Mind of His

19. Change

Zayn POV

It's strange how quickly things can change.

One minute I was in my bed, frowning at the morning light on my face; the next minute singing on a stage in front of thousands of people. And only, it seemed, moments after that, I met four boys who I was paired up with to take on the world, quite literally.

One minute I was onstage singing high notes in front of a sold out audience, the next minute throwing up backstage and passing out.

One moment I was hungover and depressed walking into a coffee shop, the next minute I met a beautiful woman who changed my frown into a smile.

But sometimes, there are changes that we don't realize that change just as quickly.

Even now, I still can't understand what changed between Harry and I.

We started off as boys paired in the same band...

Simon: Zayn, this is Harry. Harry this is Zayn. Introduce yourselves because you'll likely be spending a lot of time together.

Simon pat me on the back and I nodded. As Simon began to walk away, I gave Harry a little wave.

Me: Hi, I'm Zayn. It's good to meet you.

Harry looked at me, or rather, stared at me. He seemed to inspect me, so I inspected him too.

Curly hair. That was the first thing I noticed. Skinny, about my height. Something gave me the feeling that he wasn't done growing yet. Red lips. Blue eyes.

No, green.

Harry: Hi! Good to meet you Zayn. I'm Harry.

He had a sweet but raspy voice, but I had obviously already heard that before.

We exchanged information like where we live and how old we are. I realized that he was the youngest out of our group of five. He didn't seem that young though, especially compared to Louis.

Speaking of Louis...

Louis: Oi Oiii! What's going on lads?

Louis put his arm around Harry's shoulder and looked at me.

Louis: Wait what was your name again?

Harry: Louis, this is Zayn. Zayn this is-

Louis: Oh right, right. Yeah we met already, Haz. Come on we're going to go film something with the rest of the lads. Anyone seen a Niall anywhere about?

Me: Yeah, I think he's with Liam right now.

I realized how captured Harry was with Louis. Louis always was one for attention. Loud. Touchy. Dramatic. Comical, but immature and sometimes annoying.

Louis: Right, come on then Haz, let's go find them, ay?

Louis practically dragged Harry along with him and left me to think for myself.

Maybe I was just tired and overwhelmed from the whirlwind of the X Factor, but for some reason I was left thinking:

Why doesn't Harry look at me like Louis? I wanted him to give me his attention and gaze at me the way he looked at people like Louis. And I don't know why.

As we started to all get to know each other better, I couldn't help but feel annoyed whenever Louis would treat Harry like he was his baby. Management caught on to it quickly and tried to keep them separate as much as possible.

At that point, instead of trying to get Harry's attention and liking, I decided to not get involved. Besides, management set me up with Petrie Edwards, a hottie from Little Mix.

Maybe that's when things started to change. I'm not sure. To this day, I still can't be certain. But Harry started to notice me more. Actually, more than just notice me. He started to watch me, copy me, and talk to me more. He started wearing cross necklaces and started getting more tattoos and even saying some of the same things as me. But at the same time, he was still Harry.

I realized he had grown up. In a way, Louis has been holding him back from being who he wanted to be. At least that's what it seemed like to me. Now that they had started to move on from whatever relationship they'd had, Harry was changing.

Us two, who were once the most different individuals, had developed similar taste and character.

Before we knew it, Harry and I were the closest two in the band. And then, we started becoming even closer.