In This World (Harry Styles)

33

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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So, let people wonder, let 'em laugh, let 'em frown

You know I'll love you till the moon's upside down

Don't you remember I was always your clown?

Why try to change me now?

Why Try To Change Me Now – Frank Sinatra

ZAYN

Welp, Japan...it's been real, but I must be moving on. I came, I saw...I did not conquer. It's a wrap for me. I sat on the couch in the living room in total darkness, smoking a cigarette and uncaring that I was indoors and that it wasn't my house. I needed to take a load off, and nicotine was the only answer for that. Always was. It was the dead of night, but I couldn't sleep to save my life. Hadn't got a wink since he showed me that fucking ring, and since that Aussie bloke came storming in, sizing me up. And Haz? Holy shit...he was gone. Just wasn't the same guy anymore. The boy with the trillion-dollar smile and eyes like the aurora borealis was gone, and it was time I accepted that. The person I'd faced the last couple of days no doubt had ice pumping through his veins. He could barely look at me anymore, and whenever he deigned to speak, it was with naked scorn and bitterness.

But I suppose that wasn't so much a commentary on him as it was on me. I'd driven him to that place. I'd reduced our relationship to this pitiful state. Me. He was just adapting for survival, as any animal would. Right now, I was his greatest pain in the ass, and it showed. He wanted to be rid of me, and I was no longer in the mood for fighting it. Truth be told, I was mortified. Not only would I leave here a total gimp with my tail tucked between my legs, but I would also have to find a way to sleep someday, knowing what I knew, having seen what I saw, and having heard what I'd heard as they fucked for hours tonight before bed. This was the absolute pits for me. My coming here had been an embarrassing miscalculation on my part. He wanted no parts of me, and after seeing that new bloke of his, I couldn't blame him. He was beautiful. It hurt me to acknowledge that, but he was wildly handsome and tall and strapping. I was half the man he was, physically and perhaps even mentally.

Now the only question that remained was: could I give Haz what he had so graciously given me at the beginning of the year? Back when he had bowed out and handed me over to G and this so-called fatherhood. Whether he truly meant what he said in that letter was irrelevant. It was the simple fact that even after I'd hurt him, he'd dug deep and still found it in himself to put my mind at ease about abandoning him. Even while he was at the lowest he'd ever been, and had barely survived the attempt on his own life, he still cared more about putting me at ease than he did seeking retribution. He was more concerned about freeing me to be a good father, than he was concerned about how badly my fatherhood had left him fractured.

God that was transcendent. It was a level of love I was not only incapable of reciprocating, but to this day could hardly even fathom. Despite turning the circumstances over in my head for months on end, his grace, his forgiveness, and his humility was not of this world. And still, after all he'd sacrificed and ignored and endured for me, here I was blindsiding him and ruining the closure he'd fought so hard to gain for himself, and trying to upend his new life. Cast doubt on his relationship. Demonize the bloke he'd settled down with. Elevate myself above him. Demand for a place in his life despite never giving him one in mine.