Eighteen ➵ z.m. [Camp NaNoWriMo November 2015]

<9> Are you calling me a whore?

"Fancy some more wine?" Zayn asks motioning to the lone bottle on the coffee table.

I shake my head no in response. Truth be told another glass of wine sounded fantastic, but I didn't want my driving to be impaired when I left Zayn's house.

The last thing I needed was to be involved in an automobile accident.

Currently I was somewhat tipsy, but I held my alcohol quiet well to be a hundred and twenty pound seventeen year old girl that wasn't even of the legal drinking age.

"Let's talk business now," I suggest tucking a lose strand of my hair behind my ear.

We had dinner and made casual small talk for quiet some time now. It would be a good idea to move into the entire reason why I'm here in the first place: the merger deal.

"Why don't we get to know each other a little bit first?" Zayn counters.

I ponder over his suggestion for a couple of seconds before agreeing. Normally the people I did business with were only interested in that very thing, business, not me or my family.

Although it came at quiet a shock, I was willing to do whatever Zayn thought was appropriate. I was still trying to get back in the Malik's good graces, and if doing a brief Q&A session with Zayn was going to help me do that then so be it.

Plus it wouldn't hurt to get a bit more insight into Zayn and his background. I had a hard time reading his body language and word usage sometimes, so this should help me somewhat get a better feel for him as a person.

"Alright then," I agree. "What do you want to know?"

Obviously Zayn didn't expect me to agree so quickly, and without so much as an disagreement, so he took a while before finally coming up with a question.

"What's your favorite color?" Zayn asks.

The answer almost rolls off of the tip of my tongue, but I stop myself before I could speak. Favorite color? Out of all of the questions he could have asked me about he chooses such an seemingly irrelevant one.

Immediately it raises red flags in my book because he was either trying to start of slow and build his way up to the harder and more personal questions or this was Zayn's way of gathering private and mundane information from me. Either way it could be dangerous for me because no matter how seemingly small and insignificant information may seem, there was always some way to apply it strategically.

Zayn was a very smart guy and I had yet to figure out his angle, so I had to proceed with caution every time I was with him. It was going to be hard to do, especially sense he presents himself as such a calming and rather comforting aura. He was the type of person to make everyone feel like they could trust him, me included.

"Why such a insignificant question?" I rebuttal.

In an unexpected action Zayn moves from his recliner to sit beside me on his sofa. "I want to get to know you better."

It was times like these that made me question Zayn's true intentions. I didn't know him well enough to call every thing he had told me so far bullshit, but I knew it the information that he had passed along to me wasn't 100% truthful.

The problem, however, wasn't calling his bull it was figuring out which part he was lying to me or with holding information about. Whatever Zayn hadn't told me was obviously something he didn't want everyone to know about.

For me to iquire this information, I would need for Zayn to trust me without a doubt. Which in turn meant earning his trust and becoming a close business partner as well as ally to me. Now the question was how long would that take?