Charly

Charly couldn’t wipe away the smile on her face the next day, so she just stared out of the window of their private plane, flying them to Finland for their next stop of the tour. The massage that Liam had given her last night had been more than great and the not-so-little bonus was overwhelming. It had totally made her forget about her aching body. It had her also forgetting about Lisa and that she could have walked in on them at any time. Only the next day, she found out that Lisa had fallen asleep in Lou’s room and just came back to her room the next morning to pack.
Liam was sitting on the other end of the plane. Whenever they caught each other’s view, he would wink at her with a dirty smile which caused her cheeks to blush. “Hey Charly”, Niall sat down in the empty chair next to her. “Hey”, she answered back and rubbed at her cheeks, as if she could remove the red color like that. “My mom rang me up before the plane took off and reminded me about the anniversary of my grandparents in two weeks, back home in Dublin”, Niall told her, but she wasn’t really paying attention. “That’s nice”, she said while looking out of the window again. Charly was drifting off and that dumb smile appeared on her face again. “And she said that if I want, I could bring someone…”, Niall kept on talking and now was waiting for her to respond. “Charly?”, he asked after a few moments. “What?”, she turned around again, taken by surprise. She had been completely zoned out, not realizing that he was still talking to her. “Do…do you wanna…come?”, he asked and seemed very shy about it, which made Charly think that she might should have listened to him more closely. “Where?”, she asked, blushing now for a different reason. She hated it when someone did that to her and now she was no better.
“Charly, could you come here for a second?”, she heard Paul a few rows away. “Sure, boss”, she said and while she got up, she gave Niall an apologizing smile. Niall leaned back in his chair and let out the air he had held back in frustration. “Stop tapping your foot or I’ll cut it off”, Niall heard Lisa two rows in front of him, hissing at Harry, looking up from her magazine. “Hurry, you’re on your lady-thing again”, Harry said to her and quickly got up to change seats as she folded her magazine up to a roll and tried to hit him with it.

When she finally came back to her room, it was around 9 pm. The preparations at the venue hadn’t even been close to where they should have been when the boys had arrived for soundcheck. Charly had to clarify what had gone wrong and needed to stay there to make sure they were working their asses off to get back on track. It hadn’t been easy at all because most of the workers there only spoke Finnish and the band’s crew was busy with their own work, especially doing the things that should already have been done.
“How can I ever thank you, lads?”, she said to her crew and everything seemed to run smoothly. “Buy us a pint, love”, George, the head of the workers. “I buy you a whole pub, when we get back home”, she said smiling and finally headed back to their hotel.
Charly really had to catch up on her finances. She got out her papers and documents, her calculator and pens. She had also printed out the credit card statements of the boys’ “on tour”-cards and during the day, she had collected the receipts they had gotten over the weeks.
At first, she tried to assign the receipts to the right statement, which took quite a long time. She was missing so many receipts and had some indefinable amounts on the statements that Charly had to resist to cry out a few times. Those boys really made it hard for her to do her job sometimes, especially since they didn’t have to do it themselves. They would handle their “finances” a whole lot differently when they had to do the tour-cash-register. But on the other hand, IF one of the boys would actually do it, Charly would have even more work cleaning up that mess. Charly sighed and ran her hand through her hair. It wasn’t easy when there weren’t all needed papers and most of all, when she really wasn’t in the mood for it.
It got loud in front of her hotel room door, which made it even harder for her to concentrate on her work. Charly massaged her temples and closed her eyes. She tried to zone out and completely concentrate on the papers in front of her, but the shouts and loud noises outside weren’t helping. “Foul, you prick!”, she heard through the wall. “Ahhh!” Screams and shouts like an army was about to storm into her room. She grunted in frustration and threw her pen across the room.
Charly couldn’t stand to look at those figures any longer, especially when it was that loud outside. With a grunt she got up to tell them to be quiet and to check on what the hell they were actually doing. She yanked the door open with a tug. Just as she wanted to yell at the people outside her hotel room, she got ran over by Niall. “Ouch”, Charly moaned as her head had hit the floor. “Sorry, Charly, didn’t see you there”, he said, lying on top of her, the ball above her head.
Even if he didn’t want to, he got up and jumped to his feet. “Here, let me help you up”, he said and held out his hand for her. Charly moved up to rest on her elbows and took a look at the scenery. All the boys and three from their band stood out in the hallway and looked at her. Louis, being the jerk he was, couldn’t stop laughing. “What are you even playing?”, she asked. “American football”, said Harry smiling brightly, having his hair up in a bun.
Charly took Niall’s hand and he pulled her up to her feet. Then he bent down to pick up the ball. “You alright?”, he asked, putting the ball under is arm and was holding it on his side. She took a quick look around the hallway. All those smug faces. Her eyes wandered over to Louis and his stupid grin and back to Niall. “That’s it. REVENGE!”, Charly yelled, yanked the ball out of Niall’s arm and ran in the other direction.
At first, they were all a bit surprised that she wanted to play instead of scream at them, but they got over their surprise pretty quickly. Charly got into Liam’s team which forced her to play with Louis and against Niall and Harry, but a friendly foul between team mates hadn’t hurt nobody. “You should watch your ass, Tommo”, Charly said while standing behind him, waiting for the other team to start the round. “I’m on your team, silly”, he said over his shoulder. “Don’t really care”, Charly shrugged her shoulders. “Hut, hut, hut”, Niall screamed out and passed the ball to Harry. He ran back a few steps and threw it to Josh, the drummer of the band. Or, better said, tried to throw because Charly ran past the other’s while Liam and Louis blocked the opponents and caught the ball in the air. “You go, girl”, Liam said as he saw her catching the ball and starting to run. Charly duck away from someone’s arms, trying to catch her and ran until the end of the corridor. “Touch down!”, she shouted and threw the ball to the ground. “Yeah!”, Liam came running towards her and picked her up by wrapping his arms around her hips. “Liam, put me down”, she said worried, but still laughing.
“Harry, can I borrow a hair band?”, she asked her friend and pointed to the spare one he had around his wrist. “Yeah sure”, he said and handed it to her. She put her hair up in a pony tail and gave him a thankful smile. “When you girls done discussing your hair, can we go back to playing?”, Louis sarcastically said, looking annoyed. “Shut up, Louis”, Charly said and gave his butt a little kick while walking past him.
They got back on their positions. “We’re in the lead now, so you better watch out”, Liam said and pointed to the one’s across from him. “Shut up and play”, Niall threw back, being mad for losing.
“Hut, hut, hut”, Liam shouted and gave the ball to Zayn, which passed it to Charly. She tried to play it just like before, but this time Harry tried to stop her. He tackled her and his head landed on her chest. Instead of getting up, he just kept laying there, not willing to get up. “No nap time now, we’re in a game”, Charly said and patted his head. Then she just pushed him off, got up and stuck out her tongue to him while she walked backwards to her team.
“Hey, you guys want to switch up teams?”, Niall asked. “Wanna be on the winnig side for a change?”, Louis asked and chuckled. “Definitely don’t want to be in a team with you, Tommo”, Niall responded. His real intention wasn’t the winning-part, he wanted to be on the same team as Charly and, to be honest, wanted to have a good look at her arse, when she was standing in front of him. “I want to play with Charly”, Harry called the shots and put his long arm around her shoulders. “You guys do what you want, but I have to get back to my receipts. They ain’t gonna do themselves”, Charly said and took Harry’s arm off her. “Don’t leave me…STELLA”, Harry almost screamed, imitating some lines from a movie. “Jesus Christ”, Louis sighed and turned around, walking a few steps away.
“Come on Charly, play with us”, Niall tried to keep her here for a little longer. “No, thanks. You boys play with your balls and I go back to work”, she said and went back to her room. “She doesn’t want to play. Can we go on now?”, Louis complained from the back of the corridor and sounded really annoyed. Charly shook her head and rolled her eyes as she closed the door behind her.

Notes