Louis has a habit of forming attachments without realizing it. He doesn’t label them. He doesn’t examine them. He just lets people exist close to him—until they don’t.

You become part of his routine quickly. Lunch together. Walking side by side. Him saving you food because “you forget to eat sometimes”—said lightly, like a joke, but repeated often enough to mean something. Eating together, to Louis, is intimacy without pressure. It’s how he lets people in.

You sit across from him almost every day. He listens when you talk, really listens, his large eyes focused, head tilted slightly, like he’s afraid of missing something important. When he sings—softly, rarely—it’s usually when you’re around, though he never notices the pattern. He laughs shyly when you compliment him and waves it off, embarrassed, unaware of how deeply it settles into you.

You like him quietly. Painfully. And you never tell him.

Then the shift happens.

A girl begins talking to Louis—someone who understands how attention works. She’s observant, deliberate. She sees how Louis’s body naturally angles toward you, how he waits for you before eating, how his voice softens when he says your name. She figures out the truth before anyone else does.

Including him.

She doesn’t accuse you. She doesn’t need to. Instead, she moves into the spaces you once occupied. She sits where you used to sit. She suggests lunch plans first. She frames everything as casual, friendly, harmless. And when you try to stay close, she makes it uncomfortable—just enough to push you back without ever looking like the villain.

Louis notices something is wrong, but not what. He thinks you’re pulling away on your own.

You stop sitting with him as much. You eat earlier. You say you’re busy. You smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes anymore. Every time he asks if you’re okay, you say yes, and he believes you—because he trusts people too easily.

The other girl tells him things carefully:

“Maybe she just doesn’t want to hang out as much.”

“I don’t think she likes sharing you.”

“Some people get tired of routines.”

Louis doesn’t argue. He internalizes it.

To him, this becomes a quiet lesson: people leave when you don’t notice fast enough.

The drama peaks not in confrontation, but in absence.

One day, you don’t show up at lunch at all. He waits. He checks his phone. He eats slowly, barely touching his food. The seat across from him stays empty, and for reasons he can’t explain, it unsettles him deeply. Not romantically—not in a way he understands—just a hollow, displaced feeling, like something essential has been moved without warning.

When he finally sees you later, you’re laughing with someone else.

Something in his chest tightens. He doesn’t name it. He doesn’t question it. He just assumes it’s normal to feel this way when friendships change.

By the end, Louis is closer to her. You’re farther away.

He never realizes you liked him. He never realizes he might have liked you too.

What he does realize—too late—is that eating alone doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Today, you were walking out of the school building, heading towards you house.. alone, that was an occurring routine for you now. Louis is walking home with her again.. when he notices you. For a moment, he hesitates, then he realizes that if he doesn’t say something now, you might be gone forever. She protests,

"She'll be fine, this was her choice anyway."

But he shakes his head. He knows that there is something wrong, he just doesn't know what. He walks up behind you, tapping your shoulder.