Under Summer Sky • Zarry

5. Changing

Zayn never said anything to me about what happened in the field and I wasn't sure if he had actually felt me get slightly aroused or not, but based on how he reacted and how he got off of me so abruptly I assumed that he did.

When Zayn and I got back to the shed and put the quads away there was that awkward, heavy tension between us again and internally I just wanted to die from embarrassment.

What made it even worse was that he claimed he was getting a headache and retired to his bedroom for the night, which left me alone and mentally cursing myself out.

Why did I have to be such a perpetually horny teenager with raging hormones?

I called Nick when I got back to the guest house and told him what happened, to which he then proceeded making fun of me for an hour.

"Okay well maybe he's not into it then. So why don't you just hit up a gay club or make a Grindr profile while you're there? Just take the plunge with some random guy instead if you're that curious."

And I thought about it to be honest, but I didn't want to go alone and I wasn't sure if I felt comfortable enough for my first experience with someone random. And even though it was pretty obvious Zayn was probably weirded out by me now, I still couldn't help but like him anyway and I decided having an unrequited crush on someone was definitely not my favorite feeling.

I had stayed in that night and watched way too much television to try and distract me from my thoughts but at the same time I continued checking my phone every five minutes to see if Zayn was ever going to text me, but he didn't.

Zayn also left the following day to go on a trip with the National Italian Arts Club that neither he or anyone else mentioned to me until I saw him getting in an Uber with a suitcase and found out about it. He was setting off to Rome for 5 days to study art, so that meant I had to go all week without seeing him, which was disappointing.

So I started hanging out with Adrienne.

She was exactly the type of girl from school that I'd probably have a one month fling with. I thought that she was attractive, humorous, spontaneous, talkative and rather forward with her thoughts and that was usually my go-to type of girl.

But I couldn't bring myself to do anything physical with her and it was so typically unlike me.

We went swimming after family dinner every night and we talked about life and how she coincidentally stopped seeing Luca because she decided he was boring. And we discussed what it was like growing up in Italy and talked shit about our deadbeat dads; and I also learned something about Zayn's. I actually didn't know a whole lot about him and it's probably because I never asked, but Zayn didn't have a good relationship with his father either.

Adrienne seemed to be in the know with some personal things about his family and told me that Zayn's dad had been verbally and physically abusive and violent towards his mum and sometimes towards him, too. It made me angry when she said it, picturing Zayn as a very young child going through something traumatic like that.

I also hated myself for not knowing and it only made me wish that I had been that much nicer to him all those years. He didn't deserve any of it and it only proved that you never know what people are really going through beneath the surface and it's important to always be kind. So I vowed then and there that night with Adrienne that I would try to be a much kinder person moving forward.

And that was the reason why Tricia left him and married Gio shortly afterward, who was the nicest, most generous man I know and the most amazing stand-in father figure anyone could have, and it was also the reason why Zayn never saw his dad or ever bothered to talk about him.