Buses & Bunk Beds (Zarry)

Chapter 57

Paddy didn't look too happy when Harry and I finally exited the loo, but he just rolled his eyes as he pulled my shirt up higher on my neck.

"You've got a little something there, Malik."

Harry's eyes lit up. "Ohhh, you do! What could that be?" he asked as he poked the love bite he'd just given me.

"Everything all right now?" Louis asked once we were all settled in the van and headed back to the hotel.

"Right as rain," I said, resting my head against Harry's shoulder. I was exhausted, worn out from being sick and worried and the fighting and the making up.

"You two are absolutely ridiculous, you know that, right?"

"We know Lou, we know," Harry agreed. "But we're never boring, you gotta give us that." His voice sounded even raspier than normal, and I hoped that it was just from yelling at me and not a sign that he was getting sick. Fuck, I must really be in love with him if I'd rather he wear his voice out screaming at me, accusing me of all sorts of traitorous acts, than have him be ill.

Harry was right about one thing; we were never boring. But this whole fight, from beginning to end, had been absurd. It all stemmed from insecurity and jealousy, both his and mine, and I knew that we needed to come up with a way to get over these issues.

Millions of girls the world over fancied Harry. They thought that if they could just meet him, talk to him, touch him, kiss him, that he would fall in love with them, but I knew the truth: I was the one he was in love with. So I had two options; I could be jealous that there were so many people competing with me for his affection, or I could be proud, proud that out of everyone in the world, he had chosen me. I was the one who got to talk to him and touch him and kiss him, every day. The one who got to love him and be loved by him. I figured that the smartest decision was to choose door number two.

Things with Jade were a lot more complicated. She was going to be in our lives forever, and I didn't want to act coldly towards her just because Harry was irrationally jealous. And the truth was that Jade really was lovely, the kind of girl I could've seen myself dating before Harry blew into my life and all of my preconceived notions flew out the window. But as it stood now I only cared about her as the mother of our child, first and foremost, and as a friend.

I decided that the only solution was to keep everything out in the open. I could still text her and talk to her, but I would have to make Harry aware of the conversations. And to complain to her about Harry had been a mistake, one that I wouldn't make again.

As soon as we were back in Harry's room, Paddy thankfully choosing not to comment on the fact that we weren't hiding that we were going to spend the night together, I decided that we needed to talk.

"We can't keep doing this to each other. You can't run off and ignore my calls and flirt with other people whenever you're mad at me. If you'd just asked me about the texts then we could have talked about it and I wouldn't have been sitting here all night worried sick about what you were doing."

"And you should have told me that you two were texting in the first place. I don't like feeling like you're hiding stuff from me."

"I am sorry about that; I won't do it again, I promise. You're not mad anymore, right? I mean, you know that I only want you, and that I'll never be with Jade, right?"

"What if we break up?" he asked, the question causing my chest to constrict. He must have seen something in my face, because he reached forward to pull me down next to him where he was sitting on the bed. "I'm not saying that I ever want to break up, cause I don't, but I need to know. Would you date her if we weren't together? Say I died, would you be with her then?"