All is Fair: Zayn Malik Fanfiction

Chapter 11

*Zayn's POV*

I wait outside of the art classroom. Jessie will be here soon, the second bell will ring any second, and she would not miss the day we present our project. A couple of people walk into the classroom, and I notice Jessie trying to blend in with them.

I grab her by the shoulders and pin her to the wall. She struggles against me to get free.

"I need to talk to you," I insist.

"And this was your best idea?"

I stare into her eyes. She never responded to my text or calls, I do not think this is overboard. The bell rings.

"Ugh." She shoves me off of her with her binder and walks through the door.

I rush after her and grab her arm to turn her around. "Jessie," I say sternly, and maybe a bit too loudly, because the entire class turns around to look at us. She pushes my hand off of her and storms to her seat. I am glad we still sit next to each other. It is the one time she cannot escape me.

A note. I pull out a pen and paper from my bag and start to write. It seems elementary, but if it follows through, then I do not care. I slide it to her, and she slides it back. I do it again, and this time she shoves it back. I smile. It reminds me of how we used to act. I slowly inch it to her again, this time to just entertain myself, and she grabs the note and slams it in front of me. Too much fun.

"Jessie," Mr. Reynolds says. "Would you like to share that with the class?"

Her eyes widen. "Not really, no."

"You know the rule."

She glares at me as she moves up to the front of the classroom. I shrug. It was not my fault. But now she has to read it. Her eyes whip over the words on the paper before she begins to read.

"Hey. We haven't really talked since that night you were over." People already start to whisper and snicker. She looks back to Mr. Reynolds with a red face, and he nods at her to continue reading. She takes an unsteady breath and begins again. "And these one-sided conversations aren't working. I need to know why you can't forgive me. I want to fix us. And I know you know I'm sorry, I've said it 1000 times, but obviously that's not what you want to hear. But what else is there to say? It's the truth, and that's all to say when I don't know the exact reason why you won't talk to me. You need to know how much I regret what I did. I swear, everything before that night was real. So can you please come talk to me?"

The class is silent, but only because their minds are processing exactly what the note was about. It is clear that people could come up with twisted ideas of what the note means, I probably could have been more specific. Jessie stands in the front of the classroom looking at everyone in the class, understanding that they are contemplating what it is about. She drops the note on the ground and shuffles out of the classroom. Oh crap. I raise up from the chair and look over to Mr. Reynolds, who motions me to follow her. I jog around the classroom to the hallway. I peer down the halls expecting her to have gone far by now. But she has stopped a few feet from the door. She is sitting with her back against the wall. Her knees are up against her chest, and her arms lay on the ground limply like a marionette.

She glances up to me and crosses her arm on her knees. I take short and silent steps and slide down next to her. I choose the right time to place my arm around her, and she falls into me.

It is awful comforting her now. Against something that I did. The only reason she welcomes it is because she is really hurt. It bothers me that this is only temporary.

She lays her heads on my shoulder, and I play with her fingers while she calms down. She finally says the magic words, "Let's talk."

I wake up and begin to speak. "I'm sorry" is the first thing to come to my mind.

She cuts me off there. "I know you're sorry, Zayn, you've said it 1000 times." She speaks irritably, and I already know that this will not be easy.

"Then why can't you forgive me? Why can't we just go back to normal?" I find myself raising my voice.

"Because," she snaps. "You still did it. Even if you were half drunk, you showed me that you cared more about how you looked to your friends that about me. Do you know how awful that made you seem to me?" I can actually hear the hurt in her voice. And it hits me harder than I thought it could. "And how can I know that it was all real? That you weren't just pitying me because my dad died? It's happened before. And besides, the school year is almost over. There's no way we would last while going to different colleges. People have said bad things about you, in case you didn't know. And after you showed me you could turn on me that easily-"

She does not continue.

My god. "You're over-thinking. You don't know that any of what you said is true. Can't we just try? We can forget the party. It was stupid."

"I want to forget everything, Zayn," She says faintly, in a voice that can stab, though. "We can move on. You know we can't be forever anyways. And stopping it now would just make it easier. Before we had a chance to really hurt each other."

She glances up at me with her big green eyes. "You're, right," I say. She does a double take, like she was expecting me to argue more. I smile. She just has an innocent way of amusing me with everything she does.

We sit on the ground watching a few people pass by who stare at us. I continue to play with her hands. I put our hands up together. Hers are tiny compared to mine. And her hands are so soft.

This moment might have been perfect.

I clear my throat to shake the thought. "So when we see each other in the halls, how will it be?" I ask to break the silence.

"I don't know. Back to how it was before we met, I guess."

"We can't even say hi to each other?"

She lazily smiles. "We never even acknowledged each other before the party."

That is true. "How about before the project? Before all the drama started?"

"Okay."

I squeeze her hand. This will be okay. "Then I guess we can go back to class." It has to be okay. I push myself up and hold out a hand to her. She grabs it and I drag her into a hug. A teacher walks by, and Jessie tries to shake me off. I hold her tighter.

"We have a project to present," she says, her voice muffled by my jacket.

"I know."

"I can't breathe, Zayn."

"That's okay."

She groans. I release her finally after she starts to whine too much.

We walk back into the silent classroom. They all stare at us again. Like they were listening to our conversation. I swear, they feed on the drama Jessie and I have.

"It's nice of you to join us again," Mr. Reynolds says. "Why don't we let your group go next?"

We present our project, and it ends up exactly as planned. As Jessie speaks to the class, her voice lacks its natural animation. Everyone notices. I watch her as she talks. Her eyes move from end to end of the audience and then flicker to mine. I look away to the floor. Man, this is terrible already. How can we make it through the year like this? There are two and a half more months of school left, and we have to spend them denying whatever we feel toward each other. Two and a half more months until we are most likely separated forever. I actually agreed to this.