stars and terrain (zayn malik)

Chapter 57

We're becoming really, really good friends. She's funny and smart, and reminds me of a much more practical Alli. It doesn't hurt that she's the only person who can make sense of Zayn's tantrums with me, because there have been quite a few.

Like the one when they didn't have a seat saved for me and I had to watch the show from the side stage. I didn't care at all, but he really did.

Or the one where he got press launched on him at the last minute and had to do a bunch of radio wraps when we thought he had the morning off and had planned to get breakfast at some place we found on Yelp.

Or the one where he missed a high note and then pouted for an hour after the show.

He's very moody. It's trying, but I'm starting to understand him more. It doesn't mean I'm not terrified to think how he acts when I'm not around. I've noticed I'm one of the only things that can calm him down.

Being in these close of quarters with him is giving me a crash course on what it's like to live with Zayn Malik 24/7, the light and the dark sides of it. I'd spent the last six months getting glimpses of only highlights; he was always in a good mood around me. This is what real life - or at least Zayn's real, nomadic life - is like, and I've learned a lot in a little under two weeks.

He's impossible to wake up in the morning (I'd unfortunately been given the task of rousing him early for press in a few cities and I'd had quite a few pillows thrown at me).

If he doesn't get to wake up naturally, good luck talking to him before he has coffee (which I have learned to expertly prepare for him in hotel coffee machines). He makes a few concessions for me, I've noticed, but I'm not immune to being growled at if I start asking too many questions pre-black cup.

He will willingly eat pancakes every morning (which is fine with me because it makes me feel better about always eating French toast). And he prefers to eat breakfast in bed (so we do, every morning, a room service picnic on white hotel sheets and blankets).

We're completely incompatible when it comes to taking showers; he likes taking ridiculously long lukewarm ones, and he likes having me in them with him even more (but I like taking quick, efficient ones and I like the water to be scalding, so I usually escape when he closes his eyes to wash his face).

I often have to remind him to brush his teeth before we leave a hotel room (which is bizarre because how are they so blindingly white when he can't be bothered to take care of them?). But because we're both obsessively organized we're able to easily share a suitcase that moves from the bus, to a hotel, and then back to the bus (we both fold our underwear so it must be a match made in heaven).

He smokes a lot more than I knew about. I'd seen him do it a handful of times before, but now I know it's a pretty regular occurrence. It didn't really bother me, but it definitely surprised me.

He patiently attempts to teach me to play all of his favorite video games, and I suck at all of them (and now fervently hate video games even more, but he's so proud of me when I do even the smallest thing right that I usually say yes when he asks if I want more lessons).

He's incredibly considerate, of me and of the fact that there are a lot of boring aspects to life on tour. The day after Valentine's Day he had me list out all of my favorite movies, then willingly has watched them one by one with me when we had downtime on the bus (and he will deny tearing up at The Notebook, but he did). He's more understanding about when I want to spend time with Holly, and if she's busy he does his best to make sure I'll have something to keep me occupied when he has work to do.

We have the same ridiculous, constant appetite with the taste buds of an eleven-year-old boy and he's stocked the bus with my favorite snacks accordingly (which really isn't a good thing, he's a total enabler and we're taking down at least one giant bag of Cheetos a day). He's really excited when he gets to be the one to show me something new, or take me to little restaurants he has found during tours past (which stopped pretty quickly when the last few times we ended up having to take our food to go after the excitement of a celebrity in their midst proves too much for a small town).