Supersonic | Zayn Malik | AU |

Fifty-Six

☠ Chapter Fifty-Six ☠

➳ JONAH'S POV

When the movie's over and Arielle finally wakes up, it's already late in the day. She woke up very confused earlier as to what time it was and now we've been playing Monopoly and eating muffins I'd baked two days ago.

"The moment you bought Boardwalk I was screwed," she huffs. Carefully she thumbs out the owed two thousand dollars and throws it at me in playful annoyance.

The grin is evident on my face as I greedily take the money, tucking it underneath my quarter of the board. "I can't help it. Especially not when you spend your money on Baltic and Mediterranean."

She rolls her eyes, "You take what you get, alright? Now go, it's your turn."

I grab the dice and roll lazily. At this point, it doesn't even really matter what I roll because the outcome of this game is obvious. Somehow, I'd managed to get all the better properties, leaving Arielle with the crappy ones. She was already running out of money, that was obvious what with the measly ten dollar bill she had laying in front of her and her many, many mortgaged properties.

"It's your turn, you rolled doubles."

"Shit," she curses, sinking her head in her hands. "If I land on anything of yours, I'm done."

I chuckle. "Just roll an eleven, you'll land on Just Visiting." I grab a piece of my muffin, waiting for her to toss the dice. We've been playing this for ages already—actually maybe two hours—and I just wanted to be done of it. Frankly, I'm feeling tired and I'm just too worried to tell Ari. I don't want to go to bed and fall asleep if she's still here and upset.

"You're just trying to rid of me, aren't you?" She yawns for probably the thousandth time in the last hour. It's amazing because she had a solid two-hour nap earlier, but I guess she's just emotionally drained.

"No, you know you're always welcome."

She ignores my comment and finally rolls the dice. They land on a five and four and she carefully moves her token nine spaces right to another one of my hotel-dominated spaces. "Well, it's official. You win."

I begin to stack the money while she puts away all the little houses and hotels. She yawns loudly again when she's done that task and moves onto putting all the cards away, sleepily rubbing at her eyes.

"Do you want to sleep here tonight?"

She doesn't look at me as she stacks the cards. "Would you be upset if I did?"

"Of course not, you seem really tired. You can take my bed."

"It's fine, I'll take the couch," she replies.

"Ari, no—"

"Seriously, your couch is comfortable. I'm not exactly ready to sleep in another guy's bed. I know, I know, it's you, but I just can't." She pulls her gaze away from me, using a hand to pull my shirt up over her exposed shoulder.

"Alright, if that's how you're most comfortable."

She nods her head sheepishly as I put the top of the box onto the board game. I leave her at the table to put the thing away in the living room. When I turn back to look at her, she's staring out of the window at the moonlight that's streaming in through the panes of glass. There's a heartbreaking type of sadness to her face as she hugs her knees to her chest in silence.

As I'm cleaning up the mess on the table, she stays frozen there, even after several minutes. The only thing she's managed to do is pull the band out of her hair. When she hears me approaching her, she comes out of whatever world she was lost in, not even looking at me as she utters, "Actually, I think I'll go to bed right now. If that's alright?" She finally looks at me, giving me a weak smile.