925 miles | z.m. au

i

Zayn wonders if Mary is her real name.

Mary is a pretty name; one that’s been repeated in a thousand songs and on a hundred pages of a million different books. Zayn is sure that he can count an entire album in which Bruce Springsteen sings about Mary, and he’s pretty sure it’s because Marys are found everywhere. The name crosses language barriers and is easily applied to fifty percent of America in the form of a first name or a middle name or something. Alright, so perhaps that’s a stretch, but the name is common, no one can deny that.

So Zayn wonders if Mary is her real name, because the girl is anything but what her name suggests. She’s far from common; she’s an extraordinary collection of spectacular thoughts, big blue eyes, messy dark hair, and unrestrained laughs. She’s an odd portrait of grace and the kind of understanding of the world that only results from experience. She smiles and frowns and pouts and laughs but Zayn can never figure out what she’s thinking.

Mary is spectacular, and Zayn decides she needs an exceptional name to match her glory...Mary can’t possibly be it.

Zayn thought about this the first night he met her—two weeks ago exactly—and he’s thinking about it now. The night he met her had been a hot one; Arizona was not known for its cool weather. The bar was sticky and hot and clouded with cigarette smoke. It smelled like stale liquor and sweat and the raven-haired boy considered leaving his half-empty glass on the bar and going home. But then the entertainment was introduced and, with a name as soft as Mary in a bar as grimy as this, Zayn had to stick around.

The thing about Mary was that her eyes were blue and the size of the moon; even under the dark lighting and through the murky air, Zayn could tell. She had hair that was nearly as dark as his that fell in pin straight strands over her one shoulder, falling and falling until it hit her waist. Her smile was soft and delicate like a flower; a flower in a bushel of weeds, the raven-haired boy noticed. Her dress was nothing special but she was, especially when she opened her mouth.

Mary sang...and her voice was beautiful. It was beautiful in a way that made him listen, like his soul was hanging on her every word. And her words were sad; like clippings of metaphorical depression Zayn couldn’t quite understand. All he knew was that she watched the audience with massive blue eyes, and it would have been a miracle if he’d have managed to look away.

The glorious girl finished her set with a soft and sweet Thank you that made Zayn’s heart leap across the room. Although he didn’t know a thing about Mary, she was unlike anything he had ever seen and he knew he had to meet her. So he did, and he hates himself now for using the astounding pick-up line Do you come here often?. But Mary had only smiled softly at the bar top and laughed, because she wasn’t the kind of girl who met guys in bars, and she wasn’t the kind of girl who fell for a smile and a drink.

Mary had allowed Zayn to walk her home—which turned out to be dingy motel about twenty minutes away—and insisted that she didn’t usually trust strangers like him. And when Zayn asked what she meant by that, she had simply laughed. Mary’s laugh was unrestrained, like she wasn’t concerned that the world might run out of oxygen someday and the earth might implode and mankind could become extinct like the dinosaurs.

Before Zayn left the pretty girl at the grungy motel with a flickering vacancy light, he asked again what exactly she had meant about strangers like him. Mary, with curiosity dancing across her features, answered “Tall, dark, and handsome.” She smiled, “Strangers who could get me into trouble...you seem like trouble, Zayn Malik.”

And perhaps Mary was onto something but Zayn wouldn’t let her know that. “So, why did you decide I was trustworthy?”

“Your eyes are too light to be considered dark...perhaps that’s an internal reflection...or maybe I decided that a stranger who justified using that pick-up line was incapable of getting me into trouble.”

[A/N: Hi anyone who decides to read this! So, this is my Zayn Malik fan fiction and I’m rather excited about it, so I hope you are too, maybe, haha. In many way it’s much different from what I usually write, and similar in others. But I hope you like it, I really do! Feedback would be greatly appreciated, I love to hear your opinions. Thank you so much! I love you xoxoxox]