Needless to say, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was not only traumatized, but beyond enthralled with Harry Styles.
He raced through my mind like a Porsche as his word rang through my mind over and over again.
I tried.
“I tried.”
My whole body vibrated with shivers as the sentence ruthlessly repeated itself in my mind, making me so nauseous to the point where I felt as though I could vomit at any second. The prescription meds I had taken, if anything, made it almost worse. They made my stomach ill rather than taking away the effects of the stress that consumed me.
“How are you feeling?” Luke asked, his pacific blue eyes filled with concern. He shoved a glass of fizzy something towards me for my stomach that I had complained about before sinking down into the mattress next to me.
“Peachy,” I sarcastically replied, reluctantly taking a swig from the gruesome Alka-Seltzer water. I tried not to gag as it rolled down my throat, the bubbles uncomfortably tickling my insides. My nose involuntarily sniffled as the carbonation stung my eyes.
“Looks like it. You look gorgeous!” he bellowed. I felt his warm hand pat my back as his intent stare burned into me, my hollow gaze directed elsewhere. A chuckle lightly stifled from my mouth before I downed the rest of the vile contents and discarded the cup to the cluttered bedside table.
“Get the London look,” I over-dramatized, receiving a peppy laugh from the lanky boy next to me. His exposed limbs were awkwardly entangled with one another, a loose tank top draping over his torso and blue stripped boxer shorts clung around his long legs. I tried hard to keep my eyes away from his toned biceps, which unlike Harry’s, were completely barren. Luke’s cheery sounds lifted my spirits a bit, but the gnawing feeling remained, and I constantly thought about the curly haired boy, the things he said, and the eerie way he watched me as I left him behind in his bedroom. Something about it all seemed a little… off.
“You really look alright, Ari,” he faintly smiled, wiping away some of the mascara that had spider-webbed down my face. “It’s okay to cry.”
But it wasn’t.
If there was something I really couldn’t stand, it was looking like I was inferior. The reason I usually had no feeling was because I avoided it – at all costs. I used to be emotional, but after being broken a few too many times, things begun to sting less. Now, I just try to push all of the things I feel away, but there are times they come back like this and bite me in the ass.
I sniffled, my swollen eyes falling shut for a brief moment as a familiar empty feeling settled in my chest before being snapped back into reality when Luke cleared his throat beside me.
I was grateful that Luke offered to stay with me that night and that he was willing to stay up all hours with me. He had no idea as to why I had cried for what seemed like forever, but he didn’t ask, and I was thankful that I could just openly spill out my emotions that had been bottled up far too long. He could probably make an educated guess that it had something to do with Harry, I mean, he was very intelligent, but in reality, he didn’t know the half of what was tearing me apart inside. For the first time that evening, silence drifted over us like fog rolling in on a murky day. Between the sounds of my pathetic sobs and screams and when I angrily threw my lamp at the wall, it had been pretty hectic up until that point.
It was really a fun night.
Sarcasm.
“You look nice,” he repeated as I scoffed, seeing him hold back a fit of laughter. He eyed me before being distracted by the trash beside the table, looking helplessly at the shattered lamp remains scattered in the waste bin. He had insisted on picking the pieces up no matter how many times I told him I would in the morning. Luke was as stubborn as an ox, which made him almost as hard-headed as me.
“Gee thanks,” I groaned before falling back onto my bed, pulling my knees to my chest and gently rocking in place. I felt tears threatening to stream out of my puffy green eyes before Luke intensely sighed, plopping his whole body beside me. His mile-long legs dangled over the edge of the bed. I looked up to see his face rested on the pillow next to me and noticed the immense pain overshadowing his usually happy expression. My dark, already-damaged heart was even more in need of repair after this disaster of a day and seeing how it was affecting my best friend only made it worse. The more I tried to understand why Harry’s words had such an impact on me, the more frustrated I got and the more the horrendous flashbacks would surface. I wanted so badly to tell Luke what happened that haunting evening five years ago, but as I opened my mouth the spill my thoughts, a chorus of cries fell out instead.
“Shhh” he hummed, pulling me tightly into his side. My face found its way onto his partly-exposed chest as another round of sobs uncontrollably blurted from my mouth, water pooling in my eyes before falling to stain the dark fabric of his tank top. I felt his chest rise and fall as my own breathing slowly balanced out.
I lifted briefly, looking down at the mess I had made. “S-sorry,” I managed to get out after a moment, rubbing my hand at the dark splotches that speckled his shirt in an impossible attempt to dry the prominent marks.
“God, Arielle, thanks for this shit,” he playfully fumed, an exasperated breath whooshing out of his mouth as his callused hand swiped a stray tear from my cheek. His fingers felt rough, but they instantly quieted my sobs.
“I’m a fucking wreck, I know!” I replied half-jokingly and half truthfully. My voice was stuffy and nasally, but he ignored it. I couldn’t hold back a giggle as he pulled me closer and folded his leg over my curled up body. I felt calmer, possibly from the drugs, or from the blonde boy next to me whose heartbeat drummed peacefully in my ear.
“Sleep,” his deep voice whispered, placing a friendly kiss to my forehead before dragging up the comforter to our faces and strongly wrapping around me. The night’s events slowly retreated back to the depths of my mind as I drifted into an uneven slumber.
-
“Zayn...” I sighed, my hand resting on my forehead as he paced around the modernly-styled living room, his black jacket sticking out like a sore thumb against the snowy white of the bright area.
“What do you fucking mean you can’t kill him? Fucking try!” he fumed, bronzed-face turning pink as anger rose to the apples of his cheeks. I never used to swear, but I think his unattractive habit rubbed off onto me after a while.
“I mean that I’ve tried three times!” my voice sternly spoke, my throat desperately trying to choke down the dry lump that had formed. Zayn always had a short temper, but you knew it was bad when his brows twisted together, much like they were at that very second. “Why don’t you try killing the sick fuck,” I spat, crossing my arms over my chest.
Zayn and I weren’t going to have sex for a while.
I could tell.
“Because, Arielle, I told you to do it!”
“Well, I won’t!” The decibels of my voice rose with every word of mine that entered into the air. I heard my yells echo back to me in the minimalistic room, knowing that Sabrina and Niall would be listening from above.
“Don’t do this to me,” he breathed, plunking down onto the sofa opposite of the one I perched on.
“Do what!”
“You know what,” he retorted calmer than he should have, a serious look laminating over his face, eyes distant and frigid as they fixated on mine.
I was very well aware as to what happened to people when they didn’t finish up their list. I was mortified that Zayn would actually even consider the idea of killing me.
“You wouldn’t,” I squinted, holding a hand up to cover the sun flooding in through the windows. He just nodded without a word, resting his elbows against his knees as he leaned towards me.
“The best I can do for you is extending your time.”
“You would kill me, Zayn?” I softly spoke, not comprehending how he could just dispose of me after the things I’ve told him, the things we’ve done. I was still in a slight shock as I ignored his proposition.
“Well I wouldn’t kill you directly, but someone else would,” he counter-argued. He would have his puppy-dog minions that I never saw do it, and they would do it because they were entirely infatuated with him. He was the gang leader and all, but that wouldn’t be their driving force to murder me in the first place. I swore Zayn had put them under some kind of spell. Unlike the rest of us, they would do abso-fucking-lutely anything that “King Zayn” wanted.
My hands grew sweaty with anger, seeing how nonchalant he was about the whole idea.
“How could y-,” I paused, trying to collect my thoughts together to form a sentence, “why would you have me killed? I’m like your sister…”
“You and every other girl in this gang, babe.” He coolly lit a cigarette because he knew I hated when he smoked in the house. I watched, appalled, as a smug, cocky look traced over his face.
“I’m just another fuck buddy to you, aren’t I?” He ignored my question as he took a long drag from the tobacco stick, smirking as the smoke exhaled from his nose. I was baffled. I had always thought of Zayn and me as being pretty close even though I didn’t speak to him nearly as much as I did to my other friends. He was how I got into the gang and I thought that was special to him because it meant something to me, but I’m clearly wrong about a lot of things as of lately.
Like how I “knew” I could kill Harry Styles.
“You wouldn’t kill your best killer, would you?”
“Try me,” he laughed darkly. An unsettling feeling snuck up on me like a predator sneaks up on its prey. I tried hard to think of another way that I could kill Styles, but I was drawing a blank. At that point, I didn’t want to kill him. Not that I really cared about Harry, but the fact that the most notorious gang member around didn’t kill me when I tried to kill him, multiple times, was something that was so engrossing to me. Memories of our mutual agreement to stay away from one another resurfaced to my mind before I clumsily spoke.
“I told him tha-”
“You talked to him?” he outraged, eyes widening with a sort of emotion I just couldn’t put my finger on. One of my worst qualities was that I always, somehow, someway, found a way to fuck up a situation. Mentally, I punched myself in the face before my breathing quickened.
“N-not per say…” I drifted off, feeling my cheeks flare with the unpleasant mix of embarrassment and nervousness. The white space felt like it was getting smaller by the second and the more I fought with myself, the worse it got.
“Fuck.” He rose to his feet, kicking up a rug in frustration before digging his cigarette into an ashtray. “I swear on my fucking life,” he pointed his finger towards me, his face cold as stone, “if I see you with that piece of shit, unless you have a gun pointed into his skull, I will kill you… myself.”