Parole | Zarry

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Back home, the weather turned warmer.

Sometimes it even stopped raining for a few hours, and Harry would find Zayn back on his front steps, waiting for him with his guitar.

Sometimes Zayn played him love songs, which made Harry blush.

Around the time that it occurred to Harry that he'd been seeing Zayn for over six months, that he was spending almost all of his off-work hours with the other man, that they had favorite restaurants where the staff knew them as a couple and called them both by name.

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Sarah called.

She sounded a little frazzled.

It was her last semester in grad school, and everything was piling up on her, and she wasn't sure whether she should quit her job now or wait a while.

But after only a few minutes of commiseration from Harry, she deftly turned the discussion to him.

She was good at that kind of thing.

"You're still seeing that guy, aren't you?" she asked.

"Zayn?"

Harry had been in the midst of sorting his laundry when she called.

He was still clutching a dirty T-shirt, which he dropped to the floor.

He sat down on his couch, ignoring the baleful stare Evie gave him over being woken from a nap.

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"Yeah!Still."

"So you guys are kind of a thing, huh?"

"We're,yeah. I guess so. He's special, Sarah."

"Good.You deserve someone special."

"Yeah, right," he scoffed.

"He's way out of my league, actually."

"You're in a better league than you think, Harry. You're totally Class A. Or something. You gotta help me out with the sports analogy here. You know that's not my area of expertise."

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Sarah could always make him laugh.

It was one of the things he loved about her.

Even back in junior high, when he'd been so miserable over so many things that there were days he only got out of bed to avoid catching hell from his parents, she had a way of finding just the right words to turn his mood around.

"At least I know he plays on my team,"

Harry said with a chuckle.

"Go team!"

But Harry's grin quickly faded.

"I don't know if I'm doing this right."

"It's not quadratic equations, Harry. There's no doing it right."

"But there's definitely doing it wrong. What if I fuck this up?"

He heard her sigh and could picture the exact expression on her face.

"You're gonna make mistakes, dude. Everyone does. It's how you deal with those mistakes that's important."

Evie hauled himself upright, stretched out the kinks, sauntered over, and butted his head against Harry's thigh.

As Harry scratched him in his favorite spot behind the ears, the cat fired up his amazingly loud purr-sounding as if he were hiding a motorcycle engine under all that ball of fur.

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"You still there, Harry?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Text me a picture of the two of you, okay? I want to see what the guy who finally caught you looks like."

"Caught me? Am I the ball now?"

"Yeah," she answered.

"Now let's hope he doesn't fumble."

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One Friday afternoon in April, the big boss at the shop called all the workers together.

They stood there in their blue work shirts with the embroidered logos, exchanging nervous glances or whispering to each other.

Everybody's face was drawn.

Harry lost most of the details of what the guy in the suit said, but the important parts stuck well enough.

His boss was closing this shop.

Anyone who'd been there a year or longer could still have a job-if they were willing to move to Italy.

• ☘ •

- Thank you for reading.