I wake up to a hand gently nudging me.
“Harry, wake up.” It’s Louis and he sounds a little worried. I open my eyes to see that it’s still dark before glancing quickly across the yard to see the others asleep.
“What’s wrong, Lou?” I look at Louis hovering over me, looking embarrassed.
“Um... I need to use the restroom.” He says in a small voice.
“Okay? You know where it is.” I blink. Is he okay?
He huffs and tugs at my arm a little rougher, urging me to get out of the sleeping bag. “Yeah, but who’s going to warn the other boys if I find a serial rapist and he kidnaps me or something.
I step out of the sleeping bag and look at him dubiously. “Are you serious?”
He rolls his eyes and grabs my arm, tugging me towards the glass doors that separate the backyard from the bungalow. “Yes! Now come before the others wake up.” He hisses.
I laugh at him quietly while bending to grab my phone from the ground before following him inside. I turn on the lights and gesture towards the hallway. He stays next to me with a pained look.
“Well?” I question him. I want him to admit it aloud. He didn’t wake me up at 4 in the morning for nothing.
“Haz” he whines.
“Louis” I counter with a smirk. “C’mon there’s no murderer there”
Louis puts on a straight face “yeah, I know. I was just kidding.”
I nod and look expectantly at him. He shuffles a bit on his feet before starting to walk towards the barely lit hallway. A few steps later he abruptly turns around strides toward me, locking his arms around me.
“Please don’t make me cross that devilish hallway alone.” He covers his head in my chest and continues to ramble, “it’s just that when I came here, I noticed that there really isn’t a secure fence around and I know that your parents are just across the street and I had a really bad dream so please just come with me until I can put on the light at the end of the hallway.” He keeps his eyes squeezed shut and he looks genuinely scared despite the smell of beer on his breath, so I decide to comply without further teasing.
“Okay, don’t worry” I brush his fringe back a while before letting go and taking his hand. He walks next to me quietly before I flick the light switch in the darkness, knowing its exact place from experience.
“I’m staying here, don’t worry” I assure him before he closes the bathroom door. When he’s done I take his hand again and make our way outside. The boys are still sound asleep in their sleeping bags. We snuggle back into the shared sleeping bag, Louis deliberately pulling me closer. I roll my eyes at him but hug him back nonetheless before drifting back to sleep.
The next few days pass really quickly, mostly because we spend most of the time playing football and just fooling around in general. I offer to cook some meals but we mostly eat junk food, not that anyone’s complaining really.
On the fifth day in the bungalow Louis gets restless and keeps bouncing around everywhere so I decide that it’s time to go out for a bit. Mum lets us borrow Robin’s car only because Louis’ got a valid license, and we drive to a nearby park. It’s a fairly sunny day so we all settle for t-shirts and shorts. Niall’s got his guitar with him since we promised Liam that we’d start working on the music, for he’d started to look a little pissed.
“I think this is a good spot” I say, laying the blanket on the grass and sitting down.
Once we’ve settled a bit Liam looks at us dead on. “Okay, I don’t know whose idea it was to keep the actual practice until two days before we’d leave back home,” Louis rolls his eyes and Liam glares at him “but we’ve got to start being serious now.”
“Yeah, but first,” Niall speaks “we’ve got to come up with a name. What’s the group going to be called?”
That shuts us up for a bit. I look at Louis who’s got his mouth puckered in concentration. Liam’s on his phone doing God knows what, I hope he’s not looking up “band names” on Google. A few minutes pass in silence before Liam starts laughing.
“My dad has a suggestion for a band name” he laughs again and palms his face.
“Well? Let us hear it” Louis urges.
“Okay, though it’s quite lame. He suggested ‘Status Single’” Liam hides his face in his palms, shaking his head.
We all groan.
I run my fingers through the grass a bit before deciding to speak up. “Umm, well, you see… I kind of started thinking of a name a few days ago,” I hesitate. They all look at me expectantly. “Well, how about ‘One Direction’?” after seeing their speculating faces I continue “you know, since we’re all kind of going in one direction in a sense. I thought it was appropriate” I say in a small voice.
“No, I think it’s great.” Niall says.
“Yeah, I like it.” Louis nods.
“Okay, let’s go with that.” Liam approves, and Zayn just nods with a smile.
I let out a sigh of relief but Niall is quick to interject.
“Wait! Lemme try it out first, yeah?” he urges. We all look at him confusedly before he opens his mouth and takes a deep breath.
“One Direction” he says in a perfect announcer voice. We all fall in a fit of laughter and Niall nods in satisfaction.
“One Direction it is.”
We sit there in comfortable silence for a few more seconds before we start being serious again.
“Okay, so we’ve got that covered. Now, what about the song? What are we going to sing there?” Liam looks at us.
“Umm” I start. “I didn’t really think about that to be honest.” I let out a weak laugh.
“What about Torn?” Zayn suddenly offers. “By Natalie Imbruglia”
“I think I’ve heard it” Louis says.
“I’m not sure if I have” I admit and soon Liam’s looking for the song online. After listening to it I immediate know that it’s the one.
We look for the music track and try it out a bit and soon realize that it is in fact a great song that matches our voices well, giving each one of us a different role in it.
When we think that we’ve had enough practice for the day, it’s already dark.
“Let’s get some dinner and then drive home, yeah?” I offer.
They nod and I bend to grab the blanket.
While we’re walking towards the car Louis wraps his arm around my waist. “The name’s great, I really like it” he smiles at me.
“Thank you” I blush.
He ruffles my curls a bit before running towards the car. That boy.
