I texted Louis only once, in the taxi on the way home from Cirque Le Soir, in response to his message. I just put Great meeting you, and thanks for the drinks x. He sent me a winky face in return, but other than that I didn't hear from him again, and because I believed him to have a girlfriend, I didn't pursue it.

I met up with Callie the day after and demanded a blow-by-blow account of her encounter with Harry Styles at the house party, but was relieved to learn he had spent all of about half an hour there, had been deep in conversation with Nick Grimshaw from Radio 1 the whole time, and then left in a black Range Rover with darkened windows. Although I would have killed to have seen Harry up close in the flesh, I couldn't feel too disappointed at missing out considering I'd had Louis' arm around me for a large proportion of the evening. Even Callie, although upset at not being able to contact me at first, and unable to believe I'd rejected Louis when I'd had more than a chance with him, agreed there wasn't really any comparison. That didn't stop me from asking her repeatedly to describe how Harry had looked at the party, what he was wearing, what he was drinking, how his voice sounded; to which she repeatedly answered, "I don't know, Jess! I was more preoccupied with trying to ring and text you! I didn't pay too much attention to him other than that!"

The next couple of weeks passed quickly and uneventfully. Sarah wouldn't stop talking about my near-shag with Louis, and still couldn't believe I'd had the opportunity to kiss him but had turned him down. No matter how many times I told her I wouldn't have been able to live with myself every time I saw a picture of Louis and Eleanor together, she was convinced I had made the worst mistake of my life, and literally mourned my loss on a daily basis.   

I saw in the news that the boys had jetted off to Singapore the weekend after Cirque Le Soir to continue the next part of their On The Road Again tour, and the fandom was rocked less than a week later by not only the news that Zayn had apparently cheated on his long-term girlfriend Perrie, but that he had then been signed off the tour with stress. 

"See?" I hissed to Sarah as we read the Daily Mail articles in shock over our M&S sandwiches at lunchtime. "This is what happens when you go interfering in public relationships! Imagine if I had slept with Louis and it had been all over the news! Imagine if he had taken sick leave, and flown home part way through the tour to sort things out with Eleanor! I would be public enemy number one, and have the entire One Direction fandom after me! No thanks."

Sarah couldn't argue with this, and actually dropped the subject of me and Louis for the rest of the week, although we had an excited discussion later that afternoon in the office kitchen after yet another scandalous story broke the headlines, this time about Harry having apparently hooked up with a mystery blonde girl in the Philippines in between shows.

However, Sarah was hot on my case again only four days later when another news article broke out of the blue that changed everything. I was in the pub with Callie having Sunday lunch, when I received a picture message from Sarah, captioned (in capitals) NOW TRY TELLING ME YOU HAVE NO REGRETS.

The picture she had sent me was a screen shot of a Daily Mail article, with the headline: One Direction's Louis Tomlinson splits from long-term girlfriend Eleanor Calder... as pictures emerge of him kissing a mystery woman after all-night pool party in Thailand.

I gaped at my phone in disbelief, before hastily opening the Daily Mail app to read the full article. It reported that a spokesperson had confirmed Louis and Eleanor had split up two weeks previously, and Louis had been single when the incriminating Thailand pool pictures had been taken. My mind hastily counted back two weeks - that was the same weekend I had met him, and he had been coy about his relationship with Eleanor. Was this why? Were they in the process of splitting up, or had they already broken up when he had tried to kiss me? If this was the case, it made complete sense. The article said neither had gone public with the split to maintain their privacy - was this why he hadn't told me he was single: because it hadn't been public knowledge at that time?

"I'd say that makes sense," Callie nodded, when I shared my thoughts on the subject. "Are you gutted you didn't shag him now?"

I bit my lip. "I don't know," I admitted. "Yes and no. No, because I've never had a one night stand, and to have been a rebound shag would have made me feel cheap. But yes, because it's Louis fucking Tomlinson, and I've fancied him for years."

Callie gave me a sympathetic look. "See, this is where having morals gets you. Nowhere."

I sighed, and took a sip of my wine. "I suppose I'd rather live with not having slept with him when he was single, than having slept with him believing he was in a long-term relationship."

"You're so pure, Jess," Callie smiled. "You always do the right thing."

"I'm a mug, you mean," I grumbled.

"Not at all. You're a genuinely nice person. You don't hurt people, you don't cheat, and you have strong morals and beliefs. That's not a bad thing. They're excellent qualities."

So why did I feel like I'd missed out on the jackpot?

~~ 

Callie dropped me back at my flat late that afternoon after we'd finished our lunch, and I found myself staring at my message thread with Louis, fighting the impulse to text him but also having no clue how to approach a situation like this. How exactly did you text one of the members of the biggest pop band in the world, with whom you'd had a close encounter that could have gone further but thanks to your own conscience, it hadn't gone past harmless flirting and a dance? 

My confidence wavered as I reread the Daily Mail article. My initial feeling was that Louis was obviously enjoying sowing his wild oats now he was newly single - he hadn't wasted any time trying to make a move on me. But then I found myself questioning my assumptions. I had originally come to the conclusion that he was the type to cheat on his girlfriend, but this had been brought into question given the latest article about him. Maybe he had been telling the truth that night at Cirque Le Soir: he hadn't been cheating, because they had already split? Maybe the article about the girl in the pool in Thailand had been exaggerated and embellished to create a story. Maybe Zayn's girl was also fabricated for clickbait. Maybe Harry hadn't hooked up with a blonde in the Philippines. It was an endless thought process of what-ifs and maybes, and unless I heard the truth from the horse's mouth, I would never know the answer. (Not that I intended to ask.) 

But even if these stories were all a bunch of lies, did I want to get involved with someone just out of a four-year relationship, whose face was never out of the media, who was travelling the world on a tour that would last most of the year? I wasn't assuming anything would really come of this, but it seemed unnecessary to put myself through the anticipation of it all only to be inevitably let down.

Yet I repeatedly found myself back in the text conversation, staring at the winky face from Louis, and contemplating all sorts of witty remarks to reopen the lines of communication. This was no good. I was torturing myself over something that had barely even happened, and was unlikely ever to happen again. If I'd had more strength I would have deleted the conversation altogether, along with his number, but at the end of the day I was a Directioner first and foremost, and there was no way on this earth that I could ever bring myself to delete Louis Tomlinson's number from my phone.

~~~

Life continued as normal for the next few days, but it seemed 2015 was intent on being problematic for the One Direction fandom and showed no signs of letting up. I attended a team building conference with my work colleagues on the twenty fifth of March, and as we were on our way out, and crossing the car park back towards my car, Sarah let out an inhuman squeak from behind me, and I turned around to see she had stopped dead mid-step, staring down at her phone with her hand over her mouth.

"Sarah?" I said uncertainly. "What's wrong? Are you OK?"

She shook her head wordlessly, and lifted her head to meet my gaze, her eyes wide with shock. 

"What?" I asked, feeling panicky now and walking back towards her. "What's happened?"

She took a deep, shaky breath and took her hand away from her mouth as she began to read from her screen. "After an incredible five years, Zayn Malik has decided to leave One Direction..."

"What?!" I yelped, running the last few steps and moving to stand behind her to read the words over her shoulder. My blood ran cold as my eyes skimmed the official statement.

Niall, Harry, Liam and Louis will continue as a four-piece... I'd like to apologise to the fans... I want to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax and have some private time out of the spotlight... fans can rest assured that Niall, Liam, Harry and Louis are hugely excited about the future of the band... 

"Fuck," Sarah whispered, looking up at me again with the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Her face looked pale, and she swallowed hard. "Do you think they'll split up?"

"It says there they won't," I said, pointing at the screen, but my voice trembled as I spoke. 

"I wonder if Louis knew about this, that night we met him," Sarah mused, and I put my arm around her shoulders as we began to head back to my car.

"No idea," I muttered. "This seems to have stemmed from the pictures of Zayn and that girl in Thailand, but who knows? They all seem to be shagging around these days, so maybe it's common practice when they're on tour. Maybe Louis was never faithful to Eleanor, and that's why they broke up..."

"Don't," Sarah begged. "Don't ruin the illusion of them being nice guys. I can't bear it."

We headed back to London, alternating between stunned silence and excited speculation, boring my other three passengers to death with our One Direction talk (even my colleague Gary, who was a self-confession 1D fan and who had a not-so-secret man-crush on Harry Styles.)

"You could text Louis and ask him what happened?" Sarah suggested as we came off the motorway and onto the ringroad, but even as I looked at her I knew that she knew that wasn't a good idea.

"I haven't had any contact with him since that night," I reminded her. "I think I managed to do an alright job of not letting on I was a mega-fan. I wouldn't want to ruin that, even though I'll never see him again. I can be happy that I played it cool, didn't do anything immoral, and hopefully left a good impression on him."

Sarah nodded silently, and after I dropped her and the others off I raced back to my flat to read every article that I could lay my hands on about Zayn's departure. I trawled through thousands of tweets (which took me a while as I had never been a particularly competent Twitter user - I had only ever sent the odd embarrassing tweet to Harry or Louis) and the overall feeling in the fandom seemed to be an overwhelming fear that the band would be splitting up. They were playing Jakarta that day, and there were videos circulating social media of the concert; of Harry supposedly crying on stage (although someone claimed she had thrown something on stage at him) and of the boys generally seeming a little less exuberant that usual, although from what I could see they looked perfectly fine. 

Sarah and I stalked the various media channels over the following few days, but nothing more came to light until the final show in Dubai was over, and one by one the boys were spotted in various locations across the world: Liam and Niall landed at Heathrow, Harry arrived in LA, and Louis spent a couple of days with his family in Dubai before coming to London too. I was just settling back into my normal routine of work, friends and fangirling over One Direction when I received a text message on Wednesday night whilst watching Emmerdale that made my heart come almost to a complete stop:

So, friend... how are things? Been out dancing with anyone lately? x

I squealed out loud and leapt off the sofa, my hands trembling with nervous excitement as I checked, and rechecked, and checked again the name at the top of the message thread. Louis Tomlinson.

"Fuck!" I squeaked. "Fuck!"

I stamped my feet, running on the spot for a moment before jumping up and down and staring back at my phone again. Was this a prank? Some sort of cruel hoax? A set up?

It couldn't be - my phone hadn't been out of my sight since I had met Louis, and it was password protected. If it was a joke, it wasn't from anyone my end. I thought hard, my heart hammering, as I formulated a reply in my head.

No one special, I typed back. How about you? Been busting any good moves lately? OTRA shows don't count x

I laid my phone on the arm of the sofa and tried to focus on the television, but my eyes flicked to it every few seconds until a message came through in reply.

Nah, I wouldn't want to put anyone else to shame!

I laughed out loud, giddy from the excitement of this exchange.

Somehow I don't think that would be an issue, I sent back cheekily.

My phone lit up immediately, and I grabbed it, grinning.

Didn't hear you complaining ;) x

Well, the music was quite loud, I fired back, my fingers trembling as they flew over the letters on my screen.

Shame, I was going to see if you fancied a dance-off one night soon, but if you're afraid of a little healthy competition.... ;) x

My stomach cartwheeled. Was this an invitation, or just banter? It could be mortifying if I got the wrong end of the stick. I decided to play it safe and turn it back on Louis.

Wouldn't really be a competition though, would it? Just saying ;) x

Sounds to me like you're afraid of a challenge, came his response almost instantly.

My fingertips tingled with excitement as I sent a reply back before I really had time to think, my skin prickling with nervous heat:

Bring it on x 

---***---

I'm so excited for this story! I've been through the remaining possible chapter names and come up with a vague plan for about 5 chapters. I'm so eager to write them! I hope you're all enjoying my fictional Louis - please don't forget to vote if you are! ❤