when you sleep :: [malik]

"i like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it"

Zayn is sitting in the kitchen, watching the minute and hour tick around the clock above the stove.

He's alone.

Zhuri and her siblings were all in the room with their grandmother, and Zayn felt like he was intruding, being in there with them.

He felt like an intruder, watching the family like that.

"You could stay," Raquel said, after he'd excused himself; after he stood alone in the hallway.

She had followed him out there.

"You don't have to go."

"Feels like I don't belong in there," he replied. "Like, m'eavesdropping on a private conversation."

Raquel nodded. "You're welcome here, Zayn. And she, if she was well, would have wanted you to be as comfortable as possible," and she'd grinned. "If she could help it, in her house."

He could tell she was talking about Zhuri's grandmother; her nana.

They took turns, the four siblings, sitting with their grandmother, bringing her food, keeping her comfortable.

"She should be somewhere relaxed, free of stress" said the doctors. "It's best she stays around family," they said, "through the end."

And as the night wore on, the house grew smaller, with more and more people, most of them family, the rest of them close friends, showing up on the porch.

"How's she doing?" They asked, before paying their respects at the door and going upstairs; upstairs to Zhuri's nana's room.

It was such a morbid thought; for everyone to be waiting. They were just waiting for time to pass. Waiting, biding their time Zhuri's nana would...

Zayn now sits staring at the photos framed on the opposite wall. It was easiest to pick out Taj, and then Zhuri and Imani, the twins. And Asha looked just like a slightly bigger version of the two of them.

They were really very very cute.

He sits and wonders now if this is his future. Like, if all those days of laying with other women and thinking of one, or laying with Zhuri and thinking of her ex, had actually not been for nothing.

He really hoped they weren't for nothing.

He couldn't help but wonder, though.

Love was funny like that. 

It was funny how it went from good to bad so quickly--how there were so many uncertainties even when everything should have been fine. 

And even though the love of your family was different from that other love, from that relationship-love, losses still seemed to hurt the same.  

When Zayn lost his grandfather, he'd been younger. A teenager, actually. He remembers how he was told.

He remembers trying not to cry in front of his sisters.

"Zayn?"

He looks up.

It's Justin.

"Mind if I...?" He looks to one of the empty chairs around the table.

Zayn, of course, shakes his head. "'Course not."

Justin sits.

And he sighs. 

"Bro, like..." He scrubs his hands across his face, "This is wild."

Zayn nods. "Tell me about it."

And Justin doesn't necessarily respond. He just nods, grateful in this moment to have someone to share his uncertainties and...and everything else with. 

His gaze follows Zayn's, up on the wall to the pictures hanging in frames. 

"So cute, man," he chuckles. "They're so damn cute."

Zayn nods, smirking. "Even Taj."

"Nah," he shakes his head. "I'll never admit that."

"Bet your kid'll look just like him, though."

"Nah," Justin shakes his head harder. "I'll never admit that either."

Zayn laughs softly, shaking his head. 

This was crazy. This whole situation was crazy. 

"Do you ever wonder," he begins, "if you're making the right decision?"

"About...?"

"Your relationship. I dunno...life," he states. "Everything."

"Zayn," Justin laughs, "I'm having a child. A whole kid. I'm twenty-three," he snorts. "You gotta know the answer to that."

"True..." He nods, and he strokes his beard. He nods again. "True..."

"What're you worried about?" Justin asks. "You finally look like you're doing things with Zhu. Mani talks about how legit you are now," he shrugs. "That's gotta feel good."

And Justin smiles. "Finally got what you wanted."

Zayn nods. This was what he wanted, right?

"S'just, like," he stares at the picture frames, "is it too good to be true?"

"What?"

"This. All this. Like, things are good 'cause we're here," he blinks. "We've still got to go home, and live life and work things out and--"

"Dude," Justin begins, "you're totally pulling a 'Zhuri' on me right now, worrying and shit," he shrugs. "You can't plan everything."

"I know, I just--" He sucks hard on his bottom lip. 

Damn, he wished he could. 

"Stop stressing, then."

"Feels like I've wanted this for so long I don't really know what to do now that I have it."

Worrying was habitual at this point. 

"I thought that, too," Justin nods. "I mean, with Mani."

"Seriously?"

"Oh yeah. 'Cause, for like, three years I was just your friend. She knew me through Zhuri--through you. I was just the white boy with the crush on her..."

Zayn laughs, those memories very clear.

"Then one day we start talking, and before I know what I'm really doing, I kiss her and she actually kisses me back and we start fucking and I go from being hype that the girl I'd been feeling is kissing me back, to scared shitless that the girl I like'll hate me 'cause I got her pregnant."

Now, they were having a baby. 

A whole baby. 

"We're stuck together at this point," he says. "Whether things work out or not."

"C'mon, Jus," Zayn says. He's making an attempt at being supportive. "It'll work, though."

"Yeah," he turns away. "Sure hope so."

For both of them, Zayn hoped so too.

__

this book is ending wow guys wow