The Rusty Old Minivan

Chapter 35

He just couldn't make sense of it, was all. He couldn't put the puzzle-pieces together and have them fit in such a way that the final outcome would be comprehensible to his mind. Maybe that was really the worst of it; the complete and utter incomprehensibility of it.

The heart-ache he knew by now. The heart-ache he could cope with. It sat right there in his chest and he knew what it was and why it was there and that maybe, hopefully some day it wouldn't be anymore. Even the bruise to his ego, the purely selfish part of him that had to realise and accept how utterly replacable he really was, he could deal with. All of those things, which could arguably be the worst parts of it, he could survive.

But it was the stuff he didn't understand that kept nagging him. That kept him awake at night, that took him out of conversation at the dinner-table and into the world of his mind, going over the same questions time and time again without finding any answers.

He'd been rather sure that, if nothing else, he wasn't being conceited in thinking that Harry had loved him too. It'd felt so obvious, so unmistakable, that it couldn't have been wishful projections of Louis' own feelings, it just couldn't have. The way Harry had looked at him, the way that he'd acted, the things he'd said and the way that he'd said them - hell, the stuff that'd made him fuck them up entirely -, those things wouldn't have come from a person who wasn't in love. Throughout their whole thing, the one issue Louis hadn't thought to worry about was the issue of the love. It'd been there, it had. Too strong and too passionate and too much all too soon, but so fantastically mutual, like an inside joke only two people got just by meeting each other's eyes. It'd been undeniable. He'd thought.

But maybe that was where he'd gone wrong.

He wasn't as stupid or masochistic as to begin to tell himself that Harry hadn't meant any of the things he'd said. He had probably meant them, right when he'd said them, right in the moment. But that had been the extent of it; the moment.

It still didn't quite make sense in Louis' head, though; how a person could mean something so much in one moment and then mean something entirely different the next. He'd heard of people - hell, he'd even known some - who lived by the saying 'out of sight, out of mind', whether conciously or not.

It'd just never occured to him that Harry might be one of them.

"Look, just 'cause he's out with someone else doesn't mean he's over you. In fact, it could be a desperate ploy to try and get over you," Niall offered, as Louis had spilled his mind after three beers and a joint on the balcony after the kids were down. "People fuck random people all the time. Doesn't mean they aren't in love with other people just the same."

"Hm," Louis replied, because he knew that already and it didn't change a thing. Didn't make this constant ache residing in his chest one bit less terrible. "I mean, I just - I still can't imagine letting anyone else touch me yet. It'd only make it worse."

"Well, you don't know if fucking that blonde made Harry worse. Very well could have."

"I doubt it."

"Why? Because you want to believe that all people are terrible sociopath's who leave you and forget your name the second you're out of sight?"

Louis sighed. "I don't want to believe that. I'm not some bloody emotional masochist."

"No. Exactly," Niall said, as if that proved some point he'd made in his head, "you're a rationalist. You always have been and that's why you're always just a tiny bit depressed and your sense of irony is exquisite."

"Exquisite," Louis snorted, "added to the vocabulary since we've been in London, have we?"

"Don't deflect-"