When There's No One Else But You and Me (𝖹𝖠𝖱𝖱𝖸)

Chapter II

There's a group of people that snag his eye as he had turned to pull away from the window. There was a consistency of five of them, all wearing navy blue color coordinated school clothing with white ties, three of the guys in the small group wearing snooty hats that say: Go Cougars!

They waltz up the sidewalk, one girl having hooping her arm through a boys's arm and snuggles closer to him.

It reminds Zain of two chopsticks before being unpackaged and snapped apart.

The small, snooty little group cross the street and it clicks for him.

They're going to see gardener boy.

All of a sudden he is no longer as sleepy as he once was.

He sits closer to the window now, both of his knobby knees bumping up against the wall every once in a while as his interest peeks. The group now stood on the other side of the block―on the boys' block and he can now get a better angle of each of them. There are in fact five of them. One short guy―the one who has a girl attached to his hip, figuratively at least―with his stupid cap on. A girl―the one who's attached to the boys's hip, figuratively―who has brown hair. There's a blond too and Zain feels an invisible shiver run down his spine. He hates blond. HATES blond. Next to the blond is a guy with brunette hair holding both his and the blonds cap in one hand. And finally, behind all those people stood another blond, and Zain just had to roll his eyes again. Just had too because come on! Another blond?! Except she wasn't a natural one and he could easily detect the brown roots in her hair. She had trailed behind most of the time, Zain had quickly taken notice, and she was always staring down at her posh, noticably polished shoes.

He flicks his eyes over at the boy as he places his thumb on the green hose obliviously, letting water find its way around his enclosed thumb and onto the roses. The water trickles down the greenish-brown leaves and splashes into a big murky puddle that's been increasingly growing.

Zain now doesn't have to look much elsewhere since the little posse is now in his line of view again. The small boy opens up his mouth to speak and Zain thinks: shit. Fuck fucking shit.

His heart beats in his ears because it never actually got this far. He never use to have open up his window to just watch a boy water his stupid near-death roses. He just watches until he's tired and closes his blinds and begins doing something to distract himself until dinner.

But also he really really wants to hear what they're saying.

So he lifted up his window a crack.

"...these three days? You told us that you'd be there." Zain strains to hear. He lifts up his upper body and his knees knock into the wall again. "You know that Jeremy kid was... He said that there was a... And you should've seen it!"

Goddammit! Zain couldn't hear much of anything!

The boy turned around finally and there was a silence that Zain was sure if he took in a breath he would be spotted, so he stopped breathing abruptly and waited.

"Well," he yanked the long green slithery cord to have more room to walk. He took a step forward and bunched his toes around the prickly grass and held out the hose, water dribbling down his fingers. "I couldn't make it, ok? I... And then my Mom said that... So yeah. I just couldn't make it those... days."

The others had stood around the small guy. The two girls were engaged in a conversation, their mouth yammering about something inaudibly.

"Yeah, but Harry we need you here tomorrow, at least." The boy whined. That was the only piece of conversation Zain had managed to make out without pressing himself forward and knocking his knees again.

The boy―Harry. Had stared at the short guy for a while before huffing out an exasperated, painful sigh and placed his hose down just to bring his pointer and thumb over his nose in irritation, he squeezed the base of it, hard. The water slid out of the green tube and threaded through his toes and the grass until it started another puddle in the middle of the sidewalk again. "Fine―fine," he retracted his hand from his nose and lifted his arms up, dropping them on his thighs. "I'll ask... You can't get mad if she... Ok?"

Zain wanted to pull his hair out with the little context he was given. Fuck. Why the hell did they have to be so goddamn far away?!

"Yeah, dude I get it." The small boy tipped on the back of his toes and stared at the ground. Then―Zain guessed to make things less awkward―grabbed up the hose and ran the coursing water over his now opened palm. The water slipped through his fingers like silk and Harry must've not liken that because he snatched up the hose possessively and dropped it on the ground again with a thump before glaring.

"Don't touch things that don't belong to you."

And, yeah, Zain heard that as clear as a bell. Even felt a little shiver go down his spine, like someone had poured a glass of cold water down his shirt.

Harry stalked away and left the five people in his yard. They stood around like lost ducklings in dire need of finding their Mother. He watched silently as the brown headed girl placed her hand in the back of the boys' pocket protectively and whispered something into his ear, and in reply had gotten a shrug out of him.

He had came back from around the house. The hose was no longer on and was snaked around the yard like a zigzag. "Well I'm off now. Guess I'll see you guys around."

They all glanced at each other―the blond at the small guy, the brunette at the blond girl and the couple at one another. "Yeah, but Harry–"

Harry jogged up his short stubby steps―his bare feet creaking against the rickety wood noticably―and slammed his screen door behind him, it startling everyone―including Zain.

The group stood outside his home for a good half of a minute, stunned, it seemed, but eventually scattered. All of them walking off of the grass and down the opposite path that they had come from.

Zain dropped his head on the meat of his upper arms again because he wasn't supposed to witness that. Not even a little bit. He was supposed to be asleep. He was supposed to wake up and get hit in the back of his head by his Mom because he went to bed at an unreasonable hour. Witnessing that wasn't supposed to have happen. He huffed out a breath, purely exhausted. All he needed to do was close his window and pretend none of that happened.

He lifted his head off of his arm and blinked. Hard. Trying to keep control of his jittering heart that, for some reason, wouldn't stop hammering against his ribs at an alarming speed.

"It's ok Zain. Just close the window. There's nothing to it. Just close the window. See–" Zain talked himself through it, grabbing the little rusted over handles. "–there's nothing–" he started to pull at them. "To–..." He paused. There was someone staring at him. He blinked. Once. Twice. They were still there. It wasn't his reflection. He wished it was. He really, really did. But it wasn't.

They were staring at him from their window. Their eyes set. Trained onto him like a lion waiting for an antelope to take a break near a waterhole. And, in this case, Zain was the antelope.

Fuck.

Their eyes caught, like a fish on a hook, before Zain knew they did.

It was the gardener! Wait no. He was the boy! No, no. He was the―the... Fuck what the hell was his name?!

And then, just as fast as someone could snap their fingers. It clicked.

Harry.

A/N: Sorry, I'm a sucker for slowed Zayn songs. It's just sex to the ears.

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