Page 31 of Spring Awakening

Zach takes a deep breath that he only partly hides. “You’re so rude to me.”

“Zach,” she says, and he swallows. “I want you to move in. I want to force you to play games with me. I want to sometimes walk to work together. I want to make sure you don’t try and steal my cat. I want to be your friend. Please, move in.”

“Mali.”

“Yes or no.”

He frowns, and she smiles like she knows he’ll do whatever she wants. She downs the rest of her tea, and Buffy jumps off him like he knows something Zach doesn’t.

“I’m going to feed Buff, then we’ll go get your stuff,” she says, standing up. She stretches, and her top rides up, and he sees the outline of her arse perfectly. Being her roommate might kill him. “And, if we go see your mum after, we can go to the drive-thru. Then I don’t have to cook, which is excellent news because I forgot to defrost the mince.”

Zach looks up at her, and she holds her hand out.

“Come on. Let’s go!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The warmth of thesun radiates through the office window and onto Mali’s jumper. Her shoulder blades finally feel toasty after the chill of turning the heating off in the office. It’s April, but it’s not warm enough to not heat the office sometimes. She still has to walk home with her hands in her pockets, but the river has no ice on it anymore. It hasn’t rained all week, and Mali wonders if Zach would ever want to walk home with her.

It’s been a week since he moved in. She has no full regrets, she’s just horny as fuck, and she barely sees him. He keeps to himself. The only reason she knows he’s there at all is because the milk goes down quicker, and at night she has to try and bribe Buffy back into her room with treats.

Mali misses him a little bit, which is stupid because every time he sees her, he barely says a word. There are no more rapid-fire questions. He’s always so busy with his mum or his brother, and she’s not sure how to get him to slow down. Maybe he’s avoiding her because he thinks she’s so hot he can’t bear to be around her. She can’t believe she told him she was nervous because he was attractive. Loser.

All he had from his last place was eight boxes and a handful of binbags, and every corner of her heart hurt for him. She wonders where his friends are. What happened at his last club. She’s desperate to know him, and for him to want to know her, but she’s not sure if it’s in the cards for them. Somehow, they live together, and she sees him less than she did before.

Mali takes a photo of the ducks at the edge of the river, smiling at the thought that in a few weeks it’ll be warm enough to sit here for a while. She’s not expecting Zach to want to go with her, but she’ll think about him here all the same. She wishes he was more himself around her. Sometimes, when she manages to get him to talk to her, she sees the part of him she saw on her couch, or when they saw his mum. Miriam knew who she was by name, which Zach blushed at, but Mali is choosing to believe it’s because he mentioned he worked with her and not the fact he wants to run her over. But then she didn’t recognise Zach moments later, and any semblance of happiness had wiped from his face.

Mali had thought him moving in with her would give him some peace, but he’s already moved on to finding a new place. He spends most of his time trying to get his mum some help, and God, Mali’s so tired for him. She gets it. She’d be the same if her family were in need, but she’d have help. She wants to help. She wants to tell him to stop looking at houses—he can stay with her for as long as he likes. She wants to tell him he can sit in the front room with her if he wants. She wants to tell him that she wants to be his friend.

Alas, she can’t force anything. There’s only so much she can do before it reeks of desperation, and she’s not a desperate girl. She sighs as she leaves the path beside the river and gets to the top of her road. Today was a lot. Blyke are being difficult. More difficult than she was anticipating. The deal is likely to go through, but it’s taking all her willpower to not tell them to fuck off. The waybig corporations talk about real-life people makes her a little sick. Frankie told her it’s just the industry, and she gets it, butugh.

Tonight, she’ll call her parents and see if they want to invite her around for tea at the weekend. She hasn’t seen them in at least two weeks, and she’s having withdrawals. They only live three streets over, but she hasn’t had the time to pop in after work. Not because she can’t stroll in, but because they’ll ask why she looks like that. Down, she thinks. There’s a part of her that feels weird having someone in her house. Mali doesn’t regret it—she likes seeing Zach’s jumper on the banister, and hearing him hum in the shower. But she always thought when she finally lived with someone, she’d be less lonely in the evenings. Someone would make her tea, and she’d unwrap herself from her blanket and share it with them. It’s a strange feeling, to have someone around that isn’t around.

Mali pulls her keys out when she sees the edge of her garden. The cul-de-sac is cute. She never cared what the front of her house looked like, even though her dad kept going on about kerb appeal. But right now, she’s glad he pushed for it. The brick pavements and the way everyone’s front garden has trees, or bushes, or iron railings make it look like a scene from a movie. Zach’s car isn’t in the driveway, and she can’t tell if it’s a bad thing.

Then, she realises it’s averybad thing. It takes her too long to notice the front door is ajar. That there is a hooded figure in her hallway riffling through the sideboard. Everything in her body turns ice cold as she steps onto her front porch.

“Oh my God,” she whispers, her hands shaking in an effort to get her phone. Where is Buffy? Tears sting her eyes as the horror strikes down her neck. She should leave. She should back up, and call the police, or Zach, or her dad. Buffy will be fine. He’s probably curled up asleep on her bed. But she can’t leave him.

“Fuck.” She grabs her phone, her hand shaking so violently it takes her three tries to get the screen unlocked. By the time she can see the screen, the person in her house is moving. Towards her.

“What’s your problem?!”

He’s loud, but she doubts it’s loud enough for her neighbours to hear over the whirring of the air fryer or the sound of the television. God, she should have gotten a terraced house after all. Why had she wanted to be surrounded by trees when she could die here and no one would know?

Mali stands still, trying desperately to see around him so she can find Buffy. “I just— I want—”

His eyes dip to her hand, and she grips her phone tighter.

“Are you calling the fucking cops?” the man asks, his face screwed up as he gets closer to her. She shakes her head, leaning backwards as he walks towards her. His hand grabs at his waistband. He won’t have a knife, right? If she screams, would her neighbours come out? She takes a step back, but somehow, he’s steered her diagonally, and her foot slips onto the stones besides her path. He keeps moving until her back is pushed against the tall hedge.

“You can just go,” she says, her voice quiet, even to herself. “I won’t—you can—”

“I won’t—you can—” he mocks, moving closer. She could hit him. A swift knee to his bollocks would probably give her enough time to get inside, but she can’t get her limbs to move. She can’t figure out how to do anything other than stand here petrified as the man glares at her. Her house is her safe space. It’s the only place in the world she can be entirely herself, and he’s ruining it.

“What’s going on?”

Zach! Mali almost snaps her neck to look at him. Oh, thank God, it’s Zach. She didn’t hear his car over the sound of blood thumping in her ears. He must have been picking stuff up fromhis mum’s, because he’s got boxes in his arms. She hears him now. His voice is calmer than it was when he was angry at Toby, but it’s deadly, even as his eyes widen. He’s worried too.

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