Through My Eyes

i

Dear Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson (I understand you generally refer to yourselves as ‘One Direction’),

I have been asked to apologise for hot-wiring and stealing your tour bus.

However, I would then be telling a lie, and I dislike lying.

Very much.

Therefore, I am most definitely not sorry for hot-wiring and stealing your tour bus. In addition, you are five pretentious prats who think they’re older than they actually are.

Oh, and I really hate your music.

Sincerely,

Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Wright

✉

Liam raised his eyebrows at the paper in his hands, then heaved a sigh and flopped back onto the sofa. "Well," he murmured. "That told us."

Niall paused in his pillow fight with Louis to glance at his bandmate. "What's up, Liam?"

Liam gave another sigh and passed a hand across his face, briefly considered saying 'nothing' and letting them go back to whatever they were doing, but decided against it.

"That girl," he said tiredly. "The one who hot-wired the bus a couple of weeks back."

"Right nutter, that one was," interjected Zayn, throwing some crisps into his mouth as he did so. 

"Yeah, well, obviously part of her punishment was a letter of apology to us," Liam replied, waving the aforementioned letter in the air.

At this, Louis leapt forward, snatching the letter out of Liam's hands and scanning it quickly. After doing so, he promptly burst into fits of laughter.

"Jesus Christ," he managed, "this is too bloody good."

"Let's see, Lou," Harry said, speaking for the first time. He took the letter out of his friend's hands, and sat down slowly as he started reading. Once he had done so, he turned the letter over, as though checking to see if there was anything on the other side, then put it down on the coffee table and stared at Liam. 

"Is that it?" he said quietly. Liam nodded; Niall, who looked more confused than anything, took the letter off the table and read it, still sitting on the floor. He only grinned. 

"'Five pretentious prats', are we? This girl sure knows how to dish out her insults."

Louis only burst into fresh fits of laughter. Zayn, who was yet to see the letter, was wearing a rather confused smile. "Let's see, then," he said. 

His smile slowly began to disappear as he read further; by the time he'd reached the end of the letter, it was a frown. "And we thought she was some sort of crazed fangirl," he muttered. 

"Yeah, well, we were obviously, wrong," Harry replied. "Do we need to do anything? Like, write back or something?" he directed the question at Liam, who shook his head. 

"Not that I know of," he said. "Besides, what would we write?"

"Dear Charlie," Louis began, grinning. "You are so right, we are definitely pretentious prats, although Zayn is the most pretentious. We're really glad to hear you love our music so much, we've enclosed a signed copy of our album."

Even Liam had to smile at this, but he still wondered what kind of person Charlie Wright was. 

✉

"You thinking 'bout her too?"

Zayn sat down next to Harry, who was staring at his hands and evidently in deep thought. He raised his eyebrows. "Who else is thinking about her?"

All Zayn needed to do was nod at Liam, who was sitting at the dining room table and hadn't let go of the piece of paper since they had all read it at least five times each. Harry began to tap his fingers on his knee, a sure sign that he was having an idea.

"I want to write back to her," he said at last. Zayn's eyes widened in surprise.

"You what?"

"I want to write to her," Harry repeated, his voice more determined with every word. 

"And what are you going to say?" said Niall, throwing himself onto the sofa on the other side of Harry. 

Harry faltered for a moment. "Don't know," he muttered. Liam seemed to have his back. 

"We can both write to her," he said, and it was obvious he was voicing a thought that had been on his mind for the past couple of hours. 

Harry smiled.

"Okay. Let's do it."

✉

Dear Charlie,

Thanks for your letter. We appreciate your honesty. 

You don't have to call us One Direction. 

Sincerely,

Liam and Harry 

PS: The signed album is from Louis.