by Kelly Myers
Then, just as we’re about to reach the door, Zach grabs my hand. I don’t pull away, I just let him lead me into the cozy pizza place.
I don’t need to wonder what Zoe would say.
This is totally a date.
Chapter Twenty-One
We slide into a booth, and I eagerly pick up the menu.
“Should we split a pie?” Zach asks.
“As long as you don’t like weird toppings,” I say.
“What qualifies as a weird topping?” He leans forward on his elbows as he asks.
It’s funny to me that I know so much about him, yet I don’t know how he prefers his pizza. I guess it takes more than a summer fling ten years ago to learn such crucial information.
“Sardines.” I wrinkle my nose. “And pineapple.”
Zach pulls a face. “Those are my favorites.”
I fall for it completely and gape at him in shock. Then a smile spreads across his face, and I realize he’s joking.
“Very funny,” I say. “Seriously, I’m too hungry for you to joke, tell me what you like.”
He shrugs. “Whatever, I’m not picky.”
I don’t bother doing the whole polite thing and begging him to tell me what he prefers so we can have a pizza that satisfies us both. If he really cared, he would say something.
“I want half cheese and half pepperoni,” I say.
“Sounds good.” Zach tosses the menu to the side.
After we order, I prop my chin on my hands and look at him happily. I want it to be like this whenever we hang out. Easy. We stick to the present, and we never get deep. We just share food and chat about a silly recreation soccer game.
“Tony seems like a character,” Zach says.
“Oh, yeah, he’s something.” I shake my head. “He’s fun, but sometimes he’s too much. He’s the one always trying to get my team to stay out until three in the morning on a weeknight.”
I tell him about a team outing a few months ago where we all went to a karaoke bar, and Tony ordered everyone a bunch of cranberry vodkas. I stopped after one, but half my team ended up needing help getting home.
“So most of your coworkers are partiers?” Zach asks.
I shrug. “More or less. Basically, most sales people are extroverts so it’s kinda self-selecting.”
“But you’re not an extrovert,” Zach says. “Or a partier.”
“I can be extroverted.” I furrow my brow as I consider. I never fit into either category, even when I took the quizzes in college. “It’s just sometimes I need alone time to recharge. And no night of drinking is ever worth the hangover, in my opinion.”
Zach nods. “Wise words.”
I observe his face to see if he’s being sarcastic, but his dark eyes are totally earnest.
“I don’t mind going out now and then.” I feel like I need to clarify so Zach knows I’m not totally lame. It’s not like I’m a teetotaler. “I just don’t ever feel the need to get blackout drunk.”
“Bea, you don’t need to defend yourself, not to me.”
The words are so soft, I can barely believe they’re coming out of Zach’s mouth. I almost snap at him that he doesn’t need to get all sappy on me, we’re just hooking up. But I reign in that instinct. The evening has been good so far, I don’t want to mess it up just because he veers a little towards the sentimental side.
“I guess I’m used to being defensive,” I say. “Since everyone at work doesn’t always get it.”
I give him a bright smile, trying to show him that I’m a perfectly cheerful person with zero underlying issues. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, I spot the waiter carrying our pizza out.
“Oh good, food’s here!” I grab my napkin and shove it into my lap.
I’m desperate to get off any and all serious topics. Talking about how much my co-workers party compared to me may be innocuous enough, but I don’t like the way Zach is looking at me like I”m an injured animal. As if my desire to never drink represents some deep-seated trauma. I mean, it does, but he doesn’t need to think about that. He’s not my boyfriend.
While I chew my slice, I try to think of something frivolous to say about the soccer game.
Zach comes up with something first, and unfortunately, it’s not in the vein I was aiming for.
“I don’t drink much either,” he says. “After the way my dad would get, I’ll never risk it. I remember your mom could be pretty bad too.”
“Zach.” I set my pizza down and give him a pained look. “Please.”
“Oh, right.” He twists his mouth into a bitter grin, and it makes me flinch. “You prefer us to pretend we exist in a vacuum.”
“You told me last week that we could have fun, talking about our parents isn’t fun.” I have to work hard to keep my voice calm.
Why is he doing this right now? Why does he keep pushing me on this?
“Sure, we can have fun,” Zach says. “But I’m not gonna sit here and act like you not drinking is just an interesting tidbit and not a direct result of your mother’s alcoholism. Why do you never want to talk about anything real?”
I flinch hard. My eyes slam closed, and I lean back against my seat, dropping my pizza back on the plate.
I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. I actually convinced myself that he would never bring up my mother, just because I asked him not to. Zach isn’t the type to do what someone asks. He does whatever he wants.
I take five deep breaths. I will not make a scene. Not here, not now.
Zach’s warm hand covers mine. I open my eyes and give him a look as hard as steel. It doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. He just squeezes my hand and leans closer. “You can’t act like your mom doesn’t exist. She still exists, Bea.”
A sick feeling of dread infiltrates my soul as I recall the phone call from my mother last weekend. I assumed she just got a new number, but now I’m wondering if it wasn’t a coincidence. Did Zach say something that made her want to reach out now? The idea of him talking about me with her behind my back, all while he plans to surprise me at my soccer game, makes me want to throw up.
“I know she exists,” I say. “Trust me, I can’t seem to forget that.”
For whatever reason, perhaps a profound sense of self-confidence, Zach misreads my comment. By the way he nods at me, I can tell that he thinks I’m ready to talk more about her.
“She put you through a rough time, but that doesn’t mean she’s a bad person,” he says.
A harsh laugh escapes my mouth at his words. The cackle burns my throat, and Zach furrows his brow in confusion at my sudden outburst of mirth.
“A rough time?” I ask. “Is that what you call her making me hold her hair back while she vomited? Making me come home to drug dealers lurking around?”
To my utter horror, a lump is rising in my throat, and tears prick my eyelids. I grab a slice of pizza and shove it in my mouth, praying that the food pushes the lump back down into my chest.
Zach gives me a bewildered look as I chew the massive bite. “She was just trying to get by. She was doing it for you.”
“‘Is that what she told you?” I have to speak around another mouthful of pizza, and my garbled words wouldn’t be funny if the whole interaction wasn’t so agonizing.
“She wasn’t perfect, but she was trying to help you,” Zach says.
I can’t tell if he’s just trying to explain how he sees the situation with his own father or if he is directly quoting my mother. The former is bad enough, but the latter option terrifies me.
“You know, I’ve seen a lot of guys fall for my mother’s little victim act,” I say. “I know how she made them believe her. I thought she would have lost whatever good looks she had by now, but I guess she’s gotten lucky with you.”
“Don’t be disgusting.” Anger pulses through his words. So maybe he’s not sleeping with her. It doesn’t matter. He still has no right to force me into this conversation.
But now that we’ve started, I
can’t stop. I’m not going to let him keep his dumb illusions about my mother’s motivations.
“My mother was never doing anything for me.” I lean closer as I practically spit the words across the table. “She never did anything for me, it was all for herself.”
“Bea–”
I realize he’s still holding my hand, and I rip it away to cut him off.
“I used to think she was dealing drugs just to make money.” I don’t even recognize the fury in my voice. My words are rising from some deep well of anguish within me. “I thought not even she was stupid enough to start using. I thought she was drawing the line at liquor.”
Zach’s eyes are wide, and he’s sitting straight up. He didn’t think I would ever get this emotional. He thought I was probably some cold-blooded villain, entirely made of stone. I resent him for thinking that. He was supposed to know me better.
“That whole summer she was using, and I never noticed because I was too busy chasing after you,” I say. It’s not fair to blame him for my blindness, but I’m not in a particularly generous frame of mind. “Until one night in August, when it was clear that you would never ask me out for real, I come out of my bedroom, and she’s high on heroin, right in our living room, and Finn and his cronies are pounding on the door.”
My lower lip is quivering so much that I can barely speak, but I keep going. Zach wanted me to confront my past, so now I’m going to tell him about the worst night of my life just to make him pay.
“I hid in the closet,” I whisper.
The images flash through my head in bright flashes. My mother’s wide unseeing eyes as I shook her. All she did was mutter nonsense and push me away. I nearly fainted with fear when I heard the key turning in the door and realized that my idiot mom had given Finn a spare. I got into the closet just in time.
It was pitch black in the closet, so the visual memories ended there, but the sounds were bad enough.
“They were yelling at her about some big deal that she had to pull off,” I say. “And she was promising she would do it, and for the first time, I realized how deep she was. The amount of drugs they were talking about – it was terrifying. And she was saying she would do whatever they asked, as long as she got her fix on the side. And Finn had a gun too. I didn’t see, but he was pointing it around, I could tell from the things he said.”
I feel the first tear drop from my eye and roll down my cheek. I brush it away as fast as I can.
“That was the night I ran away,” I mumble. “I left as soon as they were gone, and I wandered the streets for hours, no idea where to go until my grandmother called me. It was the one stroke of luck I’ve ever had that she happened to reach out in the moment I needed her most. She had heard rumours of how bad it was getting, and as soon as I asked her, she came and picked me up from some random corner.”
I stare down at the table, exhausted from the memory and embarrassed that I’m tearing up in a public place. I’m not being loud, and the restaurant isn’t crowded, but it’s still mortifying.
“You could have called me.” Zach’s voice is thick with emotion. “I get why you didn’t, and I know I was problematic back then. But you still could have called me. I would have come for you.”
I know he’s telling the truth. I’m furious at him for pushing me to talk about this, and I know I shouldn’t trust anything he says, but I can tell that in this one instance, he’s being honest. He would have helped me, even at a time when he wasn’t helping himself.
As if someone flipped a switch to lower a dam, the tears start to flow from my eyes in an endless deluge. I gasp as massive sobs wrack my chest, and I bury my face in my hands. Was it only an hour ago that I was finishing up that soccer game and feeling so happy because a guy was taking me out to eat?
I remember something Marianne once said. We were at a dance in college, and she caught a boy she had been dating in the act of flirting with someone else. She had started crying right there on the dance floor. She insisted she needed to confront the guy.
I grabbed her arm and begged her to come to the bathroom with me. I told her it was weak to show the boy her tears.
Marianne shook off my hand and declared through her sobs: “When a boy makes me cry, he should know about it so he sees how awful he is.”
At the time, I disagreed. I thought it was just Marianne being dramatic. I admired her ability to be so in tune with her feelings, but I vowed I would never cry like that in front of a boy.
At last, sitting here in sweatpants in this pizza place across from the first guy I ever fell for, I understand what Marianne meant. I can’t hold anything back. I feel how I feel, and I’m not going to bother hiding it from him.
Strong arms encircle my shoulders, and I let out a little whimper when I realize Zach has moved next to me. He’s holding me, even though I’m stiff as a board. He wraps his arms around me and presses his face close to my ear.
“It’s ok, I’ve got you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
It takes a few seconds, but I can’t deny myself this small comfort. I know this whole scenario is all his fault, but I don’t want to cry alone. So I relax my shoulders and lean into him. He pulls me close until my face is pressed against his warm chest.
Her rubs my back, and for a second it reminds me of how my grandmother sometimes hugs me. I’ve never even told her the whole story of that night. I knew it would upset her to hear about my mother being involved with all that.
I keep my eyes shut as Zach talks to the waiter over my head. Zach asks him to wrap up the rest of the pizza to go, and he hands over his credit card, one arm leaving me briefly while he reaches for his wallet.
I don’t want to look. Who knows what the waiter is thinking? He probably assumes that we’re going through a break-up. Or that I’m completely deranged.
“Hey, are you ready to go?” Zach’s warm breath caresses my neck as he murmurs the question.
I wipe at my damp cheeks and nod. Zach stands up and helps me into my coat. I keep my head down as we walk towards the exit. He holds my hand and guides me to his truck. He even grips my waist to lift me in, as if I’m some frail invalid.
I catch a glimpse of my face in the rearview window as Zach walks around to the driver’s side. The tears have dried up, but my eyes are red and puffy, as well as the tip of my nose. I haven’t cried this much in a long time, and I’ve never cried like this in front of anyone, not even my closest friends.
Zach starts the car and points it towards home without saying a word.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He raises his brows and gives me a sideways glance. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
I smile at his self-mocking tone. “Yeah, that was kinda your fault.”
I look down at my hands, clasped together in my lap.
“I’m ok now though,” I say.
Zach doesn’t respond, he just makes a small humming sound and gives me a little smile, as if he knows something I don’t.
Five minutes later, I start crying again. Without warning, the tears just come rushing back, and all I can do is stammer that I’m never like this while I weep into my hands.
I’m still crying when we reach my apartment building.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I expect Zach to drop me off outside my building, but instead he drives around the block and finds a parking space.
“You don’t have to –” I murmur as he walks me back towards the building.
“Yes I do,” he says. “Unless you don’t want me to stay.”
I bite my lip and shrug. He’s the one for ruining our casual pizza dinner, but I also can’t bear the thought of being alone right now. It’s new and a little unsettling for me to want someone to comfort me. Brief hugs with my grandmother and occasional intense conversations with my friends used to be enough. Now I crave endless hours of being ensconced in Zach’s arms.
It’s not ideal to need him like that, but I don’t want to be without his presence right now.
Whatever resolutions I had about working on my impulse control flew right out the window when I got angry enough to tell him about that horrible night.
I am way past stopping to think about my actions. So I lead Zach into my apartment, and I don’t object when he suggests I take a hot shower while he makes tea.
As I stand under the piping hot stream of water, I ponder over how it’s possible that the wicked and rebellious dark-haired teenager I once pined for is now the type of guy who is willing to make me a cup of tea.
Then I tip my head back and let the warm water run over my hair. I scrub at my face until it feels clean. It will be puffy for a while, but at least I can wash away all the sweat from the soccer game. I stay in the shower until all the coldness has drained from my limbs.
I wrap myself in a towel and walk into my room. I hear Zach moving things around in my kitchen, and that gives me the strangest sense of peace.
It’s not so simple anymore. Not so casual. Not just fun either. But somehow I don’t mind.
I put on some sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt and wander out to the living room. The floor feels cold to my bare feet, so as soon as I sit on my couch, I curl my legs up and pull a fleece blanket over me.
Zach carries a cup of tea over. I take it from him and inhale the scent of lemon mint. He sits down and pulls my feet onto his lap, blanket and all. He acts like it’s the most natural thing in the world for us to sit like this. As if his rightful place is by my side comforting me after a bout of tears. With a pang, I remind myself that he was the cause of the tears. Or rather, my mother was the cause, but he was the catalyst.
“I’m ok now,” I say. “You don’t have to baby me.”
Zach flashes his teeth in a brief smile. “You said you were ok in the truck too.”
I flush with embarrassment and grip my mug tighter. Zach just gives my legs a gentle squeeze.
“You know, you don’t have to be ashamed,” he says. “Not about crying in front of me anyway.”
To my utter mortification, I feel another lump rising in my throat, this time because of how well he knows me. I didn’t have to say anything, he just knew I’m not used to crying in front of people.
