stars and terrain (zayn malik)

Chapter 65

Charlotte

The rain stays for four days.

Harry takes me to Whole Foods and stocks the fridge so we don't starve.

I order pizza twice and have plenty of leftovers because he won't eat any.

I find a box of cigarettes Zayn left behind and when I really miss him I smoke them in the garage. I hide this from Harry, but one afternoon he catches me. I tell him I'm doing it because I miss Zayn and he just gives me a sympathetic smile, doesn't offer any judgment, and sits on the floor of the garage with me until I stub it out.

We Facetime with Zayn every night and recount every minute of our day.

Harry constructs an odd, eclectic rainy day playlist that he insists on blaring through every speaker in the entire house. At first I protest, but all the songs are really good.

And I'm starting to want the rain to stay.

We go for another swim, but this time we spot lightning before we get very far and both get too scared to keep going.

"How does that work, like, would the lightning just seek out something solid and get us?" I ask, as I towel off my hair once we're safely inside.

I've learned Harry often knows the answers to bizarre things like this, and I'm not disappointed when he shakes his head.

"No, but the electrical current would travel horizontally so it's very dangerous."

"Right," I nod. "What are we going to do now?"

Since Harry always seems to find ways to entertain himself, I've enlisted him in keeping me free from boredom.

I'm never disappointed. So far I've been roped into playing chubby bunny (with his Whole Foods marshmallows), learning how to say the alphabet backwards, watching animal videos of things like a shark fighting an octopus, attempting to make our own soap (a giant mess), a lot of yoga, learning some German, and letting Harry attempt to hypnotize me (didn't work). He also taught me how to juggle, using three of his organic apples.

We decide to learn to play chess, and order a really fancy chess set online. Then we figure out it's actually really boring and decide to go down to the beach instead.

But today he suggests making a fort and watching Netflix and I let him know where the spare sheets are and watch him construct a pretty impressive fort for the next thirty minutes.

"Voila!" he flails his arms in the direction of the construction once he's finished and I give a low whistle.

"What do you want to watch?" he asks, which is a question I'm not really used to hearing. Zayn is beautiful and I love him but Zayn is a bit of a monster when it comes to things like that. He always picks the Netflix selections.