Lovingly {One Direction} (Sequel to It's Complicated)

OH. MY. GOD. CHOCOLATE. CAKE.

Aleka Ortega

I winced as Zayn applied the ointment to my left palm and wrapped it up in gauze. It was my fault, after all, touching a pan that was on a lit stove. Everything was cleaned up and we had shooed the rest of the group out of the flat. I was now fully dressed in a light shade of blue jeans and a floral top, along with beige heels. My hair was curled and resting on my shoulders.

Zayn was wearing grey skinny jeans and a blue, button up shirt that was rolled to his elbows. His hair was just brushed up into a quiff and his high tops were neatly tied onto his feet. The cab would be bringing my parents to the flat any minute now, and the pain in my burn was not going away.

“Done,” Zayn said, finishing off the medical tape on the gauze. My palm and wrist were wrapped in a little shell when he was done. My fingertips, which were also a bit burnt, were wrapped in band aids. Zayn got up and came back with some pain medication and a glass of water.

“What would I do without you?” I said, kissing his cheek. He smiled at me and motioned for me to consume the medication, which I did, and gulped down the glass of water. “You okay? You seem kind of… Jumpy.”

“I’m just a little nervous,” he sighed, sitting in the chair opposite mine. “I feel like they won’t like me.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked, placing my non-burnt palm on his cheek. “They’ll love you.”

I removed my palm from his cheek and held his wrist, the one with the tattoo on it. I smiled as my thumb brushed over the cursive lettering and infinity sign. It blew me away that he actually tattooed his skin with something that had something to do with me.

“Not as much as I love you, but hopefully they like me,” he said, smiling at me again. I leaned in and gave him a lingering kiss on his lips, but we were interrupted by the doorbell ringing. He looked at me with a nervous look in his eyes. I rolled my eyes at him and tightened my grip on his wrist as we walked to the door. It was five in the morning, and we hadn’t gotten any sleep, but had fixed ourselves up as best as we could to look presentable.

Before leaving the kitchen, I checked to make sure that my father’s favorite cookies and my mother’s favorite pastries were on the table. Athena, my five year old sister’s, favorite chocolate cake was also set in the middle. I turned around to see that Zayn had disappeared.

“Zayn! You can’t hide from my parents forever, you know!” I shouted, only to find him at the door already, beckoning my parents inside. Athena was asleep on my father’s shoulder, and I could already see how much she had changed. Her light brown hair had lengthened a bit, and she seemed to have grown.

“Mum! Dad!” I said, giving them each a hug, careful not to wake Athena. “Guys, this is Zayn, my boyfriend.”

My dad raised his eyebrows at me, and I knew that if he didn’t have the sleeping Athena in his arms, he would be yelling his head off, questioning me on my relationship in Spanish so that the clueless Zayn wouldn’t understand a thing.

I led my father to the guest room, where he put Athena down to sleep. As soon as I closed the door, he faced me with his hands on his hips and his eyebrows arched.

“When were you planning on telling me about this guy?” he asked in Spanish, even though he knew fluent English. “He doesn’t seem like a very good… role model.”

 I sighed. I knew this conversation was going to come up sooner or later, because of Zayn’s tattoos. Dad didn’t even know about the smoking, and I decided not to mention it because I knew Zayn was trying to quit. Smoking was the only cause of our first (and hopefully last) argument. I had taken all the packets of cigarettes while he was out for a recording session and thrown them away, leaving him coming home to just an empty ash tray. He had raised his voice at me, only once, telling me to give him back the cigarettes, but I didn’t say a word. I merely kept my mouth shut and watched him yell, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to yell at a silent girl for long. And I had been right, because he had collapsed on the couch with tears in his eyes, claiming that cigarettes was the only thing he had the time his family member had passed away.