A/N: This chapter is one of my absolute favourites! It is very close to my heart, so close that you might say it comes from my own life experience! Thank you all so much for your comments, votes, and love! I am beyond amazed! xx
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Leila's P.O.V (cont'd):
Flashback
We sat contentedly on the swings of Lower Fields primary, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. The night was warm despite it being well into September, and the charcoal black sky was cloudless and littered with more stars than I had ever seen before. I suspected my enthusiasm for sipping whiskey however, was solely due to the fact that I was sipping it with Zayn Malik.
An hour before, I had been lying in bed, my mind whirring with the two simple words of advice my mother had told me earlier that week. Tell him. It had been vague, but so completely to the point at the same time, the telling smile on her lips making it quite obvious in my mind that she knew –which was strange because I hardly knew myself.
I found out in the same way that night gradually shifted into day, in the same way that the sun dipped behind the clouds only to bare its face again a few moments later; I was in love with my best friend.
Deep in thought, it was some time before I finally heard the consistent but soft deflection of pebbles against my window. Thrusting open my window and looking down into my garden, I was met with the sight of none other than Zayn, tauntingly waving about a bottle of whiskey with a mischievous glint in his dark eyes. I stared at Zayn incredulously, wondering if he had somehow read my mind. "Are you mad? It's nearly one in the morning, Zayn." I hissed so as not to wake my parents.
"Fancy a night cap? I had the radio on just now and there's supposed to be a meteor shower." He offered hopefully from below, a boyish grin appearing on his lips. Heart skipping a beat at Zayn's breathtaking smile, I weighed my options in silence. Glancing over my shoulder and towards my bedroom door, I heard nothing but silence resonating from the hallway, my mother's soft, teasing words resolutely drifting into my mind. Tell him. And I figured there was no better time than the present.
I smiled down at Zayn, etching the vision of how he looked exactly then, standing below my window, into my memory. "Fine, but if I break my neck on the way down you'll have to answer to my parents." I chided him.
"Deal." Zayn announced with a laugh. In a flash, I had disappeared from my window, throwing on a pair of jeans and brushing out my unruly black hair, glancing determinedly into the mirror and deciding that was the night I would finally take charge of my life. Returning to the window, I swung my legs over the window pane, taking a sallow and hardly satisfying breath before thrusting myself onto the drain pipe. The metal groaned beneath my weight, and slowly I began to edge my way down, praying that I would not fall to my death. Nearing the bottom at last, I felt Zayn's hands tentatively grab hold of my waist, and gently, he guided me to the safety of the grass. In the moment it took me to gather my bearings, I realized that I had unknowingly leaned into Zayn for support, looking up and seeing that his perpetually serious face was only a few inches away from mine.
Zayn peered down at me in the darkness, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. Clearing his throat, he dropped his hands from my waist and shoved them into his pockets. "Come on then, we don't want to miss it." He said animatedly, trekking towards the sidewalk. Stomach churning with nerves, I allowed myself to watch Zayn's retreating back for only a moment, and then followed after him dutifully.
Some time later, we found ourselves on the ancient swings of our old elementary school. Zayn and I frequented the aging brick building and rusting playground on the weekends, playing on the jungle gym as we did when we were children or just simply rotating gently on the merry-go-round until the security guards and their hounds chased us away.
"How long before we start seeing them?" I slurred, mildly disappointed at the uneventful night sky and taking a hearty swig from the whiskey. The liquor seared a burning path down my throat and I scrunched up my face at the unpleasant taste, happily passing it back to Zayn and watching in awe as he glugged back a quarter of the bottle with ease.
"Not long." Zayn assured me drunkenly, wiping his lips on his sleeve and leaning backwards in order to take a better look at the sky for himself. Leaning too far however, Zayn toppled backwards, his legs over his head and the whiskey flinging from his grasp.
"No!" I screeched, watching as the whiskey bottle landed on the ground with a dull thud, its golden brown contents pumping out into the grass.
"Argh!" Zayn cried out in drunken distress, his still caught up in the chains and the whiskey was long forgotten in my mind. "I'm coming, I'm coming." I snorted in hysterics, hobbling over to him and working to untangle his feet. "Stop squirming." I demanded, clamping down on my lip in an attempt to suppress my laughter.
"It's not funny," Zayn whined childishly, a silly grin appearing on his face. "I could've been killed!" He exclaimed just as I had succeeded in freeing him from the swing's clutches. Zayn fell to the ground in a heap, a low groan emerging from the back of his throat. Opening his warm brown eyes, he stared up at me helplessly. With a shake of my head, I extended my hand and heaved him upwards. Zayn leaned on me heavily, the whiskey clearly having gone directly to his head. "Well that settles it, we're both utterly pissed." I noted.
"Right, we're in no condition to be operating those." Zayn glared at the swings, his pink lips cracking into a crooked grin.
"You mean you're in no condition." I teased, freezing in place when Zayn's gaze shifted to mine. My heart began to gallop when he reached for my hair, his dark eyes screwed up in concentration. He pulled his hand back a moment later, having retrieved something. "Leaf." He explained with a smile, tossing it into the grass.
Swallowing hard, I changed the subject in an attempt to mask my disappointment. "I bet we'd have a better view from there." I said, pointing towards the hillside.
Zayn nodded, a gleam in his dark eyes. "You're probably right," He noted with a grin, leaning forward so that his breath tickled my ear. "Race you there." He whispered, and with that he shot off, leaving me dashing after him in a fit of laughter.
"Zayn!" I called after him, yelping when a few steps away from the hillside, my foot caught on a root and I went flying face first. Smacking the ground, I let out a low moan. Noticing I was no longer behind him, Zayn froze mid-step, letting out a howl of laughter and trotting back towards me.
"Are you quite alright?" Zayn inquired, looking down at me from above. "Sorry to dash your hopes Karim, but I don't think you'll be making the track team next year." He laughed, heaving me upwards and collapsing on the soft bed of grass just below the hill.
"Shut up." I said, my face reddening. Arms wrapped protectively around myself, I perched next to Zayn, shuddering when the damp grass began to soak through my jeans.
We sat in comfortable silence for some time, no sound coming from either of us except for soft breaths. Zayn was the first to speak. "That book you're reading all the time, what's it called again?" He inquired casually.
I turned to Zayn in minor astonishment, surprised he had even noticed. In the darkness, I observed his perfect profile, chiseled as if from marble. "Wuthering Heights. And I do read other books too, you know." I smiled coyly.
Zayn shook his head. "I know you do, but what makes you read that one over and over again?" He turned to me, his dark eyes studying my face. A warm breeze rustled the branches of a nearby tree, a shower of leaves that were slowly succumbing to the autumn, filtering past us.
I glanced away, vulnerable under Zayn's intense gaze. "I see a lot of myself in it, I suppose." I answered quietly, leaving out half of what I wanted to say. And I see a lot of you in it as well, a voice in the corner of my mind lulled mellifluously.
Zayn nodded along in silence, his brows pulling together in thought. "Maybe I'll give it a try some day." He contemplated, a touch of uncertainty in his voice.
My heart sped up at the idea alone of Zayn reading my most favourite book, and I wondered whether he would see Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in us, as I had. "I didn't know you could read." I teased him with a gentle shove, observing each detail of his face and not caring whether I was caught.
"Shut up." Zayn shoved me playfully, a sheepish smile on his lips. Putting his arms behind his head, Zayn leaned all the way back onto the grassy hill, continuing to peer up towards the heavens. Following suit, I stretched out onto the grass, facing towards Zayn instead of the sky.
"Where do you think we'll be in a few years, Zayn?" I asked in a small voice, certain that my fear of what was most inevitable in this world –change –shone through each facet of my being then.
Zayn turned to me, his dark irises refracting the moonlight. "Right here, where else?" He stated, as if he was answering the most simple of questions.
And before I knew it, I was pressing a gentle kiss on Zayn's lips, all of myself, and everything I loved about him behind it. Zayn's lips were soft, tasting ever so slightly of whiskey. My joy was fleeting however, Zayn pulling back from my lips and gaping at me in astonishment. "What are you doing, Leila?" He said, letting out the same anxious laugh he did when he forgot his lines during a speech.
My stomach plummeted through the ground. "I thought..." I trailed off with a whisper, the lump in my throat cutting my sentence short. It appeared I had thought wrong.
Zayn continued to laugh, shaking his head and pulling himself up from the grass. "You're too drunk, I should get you home-" He began, shaking his head to himself.
The same rush of determination I had felt when looking into the mirror earlier resurfaced, my voice quiet, but strong. "No Zayn, I've made up my mind. If I don't tell you this now, I might never." I implored.
Zayn lifted his dark, panicked eyes to mine. "Tell me what?" He inquired so softly I could barely hear him.
I stared at Zayn for a few moments, all of our memories as children ambushing me at once –twisting my ankle so badly that Zayn had to piggy-back me home, trading lunches under the willow tree, allowing him to cry into my lap when his aunt died and promising to never tell a soul he had been weak. Would it be worth it? To throw all of this away? If telling Zayn meant a future with him, even if only a chance of more; then yes, it was worth it.
The words came out of my mouth like running water, yet gently, as if a stream. "For the longest time, I thought I was sure was sure of nothing –from what I wanted for breakfast to what I wanted to do with my life, I couldn't have told you even if I wanted to." I hesitated before continuing, Zayn's stormy gaze studying my face in silence. "But as time went on I realized there was one thing I never doubted, one thing I always certain of: you. It might have been for a day or years, or from the moment I met you even." I forced my gaze onto his. "Zayn, I'm in love with you." I whispered.
Mouth agape in the darkness, Zayn simply blinked at me, his chest rising and falling heavily.
"Say something." I begged him quietly.
Zayn swallowed hard, snapping out of his trance. "This-this is the alcohol talking, Leila." He decided, failing to sound certain of himself by any measure.
"It's not the alcohol talking, it's me." I assured him.
Zayn began to shake his head. "You're my best friend." He stated quietly.
"And you're mine." I answered him simply, searching his eyes so deeply for something, anything at all.
Zayn grew very still, gazing down into his lap. "I don't see you in that way, Leila." He told me softly.
My chest began to ache, the cold finality of rejection rearing its head. "Why?" I grew angry. "You see all the other girls at school 'in that way', expect for me! What's wrong with me?" I demanded.
Zayn's dark eyes drilled into mine. "There's nothing wrong with you, Leila." He told me passionately.
It wasn't until tears began to trickle down my cheeks that I realized I was ashamed of myself –that I was undesirable, unwanted. I rose to my feet, blindly trekking down the hillside. Zayn bolted after me, latching onto my arm.
"Leila, wait. Where did this all come from?" He asked me, panic rising in his voice.
I pulled my arm from his grasp. "Somewhere I wish it hadn't. I'm going now, Zayn." I sniffed, reaching the leveled ground at last. With enough embarrassment to last a life-time, all I wanted was sleep.
Zayn let out a frustrated growl. "Leila, don't be like that, please." He pleaded, running a hand through his disheveled black hair. "At least let me walk you home." He said gently, his face wrought with concern.
"I'm fine, Zayn, really." I assured him quietly, the knife in my heart twisting as I continued to stare at him, knowing once and for all that he didn't and would never love me back. "I'll see you at school, alright?" I told him and with one last departing glance, I started for home, leaving him standing in the middle of the field.
"See you." Zayn called after me quietly, his voice fading into the distance.
That Monday, I did not see Zayn in school. The next few days after that consisted of fleeting glances of him in the hallways, turning a corner or entering a classroom, like fragments from a dream. He began eating lunch in the parking lot, sitting on top of cars with the boys in our grade that he had never hung around with before. This went on for two weeks until one day I was running late to Maths. Taking a sharp right, I could hardly believe it when I saw Zayn near the end of the hallway. , Ambling towards me, his head was bent down at his mobile, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he typed a message. Looking up from his phone, Zayn saw me approaching and he nearly froze in place. His eyes met mine for a moment and then he shifted his gaze to the lockers lining the hallway. We passed each other silently, just as we continued to do when we crossed paths from then on. My heart ached, not only for the boy I loved but for the best friend I had ever had. After that, he disappeared all together, making me wonder if he had ever really existed in the first place.
The vibration of my mobile tugged me from my memories. Unearthing it from my pocket, I flipped it open, tears blurring my vision until I was able to make out the words 1 NEW TEXT MESSAGE. It had been sent from an unfamiliar number. In confusion, I opened it, expecting it to be Kitty or even Peaches notifying me of their new number.
It read:
I was wondering if I could get to know the real Leila tomorrow night? – Harry x
I stared at the message for some time, wondering whether it would be Leila or Bambi that replied to him.
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A/N: Thank you so much for checking out this chapter! I'll be doing a bit of reshuffling here and there when it comes to the next update, but I'm certain it will be on time! Will Leila go on a date with Harry? How will Zayn react if he finds out? These questions and more will be answered in: I Crave You. Please visit s.t.r.i.p.p.e.d.f.a.n.f.i.c.t.i.o.n.t/u/m/b/l/r.c/o/m (remove slashes and periods) for chapter outfits, music featured in 'Stripped', and beautiful fanart submitted by readers like yourself! xx