Buried Castles

by Monica Alexander

  “She’s easy, and I love this age. She’s so much fun.”

  Zack laughed. “I remember times when she wasn’t so fun, but you’re right. This is a good age.”

  I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to know all about how he’d come to be a father and how he felt about it and what those difficult ages were. I wanted to know how it was that he and Jen had such a great relationship and how he’d managed to see Lily while he was living here full time, but I kept quiet. Things were going well between us. We were actually becoming friends, and as much as I didn’t want that, it was better than nothing. It was better than silence. I was afraid if I asked questions he didn’t want to answer, he’d clam up. I didn’t want to push him too far.

  “Oh my God! Is that my favorite little girl?!”

  I turned around to see Daphne descending on our table, her arms outstretched toward Lily.

  “Daffy!” Lily said, lighting up, and I had to smile at the way Lily pronounced her name.

  Daphne scooped her up and covered her face with kisses while Lily laughed and squealed in delight.

  “Hey you,” she said, kicking Zack’s chair, finally acknowledging him. “How have you been?”

  “Hanging in there,” Zack said, shrugging.

  “Glad to hear it,” Daphne said, and I could tell there was something unspoken between them.

  “Daphne, you remember Emily, right?”

  Daphne looked at me for a few seconds as if trying to place who I was. Then suddenly it registered. “Oh, yeah. Right. Emily. How are you?”

  I could tell she was surprised to see Zack and me together, and I was glad he didn’t clarify what our relationship truly was.

  “I’m good. Thanks.”

  “Hey, mind if I take this little cutie in the back? You know Phil’s going to want to see her,” Daphne asked, hiking Lily, who was playing with her dangly earring, a little higher on her hip.

  “Have at it,” Zack said, and it suddenly struck me that everyone knew about Lily. Every single person I’d met last summer had known about Lily while I’d been in the dark.

  “Phil!” Daphne called as she walked away from the table. “Guess who’s here?!”

  “What’s wrong?” Zack asked then, and I knew my emotions were written all over my face.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, not interested in getting into it. It was in the past and needed to stay there.

  Of course Zack always could see right through me, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he lightly kicked my leg under the table.

  “Come on, Em. Something’s up. Tell me. You were fine a minute ago. Is it Daphne?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s not Daphne. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing,” he said firmly. “Tell me.”

  “Fine,” I said stiffly, sitting up straighter in my chair. “I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me about Lily last summer, and honestly, I probably would have been okay if she’d been a secret to everyone, but she obviously wasn’t since Daphne and Phil know her. And I know everyone in your family knows about her, so I guess I’m just feeling a little slighted that I was the only one left out of the loop.”

  Zack sucked in a breath and leaned back in his chair, no doubt sorry he’d asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I should have told you, and I didn’t. It was wrong. I’m just – I’m sorry.”

  He sounded so remorseful that I wanted to tell him it was okay, but it just wasn’t. ”Did you think I wouldn’t be able to handle it, or were we really not as serious as I thought we were? I mean I get that my feelings were obviously a lot stronger than yours, but I figured once you introduced me to your mother that we were moving past casual dating. I guess I was wrong.”

  Zack sucked in a breath and looked resigned. “I was wondering if you were going to bring that up,” he said and leaned back in his chair.

  “Zack, how could I not? You didn’t tell me you had a kid! You told me about every other part of your life, even the stuff that didn’t paint you in a great light, but you left out something so huge!”

  “I know,” he said. “And honestly, I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. It’s just, Lily was with Jen in California for the summer, and I hate to say it, but I think I just wanted to forget what it was like to have so much responsibility for a little while. You were telling me you just wanted to have fun, and I saw it as an escape – from everything – so I took it. I don’t have a better excuse than that.”

  I watched him for a few moments and could see the remorse on his face. He really was sorry.

  “I guess I can understand that,” I said finally, taking a sip of my Diet Coke.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t change the fact that I should have told you. I think a part of me feared it would be too much, and you wouldn’t want get involved with me if you knew I had a kid – almost like you wouldn’t see me as fun or something if I was a parent.”

  Okay, now I felt bad for him.

  “There’s my boy!” came Phil’s booming voice as he walked out of the kitchen with Lily in his arms. I was glad for the distraction. There was too much tension at our table all of a sudden.

  “Hey Phil,” Zack said, rising to give him a hug as Phil put Lily back in her high chair.

  “You’re next, little lady,” he said to me, and I grinned. I liked Phil. I rose to hug him, feeling small as the burly man embraced me. “I’m glad to see you two still together.”

  He whispered that only to me, and I didn’t have the strength to refute his assumption.

  “So what’ll it be?” he asked when we’d sat back down.

  “I think we need a few minutes,” Zack said, looking down at his closed menu.

  “Nonsense,” Phil said. “You’ve been working here for five years. You know that menu better than I do. And this one never ordered anything except a shimp po’ boy with curly fries all last summer. Pick what you want, and I’ll bring Miss Lily some spaghetti. How about that Lily Girl?”

  Phil leaned down so he was eye-level with Lily and made a face at her that made her giggle. “Unca Phiw funny,” she said as she laughed.

  “Uncle Phil is certifiable,” Zack joked. “Bring me a black and blue burger, medium, with some of those curly fries.”

  “See,” Phil said, as he collected the menus from the table. “No need for these.” He started to walk away when he turned back around. “Oh, and dinner’s on me if you’ll play until it’s ready.”

  “No way,” Zack said, looking around at the half-empty restaurant. There were only ten other tables occupied besides ours, and only a few people sat at the bar.

  “Your mom would have wanted you to do it. She always loved your impromptu shows.”

  My eyes went wide, and I was afraid to look at Zack for fear that Phil had crossed a line, but apparently Phil knew him better than I did.

  “Low blow, old man,” Zack shouted back, but he was grinning as he said it.

  “Just play, kid,” Phil said, before he disappeared into the kitchen.

  “I’ll be back,” Zack said, rising from the table to get his guitar from the truck. Something told me he knew Phil would ask him to play, because he hadn’t brought his guitar into the house when we’d unpacked that afternoon.

  When he returned a few minutes later, he stopped by the table. “Any requests ladies?”

  Lily looked up at him, her big brown eyes completely serious. “Tay Swif, Daddy.”

  It was so perfect that I started giggling uncontrollably. The look on Zack’s face was priceless. He shook his head and said to me, “You’re lucky I love my daughter since it is completely your fault she has been corrupted. Okay, baby girl, I’ll play you some Taylor Swift. How about you?” He looked down at me expectantly.

  I smirked. “Do the same rules apply as this summer?” I asked, and he looked at me quizzically, no doubt trying to figure out what I was referencing. “If I can stump you, can I make you sing any song I want?”<
br />
  He laughed. “Sure. Why not, but if you can stump me, I’ll play later, at home.”

  “Deal,” I said, figuring it was the best offer I’d get.

  “Alright, so what’ll it be?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him, but I couldn’t think of any song that I could stump him with. My mind was wrapped around the fact that he’d said ‘home’, not ‘my mom’s house’ but ‘home’, and I couldn’t help wishing things were different. How much did I wish that after dinner we could go home together, put Lily to bed and snuggle on the couch before going to sleep in the same bed? It was a nice picture. It was exactly what I wanted.

  “How about this?” he said, leaning close to whisper in my ear, making me shiver from his warm breath hitting my skin in such a sensitive area. “How about I pick a song just for you?”

  The way he said that, slowly and deliberately, his accent curling around the words and making them sound sensual, made my head spin. Before I could respond, he walked over to the stool Phil had set up in the corner. As patrons around the restaurant recognized him, some of them whistled and cheered.

  “Hey ya’ll,” Zack said, and I smiled. He had slipped back into his performer accent, dialing up the drawl just a bit. “I think I know most of you, but I’m Zack Easton, and I’m literally singing for my supper tonight. If I suck, you can thank Phil since he told me I couldn’t eat until I played.”

  That garnered a few laughs from the audience. I pulled Lily onto my lap so we could watch her daddy play together.

  “Here tonight with me are my daughter Lily and my good friend Emily. They have put in some requests that I’ll play, and I’ll ask you not to judge when you see what songs they’ve selected.”

  What song? I didn’t pick a song.

  Zack kicked off the night with a few crowd favorites that I’d heard him play plenty of times. He did a little CCR, some Beatles and some Stones. Then he said, “Now this next one is for my daughter who is going through a Taylor Swift phase that a rock ‘n roll guy like me hopes she grows out of.”

  “Hey, I like Taylor Swift,” I called out.

  “Yeah, I know you do,” he said sarcastically. “Thanks for being the one to introduce Lily to her.” Then he grinned at me.

  “You’re welcome,” I called back, returning his grin.

  The he launched into a song that I loved called Never Grow Up. I’d never heard him sing something that was such a sweet and simple ballad, and I could hear the conviction in his voice as he sang to his daughter a song about staying young and innocent.

  When he finished, Lily and I clapped for him.

  “Now this next song is for you, Em. I’ve know you doubted me in the past, but let this song be an indication that I’m not going anywhere.”

  I swallowed hard, wondering what on earth he was going to play. As usual, his words were cryptic, and I’d have to rely on the song to tell me what he truly meant.

  When he launched into the song he’d chosen, grinning at me as he saw I instantly recognized what it was, I started laughing and shaking my head. He was insane, and although a little part of me hoped he would pick something that told me a different message, I let it go. He was being cute, especially when he started singing in an affected British accent, belting out the words to 500 Miles by The Proclaimers.

  He was trying so hard to be my friend, and I appreciated the effort. I wanted more, but maybe being friends would be enough. Probably not, though.

  “Now most of you know I was in a band called Liar’s Edge for a number of years,” Zack said when he finished his joke song dedicated to me. “We even played here once, but we broke up after my little one was born. Well, good news, we are back together. This next song is one I wrote for someone very special to me.”

  As he said that, he caught my gaze and held it for a few beats before launching into Without You. I might have been the only person who knew what the song was truly about.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Zack

  “Did you really leave Liar’s Edge because of Lily?” Emily asked later that night when we were sitting in the living room attempting to watch TV after Lily had gone to bed. “I thought you left to take care of your mom?”

  It was what I’d told her last summer when she’d found out about the band. I hadn’t lied, but I hadn’t told her the full truth either. Now was my chance to come clean about everything. I wanted her to know my story – every gritty detail – because only then would I know if she could truly love me for me. I could tell that she still had feelings for me, and I hoped after I came clean she would finally tell me how she felt and confirm my suspicions.

  Then I’d finally be able to tell her I loved her, and we could finally move forward – together.

  “My mom getting sick was the final catalyst that led to me leaving the band, but it wasn’t the full reason. I did move back here, but instead of putting the band on hold, we broke up because I wanted out.”

  “Why?” she asked, concern knitting her eyebrows together.

  I sighed, knowing this was the reason I’d wanted to bring her here. I wanted to tell her this. She actually sort of already knew. I’d alluded to my colorful past over the summer, and she knew how much I despised who I was, but she didn’t know the full story.

  “Unfortunately, as great as the band was, it was also at the root of a lot of things in my life that I regret, but to understand that, I’d need to start from the beginning. Can I tell you my story?”

  I watched Emily swallow hard before she nodded. “I hate secrets,” she said. “And I hate lies. Change my mind about you, Zack Easton, because I want to believe that you’re one of the good guys, but it’s hard because you lied to me twice – about two really important things – and you broke my heart.”

  Hearing her say this cut me pretty deep, but I maintained my resolve. I knew I couldn’t change the past, and I couldn’t take back what I did. I could only hope to change the future.

  “I’d love to change your mind, princess,” I said, taking a chance and using the nickname I rarely called her anymore.

  It was a direct message, since she didn’t get the indirect message I’d sent at dinner when I’d sung her that song by The Proclaimers. She thought it was a joke, and I’ll admit, I was being silly, but now I was definitely not joking.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t react in the slightest. All she said was, “Go for it.”

  There was a challenging tone to her voice, and I took that as my cue to start talking.

  “I guess to understand how I got to where I was when I hit bottom, you have to know where I started. And the best way I can explain that is to go back six years to when I met Jen and Derrick. See, all through high school, I’d been this loser kid who just wanted to be cool, but I could never quite figure out how to do that.”

  Emily raised her eyebrow. I didn’t think she quite believed me, but she didn’t say anything.

  I smiled, hoping I could keep things light. “Hey, you might not see it now, but believe me, back in high school, I was scrawny, sort of shy and wore a lot of black. I didn’t exactly have a lot of friends at my preppy high school, so I gravitated toward my neighbor Ray, who was this punk kid who didn’t really fit in either. We used to sit on his back porch and get high, because there wasn’t anything else to do, and I didn’t want to be at home because my parents were always fighting. Then, at the start of my sophomore year, after my parents had gotten divorced and my dad moved out, I started playing my guitar more and more, because it took me away from reality for a little while. Ray found out and asked me to start a band with him and this guy Lance who lived up the street from us.”

  “Is that when the girls started flocking?” she asked, trying to hide her smirk.

  I laughed, remembering all too well the guy I’d been back then. “No, definitely not. I mean, I kissed a girl here or there, but I went off to college a virgin. Then I met Derrick. He was my roommate freshman year, and he had a sister who was a year older than us, who I couldn’t stop
staring at when she’d come over. She lived off-campus, but she’d stop by our dorm and hang out once a week or so. By that point I’d started filled out a little more, and I’d gained a little more confidence, but I never thought I’d be worthy of her.”

  “That was Jen?”

  “Yeah, it was. So anyway living with Derrick was interesting. He wasn’t all that great looking back then either, but he loved women and talked incessantly about how many girls he wanted to get with on a regular basis. He was a bit of a perv, as you well know since he hasn’t changed much since then, but he was a good guy, and he had aspirations of starting a band. When he found out I’d been in a band and could play guitar and sing, I was in. It was then that he introduced me to his friend Andrew who also played guitar, and I asked Leo, who was a junior at Duke at the time, to round us out since he played bass.”

  “When did Jen finally notice you?”

  “The first time she came to one of our practices. She decided, after looking at the four of us, that we needed a stylist. She stepped in and helped create our image. I still remember the day she took me shopping because we had a show coming up, and she wanted me, the lead singer to look bad-ass. So she put me in all these insane outfits, until she finally settled on jeans, a black graphic t-shirt and the Converse sneakers I’d worn that day. When I stepped out of the dressing room at Diesel, she said, and I’ll probably never forget this, ‘Okay, now that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a girl, and I’d totally want to fuck you if you wore that on-stage’. And I don’t know if it was the hedonistic power that came with a compliment like that or the fact that for the first time in my life a girl I was interested in wanted me, but I said back to her, ‘Oh yeah? Well I’m right here. Let’s just pretend I’m on stage with my guitar in my hand’. And before I knew what was happening, she was kissing me and pushing me back into the dressing room, and I honestly think we would have had sex right there had the sales associate not come back to check on us. But we sealed the deal later that night and then dated for the next three years.”