how you get the boy

six

"Remind me again why should I be the one who picks up the cupcakes from the bakery?" I asked Louis for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes as I sifted through the fridge, searching for my chocolate that I bought yesterday. I was so sure that I hadn't eaten it; I'd kept it for today. "Shouldn't you be the one to pick it up? Aren't you afraid that I'll do something to – I don't know – ruin it?"

Louis mocked a laugh as he took a seat on one of the chairs around the table, looking at me as I frowned and pouted when I couldn't find my chocolate. "You won't ruin it." He replied with such certainty that I wondered if he knew that I would never ruin a cupcake, "Besides, it's for Harry."

That name, however, might be the reason why I changed my mind.

Out of all people that he knew, I had no clue as to why Louis had to choose me to do the honour of picking up Harry's birthday cupcakes from the bakery that apparently the Jackass used to work at before he started working at The Cup. Louis could have asked for Niall's help who happened to be Harry's best mate or he could have picked it up himself seeing that he wasn't busy at all despite what he'd been telling me.

"D'you reckon I'd do it just 'cause it's for Harry?" I asked once I'd given up on searching for my chocolate and accepted the fact that it was probably gone for good. Leaning against the door of the fridge, I shot a questioning look at Louis who was grinning from ear to ear and when I saw the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, I knew his agenda straightaway: he wanted to set me up with Harry.

He'd been trying to do so since the night he saw the two of us sitting next to each other in the living room and if you asked me, I thought it was bloody ridiculous. Not once had I shown any interest in Harry – or vice versa – and yet he thought that we were secretly attracted to each other. And that was all because he strongly believed that his friend was mean to me because he liked me. Bloody ridiculous, right? Especially when he claimed that he could notice the tension between us but he couldn't, for the life of him, notice those feelings that I'd harboured over the years for him – not that I wanted him to, for I wasn't ready to face the consequences if he were to find out about it.

"It's for his birthday," Louis replied, wriggling his brows at me as if that could convince me to do what was supposed to be his task. I wasn't supposed to do anything for Jackass. "Did you get him a birthday present, Tee?"

"...no?" I answered, my brows descending into a little frown. Why would I get him a present when he wasn't even my friend to begin with? I would never waste my money on a jackass.

"Then that settles it, yeah?" Louis said as he hopped off the chair and went to give a peck on my cheek before he marched out of the kitchen and into his bedroom. "See you at Vortex, Tee!"

"I'm only doing this cos you begged me to, Lou!" I shouted back at him, huffing like a little girl that I secretly was when I heard his laughter ringing through the flat.

I couldn't believe that not only did Louis manage to convince me to come to Harry's 20thbirthday party at Vortex tonight, he also managed to persuade me to pick up Jackass' cupcakes regardless how many times I told him that being around Harry was the last thing I wanted to do on a Sunday night.

Besides, his birthday wasn't even until tomorrow. But since Louis insisted that it was best if we – not that any of my opinions was taken into consideration – threw a party during the weekend instead of on Monday night which was the exact day of his birthday and also the day most of us had classes, we agreed to it.

I refused to agree, of course, because if it were up to me, we shouldn't even throw a party for him. But if Louis still wanted to do so since Jackass was his best mate, I didn't want to get involved with it.