***Harry Styles***
Thursday, June 21st, 2012 – Anaheim, California, USA

The next day, the hospital released Louis after lunch time. Our band managers decided they didn’t want to risk Louis flying with a concussion, so they arranged for the tour bus to drive us the twenty hours to Dallas, Texas for our show there on Saturday. Louis was determined to be on stage for it – there had been a lot of publicity over his car accident once word got to the press, and there had been screaming girls outside the hospital showing their support for him, which he found to be incredible. It sucked for the hospital because they had to amp up security, but I knew it made Louis feel loved. All these people who didn’t know him cared about his well being, and that spoke volumes.

We got directly on the bus from the hospital, the assistants having gotten our bags from the hotel for us. Bill began driving, and I sat down on the couch as Louis laid down, his head in my lap. I gently stroked his hair so as not to hurt him, looking down at him, so thankful he was alive, and thankful that we were okay and he had forgiven me. I didn’t ever want to be without him again.

For the following week or two though, things didn’t seem quite back to normal with Louis. I knew part of that was because he was dealing with blaming himself for the taxi cab driver not surviving, and I was blaming myself for the whole accident in the first place. I didn’t want to bring it up because I knew Louis well enough to know it wouldn’t be a fun conversation. I just wanted to give him time to heal, physically and emotionally, and with the craziness of the last two weeks of the tour it just wasn’t the time or the place. I also knew another part of the tension was because I was driving Louis crazy babying him – to a point, all four of us were, but I was definitely the worst. He was gracious about it and didn’t say anything, but the better he got the more annoyed I could tell he was at my constant asking him if he was okay or if he needed anything. At least I knew that he knew my intentions were good.

We had a show in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday, June 30th, and then our last show of the tour would be the following night, Sunday, July 1st in Sunrise, Florida. Niall, Zayn, Liam and I had made plans for all five of us to go back to Orlando after that last show and surprise Louis with a trip to Disneyworld, hoping that would help him out of his post car accident funk.

The day of our last show was surreal, to say the least. The tour, for the most part, had been a lot of fun. A lot of work, but a lot of fun, and I felt like the guys and I had bonded a lot throughout the duration of it. We were all sad to see it end, but we were looking forward to the next chapter, and I certainly was looking forward to being at home for awhile.

We finished the tour on a great note – the show was one of our best ever. We told Louis that we were flying out of the Orlando airport in the morning, so we took the tour bus back up to Orlando and slept at the hotel. I was so excited and it was all I could do to not tell Louis what we were doing the next day as I climbed into bed with him. I laid down in his arms – his ribs having healed – and rested my head on his chest as he turned off the light.

“I love you, Harry,” he said. My heart leapt. He had been saying those words more often since our fight, and it really was helping me to feel better about myself.

“I love you, too,” I said, and then we fell asleep.

The next morning, we woke up to the guys pounding obnoxiously on our room door. I jumped up to answer it, excitedly, and Louis groaned and pulled the pillow over his head. I opened the door, then all four of us jumped on the bed with Louis, and he groaned some more.

“Wake up!” I said, bouncing up and down next to him.

“No,” he muttered, in an angry two-year-old voice.

“Louis, if you don’t wake up, you can’t get your surprise,” I said, knowing that would get him. He pulled the pillow off his head and looked at us.

“Surprise?” he asked. We nodded. “Is it better than sleeping? Because I was having really good dreams…” he trailed off.

“About me, I hope,” I said.

“It’s much better than sleeping,” Liam said, cutting off our flirtatious moment as they all rolled their eyes at my comment.

“What is it? Then I’ll decide if I want it or not,” Louis folded his arms, pretending like he wasn’t excited.

“Oh, you want it,” Niall said.

“But we’re not telling you what it is,” Zayn said.

“Why not?” Louis pouted.

“Because you’re being grumpy,” I said.

“I’ll be happy!” he announced. “Now tell me!”

“Be ready in half an hour,” Liam said, then the three of them left our room. I looked at Louis.

“Tell me, please?” he asked, batting his eyelashes and giving me his best puppy dog face. I had to close my eyes to resist his cuteness.

“No,” I said, defiantly.

“Tell me!” he jumped on top of me, making me fall back against the bed, and he tickled me, making me laugh so hard I could barely breathe.

“Stop!” I cried out. “Stop it!”

“Then tell me!”

“I need to take a shower!” I giggled. He stopped tickling me and looked down at me, pouting again.

“You’re really not going to tell me?” he asked. I shook my head.

“Sorry. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

“How about a hint?” he tried.

The hint is…” I trailed off, pretending to think. And then I jumped off the bed and ran into the bathroom, closing and locking the door before he could follow me in.

“Not fair!” he cried from the other side of the door as I got the shower ready. “I’m going to get you for this!”

“You won’t feel that way when you see what the surprise is!” I called back. When I got out of the shower, he pestered me some more, but I held strong. He took his own shower, hollering the whole time about how mean I was to not tell him, making me chuckle and shake my head. It was almost like I had my old Louis back.

Notes

A lighter hearted chapter to make up for all the intenseness of the last few!

Hehe.