Say Hello, Wave Goodbye -- Louis Partridge

9. What is Love?

I was stress wiping all of the tables. It had been three long weeks of me stress wiping tables. Why? You might ask, because I have not spent a single day without Louis. And we are friends, which is great, but it isn't great when you are catching feelings, and it isn't great when your supposedly best friends is also trying to catch his attention. A various amount of different things happened this week and I will give a summary:

The day after I drew him I returned after school to the café only to see Louis talking to my mum. I was very confused and I tried blinking a couple of times like I was hallucinating or something. My mum came up to me with a big smile and said,
"We have a volunteer!" I raised an eyebrow. "Apparently Louis here is a friend of yours and he has volunteered to work your shifts with you for free just to help a friend." My mouth sort of fell open, I was too astonished to talk. My mum played an arm on Louis' back. "Don't lose a friend like Louis, Ava. People like him are just rare in this world." Louis looked down and started blushing, he tried to flip his hair to look cool but his hair retaliated and went to the over side again, covering half of his face. I laughed as he tried to pull away his hair. My mum left us and finally I could talk to him like a normal person,
"What are you doing?"

"Working here," he said as he got my favourite towel and started wiping the tables.

"No, working would be getting payed, why are you volunteering?" He finally looked at me and bit his lip.

"Because you said that this place was the only thing that kept you going, money wise. And I wanted to help, I guess it was a stupid idea but I really had-" I interrupted him with a hug. I didn't really know what I was doing but he would do that, just because of a sentence I had quickly told him yesterday. Even though he could have easily forgot.

"Thanks, Lou." I whispered and I could literally feel his cheekbones lift at the back of my neck, he was smiling.

I didn't want to let go, eventually I did though. Lou and I working together made us closer in general. For the first week he refused the my motorcycle lifts and said he was going to skate but he arrived late and then I sort of evaluated that skating back to his house would be even worse. So, he caved in on day five. I brought along a string to tie his skate board to the back of the motorbike he sat behind me every day, twice. I think out of chivalry or pure awareness he never linked his arms in front of me, instead he held to the back and sometimes, sometimes I feared that he would fall off the motorbike. On those days I drove ten kilometres per hour.

Lou still sat with the popular group at lunch, Carly practically negotiated that I could have him every other time but he should sit with her group at lunch. Hence, I practically forced him to sit with them every lunch. Sometimes he would get all sulky and protest but sometimes I heard him laugh. When he was laughing with the other boys, he looked so right in that position. He was flawless, that was decided.

Lou and I would sit in the alcove every break and free periods too. We were so close that every now and then he would use my legs as a head rest and read while tried to score music. I helped him with his Latin vocab tests whilst he modelled for me. That took a lot of convincing though, apparently he thought he wasn't good enough or something but now I had half an art sketch book filled with Louis and he looked like a god in every single one of them.

Then, on the second week I finally decided to check out his insta page. It had been four weeks since I knew him, I never knew why I hadn't checked it out it the first page. I clicked on his page and I stood there shocked.