Smoke & Mirrors • Zarry

26. Typo

"Pour me another one, Isaac," Zayn slurred as he slammed his glass on the bar top at The Eagle, his nostrils sniffling a bit after the line of coke he just snorted in the men's bathroom.

"Make it a double, actually."

Isaac just shook his head and stared back at Zayn with his concerned look in his eyes, as if he felt sorry for him, and poured Zayn a double glass of Jack Daniels while the club music thumped in the background, but Zayn didn't hear it clearly because it just sounded like a muffled, repetitive bass line, like he was standing outside of the club listening in instead of actually being there.

"So you're looking to get wrecked tonight, is that your plan?" Isaac asked him as he leaned on the bar top and began wiping the pool of whiskey near Zayn's elbow from where he had sloppily spilled it earlier.

"I don't really care," Zayn retorted, taking a large sip.

Zayn couldn't stop thinking about the tears in Harry's eyes from the previous week and it haunted him whenever he bothered to remember it. The way that Harry shouted at him, was seething, his jaw clenched with that twisted look of hurt mixed with anger, frustration and sadness all in one big bowl of shit.

And it was all Zayn's fault that Harry left upset the way he did, that he didn't bother turning around to give him one final glance or run back to him, throwing his arms around Zayn's shoulders and why should he have? Zayn knew that Harry had every reason to be upset, to see Gianna in his apartment, knowing that Zayn had kept her presence from his knowledge and all Zayn could do was hate himself.

But hate wasn't even a strong enough word for how he felt.

And when he finally picked himself up off the ground after having one of the absolute worst panic attacks the week before, Zayn had trudged back home to his apartment, only to have dealt with Gianna's rapid game of twenty questions. And he didn't even bother telling her the whole truth about his relationship with Harry, because it hurt too much to even talk about him, but she could tell that he had been crying a lot and Zayn was sure that she knew he and Harry had something really meaningful, something more than just a summer fling, even though that's all he said it was. But she let it go.

"You should have ran after him, you know," Isaac said and Zayn just rolled his eyes, taking another sip, feeling annoyed.

"Yeah, and do what? Ask him to stay? He wasn't going to fucking stay here in this shit hole."

"You should have told him you were sorry, you dumbass. That you care about him and that you want to be with him, that you want to make it work. You should have gotten down on your knees and begged for forgiveness."

"It wasn't going to work," Zayn snapped.

"He's going to go to Los Angeles, he's going to become some big, famous movie star and he's going to find some hot, rich guy's dick to ride on. And he would have just forgotten about all of this eventually anyway, I just know it. So there was no point."

"Is that really what you think of him? Because it seemed to me like he was obsessed with you, Zayn. Who's to say he would have done that? It's so like you to just light the whole thing up in flames before you even give it a chance," Isaac went on, sighing.

"Yeah well, sometimes it's better that way. Gotta let it go so your heart won't break."

This is what Zayn was trying to convince himself of, anyway. Every time he pictured his life with Harry, if they were to ever get into some serious relationship, all he saw was some inevitable ruin up ahead on the winding road that he walked down. He thought about how Harry would call him every night, maybe they'd have phone sex or send dirty pictures to each other, and Harry would say that he misses him, but eventually after weeks and months the calls would become less frequent, more random, shorter, and Zayn knew that Harry would go off and have fun, like he always did. He'd go waltz into some bougie, exclusive club with his newfound friends and he'd get piss drunk and flirt with some attractive guy, maybe even dance with him, dance on him, probably take him home because why wouldn't he? Harry wasn't going to be alone every night, just calling Zayn up to talk to him as if that was going to be enough to get them through those long months of separation.