Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s hot out.  And muggy.  And dark.  Louis hates it, a lot.  Her hair’s stuck to the back of her neck and her forehead and she thinks she might die if she doesn’t get some air.  She lazily flicks on the fan by her bedside (in a fit of charity, her younger sisters have given it to her -- they’re well aware of her heat intolerance) and waits for the rush of cool air she’s craving, but instead just gets hot, stale air blown against her cheeks.  She makes a face.

“For god’s sake,” she mutters, starfishing across her bed in an attempt to distance her limbs from each other.  Maybe that way they’ll be cooler.  Everyone else is asleep and it’s just her suffering now, her breathing actually physically impeded by the heat.  She groans and sits up, swinging her legs over the side of her bed.

It’s definitely cooler on the roof.  Louis can still feel that afternoon’s thunderstorm on the air and can smell the rain.  She stretches out on the roof tiles and thinks, this is much better than inside.  The sky isn’t black, she notices, but a dark, velvety blue, growing ever so slightly lighter at the horizon.

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and Louis is lying on her roof.  She puts her hands behind her head, pillowing it on her forearms.  It’s not long before her eyelids are fluttering, her breathing coming deeper and slower.  

When Louis wakes up, it’s raining.  She’s pretty soaked, t-shirt clinging to her ribs and shorts stuck to her legs.  She sits up and crosses her legs.

“Of course,” she mutters, standing up and crawling back through her window.  Her mom’s left a note on her pillow -- assuming you’re on the roof, not out doing drugs.  

Louis smiles, pulling a printed shirt over her head and tugging on a pair of jeans.  She combs her wet, straggly hair out and leaves it to dry naturally.  

“Ow ow ow,” she chants as she combs out a particularly stubborn knot, hopping on the spot and trying to pull on her left shoe.  She pokes herself in the eye while applying her mascara, and trips over Phoebe’s cat on the way down the stairs.  By the time she’s thrown herself into her chair for breakfast, she feels like she’s just survived a whirlwind.

“Could you sleep last night?” Louis’s mum asks, putting a plate of pancakes down in front of Louis.  Louis shakes her head, picking up her knife and fork.  The pancakes look like they’re chocolate chip, and they’re glistening with butter.  

“Too hot,” she tells her mother, cutting the pancakes neatly and pouring maple syrup over them.  

“Did you sleep on the roof again, Lou?” Lottie asks.  Louis nods, spearing a square of pancake and eating it.

“As much as I’d love to stay and finish breakfast with my lovely family,” Louis says, standing up and bringing her plate to the kitchen, where she tips the syrup-soaked pancakes into a Tupperware.  She snags a plastic fork from the box under the cupboard, then finishes her sentence, “I have to go to work.  I’ll see you at five.”  She puts the Tupperware and fork into her backpack, slings it over her shoulder, and lets the screen door slam behind her.

It’s not particularly hot out, despite last night’s heat wave.  Louis lets the cool breeze whip through her hair as she bikes along Redwing Avenue, a road edged with tall trees, creating a sort of tunnel affect.  Soon enough, she’s skidding into the dirt parking lot of Chilly Spoon, an ice cream place that was established in 1924, and provides the best ice cream around.

“Sorry I’m late!” Louis calls as she washes her hands and ties on the apron.  Liam pokes his head out from the back room and frowns slightly.  

“Were you?” he asks dazedly.  He’s got bluish gray circles under his eyes, like he’s been up all night.

“Yeah, woke up late.  Also, are you aware that you have ink on your cheek?” she says, turning off the water.  Liam looks just about ready to give up.  

“Didn’t notice.  I was up late writing something for Simon,” he tells her, swiping at his cheek.  “I guess he wants my book earlier than I expected.  Gotta finish that last chapter.”  He yawns, and Louis goes to hug him.  

“Get a fucking nap,” she tells him softly.  “I can manage for now, at least till Niall comes in.”  Liam looks grateful and stumbles to the ratty couch in the corner, calling out thanks.  Louis turns and surveys the empty shop.  The counter’s clean, but the chairs are all perched on the tables, seats stuck to the Formica tops.  She puts them all down, gives the tabletops a quick swipe with a rag, and then flips the sign in the door to OPEN.  She has enough time before the first customer to finish her pancakes, which are still warm.

The customers are fairly steady all day.  Louis keeps a tally -- the most commonly ordered flavor today, for some reason, is bubblegum, and the least common is pistachio.  Vanilla, always a classic, is a constant, remaining smack in the middle.  One little girl orders a coffee ice cream with chocolate jimmies and -- of all things -- rum sauce, which Louis assures the girl’s mother is not actually alcoholic.  Eventually she leaves with a compromised dish of coffee ice cream, chocolate jimmies, and caramel sauce.

Niall comes in around twelve-thirty.  He’s wearing a tank top and carrying a guitar, so Louis assumes today is a day when he’s going to provide some live music.  She grabs the sign declaring “LIVE MUSIC” from under the counter and runs out to hang it beneath the huge wooden structure that advertises their flavor of the day (rocky road, today).

“Louis, you absolute twat,” Niall says disbelievingly when she comes back inside, and it takes a second to remember that the Oreo crunch (Niall’s favorite) has strawberries in it, spelling out the words “niall sucks”.  Boredom can be productive when you work in an ice cream shop.

“I cannot tell a lie,” Louis defends herself, putting her hands up in surrender and walking back behind the counter to scoop herself a taste of the newest flavor, which is called sweet cream.  It’s just vanilla.  The bell over the door rings, and Niall shakes his head at Louis.  She takes it to mean she’ll be serving the customers.

“Hi, can I help you?” she asks, resting her arms on the counter.  The two girls in front of her are both taller than is probably necessary, but one is astronomically tall, with straight blonde hair, heavy bangs, and red lipstick.  She’s wearing a striped top and high-waisted shorts.  Louis despairs -- she’s stick thin.  The other one is slightly shorter but still very tall, with curly dark brown hair pushed away from her face with a floral scarf.  She’s seriously skinny too.  Louis wonders if there’s a model convention in town.

“Yeah, could I get a small chocolate caramel in a dish please?” asks the blonde one with a grin.  Louis smiles back, grabbing a white styrofoam bowl.  The chocolate caramel hasn’t been scooped from for awhile, and it’s a workout just to get a small dish from it.  

“Do you want any jimmies on that?” asks Louis.  It’s hard to seem dignified when you’re saying something like ‘jimmies’, but Louis tries.  The blonde girl shakes her head, and Louis passes her the dish with a spoon, then turns her attention to the girl with the wavy hair.  Her eyes are very, very green.

“Uh, could I have a medium with red raspberry and lemon sorbet?” she asks.  Her voice is husky and slow, sending a tingle down Louis’s spine.

“Those are two different bins, do you want a two scoop?” Louis clarifies, grabbing a medium bowl.  The girl nods thoughtfully.  Her headscarf is so fucking stupid.  Louis really, really likes it.

Red raspberry and lemon sorbet are easily the two most acidic flavors in the Spoon’s repertoire.  Louis isn’t sure she’d be able to eat both of them at the same time without some sort of basic element like vanilla or that stupid sweet cream shit.  Ice cream chemistry.

Louis hands the girl her sorbet, then rings up the two girls.  They pay, then go to sit down at the tall table in the corner.  Louis makes a point of not looking over at them, wiping down the counters, which have gotten sticky from a day’s worth of little kids dripping their cones all over it.  When she checks the clock, it’s only two-thirty.

Niall sets up at the microphone at two-thirty-five.  He sits on his three-legged stool and plucks gently at his guitar and sings softly in his “I’m trying not to disturb the customers” voice.  Every so often he’ll get a rowdier audience and can really break out the raucous stuff, but that’s not today.

Soon enough the baseball game that’s been going on at the rec center across the street breaks up and the players are all coming to the shop, either for a consolation or celebratory ice cream.  Louis is busy almost nonstop for about half an hour, serving boys in baseball caps and sunburns across their noses.  When she looks up from the post-game crush of people, the wavy-haired girl and her blonde friend are gone.

xx

When Louis gets home, she puts her tip money into the jar by her bed that serves as a makeshit piggy bank.  Her mother and sisters have likely gone out swimming, as they often do, and that leaves Louis home alone for at least an hour, maybe two.  She ends up scooping some vanilla ice cream into a bowl and covering it with an entire bag of frozen raspberries and some sugar, and then watching a few episodes of The Office.  

Her phone rings exactly once, playing one of Niall’s softer, guitar-plucking tunes as a tone.  It’s Zayn on the other end, telling her about this cat his girlfriend bought, and she stops paying attention after he mentions that its name is Prada.  She just makes noncommittal noises, occasionally adding in an “aw” or a “that’s cool” and he doesn’t even notice.

Eventually she hears shouting, which means Lottie and Felicite and Daisy and Phoebe are all home.  And, it seems, they’ve brought friends, if the cacophany from the kitchen is anything to go by.  Louis has no desire to face an army of girls, most of whom will be in the single-digit years, so she just sinks deeper into the pillows of her bed and hits play on the episode.

“Louis?”  She’s only halfway through the episode when her mum comes into her room, holding a pile of fabric.  “I went to the thrift store earlier.  Picked up a couple shirts I thought you might like.”  She puts the pile of what Louis can now see is made up of folded clothes, kisses Louis on the top of the head, and leaves, shutting Louis’s door behind her with a quiet snick.  

Louis pauses her episode and leans forward to sift through the shirts -- they’re all cute and very soft, most of them slouchy enough to expose her collarbones.  One cream-colored one has the earth outlined in black on it, and another one just has a scoop neck and a lace heart on it.  They smell like the thrift store, but she’ll wash them later.  She relocates them quickly to the top of her dresser, then checks her Facebook.  Liam’s sent her a message with myriad misspellings and a couple emojis, which she disregards.  She likes a few things, and then switches back to her Netflix tab.

xx

It’s a rainy, cold Sunday in the middle of July.  Louis is surprised the Spoon gets even one customer on days like these -- personally, she’d rather go to the cafe downtown and get a hot chocolate or something.  But no, there’s that tall blonde girl again, and she’s wearing her hair in soft curls today.  Her bangs are swept across the side of her face and curly as well, and Louis doesn’t know anyone who can look that good in straight and curly hair.  The girl orders a small strawberry, crossing her arms on the counter.  

When Louis hands her the dish, she smiles brightly and introduces herself as Taylor.  Her dress is aggressively floral, pale blush roses on a mint green background, and her nails match exactly.  Despicable.  Despite the color coordination, though, Louis smiles back and she thinks maybe she and Taylor could be friends.  

Taylor leaves after a quick conversation during which many things happen: they discover they both like vintage stuff and musicals, they exchange phone numbers, and they promise to get together for a Les Miserables night sometime.  Louis is a little bit in shock, but she waves to Taylor as she pushes open the door and steps into the rain without a jacket.

Taylor is the only customer for the rest of the day.

xx

“Four fucking chapters and he hasn’t even got off his arse yet,” Louis complains, chucking the book at Zayn.  He catches it, the showoff.  “If he’s going to make his life better, he can’t just sit around feeling sorry for himself!”

“Louis, shut up,” Zayn says.  He’s sitting Indian-style on the couch in the back room, feet tucked under his unfairly skinny thighs, and looking for all the world like he’s just stepped out of a fucking magazine.  Something about summer makes his skin glow and his eyes sparkle, and Louis is like ninety-eight percent sure his eyelashes grow another inch over summer break every year.  By her count, they should be seventeen inches long by now. Almost two feet, and a sufficiently terrifying mental image.

“I’m just saying, he’s being a bit of a lazy prick!”  Louis only realizes how loud her voice is when someone coughs quietly from the counter.  She spins around so fast she trips over her own shoelace and hits the floor with her shoulder first.  It smarts, but she bounces right back up and over to the girl who had coughed.  It’s the curly-haired girl who came in with Taylor, and she has another stupid headscarf on.  It’s paisley today.

“Can I help you?” Louis asks brightly, voice chirpy.  It’s only because Nick is in the other room, his ears sharp and just waiting to get her being rude to a customer.

“I’d like a small sweet cream in a dish, please,” says the girl in her slow, syrupy voice.  Louis puts her head in her hands.

“You do know that the sweet cream flavor is literally just vanilla with a different name,” she says, voice muffled by her palms.  When she looks up, the girl’s eyebrows are drawn together.  She looks very serious about her ice cream.

“It has nuances,” the girl starts, but Louis cuts her off.

“I’m sorry, I’m just messing with you.  Okay, small sweet cream, anything on top?”  The girl shakes her head no.

“I’m Harry, by the way,” she tells Louis as Louis scoops the ice cream.  “I know you don’t usually give your name to the person who serves you at an ice cream place, but I plan on coming here a lot this summer.  So.  Hi.”  Louis grins.

“I’m Louis,” she replies, ringing up Harry’s ice cream.  “So, Harry, that’ll be two-forty-seven.”  Harry hands her the money, then grins briefly and backs out the door.  Louis turns to look through the door into the back room.  Zayn wiggles his eyebrows.

xx

Harry comes by the Spoon almost once a day.  Louis wonders how she isn’t sick to death of ice cream yet, but Harry always asks her what the worst flavor that day is, and Louis tells her (most often it’s the banana soft serve -- it’s bright yellow and tastes like paint), and then, inexplicably, Harry orders it.  

They start a rating system out of ten, have it written down on a whiteboard in the back room.  Banana soft serve scored a one for flavor, two for aesthetic (the extra point is because Harry likes yellow), and a nine point five for Louis’s description.

One sunny Tuesday, Harry asks for the best flavor that day.  Louis gives her blueberry crunch with coconut flakes on top, and Harry gives it a ten for flavor and ten for aesthetic.

“Listen, there’s going to be a party at my friend Ben’s house on Saturday.  Taylor said I should tell you about it.  I think it’s at seven?”  She ends her sentence on a question, the end tilting hopefully upwards, and Louis smiles.

“I think I can come.  Can I have the address?”  Harry jots down an address on a napkin, and then scrawls a number underneath it.

“That’s my, um.  That’s my number, if you need it,” Harry says, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Thanks,” Louis says, flicking her eyes up to meet Harry’s.  Harry’s cheeks are dusted with just the tiniest bit of pink.  “See you Saturday, I guess.”  Louis waves as Harry leaves, and then throws herself down on the floor, hands over her face.  She groans dramatically and waits for Liam to find her.  When he doesn’t, she groans again, louder this time.

“Are you alright?”  She’s succeeded in bringing Liam out of his authorial haze, and he’s standing over her wearing a concerned expression.

“Do you want to go to a party on Saturday?” Louis asks, turning over and resting her forehead on the toes of Liam’s trainers.  Liam sighs.

“Do I have a choice?”

xx

The location turns out to be much more high-class than Louis had expected, located at a white mansion just on the edge of town.  A fucking mansion.  She glances down at her skinny jeans and that lace heart tee shirt in horror -- they’re definitely not mansion caliber.  

Thankfully, the party itself isn’t mansion caliber either.  The lights are dim, and there’s a soft indie song pouring from four speakers in all four corners of the room, and while no one’s dancing, there are people laughing and talking.  Louis can vaguely smell pot in the air, and if she looks she’s sure she can see hints of smoke drifting around.  Liam’s found someone he knows and left her alone, and she swears she’ll get him back for that someday.

Harry comes out of nowhere, cheeks flushed.  She’s holding a beer bottle in her right hand and she grabs Louis’s wrist in her left, pulls her into a corner, laughing.  She’s wearing these black skinny jeans that look like someone’s painted them on and a white tee shirt that hangs low on her collarbones.  Her feet are bare, nails painted a shocking red.  

“Louis,” she says, gasping through her laughter.  “We’re watching Disney in the other room, come watch with us.”  Louis lets herself be pulled into a room that smells like apples and fresh air, with Frozen projected onto a wall.  It’s at the part of the movie when Hans reveals his villainy.  When he says his famous line -- “If only there were someone out there who loved you” -- everyone in the room gasps audibly, and one person starts sobbing.

Four hours pass, and the group (Louis doesn’t know any of them, but they are all united in their love of Disney or whatever) ends up watching Mulan and Brave, and is just starting in on The Little Mermaid when Harry gets up, unfolding her long, long legs from their crossed position, and leaves.  Louis waits until Ariel is yelling at her father (“I’m sixteen, I’m not a child anymore,” and Louis thinks yes, you are) and then follows Harry out of the room.

Louis finds Harry draped over a tall, dark-haired guy with a scruffy beard.  He’s much older, in his late twenties, maybe, and Harry’s doing shots and whispering into his ear.  She watches for a second, and then Harry turns in his grasp and seals their mouths together.

Louis feels her stomach twist painfully, but she doesn’t know why, and she only waits a second before turning and following the long, twisting hall to the door.

The cicadas are chirping and so are the crickets and the night is hot and close and Louis is so drunk it’s ridiculous.  She doesn’t know why she reacted so badly to Harry kissing that guy -- she barely even knows the girl, and she’s perfectly within her rights to kiss whoever she likes.  

A door slams behind her, and she turns to see Taylor jogging toward her, pastel pink dress fluttering in the nonexistent breeze.

“Are you okay?” Taylor asks, and somehow Louis is kneeling on the perfectly manicured lawn and Taylor is falling to her knees in front of her.  Louis looks up at Taylor and there’s a halo of light around her face and encircling her blonde hair and before she knows it Louis is crying.

“Hey, hey, hey, c’mere,” Taylor says, pulling Louis into a hug.  Louis rests her forehead on Taylor’s bony shoulder and cries.  She doesn’t even know why she’s crying so hard, but she knows that now she’s started, she won’t be able to stop and so she just cries and cries and cries until her stomach hurts and there’s black mascara stains on her face and on Taylor’s pale, pale skin and Taylor’s arms are still around her.

“I got makeup on you,” she sniffles, pulling back and wiping her face.

“It’s fine,” Taylor says.  “Do you want to tell me why you’re crying?”  Louis shrugs.

“Harry, uh,” she says, trying to compose her thoughts.  “Harry kissed an, um, an older guy.  I don’t even know why I’m, like, this upset.  I barely know her.”  There are more tears coursing quietly down her cheeks, and she hates this, hates feeling weak.

“That’s Ben,” Taylor nods, leaning forward and swiping one of Louis’s tears away with her thumb.  “Do you think you like Harry, maybe?”  Louis thinks about it for a second, and then nods slowly.

“Maybe.”  She smiles weakly, and she knows it’s not convincing, but she hugs Taylor hard.  “Thank you.”

“No problem, babe.”  Taylor deserves an award.  Or, like, seven.

xx

It’s almost a week until Louis sees Harry and Taylor again.  Except this time, when they come through the door, Harry’s holding Ben’s hand and pulling him along like a puppy.  Taylor looks at Louis sympathetically, eyebrows drawn together.  Louis wishes she could run and hide, but she’s the only server on deck today, so she plasters a smile onto her face.

“What can I get for you today?” she asks, keeping her voice perky and happy.  Harry asks what the worst flavor is, and Louis gives her orange pineapple.  

“Why do you want to know the worst flavor?” Ben asks.  His voice is low and rocky, and Louis hates him.  Harry giggles.

“It’s just this thing we do.  We try the worst possible flavor of the day, and then we rate it out of ten for taste and visual,” Harry says, and Ben turns to smile at Louis.

“Well, I definitely want in on this,” he remarks, and then tells Louis, “do your worst.”  She does, and gives him banana soft serve.  Taylor orders a small chocolate caramel with fudge, and offers Louis a hug, which she accepts.  Ben pays for Harry.  There’s a tiny twinge of satisfaction in Louis’s stomach when Ben licks his ice cream and immediately looks revolted.

Harry smiles at Louis as they leave, waves a little, and Louis manages a tight-lipped smile back.  The last thing Louis sees is Harry’s eyebrows crease and her smile fade, and then Ben pulls her out of sight.  

xx

Louis’s mum drags her to a cookout on a Friday night.  It’s Louis’s night off and she kind of just wants to watch a movie, but she ends up cross-legged on someone’s lawn, stirring a virgin strawberry daiquiri with a straw.  

“Excuse me, dear?”  It’s an older lady in really classy slacks.  Louis looks up and takes a sip through her straw.

“Yes?”  She draws out the word.  

“Could you pull up your shirt a little bit?  It’s just, there are children around.”  Louis raises her eyebrows.

“There’s a girl over there in a bikini,” Louis says.  The woman’s eyes get a hard look in them, like she’s not used to being said no to.

“Yes, well, your undergarments aren’t meant to be seen.  That’s why they’re called undergarments, darling,” says the woman coolly.  Louis shrugs.

“It’s just a bra, lady,” she retorts, pointedly slouching forward.  She doesn’t really care if anyone can see her bra -- it’s a cute bra, she spent like forty bucks on it.  The woman’s lips shrink into her mouth and she walks stiffly away.  Louis takes another sip through her straw.  

“She’s kind of the neighborhood bitch, I’m sorry.”  A girl sits down next to Louis, a daiquiri in her hands, and smiles over at her.  She’s got this really cool, straight silvery lavender hair and arched, dark eyebrows.  Louis grins back.  

“I’m Louis,” she says, holding out her right hand.  

“Gemma,” says the girl, shaking it.  “This is actually my house.  I would appreciate it more, but my little sister’s always making me drive her places.”  

“Oh gosh, don’t get me started on little sisters.  I have four,” Louis tells her, pointing out Lottie and Fizz and Daisie and Phoebe, who are all jumping into the lake off the dock.  Gemma turns to her, eyebrows raised.

“Four?!  I can barely deal with my one.  She’s three years younger than me, though, so she’s especially a pain,” Gemma says, laughing.  Louis shakes her head.

“I mostly try to keep away from them,” she starts to say, but the words die in her throat.  Harry is standing there, a plate in her hand.

“Louis!” Harry exclaims, sitting down in front of Louis and Gemma.  “I haven’t seen you in forever!  I went back to Chilly Spoon like twice last week but your friend, the one with the dark hair, he said you weren’t working.”  The truth is that every time Louis had seen Harry on the walkway up to the doors, she’d gone and hid in the back room and made Zayn serve her.  She’d felt like a child, but she couldn’t make herself look Harry in the face.

“You two know each other?” Gemma asks, looking between them.  Louis nods, forcing a smile.  

“I work at Chilly Spoon, the ice cream place in town?  Harry’s become somewhat of a regular,” she explains.  Harry’s smile nearly splits her face in half, and Louis feels kind of guilty.  There’s a beat of silence, and then Harry’s phone starts ringing with the Doctor Who theme song.  She fishes it from her pocket, looks at the screen, and then smiles again.

“Gotta go, Ben’s here,” she says, scrambling to her feet and taking off.  Louis deflates a little.

“You’re sick of him too, huh?” Gemma asks.  Louis nods.  “He’s dating my seventeen-year-old sister and he’s six years older than me.  Also, he’s rude.”  Louis snorts.

“He needs to fucking shave,” she mutters.  Gemma nods emphatically.  

“I’m pretty sure he’s a drug dealer,” she comments.  Louis glances at Gemma, and then they both burst out laughing.  Turns out Harry’s older sister is actually pretty cool.

xx

“D’you want to watch X-Men?” is how Zayn starts his phone call to Louis.  It’s the Saturday after the cookout, and Louis hasn’t left her bed.  Granted, it’s only nine o’clock, but her point still stands.

“Dunno.  I’m more of a Spider-Man girl, myself,” she returns, flipping over and glancing at her clock.  Which happens to feature Peter Parker in all his Spidey glory.  Zayn sighs.

“Fine.  Spider-Man it is.  But please tell me you don’t want to watch the ones with Andrew Garfield.”

“The original movies sucked, mate,” she says, and he mutters an indignant resignation.

“I’ll be over at nine-thirty,” he tells her, and then hangs up, leaving no room for argument.

True to his word, Zayn is on her doorstep at nine-thirty, a bag in his hands.  Once they’re both settled down in the TV room, Louis stretched across Zayn’s lap, Zayn mentions,

“So Harry came in yesterday,” he starts, and Louis shakes her head.

“Nothing about Harry.  Please, Zayn, I don’t want to talk about her,” Louis pleads.

“I was just going to say she told me to give you this.”  Zayn hands Louis a napkin, crumpled and softened, with a note scribbled across it in black pen.

“It’s an apology note,” Louis says disbelievingly.  “And she doesn’t even know if she did anything wrong, but she’s apologizing anyway because she ‘misses me’.”  Louis’s finger quotations etch into the air like unsaid words.

“Just accept the apology, Louis,” Zayn groans.  “You miss her too, and you’re getting, like, pathetic.  Just accept it.”

xx

On the last Friday in July, Louis works all day at Chilly Spoon.  It’s pouring, actually, and she doesn’t expect many customers today, when it’s cold.  And there aren’t many.  A pasty white bloke in a sunhat comes in, dripping wet, and asks if they serve hot drinks, which -- no, we’re an ice cream place, she tells him.  He leaves a pool of water behind him.

Every time the bell over the door rings, Louis looks up, not quite sure of what she’s searching for, but sure it’s going to come, and every time it’s an unfamiliar face, her stomach sinks.  She serves a total of eight customers, all of whom are soaking wet.  Eventually Louis starts making them coffee from the coffeemaker in the back room.  It’s too cold for ice cream today, anyway.

She closes the shop at five.  Her bike would’ve rusted in the rain, so she’d walked this morning.  She twists the key in the lock, closing the glass doors behind her, and then rolls the wooden barn doors shut over the glass ones.  It’s rustic, Liam tells her.

The walk home is long and lonely today.  Louis hasn’t got a hat or a jacket on, and so her honey brown hair is soaked, darkened to a brown more like maple syrup.  Her t-shirt sticks to her skin.  Her sneakers squish in the mud on the side of the road, and wow, she can’t feel her toes.

The cars that rush past her seem to splash her on purpose, their headlights flashing dangerously on the wet pavement.  Louis can feel her heart beating.

A car slows down next to her, idling as she walks, and Louis doesn’t dare look up next to her, slides her keys slowly between her fingers like claws.  Her finger comes to rest on the release button of the pepper spray on her keychain.  Her throat tenses.

“Louis!”  And Louis breathes out in relief, because it’s Harry, not a potential assailant, but she doesn’t want to talk to her, knows her heart will twist in her chest until she can’t feel it anymore.  “Louis, stop walking!”  Louis shakes her head, feels her wet hair slap her cheeks, and doesn’t look at Harry.  The car stops and a door slams.  Then Harry is in front of her, blocking her from walking further.  Only then does she look up and meet Harry’s eyes.

“Can you move, please?” she asks quietly.  “You’re blocking my way.”  Harry shakes her head.

“I need to talk to you,” she insists, moving closer.  

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you!”  It rips out of Louis’s throat and sounds shriller than she’d like it to.  She hates sounding shrill.  

“Lou, please,” Harry says imploringly, and she’s getting soaked, her hair matted down by rain.  “You’ve been ignoring me and I don’t know why.  Please just tell me.”  Louis looks up at her for a moment, and then makes a decision.  She shoulders past Harry and starts walking again, which she knows is rude and unacceptable, and if Taylor were here she’d yell at Louis.  But the next thing she knows there’s a hand on her arm, and Harry is yanking Louis around to face her.

“Because I can’t stand Ben!” Louis yells, finally, finally, and watches Harry’s face close up.  “Because I like you, kind of a lot, and I can’t make myself sit there and watch you be all over him, I can’t do that!”  Harry stands up and steps back, looking a little shocked.  Her green eyes are wide.

“I broke up with Ben,” she says quietly, furrowing her eyebrows.  “He wanted more from me than I could give him.  And I, uh, I kind of liked you.  Like you.  Uh, as well.  I guess.”  She speaks in broken fragments, like she’s trying to compose her thoughts.  Louis swallows.

“Oh.”  She kicks herself as soon as she says it, because it’s so goddamn stupid.  

“Oh,” Harry says, standing there in the rain, hair sticking to her face.  And then she takes two steps forward and kisses Louis, cupping Louis’s jaw in her long, thin-fingered hand, and Louis kisses back, arching up to meet Harry.  It’s not a magical, soulful kiss, it only lasts a few seconds, but it’s still a kiss, and it feels like they’ve worked everything out between them.

“So, uh . . . do you want to, like, go out sometime?” Louis says, and Harry nods and kisses her again.   

xx

“Louis, stop being disgusting and adorable and come help me kick this fucker’s arse!” Niall yells.  He’s standing in the sand, pale skin reddened by sun.  Louis kisses Harry quickly and stands up from her towel, brushing the sand from her bikini.  The beach is almost deserted except for a couple down on the other end, so for some convoluted reason they’re playing volleyball.

“Taylor, you can go sit down, I’m taking over,” Louis calls, and Taylor scurries to sit down on her red towel next to Harry.  Louis gets in position, bumps the ball gently, and then spikes it over the net.  It hits the ground and Harry and Taylor both applaud as Liam goes sprawling.

It’s a painful defeat for Liam and Zayn.  Perrie, Zayn’s girlfriend, is lying on a towel next to Taylor, pink and purple hair illuminated.  She claps for Zayn occasionally, but mostly keeps quiet (there’s not much to clap about for that team).

Harry kisses Louis when they win, and Louis smiles.