when you sleep :: [malik]

"UGH!"

Zayn steps beneath the shower, his head angled up, his eyes closed as the hot water runs down across his skin and down the drain.

His jaw is clenched; muscles tensed as he attempts to calm down. He's trying to relax after that conversation, but he's still replaying it over and over in his mind, so relaxing is easier said than done.

She's such a fucking hypocrite.

That part, he'd both said and meant.

How dare she expect him to listen to her advice about Gia, when she couldn't do the same with...?

"Calm down, Zayn. Calm down..."

He grabs for the bar of soap, washing himself, now. He lathers up the parts of his body that had just felt the touches of her hands and her lips and had felt the affection of the love he knew she was capable of giving, but too afraid to fully give to him.

He was pissed 'cause thinking about her makes him so fucking upset, at the same time thinking about her is the one thing that can calm him down.

And Zayn was even more pissed because she was right.

He did need to stop fucking around -- or whatever the hell he was doing -- with Zhuri, if he was really serious about Gia.

She was right.

But, he wasn't serious about Gia.

They'd gone out. They'd hooked up. And this all happened around the time Zayn found out that Zhuri was harboring feelings for her ex, so Zayn thought that maybe Gia was the answer to the feelings he'd grown to find weren't reciprocated from Zhuri.

He thought that overtime he would grow to feel the same things for Gia as he did for her.

He couldn't blame himself for at least trying.

He couldn't blame himself for at least making an attempt to get over the girl whose fingers on his body and lips against his and words in his ears were more than just fingers and lips and words. He was harboring major feelings for a friend who...

No.

A girl.

He was harboring major feelings for a girl.

Knowing Zhuri...Zhuri probably wouldn't call herself his friend.

__

"Excuse me. Where're you coming from?"

"Don't, Imani," Zhuri groans, closing the door to the little house she shares with her sister. "Just. Don't."

"What?" Imani laughs. She's got a client, today. A teenage girl, and she's sat in a chair facing the television. There's a small unbraided tuft of hair at the top of her head.

She's nearly done.

Zhuri's twin stares at her, grinning as she pulls the braiding hair apart, taking a thin section between her long blue nails and lifting it to the girl's head. "You look like..." She laughs aloud, "Like, yesterday."

The girl laughs.

"Shut up, Imani," Zhuri replies, pulling a face at her sister. "I don't need the world to know my life," she pulls a face at the girl, too.

"Hey," the teenager shrugs. "We all got needs."

Zhuri laughs as Imani yelps.

She pauses the braid, "What do you know about needs?" She implores. "Y'all too young to know about needs."