Midnight • (Zayn Malik)

cough syrup

It was that sticky dread you used to feel when your mother was about to shove a spoon of practically poisoned cough syrup in your mouth against your will. The bitter thick cold liquid, unnaturally colored, would slip down your throat and plop heavily at the bottom of your stomach. It would leave that gluey taste in your mouth and you'd swallow gallons of water to wash it down but it wouldn't go away. The taste would last until you ate something potent but the unsettledness of your stomach tapped at your conscience incessantly like the ticking of a clock. But you had to keep in mind that it would make you feel better. It would make the sick go away. It would melt the aches and pains so that you could play happily once more. Or that's what your mother told you when she was holding the dripping spoon in your face.

That is what realizing you are in love feels like. It is how I was feeling for hours as I sat until half of my body went numb from sitting on the cushionless carpet. The tingling sensation on my skin was nothing compared to the numb sensation inside me.

Zain had given up beating on Monte and Louis' door after Violet politely told him to "fuck off". She actually told him civilly a few times to leave us alone but after a while she lost her patience. I couldn't see him. Who knows what would happen to me if I did. This was supposed to be a fun goodbye vacation, one last hurrah, and now it's a fucking big mess. I didn't even want to stay another day. I wanted to go to the ocean and drown.

By the time dinner rolled around Zain was gone. My suitcase was set outside of the door and the parking space where his mother's van had been was empty. And it didn't feel like a relief even though it should've. Violet and Monte were trying to convince me that a day in Magic Kingdom would make me feel better, get my mind off of things, be a princess but the only one in the room who didn't seem to be lying to me was Louis sitting on the bed and watching me with sad blue eyes. He watched as I pushed things around my plate and also at my vacant nodding. He knew and I knew he did in a way I couldn't explain. Ever since that night on the boat when Louis was my date and again in London when he picked me up from the tattoo parlor, he just knew. I never thought Louis would be the only one to figure it out when he was the one that's known me the shortest. Sure Violet and Sienna teased me about it but they weren't serious, that's why they teased. I thought he maybe even knew weeks before I did.

While Monte and Violet went back down to get dessert with the others, Louis stayed behind in the hotel room with me. He didn't say anything for a while, the sapphire flecks of his eyes flitting between the different colors of the carpet. The sun was shining brighter through the window since it was setting and it all seemed a little too much. I wanted night to be here when the moon was at its highest and my mind could melt under the dark paleness for a while. I watched the dust particles float around in the air until Louis cleared his throat delicately.

"You don't want to be here, do you," he stated more like a fact than a question.

"No," the word brought the cough syrup taste back in my mouth.

"You don't want to see him either," he stated again.

"No," I repeated emptily.

His voice was slightly more tender, "But you love him."

For a moment the "Y" was suffocating my throat and when I finally got the word out it spilled in tears instead. Louis sank to the floor beside me and wrapped me securely in his gentle arms. His chin rested on my head and his body shook with mine.

"I'm so sorry love," he cooed, "he'll find his way back to you, I promise."

The words came out all wet and mumbled, "How can you say that?"

"He's got love in his eyes Luna, you can't hide that under a leather jacket."

And for a moment the taste in my mouth went away. The sun wasn't so bright and the floor wasn't impossibly hard. The taste would come back and the sun would still shine and my legs were still numb from the concrete, but they were just a little bit more bearable.