The Pianist - One Direction

Chapter 35

Zayn's POV

"Every time you're on tour you come back skinny to the bone, but you're not that small now. Have you actually been eating this time?" Mum said as she put a second plate with some kind of spicy chicken on the table in front of me. I was full already, but I kept eating. I hadn't gotten to take three steps inside the house before I was handed something to eat and she just kept cooking, so I had to eat it. I had to make up to the months she didn't get to make me any food.

"I'm eatin'! It's stress, you know." I answered. Maybe I wasn't the healthiest person on tour when it came to my eating habits. But the stress was constantly tearing me apart piece by piece. I was a person who needed times in silence by myself pretty often, but that wasn't something I would get at tour.

"I know, I'm just worried. So it wasn't that bad now? The stress? Or have you learned to handle it better?" She asked. I thought about it and realised that I hadn't felt half as exhausted or stressed as I had on earlier tours. This was only the beginning of it, but I had been good.

"I might've got some help now." I admitted. Every time I had felt stressed or as if too much pressure was put on me, I could, and would, always go to Issy. She didn't need me to tell her what was wrong or anything. She noticed I wasn't feeling great and she made me think of something else without the need of knowing what my problem was. I didn't have to tell her why I was feeling bad, and most times I didn't even know why myself. I didn't know talking about how I was feeling, but when I did she listened. And I listened to her. We needed each other to keep sane.

"Oh, I see." Mum smiled at me with that typical I'm-your-mother-I-know-what's-going-on-look. "It's Issy, right?" She asked in a tone that wasn't questioning if Issy was the one that helped me because she knew it was, but a tone that asked if that was her name.

"Yeah. Or Belle. She doesn't like Isabelle." I explained.

"Too bad. It's such a pretty name. She probably have a reason, though." She shrugged and I nodded in agreement. "What's the thing between you two? Just friends or is it something more?"

My mum was the best. Honestly, I could talk to her about everything and I actually wanted to talk about Issy. I wanted to tell someone about how amazing she was. How she was behaving like 'what makes you beautiful' actually was written for her because she had no idea about how great she was. How she was beautiful even when she was jetlagged and tired and annoyed. How she was so incredibly talented and that we are lucky to have her with us on our tour. That I'm so lucky to be the only one that gets to kiss her. I also wanted to talk about how I felt about her, because I needed someone to tell me what to do. If I let myself fall in love with her, I was scared I would scare her off by telling her.

Maybe it was too late to stop that, though. I was almost certain it was.

''We're... More than friends. That's for certain. I'd like to say we're together but we haven't, like, talked about that, so we're not and nothing's official.'' I told her. I wondered if we ever would be officially a couple, since neither of us liked to talk about what we were because it made us uncomfortable in some way. Also, Issy didn't like the media to talk about her in any way, she wouldn't like the rumours and pictures and twice the paparazzis pointing cameras in her direction.

''What's stopping you from being together, like boyfriend-girlfriend-together? You don't have to get out to the media right away.'' She said.

She was right about that. I would like to call her my girlfriend. It would be easier for both of us. Maybe we could use some commitment. Maybe that could help her realise that I was serious with this, and that I believed she was a hundred times better than she thought about herself.