Chapter 35

Christmas is over. It's the 27th now. I'm going home tomorrow, and honestly, it's about time. I was having fun with my family the first few days, but now since the holiday is over, I'm dying here. I'm craving my home.

Harry's not going to be back at his flat until the morning of the 31st unfortunately, so we are planning on spending New Year's Eve and Day together. I just wish those days would come quicker.

Right now, it's 4:30 P.M., and I'm starving. Isaac and I are sitting in the living room watching SVU. Our mom and Eve are gone. They went shopping after Isaac and I devoured everything in the house. People would normally have too much food after Christmas, but not with Isaac and I. We appreciate food too much to watch it sit in a refrigerator.

We are both in casual clothes, and we share the couch without much care for personal space like we always have.

"We have nothing to eat, Isaac," I say as I hear my stomach growl. I roll onto him and whimper on his shoulder, and he pushes me off.

"I know that," he bites. "Stop complaining, mom will be back soon."

"Not soon enough."

I fall back into my original position and cross my arms over my unusually flat stomach. I really need to eat. I make whining sounds in pity of myself, and also to annoy my brother.

I get a text.

From Zayn:

Come over we have tacos

My pained cries stop. It's like he read my mind. I hop off the couch and go upstairs. "Where are you going?" Isaac asks.

"I'm going to get food."

He leaves me alone. I go to my room and quickly clean myself up. Zayn texts me the address to his parents' house once I tell him I am coming over. I leave my house as fast as I can in a simple outfit with minimal makeup.

I arrive at Zayn's house and walk up the empty driveway to his front door. It is funny how well I remember his family's house. Even the outside has been stained into my memory.

I knock on the door and wait. After a while of waiting, Zayn answers. He lets me inside, and I can immediately smell tacos.

"Ready to eat?" I ask as I walk in.

"Yeah, the food's in the kitchen."

He leads me into the kitchen where we serve ourselves and eat at the table. We get halfway into our meal before I realize his family is not here. "Where is everyone?" I ask when the conversation allows for it.

"They aren't here."

I raise my eyebrows in obvious suspicion.

He smirks. "My mom, Safaa and Waliyha are at the mall because of some sale they were talking about. Doniya is working, and so is my father." He pauses. "They were here a few minutes ago, you just showed up too late."

"Funny," I mutter. He rolls his eyes. I know he is telling the truth, though. He just likes to tease me. He takes a sip of his water. "Did you see that vine I tagged you in?"

He puts his cup down. "No." He pats his pockets and furrows his brow. "Where's my phone?"

He gets up cautiously and looks around the kitchen. "Do you want me to call it?" I ask.

"It's on silent."

He starts to move more and even checks some of the cabinets in the kitchen. I get up and leisurely check in the living room, just lifting up a pillow or two on the couches.

"Just hang out here, this might take a minute." He motions to the couches before searching some more, and I gladly follow his instructions.

I sit on the couch and really see his old house completely for the first time today. The house has not changed much. It is still as beautiful as it used to be. The same black sofas are here that I remember sitting in while we were in the middle of a power outage. Everything is the same, except for the occasional new picture or replaced piece of furniture.

Zayn starts to walk around his flat, first checking on the table in the living room where I am sitting.

"I had fun at the coffee shop," I tell him as he searches by my feet.

He lifts up his head to look at me. "Me too. Those girls have great voices, right?"

I scowl as I remember how he wouldn't let me meet them. It makes me pained to wonder why I couldn't. "Yeah, they do." I change the subject for my own benefit. "When you showed up at my house a few days ago, it kind of reminded me of when you brought me pizza that one time in high school."

He stops searching for a second, and smiles quizzically at me. "Right. Then we got pie, because it was Pi Day?" I nod yes, and then I understand where this conversation is heading. I don't even know why I decided to bring that up. It was the first thing to came to mind, but why couldn't I have thought that through? "That was the day your father died, wasn't it?" he asks me.

I sigh. "Yes."

"Can I be frank?" he asks.

I shrug. Since I lead him to asking about it, I sort of am obligated to let him. "Go ahead."

"That day you told me about how it happened, I didn't understand how that guilt and depression could stick with someone for so long. It had been six years, right?" I say yes again. Discomfort is surrounding me. I know it had been six years, I know it seemed ridiculous for me to still be so hurt. "But I know what it's like now," he mutters. "You were young, and you really thought it was your fault. Now I can see how that sticks around longer. But you've changed since then. How?"

I swallow the lump in my throat that seemed to appear out of no where. "It's coming up 10 years next March, Zayn," I talk quietly, as if I'm only saying it to myself.

It's been so long. I cannot believe the affect that my father's death has had on me. Every year, I feel the same. The guilt still nags at me. Even though now it is more muted, and I can suppress it more, the feeling is still there. "Do you really need to know?"

"I do," he says. He stands up and sits on the couch next to me, facing me, and all I can think about is when we talked about my father in high school.

He has expectant eyes that I know I will not be able to look into. I don't know why he needs to know how I dealt with the guilt of my father's death, and I doubt it is for any good reason. But I've experienced plenty of times how Zayn gets information that he wants, and I'd rather just give it to him rather than deal with his peskiness.

I focus on my hands- both sweating and clenching tightly to the other. I start to talk. "I got help. Real help. Therapy." My eyes dart up to him to see what he could be thinking. He sits the same as he was. The one thing I know is different than from high school is that Zayn appears less terrified. When we first talked, he seemed like he had no clue what to do. Today, he looks as if he is here because he is meant to listen. "I was usually fine around the year with Charlotte and my family, until March, and I wouldn't be able to deal with it. Especially that year we were together. I thought you'd help me, but you hurt me at the worst possible time, and I just couldn't take it."

My forehead wrinkles up. I hate feeling vulnerable like I do now. I close my eyes tight, thinking that maybe I can close them tight enough and open them to realize I was only in a dream.

I feel Zayn's warm hand on my knee and I open my eyes. I'm in the same place, reality is still here. "I'm sorry for leaving you in high school," he sighs.

I shake my head slowly, and hair falls over my shoulders. "It's okay, I overreacted, and it was high school-"

"No. You trusted me when you really needed someone, and I didn't even care. I'm sorry."

I fix my gaze onto Zayn, who has a hand on my knee and one on my wrist. I watch him as he clenches his jaw and looks past me into space. I can only imagine that he is thinking about what happened between us. "Thank you for that," I say. "It means a lot."

He keeps his stare out of focus. "Yeah."

I let my head drop again, pouring more hair into my face.

"Can you do something for me?" he speaks into the silent room. "Can you tell Harry I'm sorry? I know he knows we've been hanging out."

The words he says make my breath hitch. I never expected anything between Harry and Zayn to work out. Frankly, I'm still heavily questioning it. But Zayn's apology allows the bit of hope inside me to sprout. "I will."

I can see his body relax.

We sit on the couch like this for a minute. I don't let my eyes fall on Zayn, and I know his won't move to me either. We both sit in a pool of our own guilt together, and I guess we are allowing each other to have time to sit in it.

I feel his hand leave my wrist, and I look at him. His hand travels up to my face, and he lifts up my chin. He smiles at me, and I half smile back. I slowly pull his hand that is on my chin down to my lap, and I hold it there. "Hey, Zayn? Before you said that you know how I felt guilty when my dad died. What did you mean?"

His eyes avert from mine, and I notice him flinch back. I lean forward to him, turned on to the conversation at his sudden lack of openness.

He sees how interested I become. "Well, with Perrie."

My forehead creases. "Niall told me about her."

He shuts his eyes and frowns, almost as if he is wincing. "I don't think he told you the truth," he explains.

"He lied?"

"He doesn't know what happened."

"What do you mean?"

I watch him adjust himself. He let's go of my hand and sits up so that we aren't facing each other. He slumps forward so his elbows are on his knees, and he runs his hands through his hair. "Perrie wasn't friends with my friends." He says. He looks up at me, and I pay attention to his words carefully because I can understand how important they are going to be. He continues: "She was taking me away from my friends actually. Not long before we got engaged, we moved in together away from all of my high school friends- Harry, Liam, Louis, all of them- and none of us were close anymore. That's why I never told any of them about what happened with her. They hardly even knew Perrie." He stares at the ground before continuing. "When I moved, that was when I met Delilah and Leigh Anne and Jade, who were great friends of Perrie. Perrie had this friend named Matthew- we called him Matt. They were good friends from childhood." He clears his throat. "She loved him a lot. Right after we got engaged, we got into a fight, she went over to Matt's place, and she and him-" he stops. "Niall told you."

"I understand," I say.

He nods at me. "She was so sorry for it, I know she was. And I loved her so much that I took her back. She and him weren't together ever again. One night, a few months into our engagement, we got into a fight about something stupid." He begins to smile. "It was about the TV remote. We were fighting about who gets to use the remote." His eyes are glossy from tears I know are begging to spill over. But I also know they won't. He wipes his nose. His nervous smile retreats back into a frown. He swallows and continues. "Anyways, the fight turned into something awful, and she left the house. She went out with Delilah. They were at a bar, and Matt happened to be there. Perrie stayed talking with him to get back at me. I knew where they were at- she always went to the same place. So I followed her. I also knew what type of person Matt was when he drank. Angry. And stupid. He was a dumbass in general, but much more so when he was drunk. I ran inside the bar looking for her. I didn't see a lot of what happened. The first thing I saw when I found Perrie was Matt hit her straight across the face. She turned to Delilah, who looked just as horrified as Perrie and I, and Delilah helped her. I, on the other hand, had to deal with Matt. I was fuming. So naturally I ran over there and beat the shit out of him."

"Niall told me that." When I speak to him, he seems to come back to real life. His hands release their tight grip on the seat of the couch. I know how tense he is. He must be reliving the moment in his mind. I put my hand on his back and rub circles in it. "He ended up in the hospital?"

"Right. Delilah later told me that Matt tried to kiss Perrie, but she pushed him off, and he hit her. After the bartender pulled me off of Matt, Perrie was screaming at me how wrong I was. I didn't think I was wrong, and I made a point in telling her that. She left the bar. She walked outside, got into her car, and drove away."

My eyes widen as I begin to understand the full truth of the story. "Had she been drinking?" I ask him.

"Delilah said she hadn't. And when they autopsied her body to find out, she was sober." My breathing stops; for a moment, the room stops. He does not look up, he does not look at anyone or anything. "Another man who was drunk hit her head on. Neither of them survived."

I grab his upper arm. "I'm so sorry. I had no clue. Anything about her I said-"

He shakes his head. "It's okay. I know you didn't know."

I have nothing to say. All I ever expected about her was what Niall told me, and I judged both Zayn and Perrie off of what I was told. "How long ago was it?" I ask. Maybe listening will help undo some of the damage I've done.

"A year ago next month." He gestures towards me. "I know what it's like to feel guilty, you see."

"You know it's not your fault."

He grimaces. "I know, but when you have no one except your mind, the guilt eats at you constantly."

I know that feeling well.

"You were the first person I thought of," he resumes. "After she was gone, I remembered how you went through the same thing. Since I was alone, I moved back down here and started talking with Harry again. Out of pure luck, he told me about this girl he met who was amazing. He told me your name, and I thought that the opportunity must have been laid out for me to take."

The broader meaning of what he said a few nights ago, that I gave him hope, becomes clear to me. He needed me to help him cope. I gave him hope of getting through his pain. I apparently still do. "I gave you hope," I say to myself.

He hears me. "Exactly."

I don't stop asking. I don't know if making him talk is helping him, but it isn't hurting, I don't think, and I really want answers. "So what happened at the concert with Leigh Anne and Jade?"

"They were best friends of Perrie. If they knew I was hanging around with you, they'd be pissed at me for 'getting over' her so fast. The concert was the first time I've seen them since I moved." I think back to that night. The four of them were smiling and laughing and having interesting conversation because they hadn't seen each other since their tragedy happened. They were trying to keep each other happy.

"Delilah was different, though. She and I helped each other deal with Perrie's death. That's why we are so close."

I realize that Zayn and Delilah will probably not happen any time soon. He and she are too close as friends and were too close to Perrie for them to be anything else.

Everything Zayn is telling me is changing what I have been thinking. I kept thinking that he was getting close to me to hurt me because I rejected him. I never entertained the idea that he needed me. Not in any serious way.

Now that I know what happened to him, he looks different to me. I don't see a dick who wants to break me and my boyfriend up, or a guy who I want as a friend. I see that he is asking me to help him. I was the first person Zayn thought of after Perrie for emotional help. I was the first person he got romantically involved with after Perrie. I feel flattered, in truth.

He needs my help. In essence, he needs me. "So you knew you were going to see me on that first double date we went on with Harry and Olivia?"

He bites his lip. "Yes, and that's why I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to ruin anything by seeing you, I just needed your help. But it spread to the need for all of you."

His words make my heart skip and give me confidence I wouldn't normally have. Everything is telling me that I can help him if I give myself to him. And all I can think is that I want to help him so badly. I don't give myself time to question my actions, not when I have this determination and his reassurance that this is what he needs. I ignore the signals telling me to turn around, and I go for it.

My hand reaches up to his cheek. It runs down his jawline to his lips, and my thumb strokes his bottom lip, causing his eyes to close and his lips to slightly part. He rocks backwards, and my body follows him. "How can I help?" I ask. I lean forward, our foreheads rest against each other. I softly smile as his eyes blink open, and his bright brown eyes stare into mine.

I've never seen him appear so vulnerable, but now it seems like his weakness is shining straight through his eyes. Whenever we've had a baring of emotions between the two of us, it always has been me to him. Every time, he has helped me. And now I feel it's time I pay him back.

He cups my hand that rests on his cheek with his, intertwining our fingers. He pulls my hand away from his face. I lean back and see the creases between his brow. "Don't be like that," he says.

My eyes scan his face to understand what he is saying. "What?" I whisper.

"Don't ruin it for yourself and Harry."

I stare into his eyes that look horribly serious but at the same time, bright. "I'm just trying to help," I say.

He brushes his knuckle on my cheek and smiles while pushing strands of hair behind my ear with his other hand. He dips forward and lingers by my ear before pressing his lips onto my cheek. He pulls away and stares into my eyes with a grateful smile that leaves me breathless.

"You've helped plenty. Just seeing you helped me." He gets off the couch and walks away.

I don't care where he's going. All I care about is why he pulled away. My heart pounds against my chest through my body so all I can hear is its thud.

I stand up, but then sit back down. My legs are wobbly. I've never attempted anything like that. I've never made the first move in such a risky situation, but this time I did not even consider that I'd be shot down.

I read something wrong. He said he needed me. I wanted to be there for him, since I had the perfect opportunity. Why did something stop him this time?

He said he didn't want me to ruin me and Harry, but that has never crossed his mind before. Did he suddenly grow morals?

He walks back into the room as I am able to get my footing.

"I found my phone." He shows it to me and then turns it on. I hate his casualness. He is trying to act like nothing happened, while I am lightheaded, and I don't want to have to fake anything.

"I have to go," I breathe. "Bye, Zayn."

I brush past him and he puts an arm on my shoulder. I turn around. "I'll talk to you later," he says, almost as a question. His hopeful eyes burn into mine again.

I painfully nod to get him to release me. He does and I leave immediately. I almost am running out the front door.

I am so flustered I cannot catch my breath. As I drive away from his house, I still have trouble calming down.

I don't know what happened. I learned so much about Zayn that I never knew, and he trusted me over any of his friends with the information. It made something spark inside me.

I acted on that spark, but he did not. That is what is bothering me. Why did I act on it, and why did he not? How come our roles are reversed this time?

The scary thing is that I am more worried about why he pulled away than by why I went for it in the first place. Zayn had morals here, and I am angry at him for it. I don't even care to examine my lack of morals.