28ᵀᴴ CHAPTER
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present”
It comes out more like a growl than anything, deep from within his throat and he has to hold back the urge to roll his eyes to the back of his head and end up sticking them there for the rest of his life by accident. Zayn sort of gets this reaction out of him quite often.
“You can’t simply sell your car, Harry. Not now, at least. It’s not wise,” the black-haired mumbles, fingers loosely wrapped around his pint and eyes hazed, blinking slowly as if to remain open.
There’s the sound of cutlery chattering against each other coming from the kitchen, where Perrie has excused herself to take care of the dishes and leave the boys on their own claiming they need their casual dose of manly conversation just so they won’t lose the habit like it’s happened in the past. ‘Talking to free your soul’ and all that kind of bullshit she keeps repeating for some reason. Those two match, Jesus. God knows how sappy and open their relationship must be.
“Tell me why on earth I need a car, Zayn,” Harry mutters, long finished with his beer and playing with his finger around the rim of the bottle. “I work literally fifteen minutes away from where I’m living, and the furthest I go is to the bank to check on my account. That’s about a half an hour walk, but there’s still public transportations for this matter.”
Suddenly there’s the sound of a door opening and closing again, Elisha showing up from the bathroom at the back of the room, behind the stairs that lead to the bedrooms. She smiles chastely at the two boys and Zayn quickly gestures to the kitchen with his busy hand, mumbling a ‘Pezza’s taking care of dessert in there, if you wanna join’ that mostly dissipates the confusion the short woman faces when she doesn’t spot Zayn’s fiancé where she’d been before she left.
Leesh nods almost instantly, before Zayn’s even finished speaking, and then she’s gone again, mostly because she’s understood they need their talk now, and also because she’s gotten ridiculously well with Perrie. Is there even someone on Earth she does not friendzones within two seconds?
“Your car is the most expensive thing you own right now, Haz. It’s been with you for as long as I can remember and you’re pathetically attached to it,” he reasons, smart as ever – or at least as he always tries to be –, but Harry’s not really asking him for opinion. He’s just stating a decision.
“That’s about right, Zaynie,” he forces the nickname out, smiling unabashed at his friend as if for the first time ever he’s thought it all out better than the usually rational one. He probably has, actually. “This is exactly the point. It’s the most expensive thing I own, and I desperately need the money right now. I’m thinking of something I need more than I need the car, but I need money to give this idea of mine some initiative. Also, being attached to a car is quite pitiful, don’t you think?”
Zayn sighs, exasperated, and Harry recognises it as his admission of defeat. His best friend gulps the rest of his beer in one go and sets the empty bottle over the coffee table, kicking off his shoes before pulling his legs up on the couch and spreading them there, comfortably.
“What’s it you got in mind now, genius?” Bradford-boy asks tiredly, pressing at his temples to force the headache to leave. Harry can clearly see the job taking its toll on Zayn, the dark marks underneath his eyes adding him more age than he actually owns; an apparent additional life experience he still doesn’t have.
“Just something,” Harry states with a shrug, noncommittal. “There’s nothing certain yet, so I’ll keep it to myself for a while, yeah? Promise you’ll be the first to know when I have things settled.”
The eldest closes his eyes and keeps them shut for a long while, breathing in and out quite a few times before eyeing Harry sceptically. “You’re such a prick at times, you know,” he comments the same way he’d tell Harry something he’s just seen on the news he’s not particularly fond of: expressionless. “Just hope you’re not sinking your arse into something you won’t be able to handle later.”
Harry beams at that, leaving the curved position he’s assumed over his bent knees to lean back fully against the armchair, fluffing the cushion he’s sitting on. “Don’t worry, Z. I think I can take care of my arse just fine.”
Zayn snorts rather loudly, theatrical exaggeration just so Harry can feel the sarcasm. Before his mate even opens his mouth to the next words, he already knows what’s to come out and tries to block it as well as he can. “I’ve already made the mistake to hold you to that before and look what happened.”
He throws himself to the floor and lies there on the carpet, toes toying with the leg of the coffee table and eyes fitting the ceiling, anger bubbling inside his chest in way minor proportions than they had previously. He’s improving, but Zayn keep testing his boundaries, seriously.
“Aren’t you the one to say ‘past is past, we’ve always got to look forward’?” he says quietly, holding back his outburst and trying to keep calm. “Also, there’re no women involved, Zayn. Whatever I want to do now I want to do it because of me and me only.”
Suddenly there’s a cushion hitting against his stomach, a muffled ‘oopf’ leaving his mouth unwittingly. “Past is past and we do gotta look forward, but we can’t simply ignore the experiences we’ve lived. They’re lessons, Harry. Lessons.”
Harry’s about to protest, mutter something like ‘I do understand it, but’, however Zayn rolls off the couch and onto the carpet next to Harry, elbows plopped on the floor to support the weight of his head.
“Oh, talking about women. What’s with this lovely one you brought along today?” his rough voice has turned into a mere whisper, and the silence in the living room must be suspiciously heard in the kitchen, but they don’t mind. “You haven’t told me about her before.”
Harry lifts his head and tilts it slightly, holding it up until the muscles in his neck start aching. “What? Leesh? Works at the café across the carwash, great friend. Has helped me with everything since I left rehab, actually.”
Zayn gives him that knowing look, quite uncertain and quite suspicious. “You two look… close. Am I witnessing my best friend getting emotionally attached to a not-Chrissie?”
The curly-haired one rolls onto his stomach, grabbing the cushion Zayn had thrown on him and using it to bury his head into, groaning again at his friend’s intrusion. He understands where he’s coming from, really – or kinda –, but it still feels a lot like not having his own privacy and it’s… disturbing.
“You’re not,” he says pointedly, holding his breath against the softness for as long as humanly possible until he’s forced to lift his head for air. “She’s just really easy to be around, not making questions nor undue statements like someone I know,” he wiggles his brows suggestively, and if it so happens to fit Zayn. Then well. “And, er,” Harry clears his throat, doesn’t look at Zayn when he says “wemightalsohavemadeadeal.”
There’s shuffling next to him, and then suddenly his friend is right in front of his nose. He shouldn’t have turned around to check on it. “You what?”
“We made a deal, Gez,” Harry clarifies, still looking away. What an interesting design this carpet has, huh?
Zayn sighs just as theatrically as he’d snorted previously, shaking his head and mumbling a ‘there we go’ before sitting properly and bending forward to wrap his arms around his legs, lay his head over his knees. “Lay on me,” he declares half-heartedly. Harry’s not sure he really means it, but.
“What? It’s just a friend with benefits thing. I’ve made it clear I’m not really looking forward attachments and stuff, and she very consciously agreed to it.” Malik is eyeing him sceptically again, almost murderous. His features flinch quite a few times as he tries to settle into one expression only, but it takes a while. Harry sees incredulity, fear, concern, anger and superiority flashing through his eyes, and before Zayn dares a word, he adds: “We’re adults, Zayn. Please don’t vomit your life lessons all over me again. I think I’m enough done with your deep bullshit.”
Zayn lets out a guffaw as a first reaction, but it’s too loud and too fucking sarcastic to actually mean he’s amused. He grabs Harry by the shoulders and pierces his gaze into Harry’s irises, seeming panicked. “Friends with benefits, Hazza, really? You must know this is proper shit, right?”
He dodges away from Zayn’s touch and replies only with a roll of his shoulders. The man before him snorts once more and rolls his eyes. Zayn’s so not the smartass here.
“Oh my God, you’re an idiot. My best friend is seriously an idiot,” as if to add to the idea, he moves his hands wildly in the air. “Harry, you know you’re going to fall in love, right? The much of you will. This is just pathetic.”
Haz sort of explodes this time around, not really mad at Zayn, but needing desperately for him to understand his point of view. “You know what’s pathetic, Zayn? You believing in rom-com shit, is what. My life hasn’t been much of a movie, if you haven’t noticed. This is real life we’re talking about; I’m not going to suddenly heal over that fucking woman who simply triturated my heart and walked away with small pieces of it to leave the rest bleeding and dysfunctional. I’m not going to get over a lifetime romance and then, bam. I’m in love with this ordinary woman who’s got nothing special about her at all. Not how it happens, Mr. wisdom.”
Zayn’s looking at him motionless, face blank with lips pursed together casually. His eyes are still and clean of all sorts of emotions, simply judgmental. Harry hates his composure. Fuck him.
“You’re a dick, Styles,” he states after moments of silence. “I love you with all my heart, I do, but you’re an ultimate dick. Blind, as well. And that really wouldn’t bother me as much as it does if it wasn’t for Elisha, because I’m afraid she might get too caught up in this and you’ll be too busy being the stubborn prick you are to even pay her attention.”
Harry gaps at him, but chooses to shake his head instead of calling him names, too. Let’s not let this get out of control, he tells himself. “Am I going to become a billionaire too?” he asks, deadpan. “Seeing as though you’re so good with predicting my life.”
Zayn fully ignores his question, pats his thigh in an I’m-superior-than-you-are manner and lies back down, clasping his fingers over his stomach and staring at the ceiling along with Harry.
“I absolutely hate you, Zaynie,” curly mumbles a second later, already too enamoured by the thick silence between them. Somehow Zayn exhales this familiar feeling of home Harry is completely endeared by, and there’s no way he’s going to manage being mad at his best mate for more than an hour, at most. He’s so fond of this jerk.
When Zayn’s about to reply, Perrie chirps in next to Elisha, each of them holding two small bowls of ice cream. The dark-haired man stands up quickly to take his seat back on the corner of the couch, opening his arms and legs so Perrie can fit between them and hand him his bowl. As if by magnetism, they seem to close around one another, curled up together and sometimes feeding each other’s ice cream to one another.
Disgusting.
Elisha, in the meanwhile, takes a seat on the armchair Harry had been leaned against, whilst the man itself stays sprawled on the floor after muttering a quick ‘thanks’ for receiving his own bowl. Leesh scoots her legs close to her chest as she always does whenever she’s sitting, no matter where, and Harry simply lays there, socked feet playing mindlessly with the foot of said armchair.
“Oh, Haz?” Zayn calls, suddenly. Harry only hums. “I think I’ve got you something for this weekend, too. You up for it?”
His long, lanky limbs seem to react instantly, as if his mind has been waiting for the statement since forever. He twitches subtly and smiles privately like he’s achieved something, wants to hug Zayn despite the parental side of his personality.
“As if you don’t know the answer.”
--
After that, Zayn leads them all to a room upstairs filled with sprayed walls and random sculptures, caricatures, drawings, several sprawled sheets with unfinished business. All in all, Harry feels like invading a comic, completely lost within the freedom of Zayn’s art.
Perrie, inside her fiancé’s arms, seems overly proud of his job once she takes in Harry and Elisha’s expressions; especially the woman’s one. Because Harry has lived with him already, he knew what to expect of his friend’s way of living. It still surprises him, though, how talented Zayn is. Has always been.
“Sick,” Elisha comments, and after, they leave the lovebirds’ flat with a promise of coming back soon.
The whole drive home is silent, Harry being lost in his own thoughts and plans for the future. It’s a bit hard not having his best mate, almost like a brother, not believing his capacity to plan something truly good for him, but he hasn’t been much of a reliable source considering it all.
Midway his mental rambling, he offers to leave Elisha at the motel’s front door, but she refuses and stays with him the whole drive to the carwash, clambers out of the car once he’s parked and waits until he’s done with grabbing everything he needs.
The fifteen-minute walk back home lacks just as much words, but somehow they’re closer, so the night isn’t as cold as it appears to be. Unconsciously, their hands are brushing, the tips of their fingers nearly entwined, but Harry’s not on Earth tonight.
Zayn keeps echoing inside his head, mixing with his ideas and ideals and sort of messing it all up, filling all the empty spaces he has left with small doses of doubt that weren’t there before.
Past is past, we’ve always got to look forward, he repeats to himself, though the voice he hears is not particularly his. Once in the door to Elisha’s room, he leans forward and presses his lips gently to hers, finds his hands tangled with the hairs by the end of her neck and his thumb brushing absently over her rosy cheeks.
When he pulls away, it’s like their lips offer resistance of their own, glued still when he opens his eyes and watches the fleshes pull apart. She seems kind of breathless after, but he doesn’t comment on it, the same way she hasn’t commented on his airily state.
Yes. Past is past. What happened yesterday is stuck there, and there’s no way Harry will know what tomorrow reserves for him, but today there’s something he can do to make things go the way he expects to.
Today is the present, a present, and he’s going to make the best out of it. He knows how to deal with his life.
Zayn doesn’t know everything.
--
Author's Mind (?)
Comments: 1. Sorry I didn't update yesterday. No wifi connection available ): Here it is, though. 2. What do you think Harry is planning with selling his car? Guesses?
Dedication (to the best comment): {@hed3107} Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying my work so far, and it's good to see someone appreciates Leesha's simple personality. Yeah, I like to take my time, but they'll fall in love eventually. By the way, I had a great show! Thanks for asking :)
Next Update: Wednesday; May 21st
Early Update: 500 votes