How It's Going To Be [h.s.]

Chapter 45

                 

Using my shoulder to hold my phone to my ear while Ruby chatted endlessly to me from Norway, I typed an email quickly. The pace of work had slowed down since the launching of the European leg of the tour. I understood that it was simply a break in the storm; things would intensify when award shows came up and when the tour was taken from Europe to North America.

"How's Laura?" Ruby asked bitterly.

I glanced up and saw Laura close her office door. "She's on a rampage! She screams at everyone. I think she made Natalia cry yesterday."

"I'm sorry to have left you all there with her," Ruby sighed over the phone.

"But you're having fun on tour, yeah?"

"An absolute blast!" she giggled. "Oh! The interview is about to begin. I have to run! Email me those reports we talked about earlier."

"I will."

"Go to the web live stream and watch this interview. It's going to be good."

"Okay," I agreed.

When the call ended, I eyed Laura's office door. She had locked herself in her office after screaming at an intern for mistakenly ordering her the wrong coffee. Alessandra spent thirty minutes talking him out of the bathroom where he had hidden.

I stowed my laptop and a pair of headphones in my bag and left the office space. I didn't speak to anyone as I walked out the front doors and crossed the busy street to a coffee shop. I sat down at an empty table and opened the laptop. Untangling the headphones, I managed to access the live stream just as the interview began.

There they were: the boys sat in a semicircle with a male interviewer. Five sets of eyes were on the camera as the interviewer spoke Norwegian to the viewers. My eyes fell to Harry. His hair was gathered in a bun and he looked tired. I felt the urge to reach out and touch him.

"Alright, guys," the interviewer turned to the boys and smiled as he spoke in English. "You do a lot of interviews and most of them have funny questions like 'what's your favorite food?' or 'who is your celebrity crush?' But we already know those answers now! We wanted to do this interview a little differently. We wanted to ask more serious questions. Is that okay?"

"Sounds like a good challenge," Niall answered. The boys nodded in unison.

"We'll start with a big one." The interviewer glanced down to a piece of paper he held in his hands. "You have millions of fans worldwide who know you. The parents of those fans know you. The friends of those fans know you. You're constantly on the news and in magazines. You are music icons. You are fashion icons. You do charity work. You're influencing musicians and artists all the time. You're very involved. What is it like being relevant to nearly everyone?" 

Each of the boys' eyes widened. "I guess we've never really thought of it like that," Louis explained their hesitation to answer. "We grew up leading normal lives and we sort of stumbled into this world. We don't pay much attention to our own relevance, you know? But I think we're in a position to do good in the world because of it. You mentioned our charity work. That's a major example. Having relevance is a bit of a strange feeling, but I think we try to be uplifting and not take ourselves too seriously."

"Let's talk about the fans," the interviewer said. "It's difficult for you to go places, Harry, without being followed. Fans follow you to restaurants and to the cinema and to your car. They take pictures of you and tweet at you and comment on your photos online all the time. Sometimes they get even more extreme. Does it ever get overwhelming? Do you ever wish it would slow down so you could breathe?"