Under Summer Sky • Zarry

22. Too close to the sun

I re-read Nick's drunken texts to myself over and over again, and the more I read them to myself the more overwhelmed I became. But I couldn't let this go unacknowledged, so I ended up calling Zayn while he was on the train back to Paris.

"Hey."

"Hey," I replied.

I swallowed hard, starting to feeling anxious.

"Did you look through my phone?"

He sighed. "I really don't want to have this conversation right now, Harry."

Too bad, I needed to know. "Did you, Zayn?"

"Yes," he answered flatly.

"Why? Why did you do that?"

Zayn coughed, his tone now slightly pointed. "And this is coming from the person who's looked through my things? Who has eavesdropped on me several times before? Don't even tell me you're mad about it."

Ugh, so this was going to be his mood.

"I'm not mad...I'm just..." I started to say, my anxiety now increasing. "Look, Silas might be into me or whatever but we never did anything. I swear. I'm not hooking up with him. Not with anyone, like I said to you."

"Of course he's into you," Zayn grumbled back, a rhetorical question now following. "Why wouldn't he be? It's you."

"Zayn..."

"What?"

"It's not my fault."

"I'm not angry with you. I'm just annoyed at life, at everything," he explained.

"Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to stay away from him?"

"I don't care what you do," he tossed back, like a sharp jab to the gut.

I was annoyed now. "It sounds like you do care, Zayn, especially with how you acted last night, being all jealous and posessive over me."

He didn't answer right away. "Yeah well...I shouldn't have been like that. I have no real authority over you, right? Was stupid of me to even act that way over a guy that I'm not even in a relationship with."

I was really beginning to loathe whenever Zayn said shit like that to me, as if he secretly resented me for not being able to jump into something serious; I wasn't ready for it all.

"I don't have any fucking time! We can't even see each other!" I defended.

"I know," he gritted out.

"But we still have feelings, we have something. You said we didn't have to label us...and to be perfectly honest I don't even mind you being jealous, either. At least it shows me that you care."

"Well I do mind," he replied coldly.

I sighed. My frustration over this situation between us was just getting worse. All I ever tried to do was avoid conflict with him but it never lasted, especially now that we were apart. Nothing could ever be easy or simple for me, could it?

Being this emotionally attached to Zayn, someone that I wasn't even officially dating, that I can't realistically date right now, and working with long distance, was turning out to be more complicated and more confusing than I imagined.

"Okay, so now what?" I questioned, unsure of where I was going with it, and it killed me because it felt like we were running out of things we can say.

"I don't fucking know."

"I really don't want to argue," I went on.

"Yeah well that's why I didn't even say anything about it this morning," he returned. "Wasn't even gonna bring it up."