Suavemente

CH1

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” –Saint Augustine

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                This is how the story begins. Well, not really, seeing as it keeps on beginning every day, and as of this moment, I’m living in a cycle of happiness, one form after the other. But, for the sake of writing this, let’s go back to the very start.

I’m Flynn. Flynn Bennett. I’m a girl (huge spoiler alert). I live in Little Monroe, a seriously small town about forty miles off Leeds, North England.

I know this part isn’t all that necessary, but I guess if we clear things up right here you wouldn’t have to read it again and again.

So, where were we?

Yes, my name. Now that we’re all familiar with the fact that I have a boy’s name, let’s move on.

Is this like a little “tell the stupid tracker notebook your entire story” kind of thing? Because if it is, I know how to fill this up.

Everyone has a dream they want to accomplish, to destroy all odds against and feel its surge in your heart. (Yeah, that made no sense. That was my try at being deep.) Well, I had a similar one. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to see all the cities in the world, I wanted to be able to fall in love with the beauty of the world.

You know those moments you get, out of pure epiphany, that make you do something reckless and stupid? Well, my life’s been one hell of a big mistake, thanks to this boy I met a year ago, in the London Museum, who happened to be famous, a complete idiot, but also my ticket to happiness. So, in the end, this isn’t a story about me.

It’s about him, and how his small blunder brought two people closer than anything and everything, and how his small blunder changed his and my life.

This story is about Zayn Malik.

                Flynn Bennett

                Those who don’t have the pleasure of living in the United Kingdom often call it names. Royalty, butt-faces, pompous arses. It’s nothing new, really. But then there are the type of people who’d go all-out and splurge their life savings to visit the country.

I guess Britain was sort of beautiful. In its own rainy, miserable way, of course. Tall skyscrapers, beautiful archaeological sites, an incredible history, and it was an amazing place to be educated in. Another misconception most ignorant people had was that Britain consisted of only London.

Don’t deny it.

That slowly changed once famous Brits started emerging. Of course, it didn’t help that flawless people like Benedict Cumberbatch were from London itself, but there was a fair share of people who didn’t necessarily stem from London.

One Direction, for example.

Even as I lived in my dingy little house somewhere in a paltry village 40 miles off Leeds, with hardly-there internet connection and a third-hand laptop, I knew all about them. How they’d taken the world by storm, yada yada.

I wasn’t particularly pleased.

I’d obviously read everything about them. With a crappy internet, an even crappier laptop, and no college, I had more than enough time on my hands.

My mother used to be pretty famous when she was younger. But then she left her wealthy family to marry my dad, who was her butler, and they ended up having me. I was three when my father left us, and that was about the time her family disowned her.

That’s how we came to live in Little Monroe.

Safe to say, my mother’s little savings almost ran out by the time I was about to finish high school, and thus I dropped all notions of going to college. I’d been working as an assistant photographer with the local shop for the past two years, spending the remainder of my time at the library poring over guides and textbooks related to journalism.

I’d also planned to apply to the City University in London. It’d been a year since I started studying for the course, and the University had accepted me, with full scholarship, and I was in the process of making myself comfortable in London when the entire story started.

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             When the day was sunny, London was beautiful. High rise towers seemed nearly streamlined due to the similar glass panelling, there was a sort of peace one got from the silent, fast paced traffic, and usually, the doors to bakeries were throw open; making the air smell delicious.

I’d moved in the day before, into the nearest hostel my college could offer. I wasn’t in the stage where I could immediately start roaming the city, of course. My mother had pulled a few strings and given me a hefty sum that allowed me to buy stuff my scholarship didn’t cover. So there I was, walking down the street, internally debating on whether I should buy myself a coffee or not, when I walked past the entrance to the city museum.

I’d be lying if I said I walked straight past the museum. On the contrary, forgetting my original aim of buying sheets for my dorm bed, I rushed up the stairs and entered the warm, huge museum. Picking a guide off a nearby rack, I made my way over to my favourite section: landscape photography.

Landscape photography wasn’t anything extraordinary if you compared it to some of the other exhibits in the museum. Yet, living in the same little village for the past twenty years of my life had made me more than just desperate to see what the outside world was like. The internet did open up some of the sights of the world to my blind eyes, but in the end, the internet was a neutral field. If you had to appreciate the beauty of a place, you had to appreciate it from the point of view of a person who aimed to illuminate that beauty. It was sort of like this: the Internet hadn’t made me particularly enthusiastic about London. Living in the city, though, could help me start understanding why London was revered.

It was the same with every place on Earth. Beauty, seen from the eye of the beholder.

The landscape arts section of the museum was incredible. Of course, my obsession with the internet had not let the museum go astray, and I knew exactly how the exhibits looked from inside; but it still blew me away.

I was staring at a photograph of the Paris skyline when a deep voice behind me snapped me out of my trance.

“It’s an original by Everton McDuff.”

I scowled at the person’s mistake. Turning, I said, “No, this is Alain Briot’s work.”

The man – boy – behind me turned his gaze to my face. “Is it?” He mused, seemingly talking to himself.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

The boy was a sight. He was quite tall, but that was the first image I could paint of him at a glance. He was wearing dark jeans, a huge jumper that exposed just his fingers and occasionally his wrists; hood pulled up until his forehead where almost the remainder of his face began to be covered by large shades.

But somehow, there was no mistaking the deep baritone, sharp nose, defined jaw, and the tattoo I caught on his wrist.

I stared at him and lowered my voice, the landscape masterpiece momentarily forgotten.

“You’re Zayn Malik.”

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| dedication to Maggie my baby |