Chapter Twenty-Two:
Zayn
The last concert before our break was one of our best, the energy was off the charts because we were looking forward to the week we got to be at home. I had originally planned on going home to Bradford for the few days, but the silence from Joelle had been too much. There was only so much I could take before I got fed up with it, and I knew I had two options. Delete her number, assume the worst about her, move on. Or option two, go talk face to face with her. There was no way I had worked so hard to get her to be comfortable around me that I was going to give up now. She meant too much to me.
"Are you going to tell her?" Harry asked as we took our last ride to the airport for a week. Liam had already left, as well as Niall. It was just Harry, Louis and I left in the tour bus.
Louis whipped his head up so fast I thought he'd break his neck. "Be careful."
There had been an argument in my mind for the past twenty-four hours on whether or not I should tell Joelle. I love you were three really simple words, but would it make her run away? She stated from the get go that she didn't fall in love. But was it possible that she had changed? We had an undeniable connection, did she feel the same way?
"Nah, I don't think so." I responded after a moment of thought. I didn't want to risk anything. It had taken me four months for her to accept just dating me, I didn't want to put any more pressure onto that weighed down rope.
"I heard you and Capris wrote a song," Louis brought up and his shoulder shrug tried to make the question seem offhanded, but I knew him better than that.
"We started one," I said as monotone as I could. I didn't want this song to be sung on the album, I wanted it to be something special for Joelle. Something that showed her how much I cared, without telling the whole world. She didn't like that attention.
"What's your issue with Capris, Lou?" Harry shifted the attention from me to the older boy who suddenly looked like a deer who was about to get ran over. "You bring her up in almost every conversation but ignore her when she's around. She thinks you hate her."
"She does," I concurred with my friend. She had said it so off-handedly, but the way her eyes crinkled up when she said it made it obvious that she was a bit hurt by Louis' indifference front.
"I don't," Louis defended himself as he cast his eyes downward. "I don't even know her."
"Neither do we, but we don't go offending her every few minutes." Harry deflected his excuse easily.
This midnight conversation was becoming quite serious, compared to our usual bus ride talks of how many inappropriate signs we could spot in the audience that night. There were nights when we sat on the couch and discussed things that really mattered, but it was rare. We spent so much of our time trying to be good role models that we didn't want to act adult when we were together. We all knew how the other felt, to a point, so we just goofed around with the five of us.
"She's different, yenno?" Louis admitted defeat, yet still wouldn't look us in the eye.
"Good different?" Harry's eyebrows raised as if suddenly the interaction between the blond and brunet made sense. It made sense to me as well, but then again it didn't. Louis had just got out of a relationship, and he wasn't one to play around when he wanted a girl. If he was truly interested in Capris, he'd have asked her out already. Yet instead he acted towards her the way I do to the paparazzi.
"I don't know, mate, just different. Leave it alone." Louis sighed.
"I'm gonna sleep, wake me up when we get to the airport." I said after we had been silent for at least ten minutes. I was drowsing off as it was, might as well be more comfortable. They both just nodded, not breaking eye contact with each other. Harry seemed to really want to get to the bottom of Louis' emotions as of late, but as selfish as it sounded, I didn't care. If it came to the point where Louis was emotionally or physically distraught, I'd step in. This just seemed like a confusion on his part, moodswings that he couldn't explain. He needed time on his own to figure out why he was acting this way to her.
The bunks in the tour bus weren't horrible, but they certainly weren't as comfortable as the one I had at home. It made me happy to think that this would be the last night on this creaky twin size thing, and that soon I would be back home in the freedom of my own home.
It's strange, how sometimes you can fall asleep within seconds of laying your head on a pillow and sometimes it takes what seems like an eternity. The exhaustion was weighing in on my mind like a ton of bricks, yet I couldn't get to sleep. So finally, after thirty minutes of tossing and turning in the bunk that seemed to be shrinking in size, I adjusted my headphones on my ears and sat up a bit. Reaching for the little notebook Capris had given me, I flipped it open to the second page.
With the Imagine Dragons album blasting into my eardrums, I stared at the page with words scribbled across it in messy handwriting. Capris and I had talked a few times more after I came to the realization, and she suggested writing. Together we had penned out a few lyrics, and I read them over.
If your heart wears thin,
I will hold you up and I will hide you when it gets too much.
I'll be right beside you.
I'll be right beside you.
It definitely wasn't finished, but it was a start and already I could see the love that I had poured into it. It was a way of telling her I loved her, without actually speaking those three words. The second I did, she'd be running away faster than a freight train. Without even processing anything else, my fingers started scrawling over the page once again.
When your tears are spent on your last pretense,
and your tired eyes refuse to close and sleep in your defense.
When it's in your spine, like you've walked for miles.
And the only thing you want is to be still for a while.
~
"Zayn, mate, you're drooling. Wake up, man. Wake up!" Harry's voice and hand slapping across my cheek was the next thing I processed, and sure enough, light was streaming in thanks to him pulling open the curtains.
"Whatitmeisheet?" I mumbled, sleep still ridden in my body. I couldn't even open my eyes for longer than a second.
"Half past six," he replied before turning around and heading towards the open area of the bus. He turned around briefly to say, "We're at the airport."
It took a few minutes after that to gain the energy to stumble out and attempt to rub the sleep out of my eyes. Following the trail of bodyguards, crew and Louis and Harry, I managed to make it inside the airport without getting lost. The paps had, as always, figured out where we were and were snapping pictures as if their lives depended on it. They were calling out things, trying to make us snap, and I chanted our manager's words in my head. They want me angry, they want to piss us off, they want to get headline worthy pictures. We had become good at blocking them out, but sometimes it just made us snap.
We were normal guys, dammit. We needed our privacy unless they wanted us to completely break down. Which of course, would just result in rehab and more tabloids about us. We could never really win and that got frustrating.
"See you in a few weeks, buddy." Louis patted me on the back once we were about to head different directions. He was headed to Doncaster, while Harry and I were off to London. "Be careful what you tell Joelle. If you absolute need me, you have my number."
"Yeah, see you later man."
Harry and I traipsed toward our gate without another word being send, both still mentally asleep. We had gotten to the point where we could almost completely function without even being awake for it.
"Where are you going when we land?" Paul asked while we were waiting to board. There wasn't much to do, airports were the same everywhere. We weren't allowed to wander off by ourselves, so we usually just found a private spot and camped out until they could get us on the plane - which was the last thing to happen for the flight, since they didn't want hundreds of people to walk past us while getting on. Last on, first off. It had become quite routine, we didn't think much about it anymore.
"Home," Harry replied with a jaw breaking yawn.
"To Mess Radio," I responded after a second.
No way was I waiting another second to see Joelle.
________
Dedication to: 1D_THGlover
"I could sense that she doesn't want to hurt Zayn but she's so used to protecting herself, it's second nature for her to ignore him."
Hold on tight to your seats, ladies and gentlemen... This rollercoaster is about to take off.
OFFICIAL NAME FOR JOELLE AND ZAYN IS.... DRUMROLL PLEASE.... ZOELLE! :)
SORRY FOR THE LACK OF UPDATES though i'm going to stop apologizing because life is life and i can't do much about that so yeah...
boysboysboys are dumbdumbdumbdumb.
Next update: SUNDAY
Twitter: MyHeartsMistake
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