zayngigigraziaImage: Gigi Hadid via Instagram

Gigi Hadid is one of, if not the It girl of 2016: from winning Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards to walking in Victoria’s Secret to doubling her Instagram followers, she’s been a woman on the rise all year long.

So how did Zayn Malik, fresh from leaving One Direction, his solo career still in its early days, manage to make the It girl his girl? Simply by, as the Aussie saying goes, giving it a red-hot go.

“I just asked her, it was pretty straight up, I just asked her if she wanted to go on a date,” he said in an interview with radio station Sirius this week.

Apparently that was all it took for Gigi, fresh from a romance with Joe Jonas, to take a chance on Zayn. And aside from that brief split this year, it’s happily ever after.

Zayn also made a brief reference to their sex life in the interview when the radio host responded to Malik’s claim that he’s never seen the Fifty Shades movie or read the books, despite just releasing the Fifty Shades Darker theme song with Taylor Swift, I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.

“You lived the movie,” the host said. Zayn replied in the affirmative “I like that”.

It’s not the first time he’s opened up about his intimate life with Gigi: Zayn also revealed this year that he and the supermodel like to Netflix and chill.

Wink, wink.