The air was cold and the sky was dark. It was Friday night and as usual my group and I were going to a place called ‘The OT.’ It stood for ‘old trees’ and that was literally what it was, a large space of grass with trees surrounding it. It was where most people our age in town would go at weekends, depending on whether there was a house party to go. It was a place where youth would drink, smoke and some even did drugs. The ages of the people who attended were from sixteen to as old as twenty. We lived in a boring town where there was nothing to do seeing as there were no clubs or pubs that people under twenty five would go to. We arrived at the normal spot and there were quite a lot of people already there. My friends and I sat on the branches of one of the trees while sorting out who owned which bottle of vodka.
‘Do you want a quarter bottle or half bottle D?’ My friend Mia asked me, D was short for Danayi.
‘Half, I’m feeling crazy.’ My friends and I laughed as I began to pour vodka into my plastic cup, mixing it with cranberry juice. We talked to the different people around us, some we had went to school with and some we just knew from coming here. I started to regret my choice of leggings and short sleeve top so I put my over sized denim jacket on and hugged it around my body. I sat on the grass cross legged talking to a boy Chris and my two friends Aimee and Faye. I looked around the groups of people when I noticed a boy leaning up against a tree smoking a cigarette. He was tall with black hair, brown eyes and quite dark facial hair. His hair added to his height and his jaw line was extremely defined. The way he stood with his cigarette made him ten times more attractive. I recognised him but I had no idea who he was, he usually left the OT before anybody started drinking so the fact he was still here surprised me. I had probably seen him here ten times but for some reason I took an interest in him tonight.
‘Who is that?’ I asked Chris, pointing to the guy wearing a camouflage jacket and black jeans.
‘That’s Zayn. Zayn Malik’ he replied while taking a gulp of his beer. I stared at the boy who I now knew was called Zayn and I soon caught his eye. He stared at me while taking a draw from his cigarette, by now I usually would have broke eye contact but I had drank a fair amount and I wanted to speak to him. He looked away before throwing his fag onto the ground. He walked towards us and sat next to Chris resting his elbows on his knees, they turned out to be good friends.
‘This is Aimee, Faye and Danayi’ Chris said gesturing his hand towards us individually but Zayn’s eyes were fixed on me.
‘Nice to meet you’ he stuck his hand out in front of him in my direction and I shook it lightly.
‘You too.’ We continued to stare at each other while our small group chatted. I contributed to conversation but Zayn stayed quiet. I got up and went to check my phone in my bag that was over by some trees. I bent down and rummaged through the bag when I felt the presence of somebody behind me. I jerked my head behind me to see Zayn staring at my ass.
‘Like what you see?’ I said. Alcohol made me extremely confident.
‘Maybe.’ He said, laughing quietly. I stood in front of him, concentrating on my text message to my mum to make sure she didn’t sense that I was drunk. I was only seventeen so my mum didn’t allow me to drink even though she was never home to know what I did.
‘Danayi. I like that name.’ He said. ‘It’s different.’ I smiled at his comment, it was one of those names people could never pronounce or spell.
‘Thanks. Zayn is quite different too.’ We talked for a while. I found out that he was nineteen and worked at a radio station, not on air but he helped with music choice and things like that. As we spoke my eye became itchy so I rubbed it forgetting about the mascara I was wearing.
