27. Zayn
Zayn
“Annie?” I call out when I enter our apartment. I’m used to her waiting in the living room, book in one hand, tea in the other.
“In here,” she calls out from down the hallway.
I drop my bag by the door and make my way to my room.
“What are you wearing?” I ask, easily recognizing one of my old college t-shirts.
She looks down for a moment, apparently forgetting that she borrowed something that didn’t belong to her. When she looks back at me, her cheeks are a beautiful shade of red. Her bottom lip disappears and she averts her gaze again.
“I wanted something cozy,” Annie says.
“And if I wanted you to take it off?” I lean against the frame of the door, crossing one leg over the over.
“I can’t do that, I’m busy painting my nails, Zayn.” Annie holds her hand up to me in a duh -like fashion.
“It’s almost midnight, why are you doing this now?”
“Who are you? The nail polish police?” She goes back to painting her nails, folding one of her legs in front of her so she’s sitting in a half pretzel. She’s not even wearing any pants, this fucking woman. Teasing me in my own house, in my own shirt.
I hold both of my hands up in front of me. “Hey, don’t get sassy with me. I just got home.”
“Oh, right, how was Emmett’s? Come sit.”
I’m not going to say no to that. I walk to the other side of the bed and sit next to her, leaning my back on the pillows.
“It was good. Different. I haven’t hung out with anyone in a while.”
“Since something mysteriously happened a year ago?” Annie peeks at me for a moment, gauging my reaction. I just nod and she goes back to painting the next nail.
“Why haven’t you asked me what happened?”
“You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” is all she says.
“No one ever gives me the space.”
“You haven’t let anyone in, Z, in a long time it seems like.”
She’s not wrong, I haven’t. Not even my family.
“I want to tell you because you deserve to know.”
“As long as you want to tell me, that’s all that matters,” Annie says.
“You don’t want to know?”
“Of course I want to know, Zayn.” Annie puts the nail polish down. “I want to know everything about you. It kills me to not know what happened, to not know how she hurt you when everything seemed perfect from the outside.”
“It did seem perfect from the outside, didn’t it?” I ask. “It seemed perfect to me, too. I thought everything was going well. I know we had a bumpy few years and had a few breaks.”
“Weren’t you on a break when...” Annie trails off.
“When I came on to you in my parents kitchen, even though you were with my brother?” I finish the sentence for her.
“Yes,” Annie whispers, her cheeks flushing deep red.
“Yes, we were on our longest break then. That time was six months, and I wasn’t sure we’d get back together. But we did, and I don’t know. I thought she was the one. But she’s not.”
“How do you know that?” Annie says, still painting her nails like she’s trying to be placid about this conversation.
“Because I’ve realized that she never got under my skin to the point that I wanted to pin her to the wall and show her who’s in control. I never found myself missing her every time we were apart, regardless of how long. And I especially didn’t feel the same way about her as I feel about you.”
I’m out of breath by the time I’m done confessing what’s in my heart, what’s been driving me crazy.
“Oh,” Annie says, her eyes still on her nails. But then she looks my way, meeting my eyes, and says, “I’ve never felt like this before either.”
I refrain from pulling her toward me because I still haven’t told her what happened.
“Well, that makes me extremely happy,” I say, because it’s true, and we both chuckle. “But I want to tell you what happened if you want to know.”
“I want to know.”
“A year ago, on the beach that we visit practically every week, I proposed to Marissa. She said no, told me I was holding her back from chasing her dreams.”
She shakes her head, then looks at me with wide eyes. “What?”
“Yeah.”
“She didn’t deserve you.”
“I know that now, but for the longest time I hated myself and everyone around me.” And now I don’t.
“Thank you for telling me.” Annie blows on each nail carefully, trying to dry the polish.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, it’s just hard to talk about.
A lot of articles had to be covered up and taken down, it took Logan and my team weeks of nonstop work to make sure that nothing negative was in the press.
And I became the asshole that the press couldn’t stop talking about anyway.
Then you came along.” I lay a hand on her knee, squeezing once.
“Then I came along and rocked your world.” Annie winks.
Damn. I love this girl.
Fuck .