rain. || zayn malik

nine || real

It hadn’t rained since that day.

Ten days had already passed since Aella met Zayn in that overly warm but comforting diner. And as much as she tried, Aella just couldn’t stop the images of a certain pair of caramel eyes, or messy coal black hair and a kind smile running through her clouded mind.

But she had to push those thoughts aside, as today she was scheduled to work a nine hour shift at the place she heavily disliked – Rimley’s Grocer. After throwing on her work uniform and brushing her unruly long hair into a high ponytail, Aella grabbed her bag and slipped her feet into her most tattered pair of black Vans.

As she didn’t have a car (and also couldn’t drive), Aella had to walk to Rimley’s, which took about fifteen minutes. Kicking a few pebbles away from her path, Aella let her grey eyes travel up, up up, until she was looking at the sky. It was filled with murky colored clouds, that didn’t look like they’d part anytime soon. Letting a soft sight escape her parted lips, Aella directed her gaze back in front of her, tugging her bag further up her shoulder.

-

“Thank you for coming to Rimley’s, have a nice day!”

It was her last hour of work and Aella could see the sky outside already darkening. She was tired of having to use her overly cheerful voice for the unthankful customers, and her cheeks ached because of the innumerable amount of smiles she had to force out. Just as she was about to wipe the painful smile off her face, another customer came through her register, causing her to smile once again.

“Hi, how are you?”

Aella cheerily asked, not bothering to make eye contact with the customer. As she started scanning the products one by one, she was slightly surprised to hear a different response than the usual ‘good’ or even ‘could be better’

.

“You can drop the fake smile, love, I’m afraid your cheeks’ll fall off if you keep it up.”

The customer’s warm voice held a tinge of humor in it, and Aella already found herself being thankful for such an honest customer. She proceeded to drop the bunch of bananas into a plastic bag before reaching up and massaging her aching cheeks in an exaggerated way. She heard a loud chuckle (which sounded quite nice to her) come from the customer and finally connected eyes with him.

His sparkling eyes were the colour of dark chocolate and his brown hair was pushed into a half quiff. He was attractive, no doubt about it. And as she continued scanning his picked products, she felt a real smile playing on her chapped lips for the first time in a while.

For the first time in ten days.

~

Well hello there, uuuuggh i know, short chapter, I'm sorry but look it's not a filler

as usual, your amazing feedback (wink wink not 'update please' wink wink) makes me really really happy and i just want to give each and every one of you a big hug!

ugh, school is starting tomorrow so i'm not sure how long it'll take me to update, since i've got four other stories to look after too (which you should check out ;))

other than that, thank you for reading and i'll hopefully talk to you all soon xx