You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Twenty Nine

Disclaimer: The following chapter would be a bit more sad and emotional you might need some tissues just in case. Here we go.

Harry:

Zayn arrived forty-five minutes later. I opened the door to see him in his usual get up—jeans, jacket, boots.

My first instinct was to haul him to me and smash my mouth against his, but I heroically restrained myself.

“Security is tight around this joint,” Zayn said. “I’m amazed I got in without a strip search.”

He slipped out of his jacket to reveal a plain white T-shirt that was almost worse than him wearing nothing, given how it clung to his skin and highlighted his lean muscle
definition.

Fucking hell, Zayn, don’t talk about being strip-searched.

I coughed and hung up his jacket for him in the entry closet. “Make yourself at home. You want something to eat? Drink?”

“Maybe later,” he said, wandering my apartment, his hands jammed in the front pockets of his jeans.

“This place is huge,” he said. He gave a low whistle at the piano.

“I thought you said you only played for Marcel.” He shot me a trademark Zayn Malik know-it-all glance. “Looks new.”

“Yeah, it’s new,” I said. “I don’t know why I bought it. Felt like it.”

“I can relate. My impulse buys usually involve grand pianos. Sometimes I’ll throw a BMW into the cart, if I’m in the mood.”

“Don’t wealth-shame me, Malik.”

He smirked. “That’s not a thing.”

I sat on the couch, watching Zayn go to the wall-to-wall windows that revealed all of Seattle falling under the amber twilight.

“Not a bad view, Styles. Not bad at all.” He turned with that other smile of his I loved, the quiet one that was reflected in his deep golden brown eyes.

“So. How’re you doing?”

I frowned. “Why aren’t you pissed at me for going radio silent for a whole week?”

“I was. Kinda hurt, if I’m being honest, but mostly worried. I had to eavesdrop on Cesar to know you were at the Pharma offices and not drinking yourself into a stupor.”

“I chucked all the booze in the house. And I’ve stopped taking the cold showers.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s. . .” I shook my head. “It’s fucking humiliating, is what it is.”

Zayn crossed the living room and sat on the leather chair opposite me.

“It’s what happened, Haz.”

Somehow, the simplicity of those words helped to loosen the shame’s hold on me.

“So what do I do? Just start talking Just. . .vomit all my horrible shit into your lap?”

“Yes,” he said. “If you’re ready.”

“And if I’m not?”

He shrugged. “Then we order takeout and watch the Mariners not make the World Series. Again.”

“That works for me, actually.”

Zayn waited.

I sighed.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“The cold showers?” he asked gently.

“Does that mean more than what it usually means?”