925 miles | z.m. au

v.

“We can’t be friends this much I know

I wish it wasn’t so

And I can’t take my heart someplace it won’t go”

—The Maine

***

Zayn is pretty when he sleeps. The kind of pretty that makes you looks twice, like a marble statue with carefully engraved fingertips; with his skin that is just as smooth and eyelashes that are a thousand times more spectacular, resting on his cheekbones like that. His lips are parted so Mary can see the slight crookedness of his teeth that make his smile so adorable and the stubble along his jaw is suddenly tremendously softer and god he’s just so fucking beautiful.

And it hurts, somehow, because Mary would like to kiss every element of his beauty and run her fingers over every delicately placed bone. She’d like to straddle his body and lick her way into his mouth until he wakes up and she just wants to see those beautiful hazel eyes looking at her. Because all of the time she’s spent questioning that look in his eyes has merely been bouts of wasted words and oxygen.

Mary’s never had a boy stare at her as if she was the sun. Sure, she’s been a star or two; perhaps a diamond or something of the sort...but it’s all been trivial. It’s been the kind of admiration men have for pretty little girls who are on their own; the kind of admiration that gets you into trouble and stuck inside a dingy motel room until the early hours of the morning.

But Zayn is different. Zayn is special. And Mary is sure that the colour of his heart can rival the flowers she used to plant in her garden—the ones that don’t grow here in the desert—and she doesn’t need to see inside of him to prove it, because in her nineteen years she is sure she’s never met a more beautifully catastrophic soul. Well, he’s more beautiful than anything when he’s asleep, and that must mean something. It must, because the way your eyes flutter and the way your lips part when you can’t control them is important. And Zayn’s eyes flutter an awful lot and his lips twitch every couple of minutes and hey, maybe he’s dreaming.

Mary would like to know the colours and shapes that comprise his dreams. She would like to see what he sees and hear what he hears and that terrifies her because she can’t, and she promises herself she’ll never try. So she wraps her arms tighter around Zayn’s waist and buries her face in his chest, where his heart beats like a drum beneath his sternum. Heartbeats are lovely, and Mary is afraid she might fall asleep to the sound and thinks perhaps she should move now before she loses her chance.

But maybe just a few more minutes with the beautiful boy won’t hurt.

...

The sheets are unusually chilly when Zayn wakes up and he briefly wonders what the time might be. Early, he figures, but he’s sure the sun is up by the way his skin tingles next to the window. He stretches his arms and his fingers across the mattress, searching the messy bed sheets for warmth and beauty but coming up empty handed. With a sigh, he pries his eyes open and sees the empty space his fingers warned him of, and he’ll never admit just how deep his heart plummets from his chest.

“Mary?” he questions the silence as if it’s actually going to answer him back.

Zayn rolls out of bed and tugs on a pair of briefs, letting his eyes wander where his body doesn’t and seeing nothing but his empty room. He humours himself by taking a look around the apartment but of course she isn’t there. It’s only Zayn standing in the doorway of his bedroom, trying to figure out whether or not he’s surprised. And he knows Mary well enough to know what she’s like, but he thought maybe she’d stick around to see the likes of morning before running off to wherever it is she goes when she isn’t with him.