Brave Bold Belle (ft. Liam Payne)

Chapter 30 - Like A Real Couple

    Something curious happens during our dinner. The place is nice, quiet and not extremely fancy but sophisticated nonetheless. We are guided where we can be left alone and have a nice time. But nothing regarding the restaurant or the food is curious; it’s Liam.

“What were you talking about with Zayn? Can you explain it to me?” he requests and for a while I can only blink, too surprised to react.

He shies away, avoiding my eyes and blushing, embarrassed for asking this and with it, accepting his ignorance, but I feel my heart fluttering even more than when he was on stage, playing and looking kind of like a god. More than when he hugged and kissed me senseless. More than when I saw him with my students. As I keep watching him, flustered and all shy, I feel like jumping on him, so happy because he wants to know more.

Could it be that he looked like that when I was talking to Zayn because he felt excluded? And instead of just making a scene, he’s trying to improve?

“Liam,” I call and he meets my eyes again. I reach out for his hand, squeezing it tightly. “Of course I can. It’d be my pleasure.”

So we spend our dinner talking about these topics. I start by explaining to him the situation in America with the police forces and all the injustices that are taking place and I can see in his face the moment he understands how serious this is, how unfair and frustrating. I see him getting angry, asking me why this is happening. Racism should be in the past, it is supposed to be in the past.

“There will always be racism and unfairness,” I tell him at some point. “Because people will never accept they are being racist, hence they can never fix their behaviour because they fail at seeing what’s wrong. They choose to ignore it.”

He’s so angry but he understands what I’m saying, and I keep telling him about the situation, the cases, the way the law has dealt with this, the government and all the other institutions in power.

“It’s ridiculous! They expect the world to believe that?!” he blurts out at some point and I heave a tired sigh. “Are they stupid or do they just think we are the idiots that could buy that bullshit?”

Besides that what we are discussing is a serious topic, I’m glad to see him responding like this, seeing him caring and reacting, forming his own opinion. Until now I believed he was just ignorant and he didn’t want to learn and maybe he didn’t have the motivation to go and see beyond his little world, but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn. He is learning, he is opening his eyes and seeing beyond and that makes me proud, that makes me feel so warm.

Being able to also talk about these things with Liam is important but at the same time scary, because it means that maybe we are not that incompatible as I thought. If he tries to understand me better, to see why I like the things I do and if I try to understand him and share his interests, then maybe we could make it work. But I push those thoughts aside because they don’t help the situation.

And after dinner we go to the tour bus instead of joining the party. We sit in the booth and we keep talking. I explain to him the conflict in Middle East and he is as frustrated as during dinner. He gets angry and almost blows a tantrum. He gets frustrated because he can’t do anything about it, because he can’t make people talk and solve the problems without killing innocents in the way.

We talk and talk for hours. We don’t feel time pass until we see the rest of his band mates joining us in the bus.

“Hey, you didn’t go to the club,” Zayn says, sitting at my other side. “What were you doing here?”

“Talking,” Liam replies with an amused smile. “We didn’t even remember the party. Belle was explaining things to me and we got carried away. What time is it?”