Neon Red [Order The eBook] [Zayn]

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(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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Honey, I don't want it to fade

There's things that I know could get in the way

I don't want to say goodbye

And I think that we could do it if we tried

Clairo | Sofia

January 2014

It had a hard time healing, this one. The ink was beginning to peel. I'd taken the plastic off and blood had run down my elbow. There were telltale signs of an infection. Flaky, swollen flesh encrusted with all sorts of unsightly things. I set a cool towel to it, trying not to irritate the skin more than it already was. The location was a tricky one, it being drawn along my inner arm in excruciating detail; all of which sought to pain me now. These elements I'd pursued from my dream had haunted me for weeks after the image first appeared to me. Every nuance needed to be accounted for, just as I'd seen it when I was asleep. The preeminent eye, the lunging arrow, the cascade of cloudlike tears. All excavated from the craggiest reaches of my memory. His eye, that is. All-knowing. Now attached to me permanently. More apart of me than it was of him. A bold move on my part, done without his consent because he would have never okayed it, but I wasn't here to ask for permission. I subscribed wholeheartedly to the notion of begging for forgiveness later. 

Last year had ended on a sour note. He'd broken up with me at the end of November, determined to make things work with Kendall. Where the fuck did she even come from anyway? Kendall? As in Jenner? Boy, was I blindsided by that one. And it had taken me a while to stomach the thought that he'd gone there. A Jenner. Damn near a Kardashian. Sometimes I didn't know who he was, as many of his actions alarmed me of late. For this pretty-eyed braindead bird he had tossed me away? After everything we'd battled and overcome? Was it really my fate to be shoved aside for a Jenner? 

He looked up one day, saw the long haul, and thought: 'Oh she'll do'. What the fuck planet was I even on right now?! It wasn't a question of beauty, as he'd seen plenty of that through the years and would continue to find himself in tempting situations with birds even badder than Kendall. And it wasn't for money, as he had enough of that to last him a life time by now, probably even two. So what was it? From what I could see of the reality show and in the press, he couldn't have been drawn to her personality. That's what boggled my mind the most. Why her, exactly? I'd asked myself that question at least a hundred times now, and was no closer to clarity today than I'd been the first time I voiced it.

He was a cold-hearted motherfucker when he wanted to be. His stare could cut you to pieces if you happened to be one of those rare individuals who ended up on his bad side. That's all I'd gotten of late. We had barely spoken since that awful November night following the AMAs. I'd noticed long before that night how things seemed to be gradually growing frostier between us, but had been too unnerved to speak on it. Some might even label our dynamic unkind. 

Most days he wouldn't look at me in interviews. Wouldn't talk to me between them. Wouldn't speak of me to the other boys whenever I sent Niall or Lou to relay a message on my behalf. If I was lucky, I'd get a smile or a brief word or two after my best work of buttering him up, but hardly anything substantial. Certainly nothing to ease my nerves or help me sleep. The sex had stopped too because he now ghosted my calls until he knew full-well we had no time left to be together. And although he wouldn't address the fact that we'd barely slept together in the past month, I'd taken note of my excruciating days of withdrawal like a prisoner etching tally marks on the wall of a cell. Solitary confinement. It was all beginning to badly affect my mood.