Storms {z.m.}

Chapter 44

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Chapter 44 – Christine

“Thank you,” Zayn tells me as I pull up in front of his house. It’s almost 11 p.m. but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been gone all day. I wish I could just stop time and keep Zayn in this car with me forever, away from the harsh realities of the real world, but I couldn’t do that no matter how hard I tried.

“For what?” I ask him. His ‘thank you’ feels too much like a ‘goodbye.’

“For caring enough about Liya to do all this. It was really brave of you, Crissy,” he says trying to avoid my eyes.

“I love you both too much not to,” I say. I don’t know if that could be misconstrued, but at this point I don’t really care.

Tonight Zayn and I could have been killed. That is the kind of thing that puts everything in your life into perspective. If there was even a sliver of a chance that Zayn and I could ever be together, our night would not have gone like it did. If I had my way, he would realize, after almost getting shot, that he really wants me and not her. He would realize that he was so daft to leave me behind all those years ago and he would embrace me and we would be happy for the rest of our lives.

But that’s not what happened. Zayn told me he loved me, but not in the way I wanted. He made me feel like I was eternally his, but he would never be eternally mine. Things tonight didn’t go badly, they just didn’t go the way I would have wanted them to. This was the night that could make or break my dreams, and as the night played out I realized that it would be the latter.

In the back of my mind I knew that today would be goodbye from the moment he stepped into my car. I had already given up, but then Harry gave me his little “don’t give up on love speech” and I thought that somehow I could salvage something more than friendship out of burning embers. Tonight I watched Zayn’s lips move so beautifully as he sang for me, and if for just a few minutes, he was entirely mine. That’s something nobody can ever take away from me. It was the most perfect goodbye I could ever have wished for.

This wasn’t by any means a complete goodbye, though. I’ll probably still see him for the next few days before he leaves and doesn’t come back for another year. I’ll still see him all over tumblr, and I’m sure he’ll text me once in a while. It wasn’t Zayn I was saying goodbye to, it was my dream of being with him. My twisted fantasy that I entertained for years.

“Promise me something,” he says finally meeting my eyes. It’s so dark inside the car that I can barely make out the reflection of a street lamp in his pupils.

“Anything,” I say before I can stop myself.

“Promise me you won’t give up on me,” he says, his voice cracking.

I sit there in awe at his words. There’s so many ways to interpret his sentence and every time I think of a new one I get more and more confused.

“I won’t even demean you by pretending to know what you’re feeling right now, because I know I have no idea. But I know that you love me, Crissy. I love you too, but it’s just not in the cards for us. I have a fiancée and a…” he begins. I can see him cringe as he opts not to finish that sentence. I think he’s finally realized just how much it burns to hear about his baby on the way.