Forever My Father

Chapter Four

The next day, Zayn goes to school begrudgingly with Louis and Niall, and the moment he arrives he's bombarded with questions from Ant, Danny, and Shahid. The young boy quickly explains to them what his teacher had said and how he had a mild panic attack, so Harry picked him up only to see his father at home. He then goes on to tell them all the activities they did throughout the day, but decides to ignore the awkward glances they gave him when he said that his father stayed at a bar for a few hours.

Throughout the day, people go up to Zayn to check on him, even his history sub goes to apologize, but Zayn just shakes it off and tells everyone he's fine. Which he is. Actually he's more than that, he's over the moon! Soon the day is ending, though, and Zayn makes his way over to the school locker room where the hockey team meets before they take a bus to the arena.

"Malik! My office for a minute!" Zayn coach, Leo, says when he sees Zayn entering the room. Zayn drops his bags off at his locker before walking into his coach's office.

"You need something, Coach?" Zayn asks before Leo gestures for him to take a seat.

"How are you? Mr. Higgins and some of the guys told me what happened yesterday, and that's why you weren't at practice. Are you alright, Zee?" the man asks with concerned laced in his voice.

"Yeah I'm fine. I just freaked out a bit, but when I got home my dad was home! He wanted to surprise me!" Zayn says with a wide grin that Leo can't help but smile at also.

"Hey, that's great! Is he gonna come to the game today?

"Yeah he said he's gonna come!"

"When we get to the arena tell him to sit in the box with us, so he can get the best view of you playing," Leo says while standing up, signaling that Zayn can now leave. The boy quickly agrees to the idea before going back out to his locker where he changes into the undergarment clothes he wears for hockey (he changes into his pads and uniform at the arena).

Thirty minutes later and the team bus is now driving everyone to the arena where parents and other supporters are beginning to arrive as well. Including some college recruiters. Once the bus pulls up, the team rushes off the bus to get changed quickly in order to have more warm up time. Except once Zayn finishes getting changed he immediately goes to his phone to call his father. He calls five times, and three of the times it rang once before going to voicemail. Finally, the boy decides to hit the ice in case his father was already there and just had bad reception.

Once on the ice, Zayn does a few warm up drills before beginning to look around for the man. He spots Harry and Liam front row in the center of the rink and three empty spots next to them. He sees Niall and Louis talking to a few friends a couple rows up, but no sight of his father. Once the coach tells the boys to do a free warm up, Zayn immediately skates over to the glass with wide, expecting eyes.

"Where- where's Baba?" Zayn asks and he sees Harry sigh before turning to Liam a bit.

"He went up to Bradford for the day, he said he'll try to make it back in time for the game. I'm really sorry, babe," Liam says regretfully. But that was the last straw for Zayn. He knows his father doesn't want to spend time with him, he's not an idiot, but he just thought that maybe he could fake it for 48 hours! But this, was the last straw for Zayn, and now Harry could see that little bit of hope in Zayn's eyes completely disappear.

"Maybe you can call-" Harry started but Zayn was having none of it.

"He's not coming, and I don't care. You can tell the ticket person to sell his ticket," Zayn says before skating back over to where the rest of the team was still warming up.

+

Zayn plays right winger. Constantly skating up and down the rink, doing everything from checking, to back passing, and even giving out a few assist. But Zayn's main position on the team would be being a sniper. Yeah the kids fast on ice, but what really makes him a threat is his accuracy on scoring goals. They have already played sixteen of their twenty five games this season (winning all of them) and Zayn has scored 21 goals. He's the leading scorer on the team, and everyone knows these recruiters are as much here for him as they are for the year thirteens.