not in love! | THE SIDEMEN

xi. friends kiss sometimes

"I'M KIND OF MAD THAT SHE'S CUTE," Callux commented with a bitter undertone. Much like Lennon and Harry, the trio's eyes did not leave the date that was happening mere feet away. Freezy narrowed his eyes with discontent when he first noticed them - piling into a booth in the pub with large grins across their faces.

"Well I bet she's mad that he's not," Harry joked, leaving them spluttering into their glasses. They were operating on a 'round of drinks' basis - something Lennon detested but didn't voice outright. There was something more painful about having to pay a large sum of money at once rather than small amounts throughout the night.

The date, to any passing onlookers, seemed to be going relatively well. They laughed occasionally, never looked down towards their phones or appeared disinterested. Until Cal shot them a desperate glance that practically begged for intervention, they then realized that perhaps it was going a little disastrous.

Nevertheless, none of them intervened and instead sat and watched with smirks.

Lennon glanced around the pub occasionally, finding herself rather taking a liking to it. Pubs in London were sometimes a little too high-end for her taste, with more choices of cocktails than beers and floors that were a little too clean. She was a Manchester girl through and through, and Mulroy's reminded her of her teenage years.

Having reached apparent breaking point, they could distinctly hear Calfreezy excuse himself to go to the men's room while frantically waving at the boys to follow after him once he was out of her eye line. Groaning at the effort, Harry took one for the team and slid out of the seat to follow after his friend with the promise of returning with gossip. Lux stayed behind with Lennon out of politeness, something she massively appreciated. Nothing was more awkward than looking as if you were alone in an area surrounded by groups of friends.

"Hey, by the way," he began after taking a swing of his pint of Guinness, awkwardly grimacing as he tried to think of how best to approach the subject. "I hope you don't mind that I cut out that steamy backseat kiss from the video. Harry didn't mind keeping it in but said that you'd be uncomfortable with it and I didn't want to step on your toes."

"I wouldn't have minded," Lennon shook her head with mild confusion, wondering why Harry would think it'd have made her uncomfortable. She was aware the whole night that cameras were recording her every move, although admittedly she did completely forget about the handheld recorder in Talia's hands when she was kissing him.

"He said something about you not wanting a boyfriend, maybe he didn't want people speculating in the comments I don't know," he shrugged, but his casual words made something click inside Lennon's brain as a conversation from the first weekend they met made its way back inside her thoughts. She couldn't remember telling Harry outright that she wasn't interested in dating anyone, but she did recall casually mentioning it in conversation.

Lennon still stood by her statement, but she would rather Harry knew the reasons behind her resistance now that they were growing closer as friends. That would be a conversation for another time, though, as it would likely ruin the happy vibes of the night.

The object of their conversation eventually returned, chuckling to himself before even starting to recap as a sheepish-looking Calfreezy eventually followed after him to return to his own respective table. Letting out a sigh as he plopped down in his seat again, Harry shook his head before smacking his hand onto his forehead.

"He's only gone and roped me into ringing him in five minutes," he admitted, settling his phone down onto the table to check the time. "I felt a bit bad for the man. She learned over an hour ago that he's a YouTuber and now she's done nothing but try and worm her way onto his channel ever since, she's over there discussing what she could call her own channel which doesn't even exist yet."