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Duchess dozing in her basket in the backseat.

“Surprise!” he says down the line, hoping his voice doesn‟t sound as

manic as it feels. “I‟m coming home for the hols!”

“What‟s happened, love?” his mum says immediately. Goddamn

mother‟s intuition. It‟s downright terrifying. “Are you all right?”

“I‟m fine, mum,” he lies. “Just missing you and the girls, that‟s all. I‟m

already on my way, should be there in an hour.”

“All right,” she says, clearly unconvinced. “We‟ll talk when you get

home, boo.”

Louis doesn‟t bother trying to tell her there‟s nothing to talk about. He

knows it‟s useless.

The drive to Doncaster is miserable and endless that day, even though

he‟s made it hundreds of times. He can‟t bear to listen to the radio

because if he hears a single love song he might drive into a tree, and he

can‟t bear to sit in silence because then he‟s just alone with his

thoughts, which is even worse. In the end he puts on some meaningless

radio show hosted by some meaningless bloke with a boring voice and

lets it lull his brain into static.

His mum must have told the girls he was coming, because the instant

he pulls up to the house, the front door flies open and the twins are

yanking him out of the car and down into the grass with them like

they've always done since they were little, laughing and screaming and

tripping him when he tries to get back up. He wrestles them off, careful

not to let either of them get a good look at his eyes.

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“You two almost the same size as me, I really don't think this is a fair

fight anymore,” Louis says as they giggle behind him. He goes back to

the car for his bag and lets Daisy carry Duchess in before following

them up the garden path.

Phoebe leaves the door wide open behind her, and Louis can hear the

girls bustling about inside the house, shouting from room to room.

“Lottie, come down and say hello to your brother!” his mum yells from

somewhere inside.

Louis stands at the threshold of the house for a moment, feeling the old

familiar floor sturdy under his feet. He‟s always been good at holding

onto hurt. He‟s always had a gift for packing it up tightly and hiding it

away behind jokes and a pretense that he knows exactly what he‟s

doing. It‟s a skill that‟s always been a necessary part of his life, and this

house knows it. It suits that he‟s back here now. One more thing to tuck

beneath the floorboards.

“There‟s my boy,” his mother says as she rounds the corner. She pulls

him into a crushing hug, and Louis feels his body melt into it without

his permission. “Oh, I‟ve missed you.”

“Missed you too, mum,” Louis croaks. Shit, shit, he can feel his eyes

burning. He‟s always fine, always fine, until his mum hugs him.

“Uh-oh,” she says. She steps back, gripping him by the shoulders, and

peers intently into his face. “I knew it. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Louis says, hating his voice for breaking in the middle of

the word.

She blinks at him, a frown creasing her brow, and Louis chews on the

inside of his cheek and tries to reel himself back in. “Did you lose your

job?” she asks.

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“No, mum, I didn‟t lose my job,” Louis tells her.

“Did your father call?”

Louis almost laughs at that one, because he hasn‟t spoken to his dad in

a year. “No, he hasn‟t—”

“Is it a boy?”

“No, mum,” Louis says, stepping out of her grasp. “I‟m fine. Nothing‟s

wrong. I just missed you, that‟s all.”

His mum doesn‟t look like she believes him for a second, but before

she has a chance to call him on it, Lottie comes jogging down the stairs.

“Did you miss me too, then?” Lottie says.

“Never,” Louis tells her. “Can hardly stand the sight of you now.”

“Mutual,” Lottie says, and then she smiles and yanks him into a hug of

her own. He catches his mum‟s eye over Lottie‟s shoulder, sees the

concern there, but then he‟s surrounded by the chatter of his girls and

has more than enough distraction.

It‟s so easy to slide right back into life here, to pick up exactly where

he left off. Despite years of living on his own, he still can‟t cook for

shit, but he can stand in the kitchen and clean up clutter while his

mother does, and he can mediate—or provoke—dinner table bickering,

and he can prod his sisters into doing their fair share of the washing up.

He can‟t pretend that some things haven‟t changed, though, that the

twins don‟t have to be reminded to set a place for him at the table.

That‟s all right, though. He‟s the one who decided to leave. He‟d be the

last one to ask people he loves to save space in their life for a ghost.

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One by one—or two, in the case of the twins—his sisters go to bed,

with admonishments from their mum about brushing teeth and washing

faces. It‟s routine, and boring, and home, and Louis wishes there were

still a blue toothbrush waiting for him upstairs, that he was still worried

about dental appointments and lying about flossing.

The sad thing is that he is, though, when he thinks about it. He‟s

worried about the dentist, and he‟s worried about heartache, and he‟s

worried about his rent, and no one ever told him that the worries of

childhood wouldn‟t get replaced by the worries of adolescence and

adulthood. They just accumulated, and sometimes the weight of being

every version of himself at once is too much.

So that‟s how he ends up in his mum‟s bedroom, lying with her in bed

and watching crap television, as is the Tomlinson way. He can‟t count

how many times they‟ve have ended up here, when one or both of them

needed space to fall apart but couldn‟t afford to do it properly. They‟re

curled up under the blankets, warm and insular, and Louis hasn‟t been

listening to whatever‟s on telly for the past fifteen minutes but he‟s

glad of the noise. It makes him feel safe, here in this room whose decor

hasn‟t changed since he was ten, safe enough to open his mouth

without knowing what‟s going to come out.

“Mum,” Louis says. “I‟m gonna ask you something, and I don‟t want

you to think it‟s a, a cry for help for something. I just really want to

know. So be honest.”

“Oh Lord,” his mum says. She digs the remote control out of the

blankets and mutes the television. “All right.”

He takes a breath, picking at the fringe of the bedspread and feeling

incredibly stupid and small even though it‟s his mum, the one place in

the world where it ever feels safe to let his guard down.

“Are you proud of me?”

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She turns to fix him with a look. “Baby,” she says, reaching down to

still his hands. “Why would you even ask that?”

“I don‟t know, Mum,” Louis says. He pulls his hands away and draws

his knees up to his chest. “Maybe because I never did anything I set out

to do, or because I‟m so emotionally fucked, or because I couldn‟t stick

around here to help with the girls, or because of the whole thing with

Dad, or because I‟m probably never going to—”

“Louis,” she interrupts, and Louis falls silent. She scoots back on the

bed so that she‟s sitting with her back against the headboard next to

him and tilts his chin up with one hand, making him look her in the

eye. “You are my boy. You are the only son I could ever want to have.

There has never been a moment of your life that I wasn‟t proud of you.

Okay?”

Louis nods a little, and his mother‟s face goes soft and she pulls him

into her side so that his head is resting against her shoulder. He closes

his eyes, feeling her hair brushing against his face and breathing in the

smell of the detergent she‟s been using every day since he was a kid,

and he swallows around the tightness in his throat.

“You‟re my boy,” she says again. “And I know you better than

anybody in this world. Maybe I don‟t know what you‟re going through

right now, maybe you don‟t want to tell me what it is yet, but I know

you. And I know your heart, and I know you‟ll be okay. You‟re always

okay.”

“Doesn‟t feel like it,” Louis tells her. “It feels like I‟m never okay.”

“I know, baby,” she says, squeezing his shoulder. “I don‟t think you

know how strong you are.”

“Maybe,” Louis says. He wants so badly to believe her, but he just

doesn‟t think he can.

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He remembers when he was younger, when it was so much easier to

believe those things his mum said, back before he‟d watched a

marriage implode and gotten left by two fathers and had his own heart

ripped up and turned inside out. He remembers how she used to tell

him that things work out for the best and he believed her, and that made

things okay back then.

He lets her stroke his hair in silence for a minute, and then he asks her,

in a small voice, “Do you still believe in love?”

She laughs a little, taken by surprise, and says, “Do you still want me to

be honest?”

Louis hesitates for only a moment. “Yeah.”

She takes a long moment to consider, pursing her lips in thought. “I do

believe in love,” she says finally. “But I don‟t know anymore if I

believe that we‟re all meant to find it, or keep it forever. It‟s

complicated.”

“Yeah.” There doesn‟t seem to be much else to say. After a moment,

his mum unmutes the television and they settle back into silence. Louis

falls asleep like that, lulled by canned laughter and the thought that

even if most things fade, this will probably last forever.

His old room was repurposed into Fizzy‟s room ages ago, but there‟s a

TV-room upstairs with a sofa in it that he usually sleeps on when he

comes home to visit. He spends his second night in Doncaster there,

tossing and turning even though he still feels heavy and exhausted. He

can‟t stop thinking about the phone he hasn‟t checked, about what

Harry might be doing, about how stupid he is for caring what Harry

might be doing, about how lonely he feels curled up on the sofa by

himself.

He finally does manage a few hours of restless sleep, but that too is

ruined—not by his own mess of a brain, but by something heavy

dropping on top of him and startling him awake.

345

“Morning, gorgeous,” says a familiar voice right up against his ear, and

Louis‟ eyes fly open to find Stan leering at him from atop his ribcage.

“Jesus fuck,” Louis hisses.

“There he is!” Stan coos, pinching Louis‟ cheeks. “Oh, look at that

grumpy little face!”

Louis slaps Stan‟s hands away, scrunching his face up even more in

annoyance. “The fuck is wrong with you, I was trying to sleep.”

“D‟you honestly think,” Stan says, so close to Louis‟ face that Louis

goes cross-eyed trying to look at him, “that you‟re allowed to come

back to Doncaster without telling me first, Tommo?”

“Get off,” Louis grumbles, trying to push Stan off and finding no

success. “You‟re a nuisance. You should be sterilized.”

“I missed you too,” Stan says.

“How did you even know I was here?” Louis says, even though he

reckons he already knows the answer to that.

“Your mum called me,” Stan tells him. “I‟ve got to hear about things

from your mother, mate, that‟s just not on.”

Louis groans, trying to pull the blanket up over his head but finding it

pinned down by Stan‟s body. “And what else did she tell you?”

“That you came home out of the clear blue sky and you‟ve been a great

sorry mess ever since,” Stan says. “Which I, being your best friend,

immediately knew to mean that things with a certain curly-haired ponce

had gone sour.”

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“He‟s not a ponce,” Louis says automatically.

“Ah, so you‟re saying I‟m right,” Stan says.

God, how does he always fall for that one? Louis screws his eyes shut,

desperate not to talk about this. “Fuck off.”

“Hey,” Stan says, reaching up to ruffle Louis‟ hair. “Hey, I‟m not here

to take the piss.” Louis doesn‟t say anything, and Stan nudges Louis‟

chin with his fingers. “Hey, Lou, look at me.”

When Louis does open his eyes, Stan‟s expression has changed from

deliberate obnoxiousness to gentle concern, and Louis thinks that kind

of mood switch is something that only really happens between people

who know each other soul-deep like he and Stan do.

“I‟m being serious now,” Stan says. “Tell me what happened. Or don‟t,

if you don‟t want to, only I know you do, because I‟m the only one you

always tell.”

Louis sighs. Stan is, as always, right. “Only if you get off of me,” he

says.

“Fair enough,” Stan says, scooting backwards on the sofa. Louis pulls

his legs in and curls them up underneath him, tugging the blanket