Ladies First (Zayn Malik) Book 4

Chapter 25

Emily’s POV

“I don’t know if now is the best time” he hesitates, glancing over his shoulder at the retreating boys.

“How about the past three weeks? Was there just no good time to text me back?” I ask arching an eyebrow. He sighs defeated.

“Ok. We’ll talk,” he agrees. “But just not here” I nod my head, and he leads me out the door after the boys to where all the cars were waiting to take celebrities away. “I’ll meet you guys back at the hotel. Emily and I are going to go talk,” he says to the boys piling in the car. They pause, glancing back at us before nodding. Niall breaks away from the group and walks over to us.

“It was nice to officially meet you Emily,” he says, giving me a hug. I couldn’t help but to smile as his head pressed into the crook of my neck. Now I understood why all the fan girls were obsessed with getting a Horan hug. Zayn coughs and Niall pulls back, looking over my shoulder to where Zayn was standing. “Remember what I told you,” he directs Zayn before heading back to the car. I glance over at Zayn confused. What had Niall told him? Had they been talking about me? I force myself to let it go as another black car pulls up and Zayn helps me inside. Zayn looks over at me to give the driver instructions on where to go since he didn’t know the area very well.

“6th and Vermont please” I say to the driver after a momentary scramble to figure out where to go. Neither one of us talks for the 10-minute drive, instead, I fiddle with my phone, shooting Hannah and Carmen a text telling them where I’ve gone.

“Here we are” the driver says. We thank him and Zayn hands him a few dollars tip as he’s already paid by the charity as a driver for the performers.

“IHOP?” Zayn asks with a laugh, a bit of his former-self emerging as he sees the restaurant in front of us.

“What’s wrong with IHOP?” I ask jokingly, a smile cracking my face.

“Nothing” He says shaking his amused “We just don’t have them in England” I gasp.

“What?” I ask, eyes wide. He watches my reaction, amusement coloring his face.

“They aren’t in England. It was one of the first American restaurants we came to though,” he says.

“So much for international” I chuckle as we head in. As we enter, we’re given some weird looks, which I attribute to our dress. Luckily, since it was almost 1 in the morning, there weren’t many people that recognized who we were. We are seated and the waitress hands us menus before disappearing to tend to other tables. My eyes skim the menu even though I already know what I was going to order. It gave me something to do as I tried to think how to broach the subject at hand.

“I’ll have the buttermilk pancakes with 2 eggs sunny side up and a side of bacon” I say, handing the menu back to the waitress when she comes over. There was just something about having breakfast at night that made it so much better.

“Make that 2 only no bacon for me, thanks” Zayn adds, handing her his menu also. The waitress walks away, and I look over the table at Zayn, twirling the bracelets on my wrist around awkwardly.

“So. Care to explain the cold shoulder for the past 3 weeks?” I finally say.

“Not really. But I suppose I owe you an explanation don’t I” he says rubbing the back of his neck with a sigh. I nod my head. He takes a deep breath, nodding his head slightly to himself.

“Well you see. We talked a lot right?” he asks and I nod my head at the rhetorical question. “Well I sort of thought that there was something there” he says, his cheeks turning pink. “And then, I saw you and Charlie”