Loved You First

Chapter 2

            “Piss off!” Zayn growled as his hands collided flat with the chest of a boy about a foot shorter than him. The boy stumbled backwards, running into one of his friends as he backed away from Zayn’s fuming figure, Liam and a smaller blonde boy stood behind him.

            “Why don’t you? This isn’t any of your business anyways!” the boy, who Zayn knew as Jeremy, shouted back at him, still not daring to advance towards the taller of the two.

            “It’s about to be.” Zayn took a couple steps towards the small group of boys and a few of them scattered backwards, one of them began grabbing towards the door of the school bathroom which all seven off the boys were occupying. Jeremy took a step back towards the door, trying to spread distance between him and Zayn, who was definitely one of the tallest and most intimidating of the two groups.

            One of the other boys grabbed at Jeremy, who seemed to be somewhat of a leader to the small group. “C’mon,” he tugged a little at his friend’s sleeve, “let’s just go. We’re going to get in trouble either way.” He mumbled, apparently he was the only one in the group of four who had any sense.

Jeremy made some sort of a grumbling noise at his friend; he looked between Zayn and the smaller blonde boy behind him whose head he’d previously been trying to shove in a toilet. His defeat was evident on his face as he assessed the situation with the small amount of common sense he had in his brain. Zayn wasn’t the one around school you wanted to mess with, even though he’d never been seen in an actual fight, he was always there to end them. “Whatever man,” he mumbled as he decided nothing good could come out of the situation and let himself be lead out of the bathroom by his friends.

“Twats.” Zayn grumbled, rolling his eyes at the four boys as they exited the restroom, he turned back to Liam and the blonde boy he’d just rescued. “You alright?” he asked the blonde, who he recognized as the new kid at school who’d just moved from somewhere in the UK.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” The boy’s voice didn’t match his body. He was a bit scrawny with blonde hair and clear blue eyes, his teeth were a bit crooked in the front. But his voice was deep and sounded for the most part post-pubescent. “Thanks for comin to help me out.”

Zayn nodded his head at the new kid, and replied with a slight grunt. Even now, in his early teen years, he wasn’t much the type to talk around strangers. Liam knew Zayn well enough to step in for him to make sure he didn’t come off as rude, it was situations much like these where Liam saved Zayn from having a horrible social reputation. He hoisted his backpack up onto his shoulder a bit more as he took a step towards the blonde, “I’m Liam by the way, you’re new here aren’t you?” he held out his hand and smiled politely at him.

The blonde nodded his head very intently, it seemed most things he did were like that. “Just moved from Ireland,” he shook Liam’s hand enthusiastically. “I’m Niall, good to meet ya.”

“You too,” Liam smiled. He looked over to Zayn who was checking the time on his phone, Liam nudged him with his elbow a tad to get his attention. Zayn looked up from his phone and furrowed his eyebrows at Liam who just gave him a sort of look like c’mon-now.

Zayn caught Liam’s little gesture, it seemed like they could speak without speaking seeing as though they’d known each other for nearly seven years now. Zayn coughed awkwardly and shifted his backpack, “Uh, I’m Zayn,” he stuck his hand out to Niall the same as Liam had. The blonde shook his hand just as eagerly as he had Liam’s, he didn’t seem to notice Zayn’s awkwardness.

After dropping hands with Niall, Zayn turned his attention to Liam again. “Li, we’re already late for sixth hour.”

Liam waved a hand in the air, “Don’t worry about it, Z” he laughed. “We can just say we were showing the new kid to his class, eh?” he winked at Niall, who immediately let out a loud and lively laugh. By the way he acted made it seem like he hadn’t just been about to be put head-first into a toilet moments ago. He had a sort of bubbly charm to him, Zayn noticed.

“So, Niall, what’s on your schedule for sixth?” Liam put a hand out towards Niall for his schedule.

At Li’s words the blonde jumped into action, pulling his bag from his back and rummaging through it before pulling out a crumpled piece of paper to hand to Liam. Li read over the paper and chuckled to himself, “looks like he’s going the same place we are,” he looked to Z and shrugged.

“Better get to it then.” Zayn turned and headed for the door, Niall and Liam hot on his heels.