Heavy Heart

Finals week was upon them – the last week of class slipping through their fingers Daria had worked the whole way through, trying harder than ever to Dr. James that she deserved to have him accept that paper from so long ago. She needed to go into finals week with a clean slate – with a sliver of hope of maintaining her sought-after 4.0 grade point average. He had it in his hands. He said he’d think about it.

“Olivia,” Daria called as she entered their room, only to be met with the sight of her belongings in her suitcase. With a week left, it was time to start saying goodbye. She thought maybe the best way to start was with her clothes, the only physical thing that would be coming back with her.

Olivia sat on the floor, surrounded by a sea of art history textbooks, blue paint streaked across her cheeks, a pile of crumpled papers stacked next to her. She glanced to Daria with a wild look of stress in her eyes, the weight of every one of her sixteen credits crushing her whole.

Everything seemed to weigh more than it ever had – their schoolwork, Daria’s meltdown, her quiet confession between the folds of Harry’s sheets, their bodies together the morning afterward. As promised, she flushed the rest of her bottle of Prozac upon her return to Birmingham, vowing to stay away from it as much as possible. She could do this on her own. She could do this with Harry’s help, she knew she could. Now that he was clued into her anxiety, it was like the missing piece finally fit. He could be the one to hold her hand through it all.

She hardly heard anything from him all week, his presence distant with the whirlwind of responsibilities that came with preparing for tour. Of course, she couldn’t blame him for that, but it was hard on her when he had become her escape, her security, and her steady rock in the middle of it all. It had been ages since she’d seen any of the other guys, all wrapped up in their individual lives. Daria missed them, she missed them a lot.

“Daria…” Olivia moaned in frustration, banging her head on her knees a few times to accentuate her stress. Daria wracked her brain for options to cheer up her best friend, the girl who had been there for her even before Harry had.

“Let’s get out of here,” Daria suggested urgently, setting her backpack on the chair at her desk to pack it full of necessary items. “Let’s have a change of scenery.”

“But where?” Olivia questioned, pushing her honey hair out of her face, leaving a trail of paint along the edge of her bangs.

“I know just the place,” Daria hummed triumphantly. Just the place – far away from Birmingham and from all their stressors that surrounded them. Far away from everything.



“Daria Holmes, you’re absolutely ridiculous. You know that?”

Olivia and Daria stood at Zayn’s door, a collection of belongings in tow. Daria gave him the best smile she could manage under the weight of her textbooks, Olivia doing the same from beneath a large canvas. Zayn shook his head but returned the smile, opening the door more fully to let them in.

“You’re the best Zayn,” she hummed excitedly, dropping her belongings in the doorway to envelop him in a hug. He laughed into her ear, his mouth at just the height of the middle of her head. “Thank you for having us.”

“Thank you for inviting yourself over,” he teased, squeezing her top-knot a couple times as he pulled away. Daria shook her head and giggled. Zayn was just the big brother figure they both needed in that moment, someone to make them laugh while they studied for tests, to give Olivia artistic guidance and to make runs to his enormous kitchen whenever the girls needed snacks. Zayn’s company was invaluable to Daria, just another friend who she’d come to love dearly. Another friend she would soon be saying goodbye to.

He moved to Olivia and wrapped her in a hug, picking at the paint on her cheek with joking fingertips. “Niall and Harry should be here eventually, I know they both said they would come over to hang out with us. Liam and Louis are busy with their ladies, of course. Before we head out, that is.”

Daria nodded gravely, being forced to recognize the boys’ imminent departure once more. The last few months had been a treasure, not only to Daria but also to their families. It seemed the boys never sat still, always touring, always recording, always promoting. It was a sweet miracle to have had as much time with them as she did, and now that sweet miracle seemed to be coming to an end. They would leave for America shortly after her departure, only coming back for Christmas and then heading out the next day. Daria couldn’t imagine leading her life like that.

As if on cue, a shock of blonde hair appeared in the doorway – one Niall Horan, to be exact. “Sorry I’m late,” he lilted in his distinct accent, kissing Daria on the cheek in greeting. “I’m absolutely starving. Please tell me we’re gonna have snacks.”

Olivia greeted Niall shyly, having not seen him since their encounter on Halloween, where they’d danced the night away in their silly costumes. Daria exchanged a glance with Zayn as Niall placed a friendly kiss on Olivia’s cheek, raising her eyebrows in her direction. Somehow, Zayn managed to understand her, even when she didn’t use her words. Watching and Niall and Olivia interact soberly would be interesting to say the least.

“Where’s Harry?” Zayn asked, closing the door behind them.

“Said he’d be coming separately,” Niall explained as he slipped his feet out of his Nike Dunk high tops. “I’d expect him to be here any time though.”

Daria’s heart sunk a little bit at the thought of having to wait longer to see Harry. It had been days since her lips had touched his, far too long in her opinion; especially with the amount of time they had left. She was aching to see him, even just to be in his presence. But she decided to hold tight and wait for him, because at that point it was all she could do.

Zayn’s futuristic country home in Hertfordshire was just the escape Daria and Olivia needed – and they agreed upon this with the boys as they walked through the home to the kitchen to get Niall his snacks. They holed up in a cozy room together, one with a television for Niall to watch football when it came on at seven and a radio to help Olivia create artistic fusion in the meantime.

“Populations is what’s going to kill me,” Daria mused, paging through a stack of notes printed off that counted towards a hundred. “There’s just so much of it. And so much math. I can do math, but Jesus. So many calculations to be made.”

“Maths,” Zayn hummed in correction, shooting baskets into the garbage with leftover Maoams wrappers. “In Britain, we call it maths.”

“I don’t care what you call it, whoever decided you should combine letters and numbers and make you solve for them is evil,” Daria challenged as she highlighted important equations on about the fiftieth page.

Zayn shrugged, shooting another wrapper into the garbage. Daria glanced over her shoulder coyly to see Niall and Olivia sitting rather close on the floor, teasing each other in their blistering, arcane accents. He was watching her paint with careful eyes, trying hard not to seem too interested and at the same time, unable to resist giving her his undivided attention. She was painting an obscure self-portrait, a mirror posed in front of her to get a better glimpse as she painted her face in shades of green. Niall’s eyes darted back and forth between Olivia and her reflection in the mirror, the corners of his full lips tugging involuntarily.

Daria didn’t know how she didn’t think of it before, the unfathomable breadth of Olivia’s personality meshing perfectly with Niall’s unabashed honesty and playful nature. They were just the right amount of opposite and just the right amount of the same. She could hear them joking about a mutual friend from Ireland as Olivia streaked paint across Niall’s nose with her messy, worn paintbrush. It put a strange warmth in Daria’s soul to know that when she was gone, some shred of her little group of friends would remain. Maybe Niall and Olivia could be the new Daria and Harry, the new hinge of their social circle. Until Daria could make it back to England, that is.

“When are we eating dinner?” Niall complained as he attempted to wipe some of the paint back on Olivia’s cheek.

“You’re a bottomless pit,” Olivia lilted. “You’d think you could get a bit of meat on your bones for how much you eat, you know.”

“I have an unusually fast metabolism,” he whined in return, finally catching the corner of her lip with his nose and transferring the paint onto her skin. Olivia reeled in laughter, threatening him once again with her paintbrush.

“If you two get paint on anything other than each other, I swear,” Zayn threatened, shaking his head before turning to Daria. “Could you use a break? I wouldn’t mind the company.”

Daria nodded, setting down the highlighter and following Zayn out of the room into the expansive kitchen. Again, she could never imagine living in such a luxurious home, the way she felt when she went to Harry’s for the first time. Zayn pulled a few boxes of frozen foods from the fridge, placing them on a tray to put in the oven as Daria perched on a stool at the breakfast bar.

“How’ve you been?” Zayn asked after a moment of silence between them. “You know, since…?”

“Good,” Daria answered immediately, “keeping busy. With finals and everything, you know, it’s hard not to be busy.”

Her heart froze in her chest fearful of talking to Zayn about her seemingly endless plethora of instability. He was her friend but not necessarily her confidant; she didn’t want to place the weight of the world on his shoulders too when she’d already spread the share so thick.

“Yeah, I would guess so,” he agreed. “Never really fancied any of that stuff very much. School, that is.”
Daria sighed, thankful for him not pushing too hard for answers. “Oh Zayn, how desperately you fit into your stereotype.”

He scoffed, setting the timer on the stove for some undetermined amount just long enough to defrost the meal. “Last time I try and talk to you to comfort you.”

“I appreciate you trying,” Daria mused, setting her chin on the cold, granite countertop. “I just really wish I could talk to my mom.”

Zayn leaned back on the counter across from her, hoisting himself up onto it in one smooth, swift motion. “When’s the last time you talked to her?” he asked gingerly in his thick accent, resting his head back on the cabinetry. He was wearing his hair the way Daria liked, relaxed and shaggy across his forehead, not so goddamn processed and terribly un-Zayn-like.

“Oh…” Daria murmured awkwardly while twiddling at her thumbs, the polish Poppy had painted on them chipping at the tips. “When the news first came out about me and Harry, I suppose. She made a big deal about it and we kind of had a blow out.”

Zayn nodded, his dark eyes full of intent. Daria felt like he wouldn’t look away even if he wanted to, his dedication to her had grown so strong. It made her heart ache to think that in a week, she wouldn’t know when she would be reunited with him – or with any of them, for that matter. They’d all grown so important to her – Zayn and the boys, Olivia and the girls, Anne and Robin and not to mention Harry – and then she was going to have to leave them. And face her mother.

“ I’m still so mad at her, especially that she hasn’t tried to contact me at all,” Daria muttered bitterly, biting at her lip so hard it could have burst beneath the pressure. “But then again I haven’t tried to contact her.”

“It takes two to tango,” Zayn agreed with a nod. “Or something like that.”

Daria exuded a laugh, shaking her head in disbelief. “Jesus, Zayn, you’re a dork. But yeah… I will have to see her in a week. And I don’t know what to say to her.”

Zayn crossed his arms in front of his chest, the tattoos on his forearms bulging with strength. “Tell her how you feel, Daria. She’s your mother, she loves you.”

“She’s mad at me Zayn,” Daria protested, “for abandoning her. And she’ll be mad at me for not wanting to come back.”

“Daria, love, listen to me,” Zayn replied with a sigh. “Sometimes you can’t please everyone, even your own mother. You have to please yourself. And while she may not acknowledge it, she wants your happiness. I’m sure things will be better once you can see each other face to face.”

Suddenly, the tonal sound of a phone ringing came from Zayn’s pocket, causing him to jump down from the counter to answer. He glanced quickly at the caller ID, then to Daria, signaling her with a single finger that he would be back in a minute. Daria was left to chip at her fingernails again.

When Zayn returned, he had a somber look on his face. “Harry isn’t feeling well, he says. But he’ll meet up with us in London before we all go out to Blaze, if that’s alright.”

Daria shrugged, her hopes a little dashed. “I mean, it has to be okay. If he’s not feeling well, he’s not feeling well. I just miss him, that’s all.”

Zayn pursed his full, dark lips before leaning on the island counter next to her, his forearms just inches from hers. “Daria…” he began carefully, his words chosen like he’d hand picked them straight from the dictionary. “He and I don’t really talk about stuff so I wouldn’t really know… but is he okay? With you leaving, that is?”

“I don’t know… we haven’t really talked about it.”

Things were quiet between them as they both contemplated the gravity of the situation. Daria was leaving, and what did that mean for her and Harry? More than ever, she was starting to figure out just what he meant to her, and just how she felt about him. One week she would be on a plane to JFK, and what would that mean to their relationship? What would that mean for Daria’s well being as a whole?

“You know you mean a lot to him,” Zayn stated softly.

“I know,” she breathed in response.