Love Storm

by Ruth Houston

  "How was your day?" he mumbled after a long moment.

  "Horrible," I said honestly with a slight smile.

  "Wha…? Why?" he asked, his breathing starting to slow as he relaxed more.

  "Because I was so worried about you," I replied softly.

  I could feel his lips curling into a smile against my skin. "You shouldn't have been worried…You can see that I'm fine…Just a little sick…little fever…flu…" His voice was thick with sleep, and he was drifting off. "My day was alright I guess," he mumbled even though I hadn't asked. "'Cept Victoria kept making me drink juice…orange juice…too much…orange…"

  He had talked himself to sleep at long last. I could feel his chest rising and falling against mine as I laid there next to him, our bodies so entangled it was impossible to tell where I ended and he began.

  I laid there for a very, very long time. I was too afraid too move, even after he had been asleep for a good hour, because Zack looked so peaceful and serene in sleep like he never was when he was awake, and so unbelievably handsome, that I was loathe to even risk waking him. He had been tired for so long, and now he could get a little bit of long-needed sleep. I had no idea how long it would be before he would wake again, and I didn't want to make it happen any earlier than it had to be, so I stayed there, wrapped up in him, in a warm and safe Zack cocoon.

  I wasn't tired like he was, and though I tried to fall asleep, it didn't quite work out. My thoughts were completely stuck on the teenage guy I was in bed with. I winced. In bed with. Eva would have had a field day with that phrase.

  A light sigh slipped through my lips as I pushed a wayward curl off Zack's forehead, a little bit past the first hour of his being asleep. Why was he so….so…I didn't even have the right words for him. I gently tapped the bridge of his nose, which was sprinkled with those adorable freckles. He was just one person. One person. One guy.

  So why in the world did he mean so much to me?

  He could have been no one, just a stranger, just a classmate, just one of Eva's numerous ex-boyfriends, just a person who I had no particular inclination or disinclination for. He could have been any of those, all of those.

  But he wasn't.

  What was it about him, exactly, that made it so that he could be doing something absolutely obnoxious, and yet instead of blowing up at him, I'd end up laughing at his little antics? What was it about him that made me not only willing, but also wanting to do anything to preserve his happiness? What was it about him that was special anyway, so special that my heart was telling me every day with every glance in his direction and every smile for him, that he was someone to hold on to for always?

  I don't pretend to be genius or anything, because I'm not, so to be completely honest, I didn't know what the answers to any of those questions were. Maybe the answer was nothing. Maybe it was everything. Either way, it would have implied a lot more than I was willing at that moment to delve into.

  So I just relaxed in Zack's arms and took comfort in his slow, steady breathing, hoping he was enjoying a deep, restful sleep.

  -Zack-

  I don't know how many hours later it was that I woke up. The first thing that I noticed was that my bed smelled absolutely heavenly. The faint scent was sweet and feminine, and I automatically turned my face into my pillow and inhaled it deeply. My mind still muddled with sleep, I unconsciously reached out blindly to the other side of my bed, and it wasn't until my hand met thin air that I realized I was searching for the warm body that the scent belonged to, and that she wasn't there. I opened my eyes blearily, yawning and stretching luxuriously. I hadn't felt this well rested or contented in I didn't know how long. Now, the only thing that was making that moment incomplete was that I didn't know where Winter was.

  I rolled onto my other side, rubbing at my eyes. A glance at my digital clock told me it was 3pm. My still groggy mind was only able to accept that without asking any questions, and I staggered out of bed, shivering as cool air hit my body. I managed to find a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt which I pulled on over my t-shirt and boxers, and I left my room for the bathroom. I did the old bathroom, brush teeth, wash face routine and headed downstairs.

  I found Victoria in the kitchen, cooking something.

  "Oh, you're finally awake," she said with a warm smile. "Feeling better?"

  "Uhh, I guess," I said, trying to focus my mind.

  "You should be," Victoria said, grabbing a clean spoon and dipping it into the pot. It looked like soup. "You slept for a whole day. Here, try this. Is there enough salt in it?"

  A whole day? I dumbly took the spoon from her and tried the soup.

  "Well?" she prompted me.

  I choked as the hot food slid down my throat. "It's fine. A whole day?" I coughed.

  "Yes," she replied with an arched eyebrow.

  I took another look at the clock. 3:12pm, it read.

  "Oh man," I said, holding a hand to my forehead. "So that makes today…" I shook my head, trying to clear it of all remnants of sleep. The events of the past few days flashed by me in chronological order. Winter, punching me – that had been Friday. Saturday and Sunday, spent at home in a foul mood. Monday, getting into the brawl with Gavin, getting taken to the hospital by Winter, having dinner with her, driving her home. Tuesday, waking up sometime in the early hours of the morning with a sore body and feeling freezing cold though my skin was burning with heat. Tuesday…Tuesday in my mind trailed off into a blurry memory. I had spent the day in a half-asleep, half-awake haze, feeling absolutely crappy and way too far gone on ibuprofen. Winter had come sometime during the afternoon…I had fallen asleep…

  "It's not Wednesday already, is it?" I asked.

  "It is Wednesday already, actually," Victoria said.

  "God, I feel like I got cheated out of a day of life," I muttered.

  Victoria laughed gently. "That girl of yours was here all of yesterday afternoon. I had to use all of my best persuasion skills to get her to go home and get some sleep for herself."

  "Oh, really?" I said, smiling softly.

  "Don't go all the way off into Winter La-La Land yet, Zack," she said.

  I was slightly offended. "Winter La-La Land? There's no such place," I scoffed.

  Victoria gave me a "yeah, right" sort of look and said, "Mmm, well then, you tell me why your eyes glaze over every time someone mentions her."

  I had no reply for that. "Did she really stay here all afternoon yesterday?" I asked instead.

  "Yes, it was so sweet," she said, going back to stirring the soup and adjusting the heat of the stovetop. She shot a stern look at me over her shoulder. "You hang on to this girl and don't give up on her, you hear me?" she said severely.

  I held up my hands defensively. "Wasn't planning on it," I said honestly, hiding a grin.

  "Good," she murmured approvingly. "Winter said she'd drop by again today after school."

  "Really?" I asked eagerly.

  "Yes, she should be arriving –"

  The doorbell rang. Lovely how telepathic Victoria is, isn't it?

  "I'll get it!" I said quickly, and dashed as fast as my still weak body allowed to the front door.

  "Hey," I said as I opened the door for her.

  "Hey, you okay?" she asked, concerned as she saw me bringing a hand up to my head in a sudden but short bout of dizziness, probably initiated by my quick sprint.

  "I'm better than okay," I said, wincing a little as the foyer stopped whirling around me.

  She gave me a beautiful smile that warmed me from the inside out despite the chilly air that was blowing in from the open door.

  "Come in," I said, closing the door behind her.

  "You're feeling better, right? I –"

  She stopped as I caught her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek, unable to stop myself. It occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn't have been taking these liberties without asking her first, but when I saw her pleased smile, and that she was as flushed as I felt, I figured she could have stopped me before, but
she never had.

  "Much better," I said.

  "Well… that's – that's good to hear," she said, trying to regain her composure. I smiled secretly to myself. "I just came to check up on you and see if you were awake. I brought your homework." She gestured at her backpack.

  I groaned. "Is it a lot?" I asked, motioning for her to follow me upstairs.

  She took off her shoes, leaving them at the door as she followed me. "Crap load," she grinned, though her tone was sympathetic. "And you missed a unit exam for AP Spanish."

  "Great," I said. "In that case, wanna help me study?"

  She shrugged. "I could. Sure. It wasn't that hard. It was just that unit vocabulary stuff, and that review on the command form and the subjunctive."

  By now we had reached my room. I gestured at her to enter first.

  "Hey, it's kind of dark in here, don't you think?" Winter asked, going directly to my curtains and drawing them back. The waning afternoon sunlight, weak in the winter, streamed in through the window, and I squinted, adjusting to the light as it flooded my room. Winter was always doing that – bringing light.

  She sat herself down on my window seat, crossing her legs Indian style. I sat down on the floor in front of her. My bed was right behind me, so I leaned back on it.

  "Okay," she said in her All Business voice. I grinned. How much more adorable could she get? Winter extracted a dark blue binder from her backpack and flipped through it. "Two review worksheets for AP Spanish – we did those in class before the exam; problems one through 53 odd for unit 4.9 out of the textbook for Calculus – you probably need to borrow my lecture notes for that; we have another essay due for English in two weeks, here's the sheet on the prompt; and…wait, there's one more thing, what is it? Oh yeah, I think Rebecca mentioned some homework that you guys have for AP Physics. Why are you taking that class anyway?" She wrinkled her nose.

  I laughed. "Because it's the easiest AP course Branner High has. Robinson's class is a joke. Jeez, that's a lot of homework." I took all the papers from her. "Thanks."

  "No problem. Can't have you sitting at home all day getting on a sugar high from all that orange juice, after all," Winter grinned at me.

  I was astonished. "Are you physic? How did you know about Victoria practically force-feeding me orange juice?!"

  It was her turn to laugh. "You talked yourself to sleep yesterday. You mentioned it."

  I shook my head. "Remind me never to do that again otherwise I'll end up revealing something horribly embarrassing about myself to you. Wanna help me with this subjuntivo form and the mandatos for Spanish? I never did understand it."

  "They're basically the same thing," Winter shrugged. "Just order people around. Take the yo form, change the ending to an a if it's er or ir, and e if it's ar…"

  We spent the next hour or so like that, her helping me catch up with my homework and doing her own homework, as I worked and stole glances at her every once in a while. I did so presently, and saw that she was thinking hard, concentrating, and had caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Automatically my gaze strayed to her mouth, just as she licked her lips absently.

  Oh, crap; no, bad, bad, bad idea Zack, I thought, now unable to tear my gaze away from her delectable, luscious mouth –

  No, we weren't going to go down that path right now. Definitely not.

  "What?" Winter's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. She had caught me staring at her.

  "Huh? Oh," I said, coming up empty as I searched for an excuse. "Uh, nothing. Sorry," I muttered, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. What? Me, blushing? Not possible. I turned my head away so she couldn't see. A moment later I risked a quick glance at her – keeping my eyes firmly on the upper half of her face – and saw that her dark chocolate eyes were smiling in amusement.

  "What?" I said.

  "Uh, nothing," she said. "Sorry."

  "Are you mocking me?"

  "What? No, why would I be mocking you?"

  "You are."

  "I'm not."

  "You are mocking me."

  "I am not."

  "Are too."

  "Am not."

  "Are – hey, stop laughing at me." I tried glowering at her and failed miserably.

  "You're paranoid Zack. First you say I'm mocking you, then you say I'm laughing at you?" Winter kept her expression serious, though her eyes were dancing with mischief. Absolutely adorable.

  I turned away to hide my grin. "So are you doing your homework or what?"

  "Doing my homework, of course," she said with a charming smile. "How could you possibly think otherwise?"

  And so we carried on with our homework. She soon tired of that though, as I knew she would, because Winter dislikes sitting in silence for extended periods of time doing boring work. So she started chatting with me, and though it was distracting, I didn't mind too much, because her voice was deliciously attractive. I wanted to keep her talking.

  "Did you know that J was the last letter to be added to the English alphabet?" she asked me idly. By now she had taken off her sweatshirt and was sprawled out on her back on the window seat, the folded sweatshirt pillowing her head, which was turned sideways toward me.

  "No, I did not," I chuckled. "How did you know that?"

  "Katherine told me. She's so full of random knowledge," Winter told me. She stretched languidly and turned onto her side. I decided to give up on my Calculus homework.

  The mentioning of Katherine brought up the thought of the Westleys. "How are the Westleys anyway?" I asked her.

  "They're doing better," Winter replied. "Did I ever tell you that Mr. Westley got a fiancée?"

  "What?" I stared at her.

  She nodded. "Her name is Emma Wilbourne. She's a fashion designer."

  "Um, is that supposed to tell me something?" I asked quizzically.

  "Not really, but Eva likes introducing Emma in conjunction with her profession, so I do it too," Winter shrugged.

  "Have you met her yet?"

  "Nope. I'm invited to their wedding though. It's in December up at Tahoe."

  "Tahoe." I arched an eyebrow. "What, are they going to get married on a ski slope or something? Have the theme be black diamonds? Or maybe blue squares? Or wait – actually, I hear the new in thing this season is green circles."

  "Don't be mean!" Winter laughed, reaching down from her perch on the window seat to slug me on the shoulder. "You want to come with? Cause a deliberate commotion during the objection part by pretending you got frostbite?"

  I chuckled. "As long as I'm your date I swear I won't try to pull something like that."

  "I can live with that," she grinned.

  We fell into quiet for a pause.

  "So…" Winter hedged. "I was wondering…our conversation the other day kind of got interrupted. I was wondering if you wanted to keep talking about that stuff…"

  "Sure," I said simply, watching her. "What do you want to know?"

  She had turned onto her stomach now, and was playing with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, eyes concentrated on a thread that had wiggled its way out of the fabric. "I'm confused. You just up and left Italy. Your parents couldn't have been happy with you. You're still a minor, so technically they can make you do whatever they want. So why didn't your dad drag you back to Italy?" Now she looked at me, awaiting my answer.

  I nodded. "You're right. My dad was furious with me. I thought I'd seen it all – I pissed him off so much on a regular basis. But when he came home from a charity gala and found me gone…" I shook my head now. "He saw it as a violation of respect, as the last bit of control he had over me slipping away. I guess it was exactly that, though at the time I didn't really analyze it like that. I figured I was doing what was right for me, you know? I still think I did the right thing.

  "But he was so mad. You can't even imagine how angry he was. He called my house every day, sometimes in the middle of the night so Victoria and I couldn't sleep. We ended up unplugging the phones at night so his calls couldn't come through. I finally picked up
because I got sick of dancing around him. He told me, he couldn't believe what I had done, and how could I diss him like this, how bad this must look to his corporate buddies, and I'm going to cut off your allowance until you get your act together young man and I have already bought a ticket for you to come back." I shrugged. "He used to wire over whatever money Victoria and I needed. He threatened to cut us off from his bank account if I didn't get on that plane, and if Victoria didn't see to it that I got on that plane. Of course I didn't get on the flight. Victoria was pretty pissed too." I grinned. "Never seen her so mad at my father in my life. She went and sold that plane ticket back to the travel agency and we kept the money.

  "But anyway, that made my dad even madder, right? A disobedient underage son beyond his control and an insubordinate house employee? Totally unacceptable. But he was unwilling to give up the time to fly over here and physically force me to go back, so what could he do? He gave me an ultimatum: Come back here to Italy within the next week – I'll even shrink the deal, all you have to do is finish the fall semester at the American school – or I'll cut you off from my bank account forever. He gave me that ultimatum about halfway through September."

  "Wait, so how do you get by for money now?" Winter interrupted, alarmed.

  "Patience, principessa. Obviously I didn't go back to Italy. He called one last time. Victoria picked up first, and I think she got an earful, because she was pretty mad too when she handed the phone to me. So here's how it went down: he gave me another ultimatum."

  Winter rolled her eyes. "The point of an ultimatum is that it's all or nothing, not that you get a second chance."

  "I know," I said. "But he was changing it. He told me I had better get my ass back to Italy within the next week again, otherwise he was going to sell this house, fire Victoria, and refuse to support me financially in anything."