Doncaster [Louis Tomlinson]

25: Opening Night

I hadn’t thoroughly thought things through, it seemed.

            I was fine over the weekend once I’d powered through the initial sadness. On Friday night I’d cried, distressed over the realisation that that was the last time I’d ever kiss his lips, the last time I’d ever feel him breathe and the last time I’d see him and my brain would associate him with the title ‘boyfriend’. But after a few packets of Jammy Dodgers and much time spent trying to convince myself, I was fine by Sunday.

            The amount of time I spent worrying evidently decreased in the way I could get back to drawing, reading and studying without pausing for a breakdown. Of course, I still worried. But there were pills for that; pills which, with my history, I had easy access to. Things were looking up, it appeared.

            On Monday, however, the first person I saw when I set foot in school was him, so that was the end of that.

            I’d already considered taking the day off, but that morning I’d had this strange feeling that it was going to be one of my good days, and as a last minute decision, decided I’d turn up. But seeing him at the lockers with dark rings around his eyes and a head of messy hair proved that I’d made a grave mistake.

            When I’d dropped my bag and begun dialling my locker code, the air surrounding me was thick, suffocating. I could sense his tired eyes watching me as I cracked open my locker and threw in my bag, and almost felt like I was going to faint. I still had one earphone in my left ear playing a song which I’d long forgotten from the walk to school, which for the time being somewhat distracted me as I gathered my materials for English. But my other ear was picking up noises of him shuffling his feet and just constantly reminding me that he was there; a metre apart from me and waiting for me to say something, waiting for me to reassure him that it was all fine and we were still okay and that I was just on a particularly bad period, or I was just being stupid or unreasonable or whatever.  But I left him hanging and scurried off to class without a single glance in his direction.

            Later, in Physics, we sat on opposite ends of the classroom and I tried to ignore the subtle looks in my direction, tried to ignore the way that his mouth fell open like he was ready to say something even though we had a vast space between us.

            I’d arrived home and cried, just like Friday, and through heavy tears and shaky breaths, tried to persuade myself into believing that this was only happening because it was just the early days of being separated, and once I’d grown familiar with not calling him my boyfriend the pain will have softened and I’d be back in a good place again.

            Tuesday, though, was far worse.

            Rehearsals. Fucking rehearsals. Fucking Grease. The Fucking kiss. Fuck.

            This time it was a full dress rehearsal, and I knew I couldn’t escape it. In the dressing room I stood with a girl called Corinne who I’d become acquainted with over the stretch of the musical, and tried to pretend that there wasn’t any reason I was chatting with her and not Louis like I always did. I was laughing more than necessary at her light jokes, clinging desperately to her side and trying to even out my breathing as the minutes ticked by and we got into costume.

            Chaos commenced as our first proper run through of the play went into action. I was shoved backstage amongst other actors as the crew went to set up the stage and test various technical equipment. I bided to steer my focus towards prepping for the performance and allowing for all worries to flee my mind, but within a matter of seconds I’d already failed.