Falling Stars

2:42 PM

It was still and heavy, the type of weather only a bought of rain could fix. They had finally made it to Mr. B’s Emporium and had spent a majority of their morning there. After purchasing a few books each, they wandered Bath and found a delicatessen. They brought their lunch outside so Adalae could sit in the sun.

With her head resting in his lap, she immersed herself in one of the new books she had purchased. He tried to keep his eyes on the words of his own book but something had changed within him. His mind often wandered to places he hadn’t dreamed of before. He wanted to figure out why this was happening to him and what it could mean. Was this supposed to happen? Had she meant for this? Better yet, why was he allowing it?

Casting his gaze down to his lap, finally giving up on trying to focus on the book held in his hands, he realized she was looking up at him as well. With her piercing blue eyes staring at him, brilliantly reflecting the sun, he felt a little pang in his chest. What exactly was this feeling? Had she been the root of it all, or was his mind playing tricks on him? Maybe he was falling ill.

“Hi,” she murmured, her cheeks reddening as his eyes met hers. “Erm. Enjoying your book?”

He shrugged in a non-committal manner. “S’alright. You?”

A sigh escaped her lips as she rested the book on her chest, held open to the page she stopped on. “It’ll get better. Are you ready to move on?”

Zayn thought for a moment. He hadn’t truly put much thought into where they were versus where they had started, but after his brief pause to calculate how long they had been in this one particular area he realized it was beyond time for them to move along. “Where to next?”

“We could go to Stonehenge,” she suggested offhandedly.

Zayn sighed. “For, what, the hundred-thousandth time?”

Adalae chuckled and repositioned herself, pushed herself a little more into him. Zayn chewed at his lip and tried to stave off the blush fighting its way onto his cheeks. “How about you come up with something,” she suggested. “I’ll drive wherever you tell me to go.”

Zayn nodded, slowly at first until a plan set in. “Okay. Up. We’ll stay here one more day, yeah? So we can recharge. Go back to the hotel and relax, read, sleep, whatever. Bright and early tomorrow, we’ll head out. And I mean before sunrise.”

Adalae nodded as she got to her feet. “Right. Okay. We should get more food, then.”

Zayn’s eyes lit up as a grin stretched across his lips. Adalae hauled him up from the grass and they headed back to her car. They left their books in the backseat and wandered up the street to a market on the corner.

“We need junk food,” Zayn immediately decided as he wandered farther into the shop. Adalae rolled her eyes as she grabbed a hand basket and followed him.

“You’ve spent too much time with my brother,” she commented. He flashed her a smirk, unloading an armful of candy and crisps into the basket. She added various fruits and bottles of water when he wasn’t looking. They trailed along the aisles for twenty minutes, gathering as much food as they wanted on the way.

“Do you miss him?” Zayn asked out of the blue, gently adding a pint of ice cream to the basket. His eyes lingered on hers while he was still bowed down at her same height.

“Of course,” she replied quickly, then gasped as she caught sight of the bakery displays. She pointed out a few things to the baker and he boxed them up for her. Zayn watched in awe as she spoke easily to the guy behind the counter about ingredients and preparations, utensils and methods of creating icings. She cradled the box in her hands as she returned to Zayn’s side, a fresh blush upon her cheeks.

“What’s that about?” Zayn asked playfully, index finger poking at the apple of her cheek. “Suddenly shy, are you?”

“Shut it,” she grumbled, nudging him away from her.

Curiosity got the best of him and he looked over his shoulder. The baker was smiling, shaking his head a bit. When he caught Zayn staring in question, he simply winked and disappeared into his work again. Confused and curious, he followed a few steps behind Adalae to the registers where she remained mum.

Back at the hotel, the two put on an old classic movie and lazed on their respective beds, trying hard to concentrate on their books. After about an hour of silence between them, he cracked and threw one of his pillows at her head when she got up to find something in their mini refrigerator. In retaliation, she grabbed the open bag of crisps on her bed and began throwing handfuls at him.

“No food fights!” he cried, leaping from his bed. “Especially not in my sleeping area!”

“Oh, Malik doesn’t want to play fair, then? Thinks he can just attack without consequence?” Adalae challenged, now armed with a package of cookies.

“Well,” he stalled, careful to keep his eye on her as he inched backwards toward his own stash of food. When his hands grasped a plastic bag, he leaped onto his bed. “Fine! It’s war!”

To his downfall, he had grabbed her bag of fruits and healthy snacks, and ended up throwing individual grapes at her until he could safely make his way to the refrigerator for a better weapon. After several minutes, the room was trashed and food littered virtually every surface. She was laughing too hard, plucking crumbs of potato crisps out of her hair from his surprise attack, to realize that he had grabbed one more thing. Her loud giggles ceased when she heard the seal break and the lid pop off.

“Zayn Malik, don’t you dare waste that ice cream!” she shouted, leaping from his bed over to her own, which was considerably closer to where he stood by the window.

“There’s that Horan appetite I’ve been waiting for this whole time,” he chuckled, spooning out a large portion. He tasted a bit then nodded his head in approval. When she stepped toward the edge of the bed, he raised the spoon, ready to fling the contents of it at her.

Her eyes scanned the room for anything left in tact after their brief, albeit destructive, battle. She bit her lip, contemplated the white box set neatly to the side on the desktop. As she decided it was the last weapon in the room and would sacrifice the beautiful confections for their game, he registered what she was doing.

“I’ll do it,” she warned. “So help me. If you waste that ice cream, I’ll waste this treat I got you.”

“For me?” he asked, genuinely shocked.

In the moment he forgot he had chocolate smeared across his face from when she leaped onto his back and clapped her hands to his cheeks. He didn’t care about how silly he must’ve looked. All he could feel was the rapid beating of his heart and the smile tugging at the corner of his lips and the way he felt when she said she had bought him something.

“Is that why you were blushing at the shop?”

“Blushing at the-? Oh, that?” she thought aloud, shoulders falling as her tense stance slackened. “The bloke mentioned that we were a cute couple.”

“He- What?” His stammer was noticeable but he didn’t have the time to stop his mouth from moving in order to think about how to hide his astonishment. “What’d you say back?”

Her eyes followed the ice cream as some of it slipped from the spoon and puddled on the carpet. “Said we were just best friends on an adventure. He laughed a bit and said sure, but we might’ve lost sight of the original destination. Something like that.”

She stepped off the mattress and set the box down. She carried a miniature cake over to him. He lowered the spoon into the carton as his eyes fell upon the cake. His cheeks reddened, but for all the wrong reasons.

It was a cake with his band’s picture airbrushed on it and in bright red piping gel it said “Happy 7th Birthday!” around the edges. He probably would have been embarrassed over the decorations of the cake had it been given to him by anyone other than Adalae. But it held a different meaning coming from her.

“Was premade,” she explained. “Or else I’d have it say ‘congrats on your freedom.’ Would’ve used the same picture, though.”

Zayn laughed through his nose, shaking his head a bit. “You’re crazy, you know?”

She shrugged indifferently. “It’s a Horan thing. Are you quite finished with my ice cream now?”

He rolled his eyes and offered the carton to her as a peace offering. Once she had the ice cream safely in her hands, a wicked smirk reached her lips and before he could stop it, the cake was smashed into his face. He heard her giggle as she ran across the room a safe distance away. Once the majority of the cake had fallen into his hands, and he had scooped the icing away from his eyes, he ran at her, intent to get her just as messy.

“Noo!” she yelped, eyes wide and hands full. She had no time to escape and nowhere to go. “Zayn no!”

He refused to listen or have mercy. Her body stiffened upon his immediate attack, knowing she had lost the war. With his hands full of cake and icing, he pressed his hands to her cheeks and smeared the dessert across her face and down her neck, where some of it fell into her jumper.

“There,” he finally concluded, satisfied with the mess he had made upon her. She cautiously opened her eyes. His nose brushed against hers in a gentle Eskimo kiss and then he kissed her lips.

When he pulled away moments later, she kept her eyes closed as she exhaled deeply. “We’re going to have to pay so much extra when we check out tomorrow.”

“’s well worth it,” he murmured, then pressed another kiss to her lips. Her sticky fingers tangled in his hair and he smiled against her skin.