January. // z.m. au

Chapter 34

"Seriously, Alexa? You're hogging all of the tape!" Grace whined from beside me.

"I told you to get a bloody roll of your own, didn't I?"

"You're a pain in my ass, do you know that?"

This is how it was every year around this time. The three of us would meet up at one of our houses and wrap gifts for the holidays together. It was weird because we'd wrap the presents we got from each other ourselves. It was sort of a tradition that happened by accident, really. Kind of a long story, but let's just say it had been Alexa's fault from the beginning. She still, to this day, begged to differ.

Christmas was in five days and usually we would have done this by now. This year everything seemed to be thrown off track. I'd take the blame for it this time around. It was partially (well, mostly) my fault.

I'd been woken up by mass text messages and calls from my two best friends, all caps and a whole lot of screaming through the phone. Apparently today was December twentieth and I had no clue until I was informed (or rather yelled at) by Alexa.

"YOU DIDN'T KNOW TODAY WAS DECEMBER TWENTIETH?!"

"I'M GOING TO SLAP THAT BLUSH OFF OF YOUR FACE WHEN I SEE YOU, JAN. I KNOW YOU'RE BLUSHING."

(And that she did.)

(It really hurt.)

I was pulled from my daydreaming and brought back into the real world when Grace snapped her fingers in front of my face to grab my attention. I tended to do this a lot -- lose focus on reality and what not.

"She's probably thinking about Zayn's dick or something," Alexa giggled underneath her breath.

"Shove off," I threw a wad of wrapping paper at her head.

"She's blushing," she wriggled her eyebrows. "It must be a nice one -- is it nice?"

I rolled my eyes, a furious blush taking up my whole my face. Of course that would happen, though. You can't just talk about a girl's boyfriend's, you know, thing and not expect her to get embarrassed. It was bound to happen.

"Speaking of penises," Grace's eyes lit up. ("Oh god," I groaned.) "What have you gotten Zayn for Christmas? You are getting him something right?"

"What does that have to do with penises?" Alexa made a face, throwing her roll of tape at Grace's nose as soon as I let out a long, dramatic sigh.

Zayn's gift. I still had no clue about that one.

"Oh, Jan, don't tell me you forgot," Grace looked at me with sympathetic eyes. I pushed my lower lip out into a pout.

"Well, no," I started. "I just have no idea what to get him." I huffed, falling back onto the floor we were sitting on. I covered my eyes with my arm and sighed. I was a complete mess.

"I am so glad I'm single," Alexa muttered.

"Shut up," Grace pleaded.

And as the two of them bickered like children would over the last chocolate chip cookie, I contemplated what I was going to do. And at the last minute at that. Today was the twentieth and I was leaving to go back home on the twenty-second, so that meant I only had one day -- one fucking day -- to come up with something to get Zayn and wrap it up and -- and -- figure out when and how I was going to get it to him before I left.

It was all my fault, really. I'd been so wrapped up in Zayn and only Zayn that I had no sense of the outside world around me. I was surprised that I still knew that the sky was blue or what water tasted like.