying to sell menstrual pads by associating them with being an always-on-the-go successful career-woman.

"You can sit down, you know," Louis muttered, when Harry shifted weight for the sixth time.

"I'm all right," Harry muttered back, but slipped onto the couch seconds later anyway.

The show came back on and Katie was getting her cracked nail fixed while ranting to a chinese manicurist, who looked like she'd been instructed to just 'smile and nod, smile and nod, don't worry that you don't understand a word of English, just smile and nod', about her bitchy back-stabbing girlfriend.

"Where's Tab?"

"At a friend's house," Louis said, rearranging Freddie on his chest to fend off the bit of anxiety that always came with having been in a fight with Harry and trying not to say the wrong thing afterwards, "I mean, that's what she said last night anyway. But she's been gone since then, so I think she's got a new man or summat."

"Oh, what a little slag, her," Harry grinned. Well, Louis didn't check his expression, but he could hear the grin in his voice.

"Yeah, she's a right little minx, in'she? Going out all night without telling us who with."