I hugged my knees as I stood sat, my back against the kitchen island, and Owen just looked at me from the other side of the door, putting Dylan on the ground and telling him to go play in his room.
He walks over to me then, almost closing the door behind him but I stop him
“Don’t!” I demand, my legs stretching across the floor from their bended position, running my hands through my face to clear traces of tears and humidity “It’ll be harder to listen to Dylan if he calls for me.”
And Owen smiles at me, like he’s proud, like he knows I’m being strong. I have to be. Even with the eternal kaleidoscope of memories and bad choices that is my life, I have to be strong for my anchor. The only thing keeping me alive right now.
“You know sis,” He says, sitting down next to me “I told you that I would much rather have his dad in the middle of this. I told you that! Dylan would grow up much healthier and happier if he had a male figure that’s not me around! Even if you guys are divorced, or separated of whatever!”
“I know Owen!” I sigh “I’m just trying to figure out how to fit him in my life, how to find the place in my feelings for him without …derailing. Again I mean!”
Owen only sighs by my side and moves only to press a kiss in my forehead and then settle against me, his head resting against my neck.
I know he understands me!
He knows I’ve lost control once, and I can’t do it again. It destroyed my life the last time I did so. That’s why I need to be so in control of my life, of the things I do. He understands how… sick my relationship with Niall was, only because we needed each other to breath. It wasn’t healthy how we didn’t have space to hang with other people, or how he gravitated around each other, always. It does mean I don’t love him, it means I understand it’s not healthy. Now that I have a perspective from the … outside, I can see it.
Before I felt like there was nothing wrong. Not until I found myself crying to sleep because he wasn’t there, his body’s warmth wasn’t there. And I wasn’t crying because of him, I was crying because I missed the times we spent together, I missed his scent, and his hugs and his care way too much.
“Mommy, where’s Panda the Bear?” Dylan bursts through the door, holding his blanket, rubbing it against his fall. I laugh, and clean my cheeks with the back of my hand, plopping up to grab Dylan’s hand and departure to and adventure that was try and find ‘Panda the Bear’, a bear plushy Owen got him when he went on a trip to Spain in a getaway trip with his college friends
** It wasn’t until a few days later that someone that wasn’t family or friends knocked on my door.
Well, I could say he was a friend, a friend I didn’t speak to in about two years. I can’t explain the concoction of feelings that rumbled through my chest when I first saw those raw blue eyes staring back at me.
He kept the same defiant aura that I remembered from a while ago, such defiance wouldn’t go away easily. He looked different though. His hair was styled a certain way, and the stubble that darkened his jaw grant him with a much more sexier look may I, daringly, state.
Unexpectedly, he was holding a minion plushy in his arms that was as tall as Dylan, and even if I wanted to glare in his direction, I wouldn’t be capable of doing it.
Louis looked down to the person whose hand I was holding, and then back at me, as if trying to search for similarities between me and him, or maybe he was just mixing mine and Niall’s face together to imagine the outcome, and if the outcome was as even similar to the real one.
“Hello there little man!” Dylan smiled as Louis ducked in front of him and held the plushy tentatively towards him.
Dylan knew better. He looked up at me, and when I smiled and nodded, he eagerly let go of my hand to hug the plushy Louis had brought him.
“Thank you!” I smile warmly at him, my heart swelling at the sight of my kid hugging a banana-yellow-minion “I’ve been meaning to buy him one of these for ages now!”
“It’s no problem!” He shrugged with a smile, getting back up to stand a little bit taller than me “He looks just like him!”
“I know!” I say simply, with the innocence of a little school girl and the same spirit as one would tell her best friend about the new gift her mom got her, the smile still in my lips “C’mon in!”
And he does, and he grabs Dylan’s by his thin little waist and I’m expecting his bawling at any minute, but it just doesn’t come. I would never guess Louis was good with children, but I guess he is. Either way, Dylan was way too busy with his new present to even pay attention in I was holding him or somebody else was.
I took him to the living room, where my fireplace was lit, the cold nights way too threatening to the sake of my little boy.
If you’re asking yourself what will she do about Dylan’s disease, well, I thought about it, and in what concerns me, I’ll keep doing my best to give my child the best and most normal life someone can have. Coming home with a scraped knee, making his first friend, heartbreaks, maybe even a dog, who knows? All I know is as a mother, I won’t ever, ever fail my kid. Even if I have to spend a hundred days starving, I would do it in peace to know that he is well fed.
“Can I offer you something? Coffee, or tea?” His eye shined briefly at the proposition of tea, but he shook his head negatively “Water?”
“I’m fine Johanna, sit down and don’t worry!” He said without glancing at me, too worried playing with Dylan’s pacifier. I obey and sit on the single couch adjacent to the one where he is
“Mommy, mommy, it moves!” Dylan says, running towards me and climbing on my lap.
He extends his little legs on top of my bent ones and settles the plushy on his, pressing his hand to see the head of the plushy move. I smile, planting a kiss on top Dylan’s head as I beam to Lou.
“Thank you, you seriously shouldn’t have!”
“It was nothing! I just happened to pass by a shop when I was coming here and I grabbed one!” He said.
I don’t feel in the mood to ask Louis why he came here, though I know it involves Niall somewhere and that’s partially why I don’t want to discuss the subject. The other part is because my nightmares are stronger than ever and I had a sleepless night thus the headache.
“I know you don’t particularly feel like talking right now. Especially because Niall has a law suit on you! And he told me not to get in between but I can’t!” He exasperatedly said “You get why I can’t right?!” He looked at me and then at Dylan and then up at me again, and I nodded
“I get it!”
“Then why won’t you end this?” He asked, elbows resting in his knees as his eyes focused o only me now “He told me about the kiss two days ago! And I thought that at the end he would tell me everything was fine between you two, that you forgave him for things in the past! And he forgave you for Dylan…”
“Hold a minute right there!” He obeyed “I don’t have to ask for excuses or apologies when it comes to my son, he wasn’t a mistake I made, he’s a gift someone got me! You got those things mixed Lou!” I narrowed my eyes
“I voiced my opinion wrong Johanna! What I mean is I though you forgave each other, for keeping secrets that yous shouldn’t, but then he told me everything is the same! And I don’t understand why!” He ran a hand through his hair “I love him Johanna, he’s my little brother, and I can’t help him! He’s been like this for two years!” He explains “Initially we thought ‘let him be, he’s mourning over her, it’ll go away’ but it didn’t! It didn’t, and I had to see him drown deeper, and deeper into four feet of water when the thing that could save him was the simple act of standing up, of moving on. But h didn’t. He told me he couldn’t.”
“Louis, I understand…” He cut me off
“No Johanna you don’t understand! Because you weren’t the one receiving drunk calls at 3 am, and go back to his place to find him crying and hugging a bottle of vodka while yelling how much he loved you to whoever wanted to hear!” Louis said stiffly “I’m supposed not to get in between, but I do love you and I would love to know the child you’re holding right now. In the time we’ve spent together, you became my sister, I care for you, I mourned for you also when suddenly you disappeared from my life. Without a single goodbye, or an explanation why you couldn’t hang out with us! I get why you can’t hang out with Niall, but me and the guys love you like a sister, and none of us ever did any harm to you, or even wished you anything bad after you and Niall broke it off!” He stressfully says “We wanted your time. Your attention because you had friends too, you didn’t just have Niall, we were there too!”
“But I didn’t see you!” I cry out loud and set Dylan on the couch next to me “I didn’t see anyone because I was focused on him! HIM! Oh Louis.” I sigh “He was my full life. My entire life. It surrounded around him, every breath I took was about him, my dependence on him wasn’t healthy. I adored you guys too, I seriously did, but I was so focused on all the action he was brining to my life, that I didn’t see anyone else.” I sigh again, exasperated “It’s like a moth attracted to a flame, once it’s there, you won’t see her get her attention on anything but the flame. I was the moth, and he was the flame, and it was so God damned unhealthy Louis!”
He gulps, realizing something, making sense of the words coming out of my mouth.
“I can promise you a try!” I say “I’ll try to find a day where I can go out with you guys and make it up for the lost times!”
“Can you bring Dylan, the lads are excited to meet the little fellow! Niall has said so much about him, like he hadn’t seen anything as adorable in ages!” Louis smiles and gets up to sit by Dylan’s side, ruffling his hair
“Sure, I’ll bring him! Do you wanna stay for dinner?” I ask
“No, Liam and I have a ‘writing date’ as we call it! I promised I wouldn’t take long.” He sighs “It’s gonna be a late one, so show up tomorrow at… can it be Niall’s place?” He asked and I gulped “Or if not it’s totally fine I mean, we can arrange other places to meet and do something and we could…”
“Louis it’s fine.” I say confidently, and Louis gives me a nod before he gets up
“So tomorrow, 3pm, don’t be late!” He smiled and I get up to lead him to the door
“Okay Lou, I’ll be there!” I assure with an uneasy smile, but if I was lucky, he didn’t notice
“And Johanna!” He called “We’ve really missed you!” He waves and head his way. And I close the door behind me and wander how the hell I am going to survive going to that place and not having…memories!

Notes

Hope you guys like it. Sorry for the delay