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I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.
This is the night, what it does to you.
~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road
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There’s always a moment, right before he falls asleep, in that midpoint between realising that he’s falling and giving into it, when Zayn asks himself the same question. If I’d known… But that’s as far as he gets before he stops himself, not because he’s scared of the question, but because he doesn’t want to know the answer. So for two years that’s been his last thought, that half-asked question that just hangs there – hangs and hangs – until he surrenders to sleep, like a sentence with no full stop
+++
It’s a strange thing to walk into a room and know that everyone knows who you are. He can’t remember the last time he introduced himself to someone who didn’t already know his name, who didn’t ask him to repeat it or spell it. But this is what he wanted, right? He wanted to be famous, for everyone to know his name, for phone numbers to be tucked into his pockets and pressed into the palm of his hand. Numbers from girls called Sarah and Nina and Aleisha who write their names with long, loose S’s and I’s topped with hearts, who gasp when he kisses their neck, sudden and slightly in awe as they say his name like it hurts.
That sounds so fucked up, but the way he sees it, he had two choices: stay in Bradford, become a teacher, marry a nice girl, have a couple of kids, have a quiet life and die happy, a photo in someone’s locket, or this. There was no middle ground. He chose this because while his friends wanted to be firemen when they grew up – rappers, footballers, astronauts – he wanted this: the fame, the girls, the cars. He didn’t even have a fucking passport and now he gets to sit on a plane and watch the world fall away.
To touch the sky.
And he gets to sing, to stand on a stage and feel the buzz of a bassline in his bones. He ached for that all those mornings he sung in the shower hoping someone would hear and someone did hear, so fuck a quiet life. He wants to shout, to leave a mark on everything he touches. So when he loves someone, even if it’s only for long enough to warm the sheets, he wants them to remember him, for them to go mad wondering if he’ll call. And when he sings, he wants to sing until he brings tears to people’s eyes. Until their hearts itch.
So he doesn’t say anything when people take his photo without asking if they see him in the street, as though he’s Big Ben and they’re passing him on an open top bus. And when they do ask, he doesn’t stop them when they slip an arm around his waist because this is what he wanted. So he smiles and takes the chocolates that he won’t be allowed to eat and the flowers that he’ll give to Lou because they always make her smile.
He doesn’t even read their letters any more because they’re not for him, they’re for that guy in the magazines, the sullen bad boy with too many tattoos. He used to read them, but they made his heart hurt. Not how the girls talked to him as if they’d known him for years, but how they threw words like love and want and need around like rice at a wedding without knowing what they meant. Or maybe they do know and that’s what hurts, that he isn’t the guy they love and want and need. He’ll forget their birthday and not call when he says he will and fall asleep while they’re talking if he does, because that’s just what he does now. ‘Are you still there, darling?’ his mother said the last time they spoke, stopping her story about Doniya having a row with a girl at the supermarket. It took him a beat too long to tell her that he was.
The lads joke about them – the letters. Louis reads them out sometimes. He stands in the middle of the tour bus, a hand on his chest, stopping to crack up halfway through a particularly melodramatic declaration, and Zayn laughs sometimes, but mainly he doesn’t because the letters might not be for him, but they’re still private. The girls must know that he isn’t going to write back. But he’s sure they still wait, that their hearts stop every time their phone rings or the doorbell goes, hoping that it’s him. And that’s the cruellest part: knowing that he’ll be the first guy to let them down, to break their heart. It’s not like he doesn’t know how that feels. He knows how hard it is to say that stuff to someone when you know that they’re not going to say it back. If Louis knew how that felt, he wouldn’t laugh.
Harry knows. Zayn sees him reading the letters he’s been given sometimes. He hides them between the pages of a magazine or under his leg if Zayn walks past unannounced, but he sees. Sees the crease between Harry’s eyebrows before he puts on his pantomime smile and says, ‘Hey, man.’ And Zayn sees that, too, how it doesn’t reach his eyes. He never says anything, though, but one particularly tender night, when the bus is rolling on and on and everything is quiet for more than a minute, he says, ‘Harry.’
Zayn lost the coin toss and got the bottom bunk, which prompted a lengthy victory dance from Harry that concluded with him sticking his tongue out and flipping him off, but the truth is, Zayn doesn’t give a shit because if he’s tired, he’ll sleep on the fucking roof if he has to. Harry tried to annoy him the first night by bouncing around or farting and asking Zayn if he could smell it, but after a few nights it was kind of comforting. Not the farting, but when the bus jerked suddenly and Zayn woke with a jolt not knowing where he was, he’d hear the hiss from Harry’s headphones or his soft, satisfied snoring and it would make his nerves settle. Now he can’t sleep without it.
So when Zayn says his name, he isn’t sure why, if he just needs to know that he’s there. And he is, because a moment later, Zayn hears the now familiar whisper of cotton on skin as Harry turns over in his bunk before he says, ‘Yeah, man?’
His voice is slightly sticky with sleep and hearing it knocks the air right out of him for some reason. It’s a moment or two before Zayn catches his breath, so he just lies there and it’s kind of nice. It’s so dark in his bunk, the curtain shut, that it makes him think of a film he saw once where a serial killer went into a church and confessed everything he did to a priest who couldn’t do anything about it. Zayn isn’t sure which he is – the villain or the priest – until he hears himself say, ‘This girl gave me this letter, ages ago, when we were in New Zealand. I know we’re not allowed to write back, but she said that her dad.’ He has to stop as he tries to swallow back whatever is suddenly stuck in his throat. ‘I mean, I can’t help, can I? What the fuck do I know?’
Harry doesn’t say anything for a long time and Zayn’s cheeks sting. He squeezes his eyes shut as he curses himself for telling him, but then he hears Harry moving and a second or two later the curtain of Zayn’s bunk lifts and Harry’s hand appears.
‘Just tell her that she’ll be okay,’ he says, handing Zayn a notebook and a pen.
+++
The first time it happens, Zayn thinks it’s an accident. After all, they’re always on top of one another, whether they’re lining up for a photo or being made to squeeze onto one sofa. Hips knock into hips and knuckles graze against knuckles and that’s just the way it goes. So when Zayn’s sprawled on the sofa at the back of the tour bus, his head tipped back as he scrolls through his old text messages and Harry drops down next to him, it isn’t the first time that their knees touch. But when Zayn moves his leg and Harry waits a beat then opens his wider so their knees touch again it’s the first time one of the lads has touched him and he’s noticed it. Most of the time it’s easy. Comfortable. Liam tucking his label into his t-shirt feels no different from Doniya doing it, but Harry’s knee pressing into his is anything but comfortable. It’s kind of distracting, like an itch he can’t reach.
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When Zayn was seven, he and his family went to Lytham St Annes for a week. He doesn’t know if it’s nostalgia because it was their last holiday together before his father left, but it was the best holiday he’s ever had. He doesn’t know why; Doniya and Waliyha fought constantly in the car there and his mother made him sit between them, then all five of them (Safaa was yet to make an appearance) had to share a room at the B&B, his mother and father in one bed, his sisters in the other, and him on a camp bed in the corner.
He’s stayed in some of the best hotels in the world, hotels with pillow menus and beds so high he needs to take a run and jump at them, but he’s never slept as soundly as he did in that room, even with his father snoring and his sisters kicking each other all night. Perhaps it was the sea air or maybe it was running around all day, the hot, biscuit coloured sand between his toes and the sun on the back of his neck.
Whatever the reason, he can’t remember the last time he felt that free. But the best bit was the drive home. They stopped at a fish and chip shop somewhere between Rochdale and Swinton and maybe that’s nostalgia, too, but it was the best meal he’s ever had. Even now, when they’re sitting in his grandmother’s tiny living room, Zayn cross-legged on the floor between Doniya’s legs because there isn’t enough room on the sofa, his mother will sigh and say, ‘Remember those fish and chips?’ and they’ll sigh. They never went back to that chip shop; none of them can even remember what it's called – Tony’s? Ali’s? – but it’s so part of their history, like the night his father left and the day Safaa was born, that it’s become a point in the lives. A pin in a map.
Somewhere between Phoenix and San Jose, home becomes that chip shop, this half-remembered, unreachable place he talks about sometimes but will never see again. It isn’t, he knows. He’s just tired, tired like he never has been before, deep in his bones, in his marrow. He can’t remember the last time he slept in the same bed more than once. Not that it matters, after a while they all feel the same. Same over washed sheets, same never-quite-right pillows. Everything’s the same – the rooms, the beds, the drinks he orders every night at whatever club they end up in, the food he has to force down between sound checks. Even the key cards look the same. Paul had to let him into his room last night because he was trying to open his door with one from a hotel in Rosemont. He can’t even remember being in fucking Rosemont.
Even the girls are beginning to look the same, the Tiffanys and Ambers and Rachels who can’t understand a word he’s saying, but understand enough to follow him to his room. He doesn’t make them any promises, but he knows they’re not listening and when their hands clasp his shoulders and they pant against his cheek he knows what they’re thinking, that they’ll be the one to change him. The funny thing is, he doesn’t want to change. That’s the thing he’s fighting hardest against – with both hands, with his fucking fingernails – but he can still feel it trying to pull him down like a determined wave.
So he’ll break their hearts as well, even though he never said that he’d call and only took their number because he couldn’t think of another way of saying, Just for tonight that didn’t sound like I don’t want you. So he shouldn’t – he knows he shouldn’t – but he fucking needs it. He needs the surprise of a new perfume or the shock of being touched somewhere he’d forgotten about because without it he’s sitting on the same bus, wearing the same clothes and singing the same songs every night. But this is what he wanted, right?
This is what he wanted.
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He’s missed three calls from his mother and thanks to back-to-back interviews and the time difference between Bradford and wherever the fuck he is now, he can’t call her back, so he’s in a foul mood. He retreats to his bunk, but before he can throw himself into it, Harry pulls back the curtain of his and frowns at him.
‘You okay, man?’
‘Fine,’ Zayn says with a surly sigh, scratching the back of his head.
‘Wanna talk?’
Zayn shakes his head and he’s not trying to be dick, he’s just frustrated and tired – so fucking tired – that he can’t talk about it because he’ll cry. Besides, Harry wouldn’t get it. He’s so fucking chill about everything. Even when he walks out of their hotel lift to find a girl with a camera waiting for him, Zayn sees the muscles in his shoulders tense under his t-shirt for a second before they relax as he puts on his pantomime smile and poses for a photograph. But that’s Harry, he has a smile for everyone, and Zayn wishes he could be more like that, that his jaw didn’t clench when he’s confronted by a huddle of photographers or that he knew what to say to console a sobbing girl.
Harry always knows what to say.
‘Come on,’ he says, closing his book and jumping down. ‘Get in.’
Zayn shakes his head again. ‘Nah. I’d rather sleep in mine.’
‘Come on.’ Harry slaps the bunk with his hand. ‘You’ll see. Leave the light on.’
He ambles off with a yawn, the hem of his black t-shirt lifting slightly as he raises his arms to expose a perfect strip of pale skin and when Zayn makes himself look away, he feels that itch again. So he climbs into Harry’s bunk, his hands shaking a little as he does. It’s a mess, of course, the duvet kicked to the bottom of it and there’s a pile of orange peel by the pillow so when he lies down, that’s all he can smell. Then he’s thinking of Harry’s hands, of his long, restless fingers and Zayn loses time with his breath for a second or two as he wonders if they smell of orange peel as well.
He closes his eyes as he waits for his breathing to settle and when he opens them again, he feels his heart suddenly bob up in his chest, like a message in a bottle washing onto a shore, as he realises why Harry wanted him to sleep there. Zayn doesn’t know where he got the Tipp-Ex from, but the black ceiling of Harry’s bunk is dotted with stars, big ones, small ones, busy clumps of them. He must have spent hours doing it.
‘Can you see the Big Dipper?’ he hears Harry whisper.
Zayn isn’t even sure if he’s there or if he’s dreaming, but as he surrenders to the weight of his eyelids, he breathes, ‘I can see it all, Harry.’
+++
Just outside Oakland, Zayn gets a telling off. It’s not quite a telling off, it’s more of a buck-up-soldier but the sort-it-fucking-out is implied. He’s not talking enough in interviews, apparently. The assumption being that he can get a word in edgeways, of course.
‘I never talk,’ Zayn mutters to Niall while they’re picking their favourite Skittles out of the bowl on the catering table. Zayn likes the red ones. Niall the yellow ones.
‘Yeah. But there’s a difference between being shy and not wanting to be there,’ Niall shrugs and it’s so honest he may as well have kicked Zayn in the bollocks.
Zayn’s quiet for the rest of the day and he isn’t sure if it’s out of defiance or because he wants to be quiet, but he waits until it’s dark again, then says Harry’s name.
A moment later, he hears Harry shift in his bunk. ‘Yeah, man?’
‘How do you do it?’
Harry doesn’t say anything so Zayn just listens to the bus, to the chattering telly that someone’s watching somewhere and the steady turn of the wheels as it hulks on. For a second, he’s sure that he can feel the world turning, too, just as steadily, in time with the wheels, and he thinks of the ceiling of Harry’s bunk, of all those Tipp-Ex stars, and he wonders if that’s why he drew them, because he needed to remember that the world was still there, outside his bunk, outside their bus.
He almost asks, but then Harry clears his throat.
‘Did you read what I wrote in that notebook I gave you?’
Zayn shakes his head even though Harry can’t see him, thinking of the moleskine he wrote the letter to that girl in, the girl from New Zealand. He ripped it out and hid it in his pillowcase because he didn’t have an envelope – or any clue how to get one – and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to post it. He saw that Harry had written in the notebook, saw his scruffy, impatient handwriting that left indents on the paper like Braille, but he didn’t read any of it, just skipped to the first clean page.
‘’Course not,’ Zayn says, then hears Harry chuckle softly. ‘What? Should I have?’
‘No, but that’s why I let you borrow it. Louis would have read it.’
‘And taken photocopies.’
Harry chuckles again and when Zayn hears him shifting, he imagines him rolling onto his back, a hand behind his head. ‘Remember last year, when your aunt died?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, feeling it like a punch in his chest.
‘I almost quit.’
Zayn’s heart stops. ‘What? Why?’
‘I forgot my cousin Claire’s birthday. That sounds so fucking stupid when I say it out loud.’ He laughs this time, louder, brighter. ‘Anyway,’ he says when he stops laughing, still a little breathless, ‘I’ve never forgotten her birthday but I didn’t even know what day it was and it’s not like we can nip out to Clinton Cards, is it?’
Zayn chuckles himself then and he doesn’t know why, but the thought of it is so ridiculous, Harry going into a shop and buying a birthday card. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Then he remembers all the times he stood in Clinton Cards, counting the change in his pocket to see if he had enough money for a card and a teddy for his mother’s birthday.
‘Still, she was right, I could have sent her a text message or something,’ Harry says in that slow, drawn out way he does, but tonight it’s a little slower, a little more drawn out, like a drink he doesn’t want to finish. ‘She was so pissed. She told me I’d changed and it was the nastiest fucking thing anyone has ever said to me.’ Zayn hears the crack in his voice, and it kind of sounds like glass breaking. ‘Worse than anything they say on twitter,’ he goes on. ‘I held Claire’s hair back while she puked WKD over my trainers on her fifteenth birthday and she thinks I’ve changed. So I write it all down now. In that notebook I gave you.’
‘What do you write?’ Zayn breathes.
‘Everything. Everything I can remember. My first kiss, the first time I got drunk, the first time I lied to my mum. All of it because I’m never doing that again. I’m never going to forget something like that again. They can cut my hair and change what I wear and what I sing, but they can’t change that stuff. I’ll be fucked. So that’s how you do it,’ Harry says as Zayn looks up at the ceiling of his bunk. ‘Don’t give them everything.’
+++
This morning they had a radio interview. Zayn did as he was told; he talked and laughed at Louis’ jokes and defended Liam when Niall said that he was the dad of the group and the interviewer called him middle aged. And when the mic was turned on him and he was asked what his favourite song was, Zayn didn’t even think, just said, ‘Thriller.’
No one noticed, so when the interviewer moved on, he took the pen that Harry was using to deface a photo of Louis and wrote, Billie Jean on the palm of his hand. When he showed it to him under the desk, Harry smiled, his knee pressing into Zayn’s.
It was their first secret.
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The second time it happens, they’re in a club. It’s less of a club, more of a bar, a small one at that that didn’t look like shit from outside, but they’ve got a table in the corner and it’s Reggae Night and there’s a woman selling jerk chicken and Zayn’s drinking a bottle of Red Stripe and his shirt is sticking to his back and the DJ is playing Welcome to Jamrock and he’s never been so fucking happy. Ever.
He isn’t the only one. They’re all a bit drunk, the drinks softening their tour tight muscles quicker than usual. Harry’s drunk off his ass, though. He can’t even stand up any more and loses his balance every time he plays with his hair, tipping forward into Louis or against their table, sending drinks everywhere. Needless to say, he’s a state, his hair a mess and his mouth bruised with layers and layers lipstick from all the girls he’s been kissing. He’s not even speaking to them any more, just blindly reaching for them and kissing them until he gets bored and goes off in search of another drink.
Zayn can’t watch any more because he knows that whoever Harry is kissing when Paul says that it’s time to go will be going back to the hotel with them. No one wants the room next to Harry so Zayn always gets lumbered with it (because he’s just as bad, the other lads say, although he begs to differ, he likes to think that he’s a little more discerning) so he knows that he’ll be kept awake. And he doesn’t know when he started noticing it – the muffled gasps, the fevered knock of the headboard – but now it distracts him and makes his hips falter as he opens his heavy eyelids to look down at the girl beneath him, her shivering thighs hooked on his hips, and wonder where he is.
So he goes for a smoke. Liam’s dealing with Harry and he’s much better at that stuff than Zayn. He’ll sit Harry down and make him drink a bottle of water and not let him give his mobile number to whatever girl he’s trying to pull into his lap.
The club is heaving and Zayn’s never seen anything like it. It’s not like the clubs in England with their sticky dance floors that smell of sweat and fake tan. There no one gives a fuck. People are playing chess at the bar and drinking Kool-Aid cocktails (the Tropical Punch ones are what Harry’s going to be puking up in about an hour) and the rest are just there to dance, the girls in their Saturday best and the boys, whispering in their ears, promising them the world for just one dance.
It takes him a while to fight his way through it, if only because a girl with dreads and a nose stud grabs his hands and asks him where he’s going. She’s wearing a yellow strapless dress and when he has to fight the urge to lick her shoulder, he doesn’t know why he does, but once he’s out on the patio and he feels the fresh air licking his cheeks, he knows why. The air smells of charcoal and weed and if he wasn’t already melty enough, he’d be a puddle of bliss on the flagstones. There’s a group of guys in the corner, standing under a thick cloud of smoke, who look up as he goes to stand with his back to the wall. They eye him warily for a moment then, content that he isn’t going to give them any shit for smoking, they go back to passing their blunt back and forth.
As Zayn takes his box of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jeans, a piece of paper flutters to his feet. He bends down to pick it up to find it’s a number. Some girl called Michelle who wants him to call her. The girl on the dance floor, he wonders, as he takes out a cigarette and taps it twice on the box before putting it between his lips.
When he lights it and inhales, his lungs tense. Maybe it’s the rush of nicotine, but as he looks around the patio, at the guys smoking and the couples flirting, at the wall he’s leaning against with its thick layer of posters for club nights he wishes he was around long enough to see, he feels dizzy. It’s warm and sticky and so California that he couldn’t be farther from Bradford, but for the first time in a long time, that doesn’t feel like a bad thing. So he tips his head back and looks up at the sky and when he closes his eyes, he thinks of LA and he’s sure that he can feel the nearness of it. The promise of it.
They’d talked about it, him and the lads, made a list of all the places they wanted to go while they were killing time between rehearsals during the X Factor. Louis was the first to say it out loud, though, when another week passed and they were still there and the Final began to look like the light at the end of a not-so-long tunnel. ‘Imagine breaking America,’ he said and there was a moment of silence as they looked at one another.
Harry was peeling an orange and stopped and Zayn wondered what he was thinking, but then that night, when Dermott said One Direction and Zayn thought his legs were going to give way, Harry put his arm around Zayn’s neck and pressed his mouth to his ear. ‘New York,’ he said, the heat of his breath making Zayn shiver. ‘Madison Square Garden.’ Zayn’s mouth grazed Harry’s hot cheek as he returned the favour. ‘LA. The Hollywood Bowl,’ he said into the shell of his ear and he wasn’t sure Harry heard over the roar of the crowd, but then he shivered, too.
The Gibson Amphitheatre isn’t quite the Hollywood Bowl, but on Saturday night he’ll be there and the thought of it makes him scared. Good scared. First kiss scared.
‘Fresh air!’ Harry says, suddenly staggering out onto the patio.
Zayn isn’t surprised. That’s how it is between them: wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, the night always ends with the two of them in a corner somewhere, laughing and plotting. It drives Paul fucking nuts. Zayn sees him watching them sometimes, an eyebrow raised as if to say, Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.
They usually do.
‘Malik!’ Harry says when he sees him, changing direction.
Zayn looks over to find Liam in the doorway, watching Harry with a frown. But when he sees that Harry’s heading for him, Liam nods as if to say, He’ll be okay, then walks back inside the club. So then it’s just him and Harry again and he holds his breath as he watches him. It’s kind of painful, like watching a newborn foal trying to stand, but eventually Harry makes it over to where he’s standing. Before he does, Harry stands on one of the chairs and shouts, ‘I fucking love you, California!’ his arms in the air.
Everyone on the patio – rightly – looks at Harry like he’s a fool before going back to their conversations. Zayn can’t help but laugh, though, and hooks a finger into one of Harry’s belt loops and tugs him down. He shouldn’t have done that because Harry, the newborn foal, almost breaks his neck. But then that’s kind of funny as well.
‘I fucking love you, California!’ Harry says again, arms out.
‘Okay, Styles. California is still on its first beer. It just thinks your nice.’
Harry points at him and laughs, big and bright. ‘Chanandler Bong!’
‘Miss Chanandler Bong, actually.’
Zayn arches an eyebrow at him and Harry starts clapping like a mad thing, his eyes wet. ‘The Bradford Bad Boy watches Friends.’
Zayn presses a finger to his mouth. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
‘I won’t tell a soul,’ Harry says with a long lick of his lips that’s frankly obscene as he lifts his eyelashes to look at Zayn. ‘I promise.’
And that’s their second secret.
+++
It’s a Herculean effort, but he manages to lure Harry into the people carrier. Zayn’s lost track of all the things he’s offered to get him in there, but he knows that he owes him a cheeseburger, a strawberry milkshake and four secrets (why four, he doesn’t know), which he hopes Harry will forget about by the time they get back to the hotel.
For the first time in months it’s just the five of them and Paul is noticeably relieved, closing the door and locking it as soon as Harry collapses into a seat. Harry pulls Zayn on top of him with a, ‘I love you, Miss Chanandler Bong!’ as he does (never tell Harry Styles a secret when he’s drunk, by the way) which earns Zayn a slap on the arse from each of the lads as he tries to untangle himself.
When he does, Zayn sits next to Harry with a sigh and he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so relieved. Maybe it’s the promise of an actual bed with pillows and sheets that he can roll over in without worrying that he’s going to fall off, but he can’t support the weight of his head. As soon as it tips back against the headrest it hits him: a wave of weariness that makes each of his muscles soften like warm candle wax.
He doesn’t realise that he’s asleep until Louis laughs and the shock of it is like a glass of cold water in his face. ‘I’m up!’ Zayn says, sitting up in his seat as Harry does the same, his arms flailing. ‘Don’t tweet that!’ Harry gasps, and Louis laughs again.
Zayn glares at Louis, then yawns. ‘Where the fuck are we?’
‘We’re nearly at the hotel,’ Paul says, even though that isn’t what he asked.
‘Oakland, California,’ Harry says rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms.
When Harry yawns, his eyelids fluttering, Zayn doesn’t think, just nudges him and Harry takes the hint, his head lolling onto his shoulder. It isn’t the first time Harry’s fallen asleep on him, but it’s the first time that he’s felt the weight of him, pinning him to the seat. And it’s not bad; it’s actually kind of comforting, a sleepy, curly-haired anchor holding him in place in a sea of strange streets and strange shops, their shutters pulled down to expose the graffiti sprayed across them. Secret messages you only see at night.
Zayn doesn’t know if he’s drunk too much or if he hasn’t drunk enough because he’s falling asleep again. He wakes with another jolt and glares to the front of the people carrier at Louis who hasn’t noticed and is showing Liam something on his phone. He sits up and rubs his eyes and that’s when he realises what woke him up: Harry. Harry’s hand to be precise, on his thigh and it makes Zayn’s heart leap up onto his tongue.
His instinct is to look around, his cheeks burning. No one’s looking, but when he looks at Harry, he is, his eyes wide. Then Zayn’s looking too, his lips parted as he watches Harry trace the inside seam of Zayn’s jeans with his finger, from his knee up.
Up.
Up.
Up.
‘We’re home, boys!’ Paul says with a clap and Zayn’s heart stops.
+++
‘The fuck was that?’ Zayn hisses when they get in the elevator, not that Harry can explain as everyone else piles in, but he hears Harry breathe, ‘Are you mad?’ as the doors shut.
Zayn turns his back on him as they do and he’s doing that thing again, he’s being a dick and he’s not trying to be, he just doesn’t know what to say. So he does the only thing he can think of and reaches back and grabs Harry’s hand. He squeezes it – just once, just for a second – but as soon as he does, he hears Harry let go of a breath.
+++
When they get to their floor, Zayn leaves the door to his room open. Harry takes the hint and follows him in, kicking the door shut behind him. They stand in the middle of the room and stare at one another for a moment longer than is comfortable and as Zayn’s heart begins to throb, he realises that they’re both suddenly, painfully sober.
He waits for Harry to say something, to explain. When he doesn’t – just stands there, fussing over his mess of curls, making it worse – Zayn should tell him to leave, but then he feels the hair on his arms bristle at the memory of Harry’s finger going… That’s when Zayn’s heart starts throbbing again, because he doesn’t know where Harry’s finger was going and he wants to know, so he throws the room service menu at him.
‘A cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake, right?’
‘And four secrets,’ Harry adds, the corners of his mouth twitching.
The cheeky fucking fucker.
Zayn sits on the edge of the desk, his arms crossed, as Harry throws himself on the bed, bouncing as he does and hitting himself in the chin with the corner of the menu.
‘I lost my virginity to Doniya’s best mate. She doesn’t know so if you tell her I will kill you in your sleep,’ Zayn says, scowling at Harry as he lifts his head off the bed to nod solemnly and rub his chin with his hand. ‘Now tell me something from your notebook.’
He doesn’t flinch. ‘I used to wank off to the Next Directory.’
Zayn blinks at him. He thought Harry was going to confess to something similar, something about his first time or the first girl he kissed, so Zayn is stunned silent for a second or two before he doubles over laughing.
‘Just the underwear bit, though,’ Harry adds, and it makes Zayn laugh more, laugh so much that he’s lightheaded, every muscle in his body unclenching at once. And with that the tension haemorrhages out of him and it’s okay again.
They’re okay again.
He throws himself onto the bed next to Harry and lies down. When Harry lies next to him, his head on the same pillow even though it doesn’t need to be, Zayn looks at the ceiling and says, ‘I used to wank off to the underwear in the Freemans catalogue.’
‘Classy.’
‘Then I discovered Megan Fox.
‘Oh, Megan.’ Harry sighs dreamily. ‘Ditto. I should be blind.’
‘Isn’t she a bit young for you?’
Harry kicks him, hard enough to leave a bruise. ‘Three more, Malik.’
‘You go first this time. Tell me something real. Something no one else knows.’
Harry turns his face away and looks at the window. He’s quiet for so long that Zayn thinks that’s it, the alcohol has caught up with him again, but then he tells Zayn to turn off the light. His hand shakes a little at the promise of why Harry wants it to be dark as he reaches over to turn the lamp off, but when he looks at the window, he realises why. From that angle on the bed, Zayn can’t see anything, just the stars, like tiny holes in the flat, black sky. But when he rolls onto his side, he’s not looking at them, he’s looking at Harry, at the rise and fall of his chest and the moonlight hitting his cheek so his eyes look a hundred different shades of blue and green all at once, like pieces of sea glass.
Can you see the Big Dipper? Zayn almost says, but then Harry frowns and starts playing with his bottom lip. ‘When I was little,’ he says quietly, ‘my dad used to read me this book every night before I went to bed. Goodnight Moon. Have you read it?’ Zayn shakes his head. As much as he loves his father, he isn’t the tuck-you-in-bed-and-read-you-a-story type of dad. ‘It’s about this bunny,’ Harry explains, ‘who says goodnight to everything in his room before he goes to sleep. Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Goodnight light, and the red balloon.’
Zayn waits for him to stop playing with his lip and smile, but he doesn’t and starts tugging on it so hard it must hurt. Zayn wants to tell him to stop, to sweep the pad of his thumb against Harry’s bottom lip until it stops stinging, but then Harry says, ‘I read it to my Nan before she died,’ and the shock of it turns Zayn’s heart inside out.
The urge to touch him is unbearable then, as he looks at him, at the moonlight catching on the curl of his eyelashes. All he wants to do is press his cheek to Harry’s chest and listen for the echo of his heartbeat through the layers of cotton and skin and Zayn’s never wanted to touch someone like that before. Not in the way Harry touched him earlier, but in the way girls touch him sometimes, when he’s being a dick and answering with one-word answers. He usually shakes his head, tells them that he’s fine, but that makes them worse. They want to hug and kiss and play with his hair and he always shrugs them off, but he suddenly feels like shit because he gets it now, gets what they were doing. They just wanted to make him feel better. They’d do anything to make him feel better, to be enough to make him feel better.
‘I didn’t know that she was dying,’ Harry says so quietly that Zayn isn’t even sure if he’s talking to him any more. ‘I mean, I did,’ Harry sniffs, ‘everyone kept saying that she was, but I was ten and I didn’t get it, not really. I just thought she was old.’
He stops playing with his lip and lets his hand drop onto this stomach, his fingers splayed. ‘I hated being left alone with her because the ward smelt weird, this mix of Yardley English Lavender and cabbage that always gave me a headache. Plus I didn’t know what to say to her; all she did was lie there, strung up to all these machines. But once, Mum had to talk to the consultant so she told me to talk to her.’ He shrugs. ‘I didn’t know what to say so I read her Goodnight Moon because it was all I could think of. I didn’t have it with me, I just remembered every word and I didn’t think she could hear me, but when I was done, she reached for my hand and squeezed it.’
There’s another tender moment of silence that makes Zayn’s heart throb like a fresh bruise. He doesn’t realise that his hand is edging towards him, not until Harry turns his head to look at him and his hand fists in the sheet. Then they’re so close – their heads still on the same pillow – that Zayn can’t see Harry’s eyes any more, just the moonlight crowning the top of his head. But then Zayn feels Harry’s breath on his mouth and his eyelashes stutter as he says, ‘I’ve never told anyone that. Not even my mum.’
Zayn nods and their noses are almost touching, then they are, and when their mouths meet, they spring apart as though they’ve been shocked. Zayn can hear Harry panting while he waits for his heart to settle, his hand still fisted in the sheet, but then Harry rolls onto his back again and Zayn can see that his eyes are wet – and his mouth – and he’s on top of him before either of them have caught their breath.
When their mouths collide again, it’s breathless and kind of clumsy. Zayn doesn’t know what to do with his hands, which way to turn his face. But then Harry’s lips part and Zayn tilts his head just so as Harry tilts his head just so and all of a sudden, they fit.
Harry groans when their tongues touch and Zayn has never heard him make that sound before, not through the walls, over the knock knock knock of the headboard, or in a club when he has some girl pressed against the wall, hands on her face, and for one wild moment, Zayn lets himself think that it’s because it’s the first time Harry has made that sound – because of him – and it surprises Zayn how much he wants it to be. Usually when he does this, it’s about getting himself off. That’s all he can think about as he presses against someone’s palm or puts a hand on their head and guides them down. Up until a second ago, he thought that was the point of this, to come, to come until he’s worn out and smiling. It’s a means to a rather satisfying end. To fuck, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. But then Harry made that sound and now all Zayn can think about is what he can do – where he can put his hands, his mouth – to make him make it again.
Everything is a little blurry after that. It doesn’t help that Harry keeps rearing off the bed, his hands finding their way under Zayn’s shirt, fingers tripping up and down the string of bones in his back until Zayn’s skin is weeping. And he can’t take it, can’t take that Harry’s tongue is winning the war with his, that he keeps making that sound – that groan – over and over and over until Zayn isn’t even kissing him any more, he’s just panting against his mouth and grinding into Harry, trying to keep him down with his hips. And when that doesn’t work, Zayn finds his wrists in the dark, pinning them to the mattress. But as he does, he can feel Harry’s pulse under his fingers – hard and fast, like gunfire – and Zayn knows that’s him, that he’s doing that to him and fuck. It’s better than any orgasm he’s ever had, better than any crowd he’s ever sung to, any cigarette he’s had at 4 a.m. when it’s just him and whatever song he’s listening to on repeat.
‘Please,’ Harry gasps when Zayn tugs his mouth away, trying to find it again in the dark, but Zayn wants to taste his skin. When he does, when he finally tastes the salty tang of Harry’s cheek against his tongue – then his jaw, then under it, the warm patch of skin he usually only sees when Harry throws his head back and laughs – he hears Harry gasp his name like it hurts, like it’s the last thing he’s going to say, and Zayn has to resist the urge to bite him, bite him like a fucking vampire, and he’s never felt that before, either. He’s never wanted someone so much that he wants all of them. Even their blood.
But then Harry rears off the bed and Zayn can’t hold him down as he sits up, he can only reach for the collar of Harry’s t-shirt in the dark and hold on so he’s in his lap. When his hands find Zayn’s face, Zayn holds his breath, waiting for their mouths to crash together again, but Harry presses his fingers into his cheeks and says, ‘Let’s run away.’
‘What?’ Zayn pants. He’s so hard that he’s dizzy, his eyes swimming in and out of focus. Not that he can see anything in the dark, just feel Harry’s heart hammering against his chest. Or maybe that’s his own heart. He can’t even tell the difference any more.
‘Let’s run away,’ Harry says again, pressing his forehead to Zayn’s.
‘Where?’
‘Who cares? Let’s just go.’
Zayn’s hands are still clinging to the collar of Harry’s t-shirt and, as he sits there, in Harry’s lap, the tips of their noses touching, Zayn realises that he can taste him on his tongue, this taste of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid and something else, something secret he feels very lucky to know, so Zayn has no intention of going anywhere. He wants to stay there, in the dark, and kiss and talk and kiss and fuck until the sheets are sticking to them and Zayn has learned every patch of Harry’s skin. Every scar. Every mole.
But then Harry nudges him with his nose and breathes, ‘Run away with me.’
They kiss again and it’s softer, slower, so slow that Zayn’s sure that he can feel the world turning, and he doesn’t know where the hell Harry wants to go because it already feels like he’s about to fall off the edge of the earth, but if he wants to go, he’ll go.
+++
When they untangle themselves and sit up, Zayn does that thing he always does, where he ruins a perfectly romantic idea with logic, like when he talked himself out of auditioning for the X Factor. His mother was furious when she found out and marched him there herself the following year. ‘Why would they pick me?’ he muttered, utterly miserable as he sat in the cluttered waiting area while guys with better voices than him sang runs and the ones who couldn’t sing swaggered in front of the cameras. ‘Why not you?’ his mother told him and she always did have an annoying habit of being right.
That still doesn’t stop Zayn worrying about every little thing.
‘There’s no fucking way Paul’s gonna let us out of here,’ he says, leaning back on his arms as he tries to catch his breath. But at least thinking of Paul is killing his boner.
‘We’re not gonna tell him,’ Harry says, equally breathless, and when he doesn’t tell Zayn to turn the light back on, he realises that he needs a minute as well.
They sit there in the dark for a while, and Zayn hopes that he’s changed his mind because it would be kind of nice to just fall asleep. He has a flash of them waking up in the morning, spooning, his leg hooked over Harry’s hip and the tip of his nose in his hair and yeah, that would be more than nice, but then Harry cackles and jumps up.
‘Got it!’
Zayn groans, blinking into the light when he reaches over and turns on the lamp. When his eyes refocus, Harry is pulling down his t-shirt and Zayn sees the briefest flash of his stomach and yeah, maybe he doesn’t want to go to sleep after all.
‘Get up,’ Harry says when Zayn doesn’t move, just looks at him.
‘Make me,’ he tells him with a smile he’s been told is incorrigible.
He sees Harry consider it for a moment before he shakes his head. ‘Come on.’
‘We’ll never get out so just come back to bed.’
Zayn holds out his hand, but Harry ignores him. ‘You got a hoodie?’
‘About twenty-seven.’
‘Okay, pick your favourite, give it to me then put another one on.’
‘Why?’ Zayn asks with a yawn. He glances at the iPod dock on the bedside table and when he realises that it’s 04:48, he suddenly feels bone tired.
‘Because we can,’ Harry says, hands on his hips. ‘Because I’m sick of them telling me what to wear and what to eat and what to tweet. Aren’t you?’
Of course he is. Harry knows he is.
‘How’s running off gonna help, though?’
‘It’ll scare the shit out of them.’
Zayn smirks at that. ‘Paul will kill us dead.’
Harry smirks back. ‘Let him.’
‘Yeah, but how we gonna get out?’ Zayn asks, hauling himself off the bed and walking over to his suitcase. He opens the lid and begins rooting through it.
‘Stop worrying,’ Harry says, edging open the door for a second. A moment later he shuts it again.
‘Is he out there?’ Zayn whispers, throwing him the first hoodie he finds.
He nods. ‘And Jag.’
‘Told you.’ Zayn shakes his head, trying to find another one. ‘We’ll never get out.’
Harry is undeterred. ‘Patience, Miss Bong,’ he tells him as he pulls on the hoodie, which messes his hair up in a way that makes Zayn question why they’re leaving the room again. ‘Where’s my phone?’ He slaps the back pockets of his jeans then walks over to the bed and straightens the sheet. When he finds it, he grins at Zayn. ‘You ready?’
‘For what?’
He gestures at Zayn to follow him to the door. When he does, Harry presses a finger to his lips, then makes a call on his mobile.
‘Oh my God, Paul,’ he says, suddenly frantic and Zayn’s impressed.
He’s quite the actor.
Zayn leans in so he can hear what Paul says. He isn’t impressed. ‘What?’
‘I need your help.’
‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing, Paul. Just listen-’
He doesn’t. ‘If the next words out of your mouth are face tattoo, I swear to God.’
Zayn looks at Harry and he has to move the phone away as they splutter.
When Harry recovers, he starts over-acting again. ‘No. We’re in the hotel bar-’
‘How the fuck did you get in the bar without me seeing you?’ Paul interrupts again and he sounds so pissed that Zayn has to cover his mouth with his hand and swallow back another laugh. When Harry sees, he punches him in the shoulder.
‘Please, Paul, we need your help,’ he says and Zayn takes a step back, cracking up, because Harry’s laying it on so thick now, like a damsel in distress in one of those black and white films that are always on a on a Sunday afternoon. Save me, Paul!
He’s too far away to hear what Paul says, but when he hears Harry say, ‘Nothing. Some bloke just started on Zayn’ he steps forward and punches him mouthing, Why me?
Harry mouths, Shut up.
It works, though, because when Harry opens the door – carefully and wincing as he does, making Zayn smile and think of all the times he tried to sneak in the back door when he came home drunk from a party – Paul and Jag are gone. A little braver, Harry sticks his head out of the door and when he does, Zayn does the same and they look down the long corridor to find Paul and Jag waiting for the lift.
‘We’re on our way down,’ Paul says. ‘Don’t move.’
‘Thanks, Paul!’ Harry says, sniggering as he hangs up.
Zayn grabs Harry’s hood and tugs him back into the room in case Paul or Jag look up the corridor while they’re waiting for the lift. They keep the door ajar so they can hear the beep when it arrives, and when it does, they wait a beat then stick their heads out the door again as Paul and Jag get into the lift, then Zayn and Harry leg it in the opposite direction down the corridor towards the stairs.
They barrel into the stairwell with a triumphant cheer that echoes off the walls, the Fire Door shutting with a heavy thunk behind them. Then they’re running, running and laughing, Zayn’s tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as they run down, down. Harry is taking the stairs two at the time so of course he falls – somewhere between the third and second floor – and Zayn’s so close behind him that he falls on top of him. It fucking hurts, Harry’s knee in his stomach knocks the air right out of him, then the carpet burns the heels of his palms as he puts his hands out, but Zayn still laughs. He laughs so loud that he doesn’t even recognise the sound of it. It’s loud and wild and it makes his lungs hurt so he stays there, on top of Harry while he tries to catch his breath.
‘I think I broke a rib,’ Harry rasps, and Zayn’s sure the weight of him on top of him isn’t helping, but he can’t stop laughing.
Eventually, he rolls off and onto his back on the landing between the third and second floor, a hand on his stomach as he waits for his eyes to refocus. Harry clambers up first, groaning like an old man, then holds out his hand when he stands up. Zayn takes it, but then doesn’t let go when Harry pulls him to his feet, and they walk the rest of the way, still chuckling softly, holding hands. Harry only lets go when they get to the door to the lobby and he stops and pulls his hoodie up before telling Zayn to do the same.
Zayn starts to panic again then, as Harry reaches for the door handle, suddenly picturing a gaggle of girls waiting for them or worse, Paul and Jag. And he doesn’t really get it until that moment, until his heart is banging and his hands are shaking, why Harry wants to run away and then he wants to too. He wants to get out and run.
So when Harry inches the door open and says, ‘Come on’ Zayn doesn’t hesitate. He checks over his shoulder as they turn left out of the stairwell to find that they’re running in the opposite direction from the bar. He didn’t think it through and put on his green hoodie that Paul will spot in a heartbeat, even on the other side of the hotel, so he runs a little faster, overtaking Harry who runs to keep up with a huge smile.
The hotel is nice, but it’s nothing special. It’s the sort of place bored business men cheat on their wives, not the sort of place restless pop stars escape from, so he and Harry must look well dodgy as they run through the lobby, past the men in dull suits sitting with laptops on their knees and holdalls at their feet, ready for their early flights. But they don’t care, Harry throwing his arm around Zayn’s neck and saying, ‘Come on, Miss Bong!’ as they head for the revolving door at the back entrance to the hotel. Zayn half-expects an alarm to go off and a net to drop on them as they approach it, but nothing happens. Then that’s it; they’re out, out into what’s left of the night.
+++
For the first time since he can’t remember when, there’s no one outside the hotel and the irony is, that’s Paul’s fault. They’re staying in the Bay Area, because he figured that the fans would assume they were staying downtown and he was right so poor Paul; they wouldn’t be getting away with this if he wasn’t so good at his job.
Zayn didn’t think too much about where the Bay Area was until they pulled up outside the hotel and he realised that it was on the water. ‘My room faces the road, right?’ he said, his legs shaking a little as he climbed out of the tour bus. So when Harry runs out of the revolving door and takes off, Zayn almost tells him to stop as he heads towards the Bay, his heart suddenly hysterical as he looks out at it.
It’s beginning to get light, the black sky now purple and washed out, the stars disappearing, one by one. When Harry stops to look at the horizon, Zayn waits for him to head towards the water’s edge because that’s exactly the sort of thing Harry would want to do, to run down the pier or nick a yacht and try to sail it to Mexico. But as he’s about to tell Harry that he can’t, Harry turns a corner and runs around the side of the hotel away from the water and it’s moments like that make Zayn sure that Harry knows him better than any one. He doesn’t know when that happened, but as he watches Harry run into the shadows, he realises that he’s part of every memory he has now, every funny story he tells on those rare occasions he gets to say more than, ‘Can I call you back?’ to his mother. And Zayn almost laughs when he thinks of all those nights that he couldn’t sleep because the loneliness was weighing on his chest, not letting him breathe, all the nights he tried to drink and kiss and fuck it out of him and Harry was there all along, like a rose bush climbing up a wall. Then he’s running faster, following Harry into the shadows and when he finds him, Zayn overtakes him and turns to face him with a smile.
‘Do you even know where you’re going?’ he asks, running backwards.
‘No.’ Harry shrugs. ‘That’s the point.’
He stops and Zayn doesn’t know what he’s doing until Harry reaches for the front of his hoodie and pulls him into him. Zayn stumbles forward with a gasp, almost stepping on his toes as Harry slips his hands under Zayn’s green hood to hold his face.
‘Kiss me,’ Harry breathes a moment before their mouths meet and when Harry’s tongue slips into Zayn’s mouth, it’s enough to make his toes curl in his trainers.
Then they’re kissing, kissing outside where anyone can see them, Harry’s hands still on Zayn’s face and Zayn’s fisted in the back of Harry’s hoodie. Except it isn’t Harry’s hoodie, it’s his and it smells strange. It smells of home, Zayn realises, his stomach knotting, of those pink washing tablets his mother uses and of Harry, of orange peel and tea and that shampoo Lou had to buy him when he used up his having a fight with Niall. Harry probably doesn’t smell of any of those things, but that’s all Zayn can smell as he pulls him closer. And Paul’s going to kill them. Actually, Simon’s going to fly to Oakland and kill them himself, but when Harry groans, Zayn kisses him harder because if he’s going to die tonight, it’s going to be with the memory of Harry Styles’ tongue in his mouth.
+++
When Harry pulls his mouth away and takes a step back, Zayn doesn’t let him and reaches for the front of his hoodie, pulling him into another long, slow kiss. This should be weird, he thinks, as Harry puts his hands into the back pockets of Zayn’s jeans and pulls him into him. But it isn’t and that should be weird, too – that it isn’t weird – but as they melt into it, all Zayn can think is: Why haven’t we done this before?
Eventually, they let go of one another (but not before another few soft pecks that make Zayn’s eyelashes flutter) and start walking towards the light at the front of the hotel. They don’t know where they’re going, but as Harry says, that’s the point as they walk through the car park at the front of the hotel and onto the street.
They turn right, again, for no particular reason, and walk up the tree-lined street. That makes it sound kind of nice, but it really isn’t. There’s nothing, just the wide road that’s separated down the middle with railway tracks and an overpass. Other than that, the only thing they pass for ages is a Motel 6 and some office buildings. But it’s kind of nice, just walking and seeing where they end up.
It’s such a strange thing to miss, but Zayn’s not even allowed to take a piss without telling someone where he’s going any more, so it feels so good, walking like that. His mother would laugh because he used to hate walking. He couldn’t wait to get a car and now he can’t even walk from the door of their hotel into the back of their people carrier without someone grabbing at him or trying to take his picture. He doesn’t even think he and Harry have walked together anywhere, just the two of them. Maybe to the newsagents between rehearsals back when they still could. Now they can’t walk anywhere without being told walk this way or don’t walk that way or stay behind me.
Zayn reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his cigarettes and that’s when he becomes aware of his phone, buzzing against his hip. He holds his breath before he takes it out, but it stops ringing before he can see who’s calling. He hadn’t noticed it before then, but judging by the string of missed calls, it’s been ringing for a while. He shows it to Harry who sighs and gets his phone out as well as Zayn bites down on his bottom lip and scrolls through the list of missed calls. He looks for Simon’s number – or worse, his mother’s – but when he sees that it’s only Paul who’s called, he relaxes.
He says only Paul, but that isn’t fair. Poor Paul is probably calling around the local hospitals, convinced that they’re in a gutter somewhere, having had the shit kicked out of them by whoever started on them in the hotel bar and Zayn would feel bad about worrying him if it didn’t feel so fucking nice to be walking down the street like that, at night, no less. He wants to tell Harry to keep going and going, wants to walk until he can’t any more, until his feet are sore and his limbs are heavy and he has to sit on the curb and smoke a cigarette in the shadow of a streetlight.
The sky has changed colour again, the purple clouds now pink, and the clock on one of the office buildings tells Zayn that it’s nearly 6 a.m. There’s no one about and that’s kind of nice as well. It’s as if he and Harry have the whole world to themselves and that’s all he wanted. A car rolls past and in the gathering light, Zayn sees the driver look at them. If he was being paranoid, he’d be offended, but he knows now that America isn’t like England. No one seems to walk here or get the bus. He’s sure they do in the big cities – he remembers passing a subway stop while they were in New York, although he hasn’t seen one since – but everywhere else they drive. So it’s just them on the pavement, walking side by side, so Zayn doesn’t blame the guy for looking. Even in Bradford, two young guys in hoodies walking down the street at 6 a.m. would attract some suspicion.
Zayn’s phone rings again and he’s about to reject the call when he sees that it’s Liam and his bravado wilts. He shows it to Harry, who starts playing with his bottom lip.
Zayn answers the call with, ‘Don’t worry. I’m fine.’
Liam obviously wasn’t expecting him to answer because he’s quiet for a moment before he says, ‘Are you with Harry?’
He sounds awake – too awake for 6 a.m. – and Zayn finally feels a nudge of guilt.
‘We’re fine,’ he says a little sheepishly.
Liam isn’t convinced. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. We just needed to get away.’
‘Paul’s gonna fucking kill you.’
‘I know.’ And he does. Paul’s going to skin them and wear them like suits. Zayn will be his Friday suit and Harry will be his Saturday suit.
‘Are you coming back?’
‘Of course. We just needed some fresh air, you know?’
Liam is quiet for a second or two and Zayn knows that he’s nodding.
‘Do you even know where you are?’
Zayn chuckles. ‘I never know where I am, Li.’
‘Just be careful, okay?’
‘We will. Tell Paul not to worry. We’ll be back soon, I promise.’
‘He’s gonna fucking kill you,’ Liam says again for good measure.
‘This is a good time to tell him that you were the one who broke his phone.’
He considers it for a moment, then says, ‘Just come back.’
‘In a bit. I promise.’
Zayn hangs up with a sigh and Harry nudges him with his hip.
‘Dude, we just went for a walk.’
‘I know.’ Zayn nods. ‘But we should have told them.’
Harry shrugs. ‘But they wouldn’t have let us go.’
He’s right – Zayn knows he is – and he was happy to keep telling himself that, to ignore the reality of what they were doing, but it’s almost light and something’s changed. Suddenly, running away doesn’t seem as spontaneous – as romantic – and now Zayn is dreading having to go back, his stomach turning at what they’re going to say.
Harry stops and puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Do you wanna go back?’
‘No.’
That’s the point.
‘What then?’
Zayn doesn’t know and that’s the point, too. But as he shrugs and slides his hands into his pockets as well, he can’t look at him because he doesn’t want Harry to think that he regrets this – any of it – because he doesn’t. It was just easier in the dark.
‘Come on. Let’s just go back. You’re right: this was stupid,’ Harry says, shaking his head with a heavy sigh, but Zayn isn’t looking at him, he’s looking over his shoulder, past the parking lot they’re standing in front of, at the light in the distance.
Harry turns to see what he’s staring at, then says, ‘What’s that?’
‘It looks like a diner,’ Zayn says with a frown.
Harry perks up again, his eyes bright. ‘Do you think it’s open?’
‘Well, I do owe you a cheeseburger.’
Harry smiles, big and helpless. ‘And a strawberry milkshake.’
They amble towards it and as they get closer, they see that it is a diner, a shitty looking one, but the sign says Open 24 hours and it feels a little like fate. Harry turns to smile at him again when they get to the door and Zayn knows that he’s thinking the same thing, and if he didn’t turn to push it open, he would have kissed him again.
The bell over the door announces their arrival, and when it does, Harry literally starts bouncing. It’s a proper American diner with booths and sugar shakers and those little pats of jam, like something from a film. Even though it’s 6 a.m., most of the tables are taken. Most by men in overalls reading newspapers and tucking into huge plates of eggs and hash browns, but there’s a group of friends in the corner who are laughing loudly and looking slightly dishevelled. The boys have beer stains on their t-shirts and the girls have kicked their shoes off and they all look so happy, drinking coffee and eating pancakes, that if he was with anyone else but Harry, he would be jealous.
No one even looks up and that Zayn doesn’t miss – being stared at when he walks into a room – so he and Harry share a smile as they look for somewhere to sit. Harry wants to sit in one of the booths by the window and as soon as they slide into it, he starts playing with the venetian blinds. The waitress, a thin woman with a over dyed blonde hair and cluttered charm bracelet comes over carrying a coffee pot and Harry stops, sitting up straight. She puts a couple of menus down in front of them and when she turns Zayn’s coffee cup over, he holds his breath, waiting for her to say something, for her to look at him for a beat too long then say, ‘Are you in that band?’ but she just holds up the coffee pot, her charm bracelet shivering, as though he’s any other customer.
Zayn relaxes into the booth, his legs spread as he pushes back his hood.
‘Could I get a hot tea, please, Linda?’ he asks with a smooth smile, reading her brass name badge.
It’s kind of nice, knowing someone else’s name for change.
‘Can I have a strawberry milkshake, please?’ Harry asks, tugging back his hood as well.
And that’s it. She doesn’t even mention their accents, just says, ‘Sure thing, boys’ and walks off, looking put out at having to carry the coffee pot over for no reason.
When Harry grabs a menu, Zayn arches an eyebrow and nudges him with his foot under the table. ‘Thought you wanted a cheeseburger?’
‘What’s chicken fried steak?’ he asks with a gasp.
‘It sounds fucking foul.’
‘Foul or fowl?’ Harry laughs, slapping the table, thrilled with himself.
Zayn groans. ‘Where’d you get that? Niall?’
‘No. I just made it up. From my brain.’
Zayn kicks him this time.
‘What’s chicken fried steak?’ Harry asks the waitress when she returns with Zayn’s tea. It’s that Lipton Yellow Label shit they have everywhere in America and the water’s probably come out of one of the pots festering in the coffee machine so Zayn’s sure that it won’t be hot enough and will taste faintly of coffee, but when he tips in a little a milk and gulps down a mouthful, it’s still one of the best things he’s ever tasted.
The waitress looks at Harry as if to say, Are you for real? then sighs and says, ‘It’s a piece of steak that’s breaded and fried.’
‘What? I’ll have that. That sounds amazing.’
The look she gives him before she turns to Zayn tells him that it really isn’t.
‘How about you, honey?’
‘I’ll have the pancakes, thanks.’
‘You want bacon?’
‘Nah. I’m good.’
‘Sure thing, honey.’
‘Niall’s gonna be so jealous,’ Harry says, reaching for Zayn’s cup of tea and swallowing a mouthful as soon as the waitress walks away.
‘He’s the only other person I know who’d eat that,’ Zayn agrees with a nod.
‘So what do you want your name to be?’
Zayn frowns. ‘My name?’
‘If anyone asks.’
‘Who’s gonna ask?’
‘Linda.’ Harry thumbs at the counter. ‘You’ve already been upgraded to honey.’
The corners of Zayn’s mouth twitch. ‘Jealous?’
‘Of course not!’ Harry says, then blushes when she returns with his milkshake.
‘Don’t worry,’ Zayn says when she walks away again, ‘she’s not my type.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘I prefer brunettes.’
Harry smiles clumsily then sips his milkshake.
‘So what’s your fake name?’ Zayn asks, sipping his tea.
‘I’m Zach. I’m studying Art History at Berkeley.’
‘Fucking hipster.’
‘You can be Milo my model boyfriend.’
‘I’m too short to be a model.’
‘You’re not too short for the Freemans catalogue.’
Harry cackles, then yelps, his knee slamming into the table, knocking the saltshaker over as Zayn kicks him. ‘I want to see other people, Zach.’
+++
They leave an hour later, sleepy from too much food. Zayn yawns, long and loud, arms in the air, and he has no fucking idea how they’re going to find their way back to the hotel, but he’s too happy to care as he finds his box of cigarettes in his pocket and takes one out. He can’t get his green plastic lighter to work so he’s too distracted to notice when Harry takes his sleeve and tugs him around the side of the diner. He only manages to take a puff, then Harry’s mouth is on his and the shock of it makes him drop the cigarette.
Before he knows what’s happening, Harry has him pinned to the wall of the diner, around the back, by the dumpsters, and while it isn’t the most romantic setting, suddenly they’re kissing again. It isn’t as clumsy this time, Zayn knows which way to turn his head and he can keep up with him now. He even manages to turn him so Harry is the one pinned to the wall and Zayn’s hands are on his face, holding him still as they kiss. It makes Harry laugh and when Zayn laughs, too, they’re just kind of laughing and kissing and holding each other and it’s so nice that Zayn could cry.
‘What are we doing, Harry? What is this?’ he breathes as Harry stops to kiss a line from the corner of Zayn’s mouth up his jaw to his ear.
‘How should I know?’ he says into his ear and Zayn nudges him with his hip.
‘You started it.’
‘You started it.’
‘You did,’ Zayn reminds, taking a handful of Harry’s hair and tugging his head back so he’s looking at him. ‘Earlier on, in the car, remember?’
‘You did,’ Harry smirks. ‘With your face.’
Zayn laughs then kisses him again.
+++
When they saunter back into the car park, Harry’s hair a mess and a cigarette between Zayn’s kissed red lips, they head to the diner to call a cab when Zayn hears his name. He looks up to see Paul walking towards them and his fucking heart stops.
‘There you are,’ he says and they spring apart.
‘We were just-’ Harry starts to say.
‘You alright?’ Paul interrupts, taking Harry’s face in his hands and expecting it.
‘Yeah. I’m sorry, Paul. We didn’t mean to worry you.’
But he isn’t listening as he turns to Zayn and Zayn can’t look at him because he’s looking at him the way his mother did that time he got lost at the Kirkgate Centre when he was five. And it’s worse, almost, seeing Paul so worried – so relieved.
It’s kind of making his heart hurt.
‘We just wanted some fresh air.’ Zayn shrugs, wishing he’d just shout at him.
But Paul nods like he knows and it makes him feel like shit.
‘How did you find us?’ Zayn sniffs, flicking his cigarette away.
‘I’ll always find you,’ he says, putting his hand on the back of Zayn’s neck and pulling him into a hug. And it’s a moment or two before Zayn gives into it and presses his cheek to Paul’s chest as he says, ‘Let’s go home.’
+++
Zayn is about ready to take Liam by the scruff of his shirt and drag him to his bunk when he finally – finally – turns the television off. Zayn waits for the curtain on Liam’s bunk to slide shut and he should probably wait a little longer, but he can’t and sticks his head out from under his curtain to check the coast is clear before climbing into Harry’s bunk.
‘Milo,’ he says, a little loudly as he does and Zayn chuckles. ‘What?’
Zayn pulls out one of his ear buds then presses a finger to his mouth. Harry slides over and turns the light off as Zayn climbs in next to him. There isn’t enough room, but that’s kind of the point, the two of them wedged in together, legs tangled, hips touching, their heads on Harry’s pillow.
Zayn kisses him first this time, and it’s quiet and sleepy, but so familiar, their hands meeting and their fingers threading as they lie there, under the canopy of Tipp-ex stars. Zayn doesn’t know who falls asleep first; he just knows that the last thing he smells before he gives into it is orange peel and it kind of smells like home.