You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Forty Five

Zayn:

Uncle Zayn! Uncle Zayn!”

Jamie tugged on my jacket while Brent wrapped himself around my leg as I came through the front door of my sister’s house.

“You’re back!” Jamie said. “Can we go to the zoo now?”

“I want to see the monkeys,” Brent said. “And eat Dippin’ Dots.”

“You are a monkey,” I said, laughing and tried not to whack either one of my six-year-old nephews with the grocery bags in my hands. “The zoo is tomorrow, guys. Remember?”

“Settle down, boys.” Doniya came down the front hall and took the bags out of my hands. “They’ve been climbing the walls. You’ve been gone entirely too long.”

“An hour?” The smile on my face made my cheeks ache.

“They missed you.” She gave me a peck on the forehead. “Who could blame them?”

It’d been two weeks since I’d arrived at my sister’s house in Raleigh, North Carolina, and those two weeks had done wonders to heal the cracks in our family.

Doniya was slammed with work for her magazine that was coming up on its Christmas and Hanukkah issue. Her husband, Ted, worked late hours in a marketing firm. I took advantage and spent as much time as I could with the twins during the day.

“I don’t want you to become our live-in nanny,” Doniya had said. “You’re not here to work.”

“It’s not work,” I’d said. “It’s the furthest thing.”

My sister moved her work to her home office and loaned me her car. I took the boys to school every morning and picked them up.

We spent afternoons and weekends at
outdoor parks, trampoline parks, roller rinks.

When the boys had gone to bed, I spent long hours at night with my sister on her couch, watching movies or talking and making up for lost time.

I told her everything, including the rawest, worst times of my life, when I’d been homeless and on the street.

I talked about everything but Harry.

At the end of every talk, Doniya would say,
“And?”

I’d answer,“Not tonight.”

I needed a time-out from life. I needed to shoot the shit and joke around with Doniya’s husband, Ted.

I needed the boys and their wild energy. I needed this house that was warm and homey, and I needed the love of family.

I wrapped it all around myself like a blanket and let nothing else in. No texts. No social media. No outside world.

Aside from letting Louis know I was okay, the only text I’d sent had been to Harry when I first arrived in Raleigh.

I’m out of town visiting my sister in NC for a little while.

Okay, he replied, and that was the end of our conversation.

I couldn’t blame him.

He’d needed me to stick around but
I couldn’t be kept like a dirty secret. But now that I was out of that maelstrom of turmoil, that ugly feeling of being right and completely wrong at the same time was the only thing that disturbed the happiness of being here.

A week later, late on Halloween night, long after I’d taken Thing One and Thing Two trick-or-treating and was falling asleep in my guest room bed, my phone chimed a text.