No Strings Attached

Chapter Eleven

As it turned out, dating was far more complicated than Louis expected. 

When Louis first started seeing Eleanor and Hannah before her, it was because they had gotten to know each other over a period of time. It was only after days, weeks, or even longer of conversation and tiptoeing around each other’s feelings and reactions that the prospect of dating even came up. Everything about the experience was organic, from meeting the person to stumbling into them when you least expected it to finally mustering up the courage to ask if you could see them again. 

It was, Louis realized, a process that mirrored his experience with Harry. But he ignored it, pushed it aside, tossed it away, and tried his best to move on with his life. He only imagined the Cheshire boy somewhere halfway around the world doing something – anything – that was undoubtedly more important than thinking about the poor boy in the striped shirts that he left behind. 

Louis had always scoffed at Internet dating, but as the days wore on and he came to terms with the fact that he didn’t know what he was doing, it seemed like more and more of a viable option. It didn’t help that Zayn only shrugged him off when he voiced his concerns, even lending a hand with building his online profile. 

Zayn had grown mostly apathetic since their conversation regarding Harry, and ultimately decided that going along with whatever Louis felt like doing was much better than forcing him to a conclusion he wasn’t ready to accept. Louis could sense that his best friend was only going through the motions, but it was what he needed. He needed anything to get that stupid boy – that stupidly wonderful and beautiful boy – out of his head. 

There was also the added complication that Louis had never dated another bloke before. He didn’t know protocol, or if there was any kind of protocol to begin with. He assumed that everything would happen as naturally as it had with Eleanor and Hannah, but life apparently didn’t work that way when you were a twenty-year-old father still coming to terms with sexuality. 

Though Louis’ willpower improved over the course of the next several days that followed his decision to start dating, he found himself slipping now and again, if only for a few seconds. But those few seconds were moments of warmth and brilliance, green eyes and pink lips, tangled limbs and hazy silences, afternoon sex and late night takeout. He would think back to when life was simpler, when opening the door to Harry’s smiling face was enough to make Rosie happier than Louis had seen her all day, when lying against his bare skin was the perfect way to fall asleep at the end of a long day. 

But he always brought himself out of those moments, shocking himself out of his daydreams before he’d slipped too far.

By the end of Louis’ second month without Harry, he had a date. It was nothing spectacular to look forward to, as Zayn didn’t even seem all that thrilled when he called him up one afternoon to let him know that he had met someone that Louis might possibly be interested in meeting. He was a new hire at the restaurant, Zayn had said, who had just moved to London and needed a friend in the strange, new city. 

It’s not another friend I need, Louis thought during the phone call. But he agreed to have dinner with the guy because, well, why wouldn’t he? There was no use in filling time with daydreams when it could be filled with someone kind and wonderful instead. 

As it turned out, his date was anything but kind and wonderful. 

Louis hadn’t bothered remembering his date’s name, but he knew that he was very shy and nervous in the first minutes that Louis got to know him. But as the evening went on, Louis picked up on the way that he treated the people at the diner they met at, from the hostess to their servers to the bus boy. He was harsh with his words and Louis soon discovered a very mean person whose meanness, as it turned out, came from a very bitter breakup with a long-term boyfriend not too long ago. And that was when Louis decided he probably wouldn’t be seeing him again.