Okay, I wrote this about four thousand years ago so I’m not particularly keen on it anymore… But hey. I was inspired by The Hunger Games so it’s written in the present tense… I know I haven’t uploaded in a while so here you go! 

-x-

I am sitting. Sitting on the edge of a bed that I shouldn’t even be familiar with. I shouldn’t know how the springs of its mattress creak when you roll over, loud and low pitched and then soft and high. I shouldn’t know how smooth its mahogany headboard feels beneath a trailing thumb. I shouldn’t know how the duvet always smells like clean linen when I fall into it, pressed against that warm, loving body. The only bed I should know to that degree is Harry’s. And I’m not even sure what wood his bedposts are made of. Birch? Beech? Oak? Is it even wood at all?

Oh, Harry. 

The one who doesn’t and doesn’t try to understand me. The one who can’t be in my presence for more than two minutes without initiating an argument. But regardless of all the irritating things that he is and does, I love him and feel like I could never love anybody else. 

But yet I’m cheating on him.

Loudly, I groan in frustration.

There’s a creak of springs from behind me, loud and low pitched and then soft and high, but I don’t turn around. For some reason, I believe that turning around will make things worse so I remain facing forward. A light kiss is pressed to my naked shoulder. Zayn then rests his chin against my skin, which is endearing enough to make most girls weep. But evidently I am not like most girls, because I take this gesture as a prompt to stand up and walk away. 

As I’m reaching down to pick my discarded clothes from the floor, he smirks at me. It makes me frown. He probably thinks I’m playing hard to get, but in actual fact it’s no game. And I’m not willing to be gotten.

Zayn folds his muscular, tan arms and cradles the crown of his head in large, strong hands. “This is unusual.” He comments casually. “You’re never up this early.”

He thinks he knows me. In actual fact, he does, a lot better than Harry ever will. Zayn wants nothing more than to understand me; hence why he listens to me speak, hence why I feel so safe with him, hence why I fall into the clean linen scent so often.

Zayn is so sweet, so kind. So willing to make me feel lit up by euphoria. In the past couple months that I’ve been seeing him, he’s always put me first. Ordering my choice of take-away when I randomly show up at his apartment door in the evening, complaining of Harry’s ignorance. Dismissing the fact that he has work in the morning so that he can listen to me ramble through the phone at 3 A.M, complaining of Harry’s ignorance. Cancelling football matches with his friends so that he can chill in my babbling company, complaining of Harry’s ignorance.

I am using him for his ears that are always ready to listen. That and the temporary bliss he brings.

“I don’t know why,” I shrug carelessly. “I guess the sun woke me up.” Then I look to the window and watch streaks of sunlight illuminate the crumpled bedsheets. Zayn has the bedsheets gathered around his waist, his defined and inked chest exposed. Catching me staring, he throws me a half-smile. One of those half-smiles that make me confused.

They make me stutter and bite my lip. It’s hard to endure because once one is in my vision, all I want to do is bathe Zayn with affection, but then so much affection that he would drown. Because eventually I would walk away, dwindling back to Harry, while he remains trapped under the currents of my promised love. The love I can’t provide. Because I’m already giving it to someone else.

I clothe myself and quickly exit the room before I do something ridiculous like apologise. I stand in his open-plan kitchen and yank open his fridge, gulping down the remnants of a carton of orange juice. He won’t mind. It’s been done before. 

Refreshed, I spin around to leave but he’s standing right in front of me. Clad in nothing but a pair of light khaki boxers. I wonder where he’d found them. I knew that I had tore them off before we’d even reached the bedroom last night. 

I feel sick.

He’s smiling at me again and reaches out his hand for me to take. I don’t do it. My subdued trance has run out and the guilt has kicked in. I don’t hold hands that don’t belong to Harry. My feet scurry around him and hope to reach the front door and beyond. Zayn sidesteps and runs backwards in protest.

“Where are you going?” He questions desperately. His big, hazel eyes are doing that thing where they sparkle like they’ve been brushed with magic. But it’s not enough to keep me rooted as I groan and try to escape again. “Hey, hey, hey, stop moving!”

Sharks can’t stop moving or they die. It’s the first witty remark on my tongue but I don’t voice it because it’s wholly irrelevant. I am not a shark. I am nothing to do with sharks. I am an unfaithful girlfriend and nothing more. 

I fight to not laugh out loud. It’s funny; I spend the majority of my days complaining about Harry’s ignorance and his lack of understanding for me. But as irritating as he is, he’s never and would never cheat on me. I know this because he’s not the type. Does he perceive me as the type? Because evidently, I am.

I’m not sure when it happened, but Zayn’s hand is secured around my waist. He’s pulling me in closely, brushing my hair away from my face and not in that annoying oh-let-me-be-conventionally-romantic way. It’s in the way that says ‘you have strands of hair in front of your face and it bothers me, because I want to see your eyes’. And stare at my eyes he does; gazing into my dark brown orbs until I feel dizzy. 

The relationship between Zayn and I is strange. It’s not as if he doesn’t know that I’m already with someone else; he’s well educated on my boyfriend. We talk about Harry all the time. It seems to bother him that I am only partially his, and that part is minimal. I come to Zayn’s company for comfort, conversation and sex, so he has my body and a tiny tug of my heart. 96% of my heart belongs to Harry. But Zayn holds onto his 4% as if it could change the world.

He nods his head. Can he read my thoughts? I sometimes wonder if he can because occasionally we are so ridiculously in tune. Bursting into song at the same second. Simultaneously giggling at a remembered joke. Reaching for the same puff of salty popcorn so unexpectedly that our fingers collide. Evidently, we share something. I just don’t know what that something is.

Suddenly, his lips are crushed against mine, filling every crevice that the air once hugged. It’s a strange thing to kiss Zayn because although it is always intimate and beautiful, occasionally there’s a hideous underlying aftertaste. Guilt is sour. I know the taste too well.

I pull away slightly so that our mouths are only a teasing centimetre apart. Zayn’s unspoken request is hot on his breath.

Stay. Just a while longer.

But my cold protest is explicitly audible.

“No. Harry will be wondering where I am.”

And just like that, his lips are nowhere near mine, bidding a ‘fine’ and farewell as he storms to his bedroom, slamming the door shut.

Alone, I gnaw on the inside of my gum. I feel cruel. Beastly. Because I know he’s exasperated and locked in his room, attempting to loathe me. He should loathe me by now, I’ve done no good for him. I’ve used him and pretended to be happy in his presence. Pretended. I can’t possibly enjoy it with genuine feeling. Harry’s the one for me to enjoy. The only one. 

Constantly, Zayn does everything in his power to appeal to me, to make me love him like he loves me. It is futile. It is cold and wintry but truthfully futile.

Because no matter how much he will supply me with, he will never be enough. And he’s finally come to grips with it.

Does that make me a horrible person? 

I dig my hands into my pockets and contemplate standing with my face against his bedroom door, saying…

Saying what? Sorry? God no, as horrible as I get, I don’t apologise. It’s not in my nature. So instead, I straighten my beige, loose-fitting blouse and slip my flat shoes onto my bare feet. I open the front door and walk out, clicking it shut ever so carefully, almost as if slamming it would give my infidelity away.

I’m walking down the stairs from his flat and into the streets, mentally insisting that I will never ever enter that house of Zayn’s again. But deep down I know that once I get home, Harry’s unhelpful words will cause me to scream within two minutes, and I’ll regret rejecting the tan boy. Then I’ll turn up at his doorstep tomorrow evening, complaining and requesting a Chinese take-away. Zayn will forget he ever tried to hate me as I lie safe in his muscular arms, kissing between mouthfuls of noodles.

I know this because this is an inevitable.

A varied repetition of events.

A cycle.