In a tiny café across the street from a bargain bookstore, Harry sat across from Gemma and recounted the story.
"...And then he just threw glass at the door behind me. I made him hate me even more in my attempts to neutralize him."
His sister rolled her eyes.
"You acted like a condescending asshole and made decisions about your not-relationship with him by yourself. That's not what Elia told you to do at all, I suspect. And you do it all the time, like when you decided to stop your Monday tradition or when you decided that he wasn't allowed to talk to you when you ran into each other. Repeat offender."
"Whatever," he bit out of the flaky croissant aggressively. "I'm truly done. I no longer know a Louis Tomlinson. I'm turning over a new leaf, Gem."
"Mm-hm," she hummed, raising her eyebrows skeptically. "Whatever you say, Harry."
***
"So what did he want?" Jake asked when Louis called him the next day.
"He told me he wanted us to be strangers," he grumbled.
"And remind me why that's a bad thing if you hate him, Grumpy-Pants?"
Louis ran a hand through his hair, exasperated.
"I don't expect you to understand, Jake, but Harry has been occupying my thoughts for years now, whether it be through love or hate," he snapped. "Harry and I had a past, and for the longest, I hoped for a future."
Jake was quiet for a moment.
"Do you see a future with us?"
Now Louis was even more irritated.
"That hardly matters, now, does it?"
"I'm not the one who hurt you, Louis. You don't have to be such an ass," he scolded. He couldn't even see his face, but he could just picture how livid he was.
Louis shrugged. "And you don't have to be so clingy, now do you?"
At this point, Jake was seething, but Louis truthfully couldn't bring himself to give a single damn. Every emotion had been spent on Harry until he was hopelessly impoverished; now he was apathetic: the one thing that scared Louis. He remembered then that Harry and he always disagreed with one another on whether it's worse to feel an abundance of pain or nothing at all. Louis though the latter was far worse. He was always less nihilistic than Harry.
"I'll call back when you're yourself," Jake informed him as though he would care.
Louis was left to himself, and all he could do, of course, was be angry. Harry never cared to listen to him, so he didn't understand why it still pissed him off so much. More than that, he didn't understand why he felt so shitty. He had a dream job, a decent man, a beautiful apartment, and a patient therapist. But now he wanted to drink too much, just like the night he met Jake. It was so easy for him to get lost when he drank; the air felt heavy while he felt light. Everything was a joke when he was drunk, so it was impossible to get upset over anything.
With that in mind, he left his empty home and drove to the nearest bar. He bar-hopped until sunrise.
***
sorry for the short chapter:/ love you guys
