Chemistry (L.T.)

Chapter 43

Louis POV

The look she gives me stops me dead in my tracks. Maybe I shouldn't have said it. Maybe I should have kept on pretending.

"What?" Alexia's voice is filled with confusion, like she's been hit with a plot twist she never saw coming.

"It's mine. This room." I say again slowly, hoping I didn't just make a huge mistake. A secret like this one could start all kinds of problems. A secret like this one could change my reputation forever- it could even change Harry's.

"I heard you." She says taking a seat on the bed next to me and looking down at her hands as if searching for her next sentence among them.

"Well aren't you going to ask me about it?" I say after we sit for a few minutes in uncomfortable silence. I wish I was a mind reader, because I had no idea what was going on in the mind of the girl in front of me.

I see her mind racing through the face she's making. The way she pulls her lip between her teeth like she always does when she is thinking. She shakes her head no and I watch her chest rise and fall as she takes a deep breath.

I don't like this silence. So I interrupt it with the only thing I could think of. "Thanks for sending me the notes while I was gone. You were kinda my Chemistry savior."

She laughs softly, revealing the glow on her face she gets when she let's her happiness shine through.

"Well, I don't know about savior." She looks up at me, and for a moment I feel like we are back to the way we were weeks ago. When we were friends that could share a laugh or stargaze on the field. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't fall behind. You know how Dr. Smithson can be."

"You mean a pain in the arse." I say with a laugh.

"Exactly....how are you?" It's the question I'd heard relentlessly since I'd been injured. The question that people never seemed to really want the answer to. The courtesy that everyone felt they needed to give a poor lad on crutches.

"Been better honestly. Doctors expect a full recovery but that doesn't give me back that championship game." I sigh. The truth was the injury had been more of a bruise on my ego than any physical ailment. Football had been my life for so long, and feeling like the one thing I was always good at wasn't attainable for a while was killing me inside.

"You feel like your falling behind." Alexia says as if she is reading my mind.

"Something like that. Feel like I let the team down."

"You most definitely didn't let them down Louis." She reaches out a hand and sets it on my knee. Its unexpected but I don't flinch. "They wouldn't have won that game without you."

I give her a soft smile. This encouragement was foreign territory coming from Alexia, and I wonder if it's the wine hitting her a little too much.

"Louis I..." She looks at me with her sparkling green eyes, the one's that reflect a forest of emotion. The air is heavy, the vulnerability of the moment hanging between us. "I'm sorry about how I acted the other day. I shouldn't have lashed out at you like that. Not for something so silly."

"You were right to be angry. It was a jerk move, I should have let you know."

"But you came and apologized. And you meant it, I know that you did. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't accept your apology and held onto it for so long. You didn't deserve that. It was an honest mistake."

"Thank you." I say, feeling as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Although I couldn't be entirely sure that Alexia would be as forgiving in the morning, it felt good that at least for the night, she wasn't hating my guts.

"I don't know what it is about you Louis Tomlinson, but you bring out the worst in me." Alexia laughs with an eyebrow raised.

"And you, Alexia, bring out the best in me." I smile back. I look at the woman in front of me, a far different woman from the one I had been paired with on the first day of classes. That Alexia was a girl, a child. The Alexia who stared back at me with her emerald eyes now was a confident woman, a woman who stood up for herself. She was a woman who had been heartbroken and had formed a protective shell around herself. A shell that caused her to be on the defense.

But underneath that shell was a woman whose smile could make my day. Whose laugh could warm a room and whose kindness could change lives. The Alexia I had gotten to know could be vulnerable and sincere. She had goals and aspirations, but had finally learned to let loose every once in a while.

The girl that sat before me was beautiful in every sense of the word. The bright red of her dress perfectly complementing the light brown color of her hair. My eyes are drawn to her lips, the burgundy of her lipstick popping out from the rest of her face. The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them.

"You look beautiful tonight." I whisper, instinctively leaning a little bit closer to Alexia.

"You don't look bad yourself," she says back, voice quiet. We pause for a moment, each of us thinking about what could happen. What was about to happen. I start to lean closer, and feel the warmth of Alexia's breath, our lips nearly touching.

Ringggggg!!

Alexia jumps back at the sound of her phone ringing obnoxiously.

"Sorry I better take that." She says quickly and I can tell by the flush in her cheeks that she's embarrassed that this just happened.

Was that really going to happen? Were we really about to kiss? That was just what we needed to complicate our strange friendship even more. Maybe it was for the best that her phone went off at just the right moment.

"It's Marie. I guess there's a bit of an issue going on downstairs with Liam," she rolls her eyes.

"I guess you better go take care of that then" I say, hopping to my feet and grabbing my crutches.

"Yep, duty calls" she responds with a smile. She's silent for a moment, as if she's thinking. "See you later?" She asks, as she begins to walk out of the room.

"Of course." I say, following behind her all well trying to figure out what all of this means.

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Thanks again for reading! I'm not sure what is going on with the chapters not posting correctly, its seems to be some kind of desktop versus mobile issue. Thanks for your patience as I try to figure out what is going on!!!