A/N This chapter has been edited and reposted. Please disregard the chapter that held this chapter's place. The chapter that was there caused intense writer's block, so this is the new one that will lead into the real Chapter 10, which I hope to post later today. The changes may seem slighly minor, but in the grand scheme of things they are very important. Thank you for understanding.

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Courtney

The days came and went. December continued to pass by as we inched closer to Christmas and New Years Eve. But since the day we got here, Kyle had been down. Even as we got closer to Christmas, his mood hadn’t seemed to brighten.

It was the 21st before I attempted to talk to him to see if there was anything I could do. I knew he needed time to calm down and to be alone, but having gone two days, he needed some help.

I knocked on his door that morning, waiting for him to answer. “Kyle…” I began, frowning.

The only response was a simple, “Go away!”

I frowned. “Kyle, you’ve got to let her go. She’s not that cool, honestly. There are plenty of other fish in the sea,” I reminded him as I stood outside his door.

“You didn’t even know Olivia like I did. You never got to meet her,” he said.

“And does that matter? If she decided to do something like this to you, she doesn’t deserve you. Kyle, you’re my brother. You’re cool. You have the same DNA as me anyway. If she can’t see how cool you are, she doesn’t deserve you.” I smiled a bit as I spoke.

“You actually threw in a compliment for yourself while you did this? Are you actually serious right now?” Kyle sounded really annoyed, which I just shrugged off. It’s a little sister’s job to annoy her big brother, anyway!

“Duh,” I smiled. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. But it’s not helping. Go watch a movie with Liam or something,” he told me.

“Fine. But at least unlock your door, will you? Michael’s been sleeping on the couch for two days because you won’t open the door.” I tried the door again, but it wouldn’t open. “Do you ever use the bathroom?”

“When you’re not around I sneak out. Thanks for the concern. I’ll see you later,” Kyle told me.

“If you actually leave your room, I’ll see you,” I reminded.

“Go away, Courtney,” he finished off.

“Fine, fine. I’m going. Calm down,” I said. I held my hands up in defeat with a sigh. He really didn’t want to be bothered. I just wanted to help! I turned and walked away.

As I left to go upstairs, I swear I heard him say, “My sister actually cares…”

A smile formed on my lips and I went up the stairs. Your sister sure does care, Kyle. Your sister does care.

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“Who’s up for a round of Just Dance?” I called out as I stood in front of the TV. I held four Wii remotes in my hand, one for me and three just waiting for other people to step up to take them.

Nobody responded. I frowned and crossed my arms over my chest. “I said, who’s up for a round of Just Dance?” Again, there was no response. But, I could even see some of my friends doing things around here. I could hear Lucy with her guitar on the loft balcony, and Michael was on the phone, standing by the back door. It wasn’t like I was alone.

“Wow, all of you guys. Go ahead and ignore me. Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Ignore you? What are you talking about?” Liam asked. He came up the stairs, looking at me curiously. “What are you thinking of playing anyway?”

“I wanted to play Just Dance, but everyone is ignoring me,” I said. “I just need something to keep my mind off of what’s going on with Kyle, so I wanted to play a game. But nobody’s going to play with me, because apparently everyone else is too busy.” I frowned and set my Wii remotes down on the coffee table.

“Well, I’ll play with you then, if you need someone to play too.” Liam smiled at me and picked up one of the remotes. “But since you’re such a good dancer, I think you’re going to win every time.”

“I’ll go easy on you, Payne,” I teased and picked up mine again.

He smiled at me and set up the system to play. “Which one do you want to play? There’s five of them.”

I stood there thinking for a bit, a finger on my chin in a mock thinking pose. “Hmm…surprise me,” I said with a smile.

He nodded and gave me a smile. Then he picked up Just Dance 2 and popped it into the console. We started up the game and looked through the song choices. “Wow. All these songs…they’re all from a while ago.”

“They’re still pretty good songs. Oh my gosh, I remember listening to these when I was younger.” I laughed.

“I know, right?” Liam smiled and looked through them. “What do you want to try?”

“Can we do Toxic? I like that one,” I smile at him. “It’s pretty fun.”

“Isn’t that more of a song for you to do?” Liam looked at me curiously,

“So? You said you’d play with me Liam. Come on, just this one and then you can pick?” I smile at him sweetly, really badly wanting to see him do this dance. It’d probably end up as the best Vine video ever.

He sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it. Only because you asked,” he said and I beamed.

“Yes!” I cheered and selected that song. I got ready to dance, but pulled out my phone. “Hey, Liam, could you get me a glass of water before we play?” I asked.

“Sure. Be right back,” he said. He slid beside me and went to the kitchen. When he wasn’t looking, I hid the phone with the camera running, grinning at the thought of the perfect video. When he came back, I was sitting on the couch, waiting for him like I hadn’t done a single thing wrong. But my smile gave it away. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. What are you talking about?” I looked at him, pretending that I hadn’t done a single thing.

“You look a little suspicious,” he teased.

“Courtney looking suspicious?” Michael called from the side of the room. He had hung up his phone and was leaning against a wall, looking at us with a curious expression. “She’s always got something up her sleeve. She and Lizzie are always planning something.”

“Yeah. Didn’t you see her hide her phone? She’s going to record you playing that game,” Lucy called down from the loft. She obviously was enjoying the fact that she was able to rat me out to my boyfriend.

“Lucy!” I crossed my arms and glared at my friend, who just laughed at me. “Wow. Thanks for telling him. It was going to be the next viral video: Liam Payne dances to Toxic!”

“Sorry,” Lucy smiled at me and put her guitar down beside her.

“Okay, for that, you two have to dance with us when we do this,” I told them with a smirk.

“Will there be a camera involved?” Michael looked at me with his arms crossed.

“Yeah, will there be a camera?” Liam looked at me curiously.

I sighed. “No, there won’t. I’ll put it away.” I went to where I had hid it and took it away. I shut the camera off and put my phone in my pocket again. “Okay, now are you ready to dance?”

“Yeah. Give me those remotes,” Michael said and I passed him one as Lucy climbed down the ladder to reach us. She took the last remote and got ready as I started the song.

Oh this would be fun.

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By the time we had done about five songs, everyone was crowding around the couch, watching us dance together like complete fools. Even Kyle had come out of his room and was watching us. We were acting crazy as we danced, enjoying ourselves though. I looked over at the other dancers, and they all were smiling. Liam had stayed to dance with me, but when other people came up, the group switched out Lucy and Michael for some other people who felt like dancing. This round, it was Louis and Lizzie, deciding to throw all the moves that they were supposed to do to the wind, doing whatever they want. Let’s just say their scores were lower than mine and Liam’s were.

“Well, that was fun,” Liam said as we flopped back onto the couch after we finished up the round. It had been a very tiring game, and we finally were able to get some rest afterwards.

“It really was. Why haven’t we played it before while we were here? We should have,” Ana smiled over at all of us. She stretched out her arms, having been the other girl to play in the last round. “It’s even more fun than I remember,” she then added.

“Tell you what, this’ll be the last thing we play every night if you’re up for it, if you like it so much,” I told the entire group.

Kelly gave us a smile. “I think that sounds good to me,” she said sweetly. Then, she checked the time. “Anyone else hungry?” She asked us.

From the rest of the group, I heard people comment, “Yeah, a little”s and “Mmm-hmm”s. I nodded in understanding and set my remote down. “Alright. What do you all want?”

“How about we all make some pizza or something?” Ana suggested. Everyone, again, liked the idea. I heard the same comments come from the group.

“Alright. Let’s go make some pizzas,” I said with a smile and then walked into the kitchen. The rest of the group followed me into the area and helped me find all the supplies we needed, like tomato sauce, cheese, toppings, and crescent roll dough for the crust. We had just what we needed, hopefully.

“Okay, so we have thirteen people, so we’d probably need, what, 5 or 6 pizzas depending on everyone’s appetite?” Kyle said in a soft voice, and I could tell he was doing better. After all, he was in the mood to talk, even if it was so quiet that we could hardly hear what was he wanted to say.

I gave him a smile and nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably right Kyle,” I agreed and patted his shoulder, or at least what I could reach of his shoulder. “Here, how about the girls and I start rolling out the dough, for starters, and you guys start preparing the pizza sauce and things like that?” I suggested.

“Sure,” Michael said. “Wait, how many pizzas can we make at a time in the oven?”

“Uh, I think three, if we make regular sized pizzas. Two on the bottom oven and one on top,” replied Simone as she checked to see if there were multiple shelves in the bottom, much larger, oven.

“Okay. So, we can make the first three, and everyone can get one or two pieces, and then make the other pizzas if we need them,” Liam said. “Roll out only three of the doughs.”

“I know what to do,” I reminded him with a smile as a knock came on the door. “Someone go get that while I get to work.”

I noticed Simone run off, and then she came back a minute or two later. She was joined by none other than Tanner. “Hey, everyone,” he greeted with a smile.

A chorus of “hey”s and “hi”s replied to his greeting. “Wanna stay for dinner? We’re making homemade pizza,” Niall offered the younger boy, to which he nodded.

“Sure, I think that sounds good. I’m gonna need something warm before I go back through that cold weather,” he admitted.

“How bad is it out there? I mean, I know this place gets cold in the winter, like deathly cold,” Louis said, and we all knew he was only partly joking at the end.

“Pretty bad. I might have gotten slight frost nip. But that’s not the worst part. It’s snowing pretty hard,” he said honestly. “So the shoveling my brother and I did is going to be for nothing,” he then added. Before any of us could comment on what he said, he looked at the pizza. “So, let’s get to work!”

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“It’s ready!” I heard Harry call from the kitchen. We had put our pizzas in the oven after preparing them, and for the last few minutes, ten or so, we had started watching a movie. When the timer went off, he had gotten up to go get the pizzas out and cut them up. “Come and get it!”

We didn’t hesitate. We all got up and ran off to the kitchen, shuffling around to get plates, cups, and napkins for all of us.

Throughout the movie, and throughout this chaos, nobody noticed the snow on the window. Even though there were windows around the TV we had been watching, and there was one over the kitchen sink right behind us, we didn’t see the snow.

“What does everyone want to drink?” I heard Lizzie offer over the scrambling. “We got milk, we got water, we got cocoa, tea, coffee, Coke,” she listed off, and multiple people called out their orders. I couldn’t distinguish one word from the others, but surprisingly Lizzie could. She poured all the drinks and set them at the places we had sat at for other meals prior. She set Tanner’s down in the gap between Simone’s chair and my own.

The chaos died down once everyone was able to get their pizza. Everyone took their seats at the table, and Tanner pulled a chair over from the island table. We all ate in silence, which was weird since none of us would shut up only a few minutes before when we were all trying to get our pizza slices.

Michael was the first to notice something was wrong. “Hey, guys?” he said, breaking the silence. “Anyone see the snow?” he asked us, pointing at the large window behind us. It was a tall window, with maybe a foot between the bottom sill and the actual ground both inside and outside. There was a clear full six inches over the sill already. The snow was falling fast, and nobody had realized until then.

We could be snowed in!