You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Thirty Four

Zayn:

In my room, I lay down for a quick nap before I headed out to meet Louis and the guys.

From below, the sounds of the piano rumbled like musical thunder. Harry playing for Marcel.

The piece was unlike anything I’d ever heard—pounding and intense and stunningly complicated. A storm of sound that shuddered and rampaged, as if Harry were trying to bring the house crashing down to its foundation.

Maybe he was. He and I were under the same roof and yet miles away, me lying up here on a bed and wanting him and him taking out his feelings on the instrument below.

Harry had all of that in him, and only I knew it.

Give him time. You promised.

The music stopped. I drifted to sleep.

~~~~~

“Hey, man.” Louis gave my arm a nudge and jerked his chin at my empty glass.

“You’re hitting the soda water pretty
hard. You okay?”

“Yep. Fine.”

It was just the two of us at Smoke & Mirrors so far—Charlie was running late, and Malcolm had canceled, wanting to avoid a huge rainstorm that was set to hit that
night.

Louis had rolled his eyes at that text, saying, “If we stayed in every time it rained—in Seattle—we’d turn into mole men.”

Now, I sat hunched over my drink facing the bar while Louis sat resting his back against it to scope out the crowd that was thin for a Saturday night.

“You sure you’re all right?” Louis asked.

“Because you blew off that party I told you about, and the last time we hung out, you wanted to discuss conversion therapy, of all
things.”

“I told you, I couldn’t make the party because I got called to work that night.”

“Uh huh. And speaking of your work, since you took the job with Billionaire Who Shall Not Be Named, you either vanish or you show up looking like a sad boy.”

“I’m not sad,” I said. “I’m. . .conflicted.”

Louis raised a pierced eyebrow.

I sighed. “Okay, so there’s a guy.”

“I knew it!” He slapped his hand on the thigh of his stylishly ripped jeans. “Oh, honey, I get it. When I don’t hear from you, you’re in the bliss, right? And then shit happens, and you reemerge into the real world.”

“I guess.” I turned my glass around, thinking of what Harry had been put through and what it was doing to us.

“The real world can be a really shitty place.”

“Indeed,” Louis said. “So tell me about him.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m your friend. You can tell me anything.”

“No, I literally can’t.”

Louis’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “A fellow nurse? The butler? The billionaire himself?”

I chuckled. “You’re out of guesses.”

“Is it serious?”

“I. . . Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t tell him everything, but I wanted to be honest wherever I could.

“Yeah, I think it’s serious. Or it could be.”

“How serious?”

I promised to protect my heart and instead I ripped it out of my chest and handed it to Harry Styles.