New Romantics

Chapter 1: The Beginning

"Sir, I need you to put your bag under the seat in front." "Window shades have to be drawn up, Madam." Jessica frowned as she attempted to keep her hair out of her eyes while finding her seat on the plane. Row 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,28...

"Hey, stop blocking. God," a burly looking man said while throwing a glare at her. Jessica cringed slightly, why could she never do something right? "Sorry... my seat... sorry," she stammered stupidly. The man rolled his eyes and snorted, lurching forward, pushing past Jessica, causing her to fall over, and... landing in someone's lap.

Oh. My. God. Jessica pressed her eyes shut, hesitant to face the stranger she had just landed on, who may she add, was her neighbour for the next 19 hours of this flight.

"Hey, you alright?" a voice said, breaking Jessica's prayers of getting swallowed up by the ground right there and then.

Jessica opened her eyes reluctantly. "Yes, sorry about that. I'm such a klutz, really. Sorry. Like sorry. Really sorry." She looked at the stranger and oh for God's sake, really, Louis Tomlinson?

She scrambled to get on her feet, and stared at the Louis Tomlinson, looking back at her all concerned and the first thing that came out of her mouth was, "You're like way hotter in real life."

And Louis laughed.

~

She finally composed herself and apologised profusely, for the second time in under 2 minutes, and Louis waved it off. "Stop it, babe," he said laughingly. "Didn't expect that though."

Jessica blushed furiously and took her seat, vowing to not speaking for the rest of the flight.

"Hey, mind if I seat over," Louis said gesturing at the vacant seat between them. He didn't wait for an answer and simply stood up and transferred himself into the empty seat. Louis extended his hand and said smilingly, "I'm Louis." Jessica stared at his hand dumbly and shook it weakly. "I'm Jessica, but everyone just calls me nerd."

He chuckled but frowned slightly and said, "That's quite rude of them really. Jessica's a lovely name, for a lovely girl."

Jessica didn't quite know how to answer that so she just smiled and replied, "Thanks. That's someone else's seat. You should probably move." She didn't mean for it to come out sounding rude but she was Jessica after all, the awkward girl who looked dumb and was dumb and just, really, how was she supposed to talk to a megastar?

Louis shrugged and replied, "This seat is Zayn's but he's not coming. Said he'd rather die than take a 19 hour flight in economy class."

Speaking of which, yeah, what the hell was Louis doing in economy class? Don't these people have like private jets?

Louis stared at her and Jessica groaned silently, realising that she had shot off her mouth again.

"Oh, I didn't mean to say that out loud. Sorry. Damn it."

"Hey, stop saying sorry. But to answer your question, yeah, "these people", do have private planes. I just can't use mine because I'm not supposed to be flying anywhere really. But I was so tired of being cooped up I decided to just heck it and fly here with Zayn, have a quick break, and fly back to New York again."

"You could take first class?"

Louis shrugged. "Waste of money really. And also I wouldn't have met you if I did," he added cheekily.

Jessica blushed beet red and laughed, "Sure. But you're going to regret it, sitting next to me for 19 hours."

Louis smiled coyly and replied, "I have a feeling it'll be otherwise" and he winked.