Chapter Text
“Hello?” Louis had no idea who would be calling him at 3 am.
“Is this Louis Tomlinson?” A deep voice came over the phone and Louis was immediately alarmed. He never even picked up unknown callers but he had been asleep and answered without looking.
“Uhm, yes? Who’s this?”
“I’m Harry, uh, Styles.” The voice paused.
“Okay?”
“I know your sister.”
“Oh!” Louis hadn’t seen his sister in over a year, “Did something happen? Is she okay?”
“Uhm,” The voice was shaky, Louis hadn’t been paying enough attention before to notice it. “Well I haven’t seen her in over a day now.”
“I don’t get it,” Louis said, sitting up in the dark and pinching the bridge of his nose, “Why are you calling me?”
“Well she’s my roommate, and-and my best friend, and it’s not like her to do this. She wouldn’t leave Owen for so long.”
Louis squeezed his eyes and turned on the lamp beside him, “What’re you talking about, mate? Who’s Owen?”
“Oh, uhm, you don’t know? Owen's her baby.”
And fuck is all Louis can think, that’s why she left England .
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“You don’t have to do this, Lottie,” Louis insisted as he followed his sister around her bedroom, “C’mon, I’ll talk to mom for you.”
“It won’t make a difference, Lou,” Lottie said with anger laced in her voice, “She doesn’t want to support me, that’s fine, I’ll leave.”
“Come stay with me then.”
“I can’t.”
“Just tell me what happened,” Louis pressed, “I can help.”
“You can’t.” Lottie turned around to look at Louis, her duffle bag filled to the brim. “There’s nothing you can do. I need to leave.”
Louis sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair, “Where are you going to go?”
Lottie shrugged, “The states, I guess.”
Louis didn’t know what to do. Lottie was eighteen so there wasn’t really anything he could do legally, and his attempts to convince her to stay proved futile when, six hours later, she was on a flight.
“She wouldn’t even tell me why,” Louis explained to his mum that evening. “How can you just let her leave?”
“It’s not my place to say,” Jay replied. “She thinks she’s old enough to be an adult and make adult decisions, we have to let her.”
“She’s a fucking kid!”
“She doesn’t think so.”
It took Louis a long time after that to forgive his mother. It was only when his birthday and Christmas that he gave in. He hadn’t heard from Lottie in over six months at that point and decided he’d rather not lose his entire family over the issue, if Lottie didn’t care enough to call.
The holidays were weird. Lottie had always been the star of their family. She was outgoing and friendly and smart, Louis was just average. With Lottie gone, all of the attention was on Louis but as a university professor living in London, he could only talk about silly assignments, misbehaving students, and the tube so much before his parents got bored. Watching his parents sit in front of the Christmas tree in silence made him wonder if they had wanted more kids. Or that maybe after having Lottie, they thought she was perfect, but they didn’t have her anymore.
More than anything, Louis wanted to know why she had left but his mother refused to say, and Lottie had ignored his calls, texts, and emails for months before Louis gave up.
Louis’ biggest problem with Lottie leaving was that his best friend was gone. Lottie was seven years younger than him but they had always been so close growing up, just the two of them against their parents, against the world. With Lottie gone, Louis felt like a piece of him was missing.
When he was 17, and Lottie was 10, Louis moved to London for school, but Lottie would take the train down every month to spend the weekend with her brother. And when he began his masters, she was 14 and began to spend the summers with him. He had been working on his PhD and teaching when Lottie left, and he missed his summer companion, especially because Lottie was planning on moving to London that September to start school. And, sure, she would be living in a dorm, but she would be just minutes away from Louis’ flat and they would be able to see each other all the time.
Now Louis had no one.
He liked his parents well enough but they lived three hours away in Doncaster and didn’t like taking the train journey down to see him. Louis was way too busy studying and teaching to take it himself. And Louis had friends, acquaintances more like. People he knew through work or from the pub, but he wasn’t really close with any of them.
So when Louis got the call from her best friend, telling him that Lottie had been in New York that whole time, telling him that he had a fucking nephew, telling him that Lottie was missing, he knew he had to leave England too.