ripped jeans | hes

sixty

"How're you feeling?"

"Okay." I sniffed, flipping open the sun visor in Harry's Range Rover and looking at the redness in my face and puffiness in my eyes. "I look like a mess."

"You look beautiful." Harry guaranteed me, taking one hand off the steering wheel and using it to pick at the frays at his ripped jeans.

"I don't want my parents to think that I was crying." I murmured, leaning my head back on the seat and wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

"You shouldn't be ashamed to cry." Harry said.

"I know, but." I shrugged, my voice trailing out the window and flying away with the warm wind that cut past the car as we aimlessly drove around with no true destination.

"I don't like to see you cry." Harry muttered. "I fucking hate it."

"Sorry." I whispered, not knowing what else to say.

"Do you think we can try this whole thing again?" Harry swirled his finger around in the air, gesturing a replay. "The whole Zayn thing."

"I-"

"Just walk me through what happened." I could tell that he was making an effort to keep his voice calm. "That's it. Can you do that for me, love?"

I let out a sharp breath and put my hands in my lap. "I was in line. He comes up behind me and mistakes me for somebody named Gi. I turn back around but he starts to ask me what he should get. We start talking about how I lived in LA, how he moved out to LA, dropped out of school, stuff like that. He also said something about trying to blend in and how he doesn't like journalists, which I thought was kind of weird. He seemed nice enough. But after we both ordered, he asked my name but I didn't get his name until the barista called it."

"Alright." Harry said after a minute of thinking, his hand combing through his curls.

"What?"

"Nothing." I could sense his change of tone.

"I told you it was nothing." I grabbed Harry's yellow-tinted Ray Bans from his glove compartment and put them on my face, covering my tired eyes. "It was nothing."

"I mean, it was something." He pushed, wanting a reaction from me.

"Whatever." I mumbled, crossing my ankles together. "Who fucking cares anyway?"

"I do, Ad." He stated as if it were obvious. "I don't know what Zayn is up to. Zayn is sneaky."

I looked over at Harry. "Who is Zayn?"

"He is Zayn."

"I've established that." I rolled my eyes at him. "But really. Who is he? Why are you so far up his ass?"

Harry readjusted his back against the car seat before carding his fingers through his beautiful mane. "I just have a long history with Zayn. We all do."

"Okay..."

Harry exhaled loudly before speaking. "We were all good mates, me, Louis, Liam, Niall, and Zayn. Sophia was our close friend all well, but us boys were inseparable. Our families were best friends, and we tried to hang out whenever possible and we talked on the phone almost every day. We were like a little gang, bless us." He chuckled, a small smile creeping up on his lips before retracting into a frown. "When we turned 18, we applied for student visas and were accepted. We move to some random flat smack in the middle of downtown LA. We were working towards starting up One Direction, and the Columbia Record people were up our ass everyday about joining their label but we're so caught up with uni and settling in LA, we lost track of our music. Zayn, that sneaky fucking bastard, said he needs some money to send back home. My boys always come first, so I asked Taron to send Zayn, that motherfucker, some money so he could help his family. At the time, Taron had been paying me monthly, a small amount of money to pay the bills and get basic shit to survive, you know. So anyway, I told Taron to give Zayn all of our money for that month and a little more. Zayn took the money, which is a couple thousand, and after a few days, he just...disappeared."