Promise Me (Zayn Malik One Shot)

This is the second fanfic I ever wrote, so please bear with me:) x -Bella

Promise Me

Zayn Malik is 23 years old driving in his hometown with a beautiful, cylinder object belted in the seat next to his. He is alone, and he prefers to be that way, because this is something personal, something that he needed to be alone for. He sighed holding back tears while he was driving. Then he looked his his rearview mirror, and saw himself 18 years ago.

Zayn was five years old, playing alone in his classroom. No one liked him, everyone thought he was a weird kid and ignored him for the most part. Except a girl. A pretty blonde hair girl with big blue eyes who hopped over to Zayn to play with him. Zayn was shocked as the girl handed him a crayon.

"Audrey" she says.

"Audrey" he repeated lovestruck.

This was Zayn's first experience with love.

Zayn is 7 years old, and he is convinced that he is in love despite his young age. On Valentine's day, while everyone was exchanging candy, he handed Audrey a small brown teddy bear and asked her to be his girlfriend. She giggled. "Ask me in ten years" she declined.

And so he kept the teddy bear.

Zayn is 11 years old, him and Audrey are still best friends. They are on a field trip at a lake studying plants but snuck off to enjoy their last few moments together since Zayn was moving. They sat by the blue, calm lake and discuss their friendship together. Out of surprise, Audrey leaned over and kissed him directly on his lips as the lake turned into a romantic lavender color. She made him promise that he would never forget about her since she was his first kiss.

Zayn vowed to himself to never break that promise.

Zayn is now 14. He already moved twice due to conflicts in previous schools. He lost touch with Audrey causing him to be rebellious and to pick fights. He recently found out that she moved to America a little over a year ago, and that's why he could never reach her.

“Move on mate,” his friends would say trying to set him up with girls. But Zayn couldn’t, no one could ever replace Audrey.

Zayn convinced himself that he would never fall in love again.

Zayn turns 17 and is happily celebrating it with Audrey as she surpisingly came back to visit him. He stares at her for the longest time, catching and memorising every detail about her. She still had her baby face and her long blonde hair flows down to her waist. He tells her about his singing, and how he's going to audition for the X-Factor.

“Do it!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be watching!”

Overjoyed with her response he brings up the reason why he really wanted to talk to her today. He pulls out a teddy bear, the same one he tried giving her ten years ago. Again, she declined saying that it won't work;

“We can’t handle a long distance relationship” she explained to the tearful Zayn. "Just focus on your singing, you never know, you could be famous one day.”

And how right she was.

A couple months later, the 17 year old Zayn Malik sang Let Me Love You in front of The X-Factor judges and everyone else who was watching. Turned down as a solo artist, he was put into a band through boot camp, One Direction.

They got through.

Interviewers asked the newly found band, One Direction, why they chose their audition song. Liam explained that Cry Me A River was inspired by a cheating ex-girlfriend. When they asked Zayn, he shrugged it off but deep inside he knew why. He wanted Audrey to let him love her but it seemed impossible.