Neon Red [Order The eBook] [Zayn]

48

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

**********

Are you sleeping baby by yourself?

Or are you giving it to someone else?

Harry Styles | Where Do Broken Hearts Go

Rio de Janeiro

May 2014

I left the pool party early to crash, telling Preston to stay and enjoy himself. He insisted on escorting me back to my room, though, before heading back down to finish his drinks with the other boys and our team. I was a sweaty mess by the time I got to the room, so couldn't climb in bed before a serious shower. When I came out and dried off, I squatted at my suitcase and dug around for clean briefs and a t-shirt. Mission accomplished, I flung myself across the bed and stared up at my phone. Shahid had sent me a photo of his cat driving his truck. It was stupid but funny as shit after a few drinks. I told him Naughtybob would run him over if he weren't careful. That was one pissed off looking cat. I then realized it was super late in their part of the world despite it only being 11pm here, so I saved the remainder of my responses to my mum, sisters, and Pez for in the morning.

Plopping onto my stomach, I kicked my legs up behind me and scrolled through Twitter. What a wasteland of mind-numbing stupidity and stan wars. Still, I depended on it daily for entertainment. Some of the fans were defending me against comments made about my ever-increasing tattoo collection. Many people still weren't over the gun I'd gotten at my hip last year. Bunch of bible-clutching puritans, if you asked me, always quick to judge. But my fans had my back every step of the way. Apparently I was just expressing myself and should be given free reign to do so. People were also obsessing over Haz's new leafy hip tattoos, and I'd been tempted to do so myself. My fingertips itched to trace them, although I hadn't exactly found the time since they first appeared.

Fuck, Liam was really going through it. He'd been drunk-tweeting about Sophia all week. Really shameless, corny shit like 'Can't be without you' and 'Worse thing I ever did was let you go.' I laughed at the fact that he had used 'worse' instead of 'worst'. Poor guy. The future wasn't looking too bright for him in the love department. I scrolled past without reading any more because the second-hand embarrassment was too much to bear. Plus, I didn't want his loneliness and desperation to jinx me. Moving on, I noticed I hadn't been on too much myself, and neither had Lou. Nialler wasn't up to much either. Haz had been busy tweeting all the weird and indecipherable things he normally did. Nothing out of the ordinary there. We hadn't spoken much at the party either, since he'd been all over Ben and Cal and Julian (his most loyal drinking buddies) for the past few days. Hadn't seen him around Matt anymore, though, and the mere thought of this never failed to bring a smile to my face. My work in that department was complete, and I wasn't remorseful about it in the least.

Later I got up and opened the balcony door for a bit of air, staring out mesmerized at the starry sky. This hotel was the sickest one we'd stayed in in South America by far, mainly because it was beachside and gave us a front row seat to all the drop-dead-gorgeous eye candy who strutted about all day in barely there bikinis. It also had two pools available which kept the crowds at a minimum, one being on the ground floor for the commoners, and the other on the rooftop which only the penthouse guests were allowed to access. That included our entire team. That's where they'd held the party tonight that I'd dipped from.