Neon Red [Order The eBook] [Zayn]

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(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.)

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Primal and naked

You dream of walls that hold us imprisoned

It's just a skull, least that's what they call it

And we're free to roam

Frank Ocean | White Ferrari

Deeper we wandered into this thing as the months passed and made us crazed and inseparable. Behind the scenes, we spent every free moment together, the tour and its endless string of hotel rooms making it all possible. I thought back to the beginning of the year and realized I'd gone from listening to Jhené Aiko's "The Worst" on a loop every day to barely containing myself until we met up again. Stolen hours weren't enough. Neither were passing glances and innuendo-laced texts. I needed him in front of me always, or we both fell apart.

Something about this time around felt different. Our rendezvous were plagued by a gluttonous insatiability that drove us to inhumane amounts of sex, and self-medicating in between with varying substances. My go-to was weed. His was tequila. We'd dabbled a time or two with more potent remedies, but even the opioid-induced ecstasy of some of the most powerful pharmaceuticals on the market were no match for the high we experienced together. Limitless elevation; in and of each other. What made it far more compelling was that he and I had both been through the ringer and somehow survived. In fact, we had emerged more ruthless than before, willing to tear down anything and anyone who stood in the way of our being together.

During a momentary lapse in judgement, I tried calling off the engagement to honor what he and I had discovered, but Pez lost her mind, threatening to kill herself if I left. She said she'd be too humiliated to keep living after the media had made such a big deal of us looking to get hitched. I agreed in the end, determining it would look idiotic for us to call it quits within a year of getting engaged, but I still thought I owed it to him to eliminate the final hindrance to our peace. He had given up all for me, including random hookups and the birds he kept on speed-dial during our tour breaks. What exactly had I given up for him?

Having gotten back on the road in late May, we spent time together in Dublin and discussed where we wanted to end up in the long run as far as commitment and going public was concerned, and every scenario presented seemed implausible. We quickly determined there was no safe way to let society in and survive. My family would disown me, and the label would likely go ballistic. The meeting with Amy last year still played havoc with my mind from time to time, and all I could recall was that grainy footage of he and I fooling around in an elevator, and her using the word: gay. Hard-stop. Huge no for me. Fuck labels. Whatever he and I had was too fucking magnificent to be reduced to mere sexual orientation. It transcended all earthly constructs, and was far too lit to be neatly defined or filed away. For people to have us 'pegged'. Even the suggestion was insulting.

Still, there was no realistic way to avoid particular labels and all the pejoratives and connotations that accompanied them. Not if he and I ever went public. So the choice became staying silent and preserving the dignity of whatever we had amongst ourselves, or taking it to the streets and allowing the world to rip us apart, limb by limb. No one, and I do mean no one could understand how complex our relationship truly was. Imperceptible. Inexpressible. Inviolable. Even to he and I.