She // l.p.

2

She nervously laughs to break the silence after my outburst. I haven’t heard that laugh in what seems like forever. My imagination has replayed something like it over and over again in my head, but in comparison, the real thing is much, much better. Frantically, my eyes dart to each of my friends, settling on Zayn before widening them in shock. The whole three day thing isn’t exactly true, he had said to me just an hour or two ago and I had brushed it off thinking he had meant I’d gotten my days mixed but no, he meant she would be here, right now, in the flesh knocking the air out of my lungs just from the sight of her.

I watch with my mouth slightly gapped open as she makes her rounds, hugging each of them one by one – lingering slightly to whisper something in Zayn’s ear with a cautious look etching into her delicate features. She’s almost as uncomfortable as I am.

Then she rounds the counter to me, it isn’t until now that I notice that in two months’ time, there been some changes. Just by the frame of her face I can see she’s lost weight, not that she need to in the first place, but there’s an electrifying glow radiating off of her, shining some light on my darkened soul. I don’t dare to look down at the rest of her toned body, if I can’t touch what’s underneath I don’t want to see. Her hair’s shorter, maybe two inches shorter by the looks of it but it still falls well past her shoulders and it’s the same blonde I used to wake up to on the pillow beside me. Those eyes have gotten greener, cheeks a look little rosier and her lips have never looked so full and pink to me before.

The time I spend taking in the changes is cut short when I catch her eyes settled on mine instead of the wall behind me. I grant her the same amount of time to make note of the mess I feel I’ve become since her and to my surprise, she doesn’t look disgusted. Barely, she takes a step forward and my ribcage is struggling to contain my heartbeat again. I almost don’t how to react, but I silently thank the Lord the feeling of her arms around my middle hasn’t become foreign. Her body still forms to mine the way it used to; her head taking its rightful place against my chest and I know she can hear the unsteady rhythm inside of me.

“Hi, Liam,” my girl says and I feel her shift her head up as I stare ahead in shock that she’s this close to me. This hug feels like it’s lasting forever but I know it’s only been a mere three seconds. “You’re not going to hug me back?” She whispers and her breath hits against my unshaved neck. The wind is knocked out of me for the second time and my arms fold around her small frame in an instant, probably squeezing a little too tight, and my face is buried into her vanilla scented hair.

“M-Mel,” I stutter into her ear like this isn’t happening and just as quick as I’ve wrapped my arms around her I have to let her go. My knees are tempted to give out underneath me as she backs away, prying the arms that feel like home away from my torso, and looking completely unaffected by the small encounter I’ve imagined for the last two months. “I’ll be right back.” I say a little too loudly, startling her in the process, the boys look at me knowing that that took the life out of me and I disappear around the corner into the bedroom.

It’s too much, knowing what it feels like to be hers and now… nothing. I feel this incredible force pulling me to her while she has an impenetrable bubble around herself and heart, a force field that just shocked the living shit out of me when her lips were just a few inches from my neck. I knew it would hurt this bad, seeing her again for the first time, but I thought I was going to have just a couple more days to try and put up my own force field to block out the way her saying my name makes me feel like a God.

There’s no turning back now, she’s here and I’m wouldn’t dare to ask her to leave, mostly because I don’t want her to in the first place and secondly because watching her walk out a second time, even when she’s not mine anymore, is going to rip me to shreds.