I Found You, Something Told Me To Stay - (Jason/Zacky) Version Two.

Chapter Forty-Two.

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My hand hovered at Zacky’s front door, my clenched fist never quite making contact with the wood.

I whipped my head around in all directions from where I was stood on his front archway, studying my surroundings and wondering just how subtly I could slip away. The street was practically dead – not unsurprisingly, at only eight in the morning – and had it not been for the sounds of birds singing, I would have felt somewhat uncomfortable in its silence. Its stillness almost felt so unnatural that it filled me with a surprising sense of angst, yet I quickly questioned whether that feeling was down to the fact that yet again, I was about to be alone in Zacky’s company.

I stepped a little closer to the door, pressing my ear against it and trying to suss out whether Zacky was even awake. I’d been instructed to come this early – not only from the message passed on from my dad the day before, but also in a text from Zacky himself as a reminder to do so. Much to my dismay, a soft sound of music was playing from behind the wood.

Before I could even pull myself away to attempt to knock again, the door was abruptly pulled open. The loss of support against me immediately caused me to lose balance and fall forward, and had it not been for the warm arms that immediately caught me, I would have fallen ungraciously, straight to the floor.

I didn’t even have to look at Zacky – not that I could bring myself to, after the conversation we’d had at his party – for a blush to immediately spread over my cheeks. I wasted no time in ripping myself from his grasp, and even with my gaze looking at anything except him, there was no mistaking the way his eyebrows shot up in my peripheral vision.

“How is it you always know how to make an entrance, huh?” He said, stepping aside. “Morning, you.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. My lack of response earned another raise of his eyebrows, and ignoring it, I wandered into his house. It now looked surprisingly bare, considering the last time I’d been here, it had been filled to every corner with party guests; most of which I hadn’t even known. The absence of scantily clad girls – I couldn’t deny that that embarrassing description had included me, also – and the loud members and friends of the Avenged family made it seem even quieter than it usually would have done, I was sure.

With Zacky’s gaze pinned on me, it was clear that he was waiting for me to say something. I couldn’t think of anything to say, even if I had wanted to engage in conversation with him. I felt awkward, annoyed and like I wanted to be absolutely anywhere but here; I’d not even been in his company for a full minute, and it was clear he was going to take his usual approach of pretending everything was normal. This time, I wouldn’t play along.

“Right…” He eventually said, finally tearing his eyes away from me and focusing it on the paint cans that were sitting at the bottom of the stairs. “So…your dad probably told you I wanna get my bedroom painted, right? I could really do with a hand.”

“Mm. He mentioned it,” I mumbled, wasting no time in starting towards the stairs. “Let’s get it done, then.”

“Wait,” He stunned me for a moment by grabbing the back of my shirt and stopping me in my tracks. Reaching down to the pile on the floor, he chucked what looked like a piece of cloth my way. “Wear this. I don’t want you to get paint on your clothes.”

As he turned away, I surveyed the shirt in my hands, studying it unsurely. I knew taking my hostility this far was probably a little ridiculous; it was just a shirt, after all. But it was Zacky’s shirt, and removing my own shirt and pulling his one onto my body felt intimate, and felt strangely right, too. Unsurprisingly, it draped loosely over my body and reached just above my knee, completely covering the shorts I was wearing. It was odd to catch my reflection in the mirror on the wall and appear as though I was wearing Zacky’s shirt and nothing else.