You get me dizzy

Chapter 17

“Where are you going for your sister’s birthday?” Zayn asks on August 3rd.

Leo panics for a second. First, because he’s got a hot date with James tomorrow (and completely forgot about his sister’s birthday). Second, because he didn’t get her anything for her birthday. Then he remembers that he actually (sort of) got her the concert tickets and he’s off the hook for the next four to seven years.

He gets distracted by his phone going off, signalling a new Snapchat from James.

Leo doesn’t really know how a night at the club two months ago evolved into an everyday thing, but he can’t really say that he’s mad at it.

Storytime.

Zayn and him decided to f**k it after they realized they don’t really do anything but smoke and go to work and called up Noah to organize a club night, which ended up in Leo making out with a random tall guy with jet black hair and blue eyes -James- and taking him home. James f****d the whole ‘Harryncident’ out of him and Leo got drunk a few days later and texted him, which resulted in James coming over and doing it again. They decided to do it once a week, when they both found time, until they realized that they weren’t actually that busy and it sort of became a regular thing. Now, fast forward two months, they talk every day on social media and sometimes meet up for lunch. Sometimes they go to the club and stay for about two hours before James gets too jealous and hot about guys ogling Leo, so they go to his or Leo’ place to get it out of his system. It works.

Not to mention that at the end of May, Harry started the American part of his tour and was seen with Kendall Jenner ‘out and about’ (Lottie informs him about what Harry does every time they meet; not because she knows Leo sometimes has wet dreams about him, but because she thinks that the concert brought them closer together and it’s somehow relevant).

So Leo eventually gave up on his whole ‘groupie fantasy’ (“Time heals everything” Zayn said at one point, and as much as Leo hates to admit it, Zayn is always right) and moved on. He has the occasional hot dream but nobody has to know. It’s not like he wants the dreams to happen, but it’s involuntary (he looked it up). James usually f***s him until the only thing he knows is JamesJamesJames.

Main point is; he got over his fantasy when he realized that it was one sided.

“Leo?”

“Hm?”

“I asked you a question.”

Zayn’s looking at him with an annoyed expression.

“I have to text her.”

Zayn shakes his head. “I knew you’d forget.”

Cue Leo’ eye roll.

“I’ll probably take her out for lunch or something. I’m going to text her, chill.”

He does just that, and soon enough, Lottie replies that she’ll be in Ibiza with her friends as of tonight, but that she’ll definitely take a rain check on it when she gets back. Leo reads the text out loud and that’s that.

***

Lottie keeps true to her word and a week and a half later, she walks into Leo’ tattoo parlour right before 5pm and sits down on a chair next to Leo’, who’s currently busy tattooing a lion on a man’s back.

“Hello brother.” She smiles and pats him on the back. The last time she kissed him, she nearly made him move and f**k up a tattoo. Leo yelled and she almost cried. It wasn’t pretty.

“I’m going to finish in ten minutes and then we can go.” He lets her know.

She goes to the toilet and the man on the table takes it as his cue to continue talking about his next tattoo idea. When she comes back, she’s smiling.

“Who’s the hot guy in your office?”

“I hope you’re talking about Shawn.” Leo tells her.

Lottie rolls her eyes. “I know Tom and Max.”

“He’s Emma’s boyfriend.”

Lottie pouts and Leo ignores it.

“How’s James? Is he coming with?”

“No, it’s just going to be the two of us.”

“Have you gotten over your commitment issues and finally admitted to him that you like him?”

Leo sighs, squinting at the small line he’s drawing to get it perfectly done. “No.”

It’s not that James isn’t fun to be with or good in bed (he’s definitely both those things), it’s just that Leo is 26 years old and if he’s going to start dating, he wants it to be sure that it’ll work out, since he doesn’t want to be 35 and still going to clubs or checking dating apps to meet someone. Not that it would be a shame, but when he (sometimes) thinks about his life in a few years he thinks about living somewhere in a house with dogs running in the big back yard, maybe a kid. And he’s known James for roughly two and a half months.

“Do you get butterflies when you’re with him?” Lottie continues.

That’s an easy answer. “No.”

“Then why-“

“Because I want to, okay?” Leo huffs and takes the tattoo gun off the man’s skin. “You’re done mate.”

“Thanks a lot, it looks great!” the man answers as Leo holds up a mirror. He bandages him up and gives him a paper with all the proper instructions.

“Do you have all the stuff I need here? Or do I have to go to a pharmacy?”

“You can buy it here too.” he says. “Go to the reception and ask.”

They never used the storage room right by the entrance – except for storing a broom and a mop - so they knocked down the walls to fit a reception desk back in July, and Emma volunteered to not only come in twice a week and manage their account, but to come in every day and also manage the reception desk during working hours.

“Well, you are our accountant. Do you think we can afford to pay you full time? And give you a twenty percent raise?” Leo had asked when she suggested the reception idea a month ago. She came in all nervous, had arguments planned out about how it would be better for Tom if he focused more on tattoos than scheduling appointments, and how she’s been looking for a more stable job. It took about 10 seconds until Leo was convinced.

“Well the average net profit is around 33 thousand a month, after everyone’s been paid, plus supplies, maintenance and unforeseeable costs.” She told Leo. That’s when he decided that everyone will be getting a 10% raise starting August and that at the end of September, they’ll take a ‘work-but-not-really-work trip’ somewhere in Europe. An investment in a car was also definitely a possibility.

The man shakes Leo’ hand and leaves the room. While Lottie busies herself looking at the piercings in the small glass cabinet by the door, Leo goes into the office.

They go to a place a few streets away in a side-alley, a hipster-ish type of restaurant that serves mostly vegan food, and even though Leo scrunches his nose when he sees the menu, he decides on ordering the salmon.

“Oh my God, Harry’s coming back to London soon!” Lottie exclaims.

They haven’t even gotten their drinks, for f**k’s sake.

“Oh?”

‘Oh’ is his most used response to anything Lottie says that’s Harry Styles related.

“I mean, he just posted a photo with the caption ‘thank you USA. I’ll be back’.”

Leo exhales through his nostrils. He can’t really tell her he’s not interested and that she should stop, because there’s no good reason for it. The most it will do is make Lottie feel bad.

Lottie shoves the phone into his face and Leo makes an effort to look at the picture. It’s of Harry, his band, and Levi, smiling at the camera somewhere backstage. Of course Harry’s wearing a thousand rings and ripped jeans topped with a half-unbuttoned floral shirt.

“Very nice.”

Lottie makes a face as she takes the phone away. “What’s your problem?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you so…bleah?”

“Bleah?”

“Yeah. Is James not-“

“It’s not about James, I’m just hangry.” Leo tells her, and it seems to be a valid answer because she stops questioning it.

“How was Ibiza?”

Lottie pulls her lips into a thin line. “I know you don’t really care so let’s talk about what’s going on with you.”

“No, this is your birthday lunch s***h dinner so we’re talking about you.”

“It was good, as usual. Went to Ushuaia, saw Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike two times, Martin Garrix, the lot. And now that we’ve talked about me, let’s talk about you.”

“Fine.” Leo gives in, placing his arms on the table. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me about James.”

“What’s with this James obsession?”

“Leo.” Oh no, it’s getting serious. “I haven’t seen you with someone in about…three years? I liked Paula, she was good for you. You were happy.”

“And then she cheated.”

“Well, you weren’t in a relationship, were you?”

Technicalities. Leo actually allowed himself to be close to someone, after starting out as f**k buddies, but then he found out that she was sleeping with someone on the side, which shouldn’t have bothered him, but seeing as the two of them had been doing ‘it’ for about nine months and going out as well, he thought it was kind of a given that they weren’t seeing other people. And putting labels on things has never been something he liked doing.

“I am happy with James, just…just not happy enough for me to ask him to be exclusive.”

“What if he is?”

Leo has never thought about it like that. And James has never been clingy (maybe jealous, but never clingy), so he just assumed it was an open kind of thing.

“I don’t know.”

“Would you be willing to lose him?”

Leo pulls his head back. “Lottie, you’ve met him like…two times.”

“And I liked that you were laughing. And being all smiley.”

“He has good jokes, what am I supposed to do? Just because I laugh at his jokes doesn’t mean I want to marry him.”

“Do you ever laugh at his bad jokes?”

“No, why the f**k would I do that.”

The waitress brings them their food and drinks at the same time, probably because it’s all just unfrozen anyway. Thankfully though, Lottie drops the conversation to take a photo of their plates.

“Are you still dating Jeff?” Leo asks, because he feels bad, although he’s not really sure why.

“Nah. Dumped him a few weeks ago before Ibiza.”

The conversation shifts onto her after that and Leo is happy that he’s not being interrogated anymore.