Taking Chances

There was a loud knock at the door that sounded throughout the apartment. “Coming!” I called out, trying to smooth down a single hair that simply refused to lie flat. Finally, I sighed and accepted the truth that there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it.

I opened the front door and admitted Zayn to the apartment. His hair was unstyled, and he was wearing the ugliest shirt I’d ever seen, some white, button-up thing with checkered sleeves and a black pocket.

I stared at his torso with disdain. “Oh my God…what the hell is that?”

“What?” he asked, looking down at himself. “Do I have a stain or something?”

“That whole thing is a stain,” I grimaced. “Is that yours, or did you steal that from someone else?”

He snickered, probably thinking about his obsession with stealing clothes from the other band members. “No, this one’s mine. Why?”

“It’s hideous. I can’t…” I took a step back and pointedly looked at the wall behind him. “I can’t even look at you with that on. It’s really nasty.”

“That’s easily fixed,” he teased, reaching for the bottom hem of his shirt and yanking it up.

“Hey, keep your clothes on, boy,” I laughed, reaching over and pulling the bottom back down around his hips. “You’re going to scar Rebecca.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Are you inferring that she wouldn’t appreciate seeing me shirtless?”

“I’m not inferring it. I’m saying it point-blank.”

He started laughing and shook his head. “Alright. Well, what do you want me to do then?”

“Come on,” I urged, taking his hand and dragging him into my room.

“Mmm, straight to business, then?” he joked, looking around my bedroom as I rummaged through my bureau.

“Oh, cut it out,” I chuckled in spite of myself. A minute later, I found the t-shirt I was looking for and threw it at him. “Put that on.”

He opened it up and looked at it. “Batman?” he remarked, noticing the symbol on the front.

“Yes, Batman. Do you have an issue with that?”

He shrugged, but didn’t say anything, deciding that it would be better just to do what I told him.

Once he was changed into a more appropriate shirt, I took the old one in my hand and bunched it into a ball, chucking it into the corner of the room. “That’s not going home with you,” I warned. “Because I’m going to burn it. Somehow.”

Zayn laughed and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, kissing the top of my head. “I had no idea an article of my clothing could offend you so much.”

“You thought wrong.” I shuddered and let out a groan. “I never want to see you wearing anything that horrific again. We clear?”

He nodded obediently as he sat down on the couch next to me, his eyes locked on me, as if he was waiting for me to start ranting about his poor fashion taste.

But instead, I went back to a subject that had been bugging me. “So why was Harper at your apartment?”

There was a long silence, which I tried not to think of as a villain dwelling in his guilt. Finally, he admitted, “Okay, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Last week, when I went to your house to make up with you, Harper was there. Why?”

When reality settled in, a faint pink flush blossomed across his cheeks. “Oh, God. I was kind of hoping you forgot about that.”

“Why?” My stomach turned to stone and dropped, my mouth going completely dry.

“Because…” He sighed. “Ugh, I don’t want to tell you. It’s embarrassing.”

“Zayn…” I trailed off warningly.

“Fine, fine.” He put up his hands in defeat. “I kind of invited Harper over to give me advice about what I should do with you.”

“Wait…what?” I could feel my whole face scrunch up with strong confusion as I stared at my boyfriend.

He let out a long sigh before explaining. “It’s just…I felt so shitty about our fight, and I knew that I said stuff that I didn’t mean, that I just said to hurt you as much as you hurt me. So I figured that you were beyond pissed at me. And since Charlie was at X Factor, and Rebecca’s your best friend and would definitely tell you if I called to talk to her, I invited Harper over to give me advice on the best way to apologize to you. We had just formulated this whole plan, and she was about to help me find the ring when you showed up and ruined everything.”

“Oh, I ruined everything?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow.

“You know what I mean,” he covered with a smile. “More like erased everything I ever planned and wrote in your own idea. Kind of like you always do.”

“Which is a damn good thing,” I huffed.

There was a short pause before I turned toward him more, folding my right leg under my left. “Alright, while I’m asking things about last week, I might as well touch upon this…”

He understood immediately. “Ah…the Twitter thing.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, my eyes darting to the couch. “What was that all about?”

I looked up just in time to see him shaking his head in irritation. “I was sitting in my apartment, feeling massively guilty about our whole argument and everything I said and did, so I wanted to go through my Twitter feed and read about all the people who thought I was great because they didn’t know me.”

My eyebrows drew together, and I wanted to chime in a comment about how sad that was, but Zayn kept talking so I didn’t have a chance.

“But instead of finding a bunch of nice comments, I found all these terrible ones about how I was too good to date you, how ugly they thought you were, how untalented they thought you were, what a prude they thought you were…”

My face burned severely, but Zayn had enough tact to pretend not to notice.

“After about a hundred of those comments, I just got really sick of it all and told them all off. And, in a way, I felt like that was the thing I had to do to make amends with myself about what I said to you. It kind of balanced out all the energy, I guess.”

“It definitely did,” I nodded, grinning. “When I saw it, the night before I made up with you, I was ready to run to your house, looking like an absolute slob, at one in the morning to throw myself in your arms.”

“You could have, you know,” he snickered.

“No, I really couldn’t have. You have no idea how I looked.”

“I bet you were still beautiful.”

I let out a snort of laughter. “You’re supposed to say that. Trust me, I looked like a hot mess.”

“Emphasis on the hot?”

I contorted my face in denial. “Emphasis on the mess, definitely.”

He shook his head as he hooked a hand around the base of my neck. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe what you want, but it’ll mean denying reality,” I breathed as his mouth came ever-closer to mine.

“Reality’s overrated,” he rushed before pressing his lips to mine. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he immediately relaxed, melting under my touch.

As my heart began to race, I couldn’t help but feel relieved that all the drama was behind us, and I could focus on just loving him.