The bass from one of the smaller tents thumped like a heartbeat as I wandered further off the beaten path of Glastonbury’s chaos. The sky above was soft and moody—hazy, the kind of grey that pressed down on your chest without raining. A beer sloshed in my hand, untouched. I wasn’t performing this year, just… lurking. I didn’t even plan on coming. Jeff had asked me twice if I was sure. I wasn’t. I said yes anyway.

I just needed to see it all again. The crowd. The mess. The electricity. The ghosts.

The grass underfoot was damp, and I could hear someone nearby yelling about running out of rolling papers. A group of kids passed me by with glitter-smeared cheeks and no clue they’d just brushed past someone they used to scream for in their bedrooms. I liked it better this way. Unseen. Anonymous in a sea of noise.

My phone buzzed in my palm. I glanced down.

Instagram: Louis Tomlinson liked a reel you were tagged in.

My heart kicked. I hadn’t posted anything.

I tapped the notification. It wasn’t my reel. It was some fan edit—one of those moody, over-filtered reels stitched together with a melancholic song. It was us. 2015. Backstage. A moment I barely remembered, but they’d zoomed in like it was gospel. My eyes on him. The caption: “The way he looks at him.”

And Louis—drunk Louis, clearly—had just liked it.

I stared at it. The reel looped. Over and over. My own face watching his like I knew something I didn’t have the guts to say. Maybe I did, back then. Or maybe I was just stupid and young and felt too much.

Ten minutes passed. Unlike. Gone.

I laughed bitterly, the kind of laugh that caught in your throat like smoke. My stomach twisted.

Coward.

He was here. I knew he was here. I’d seen the photos earlier. Louis in denim and boots and Zara hanging off his arm like an accessory. Her smile all teeth. Her hands all over what used to be mine.

I hadn’t spoken to him in… years. Properly, anyway. We’d sent the occasional “congrats” or “saw the album” message. Harmless, safe. Surface-level.

But this?

This was something else.

A mistake… or a slip? Drunk honesty, maybe. And then immediate regret. The most Louis thing he could’ve done.

My fingers tightened around my phone. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t feel anything. But the fire in my chest said otherwise. It was scorching every memory we buried. Every night we never talked about. Every look we pretended meant nothing.

I turned back toward the VIP tent. I knew where he’d be.

I’d seen him earlier by the artist trailers, Zara laughing beside him as if nothing in the world had ever touched them. I bet she didn’t even notice he’d gone quiet after the like. I bet she didn’t see the way he always looked over his shoulder at festivals like this. Like part of him expected the past to crawl out of the mud.

Well, guess what?

It just did.

⸻

The tent was dim and heavy with the smell of booze and sweat and clout. I spotted him instantly—leaning on the bar, drink in hand, cheeks flushed from liquor or the weight of something he couldn’t say.

I stopped a few feet behind him. My voice came low, sharp, full of buried resentment and something heartbreakingly raw.

“That was a weird thing to like, Lou.”

He turned. His expression froze. Regret, embarrassment, guilt—whatever it was, it flickered across his face like lightning.

I didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

“Funny how you can still feel something… and then unfeel it ten minutes later.” My tone dropped, colder now. “But I guess you’re good at pretending things never happened.”

He opened his mouth, but Zara appeared just behind him, calling his name, oblivious and all-smiles. He stiffened. Looked at me like I was a ghost. Or maybe the worst kind of truth.

I took a step closer.

“We can pretend again, if that’s easier. You’ve always been good at that.”

And then I walked away.

Because if he wasn’t going to choose the truth now—after all this time—I wasn’t going to let him keep mine.

But damn if that one look didn’t rip everything open again.