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warmly

"So, what flavour do you want? I'm thinking plain chocolate."

"I thought I was the boring one," I teased, leaning over a bit until we were touching again. He was warm, and pulled me in against his side like an instinct. I didn't fit quite as nicely as a smaller girl might, but the advantage was that I was a lot cuddlier. 

"Hardly," Zayn grinned, resting his chin on my head. He hummed a bit, vibrating his jaw. I shivered, but for a different reason.

"I think I'll get cookie dough," I decided, letting my arm rest around his hip. And yeah, that was comfortable. 

"Sounds good," he mumbled. We shuffled forward a bit in line. Gently, Zayn put two fingers under my chin and lifted my gaze to meet his, tilting my lips up to connect with his own. It was a quick kiss, like he couldn't help it. Not that I minded-- not really. Sure, the elevation in the volume of the whispers from the group of teenage girls in line ahead of us increased, and they were probably going to post about having seen us on all sorts of social media websites, but that was a small price to pay for the way the heat rose in my cheeks and spread throughout my face.

I hummed a bit in satisfaction when we parted, although I was embarrassed to find that it sounded more like a purr. I was almost embarrassed to admit that the moments like this, where he's just there, and so into what we're doing happened to be the highlights of my day. So what? That was normal, right? People enjoyed each other's company. It was a normal thing to like to kiss somebody like Zayn.

What probably wasn't normal, though, was that even when we weren't kissing, there was this odd and almost annoying attraction to him. Even when he wasn't really doing anything all that extraordinary, I felt like he was the sun and I was a tiny speck of dirt, hurling into his gravity at an alarming rater. And of course, I knew that it could end at any given moment. I could burn up and be left with nothing but the memory of the warmth... but at the same time, maybe I could just orbit him endlessly. 

"What are you thinking about?" Zayn asked, handing over my cone. I'd zoned out yet again, something I seemed to do a lot more often these days, thinking too hard about what was going on with Zayn.

"You," I said matter-of-factly, eyes searching his face for his genuine reaction. 

His gaze softened a bit, mouth moving from the slight smile he usually had to an expression which parted his lips almost scandalously attractively. "Me too. Uh-- thinking about you, I mean... I ah, I don't think about myself when I, um--"

I nodded faintly, taking a lick of my cone. "Yeah. Want a taste?" We began walking back towards his car, walking slowly so that we could still keep our arms wrapped around each other.

Zayn hummed, leaning forward, eyes locked onto mine as he swiped his tongue across the ice cream. "Yum."

Another nod, and I tore my gaze away, using the ice cream to try and cool down the blush that was fighting to surface on my cheeks. And there, Zayn's hand moved a bit lower, fingers brushing lightly and lazily against the top of my breast. I stiffened a bit, and he moved his hand away again, but I didn't dare to meet his gaze. I didn't want to give Zayn the Sun a reason to burn me this early on; I'd already become rather comfortable in my orbit around him. At the same time, however, I'd always found it hard to pretend to be okay when I wasn't. And as much as I wanted to take things further with Zayn, there was this nagging in my head, reminding me how the other girls Zayn had supposedly dated looked, and it seemed like being burned was inevitable.

"I'd taste yours too, but we both know what chocolate tastes like," I joked, eager to try and shift the mood to a place that was more friendly. At least if I properly established us as friends, I could slowly guide myself away from Zayn's gravity and back into my old routine. If we took things in the direction I really wanted to go, there was no way he wasn't going to end things.