Without Love ::: Zach, Jayla

Zach walked down the hall of Brimnar House. It was where all the lockers were for the college student on campus. They were mainly for people who commuted, but it seemed that more and more on campus students were using them, Zach included. It was just easier to have somewhere in the middle of campus to store some of your books instead of having to run across campus to the dorms. But as he walked down the halls, something strange caught his eye. Something that he just realized seemed to be happening everywhere on his walk to Brimnar this morning. People were just….all over each other. And he probably wouldn’t have noticed if there weren’t so many couples macking on each other. Normally Zach sort of went through the motions of a day completely oblivious to all things outside of his little head, but today, it was sort of hard to overlook everything. Especially when two very attractive women were swapping spit with each other right up against his locker.

Zach smirked. “Excuse me ladies,” he said as he waved his hand at them to move away from his locker. They heard him, but didn’t even look his way. In fact, the pulled away from each other and quickly bolted into an empty lecture hall. Zach could only imagine what naughty things they were about to do. Zach looked away from them and glanced down at the lock on his locker. It only took him a few seconds to crack the combination. He opened his locker and grabbed his English composition book along with the notebook that he was supposed to fill with lecture notes but rarely ever did and shut the locker. Surprisingly he had all the time in the world today. It had been a good day so far. He had gotten up early, showered, put on his favorite outfit which consisted of a pair of American Eagle jeans faded jeans and an black Evil Dead t-shirt, and headed off leaving himself a half an hour to just take his time. Class for him didn’t start for another twenty minutes, so what the heck was he going to do.

When he turned away from his locker, he caught a glimpse of Jayla at her locker a little ways down the hall. He smiled. Maybe the incident at the abandoned house changed her mind about him. He hoped so. It would be nice to have a friend around here that actually already knew him. He headed towards her. Hopefully she wasn’t in a hurry. “Hey you! Did you miss me?” He said jokingly when he reached her. He knew she wouldn’t go that far as to miss him. He wasn’t even for sure if they had broken that barrier that kept them from being friends that had for so long been blocking any type of communication between the two.

Zach watched Jayla as she continued to fidget with things in her locker. He wasn’t big on reading people at all, but at this moment, he could tell that Jayla was a bit nervous which was a tad weird. He wondered if she was still freaking out about what had happened at the abandoned apartments. He was about to ask her about it when she asked him if missing him was a bad thing. It was quite the surprise to hear something like that even though it sounded like she was just joking around with him. He didn’t really catch the realness of that statement in her voice. All he could think about was how nice it was to have her at least joking with him. He wondered how Jace would feel about Jayla and his new found friendship. He still wasn’t even sure how Jace felt about him. He smiled. “No, not necessarily. Why? Is there some missing going on? Come on, you can say it. You are head over heels for me!” He grinned at her. All of these things were being said in fun, but it was interesting to see how she would react to it. To see where this friendship had its limits before she got irritated with him just like she used to. With all of his talking, he didn’t realize that Jayla was already turning to face him and was trying to tell him something. The last thing he heard was “....don’t freak out,” before she moved forward towards him and planted her lips right onto his. His immediate reaction in a situation like this would be to obvious kiss back, but he had to stop himself when he finally was able to grasp what was happening.

Zach quickly pulled away. He stared at her for a few seconds really not sure what to say. After what seemed like forever, he finally said, “Uh, I didn’t think you’d take the head over heels thing to heart.” His eyes scanned the hallways at everyone else kissing and flirting. He gave her a goofy grin. “Did you feel left out or something? Because that I can understand just a smidgen. But um….a full blown kiss coming from you to your arch nemesisiseees? Not even remotely on my radar for a possible occurrence.” Of course, he would crack some sort of funny remark about the event that had just taken place, but what else could he do? His ex-girlfriend’s best friend just kissed him. He had no clue why or where that came from. How was he supposed to react?

Zach watched Jayla and all that seemed to come out of her mouth was ‘I don’t know’. He had never imagined in a million years that Jace’s best friend, someone who had always made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t going to ever be good enough for her best friend, would kiss him. And what was even stranger was what Jayla said after she was finally able to say something again. “Did what?” He already knew the answer to that. She was telling him that she had in fact fallen head over heels for him. How could that be true? Zach studied her. Was it a joke? No, it didn’t seem like it at all. Jayla really looked like she was really saying the honest truth about how she felt.

And then she brought up the abandoned apartments. Zach swallowed hard. Was that where all of this was coming from? Because he was compassionate with her at the apartments? He hoped that that was what anyone would do in a situation like that, but apparently she had taken it a completely different way. But before Zach could even respond to what she had just said, she told him to forget it and began to walk off. That was something he wasn’t going to allow. He didn’t want her to walk off upset, especially if he was the cause of her thinking this. He quickly grabbed her arm before she was able to walk to far away from him. “Hey, wait. No, we are not forgetting this.” He grabbed her other arm to pull her around so that she was facing him. “You are awesome, Jayla. And I’m glad I’m not your nemesis. I’m glad that we are actually forming a friendship, something I really wished we could have done back when Jace and I were dating. But you know we can’t do that to her. She is...” Zach paused. Suddenly, everything that was happening in that very moment was a blur and all he could think about was Jace. All he wanted to do at that moment was hold Jace in his arms and pretend like nothing had ever went wrong between the two of them. “…the love of my life,” Zach continued. “Where is she by the way. Do you know where she is? Is she still in her dorm room? I have to find her. I need to her to know that I still love her, Jayla, and I want her back.” Zach let go of Jayla’s arms and his own dropped to his sides.