Suddenly uneasy with the way the conversation was heading, Sam attempted to lighten the mood. “Not much to know. I’m boring.”
“It was important to me to tell you that I still live with and take care of my mother. That would’ve been the perfect time for you to tell me about your family, but you didn’t.” Zach sounded miserable. “I don’t know anything about you, except you’re a retired cop, and every time someone mentions that, you change the subject.”
Sam gritted his teeth. “I don’t believe in rehashing the past. What’s the point? It’s finished, you can’t change what happened, so why torture yourself over things?”
“Why would you torture yourself? Sometimes a person with a new perspective can make all the difference.” Zach touched his arm, but he remained unyielding. “Maybe it wasn’t as bad as you think.”
The hell it wasn’t. “Number one, I don’t want to have this conversation. Number two, I certainly don’t want to have this conversation on the street.” They’d finally reached his corner, and he pulled out his keys. “Can we please go inside?”
Considering he once thought Zach to be compliant and a bit of a pushover, the man could be stubborn as hell.
“What’s the point? We’ll go inside, and I’ll go to bed with you, but in the end, it won’t mean anything. I might as well be making love to a stranger.”
They stood in front of his house. His apartment was one of five that made up the townhouse, with his being the smallest and cheapest. The landlady liked having an ex-cop in the building and gave him a pretty deep discount on the rent, and in return he kept an eye on things for her and made the small repairs she needed.
“I understand what you’re saying. Let’s go in and we can talk.”
Zach gave him a skeptical look. “Talk talk? Or talk as a euphemism for sex?”
Earlier in the evening, the answer would have been the second choice. But with how important this now had become to Zach, Sam was at war with himself: shut Zach out and he’d lose him, probably for good; open himself up and all the shit he’d stuffed away for the past year would rise up to expose him and lay him bare.
Before he could stop himself, Sam reached out his hand to Zach. “Talk as in talk. If you have questions, I promise to try and answer them.”
What Sam would’ve liked to see from Zach was a smile in return for what he said, but when none was forthcoming, a moment of fear kicked in that Zach would walk anyway. Relief flooded through him when Zach gave him a nod, grim though it was, and followed behind him into his apartment.
Keeping a respectable distance away from Zach, Sam headed into the kitchen. “Do you want a drink?” He knew he needed a beer for what was ahead.
“No, thanks,” called out Zach, who remained in the living room.
His elbows braced against the countertop for a moment, Sam regrouped his scrambled brain and parsed together what he would and wouldn’t say. He could talk about his mother and the death of his father; that was a neutral subject and wouldn’t take too much time. As for work, retirement, Andy…he’d have to see how it flowed. The thought of telling Zach why he retired nauseated him.
After a quick, bracing gulp of beer, Sam went to the living room and found Zach sitting on the sofa, staring into space.
“Hey. You’re sure you don’t want anything?” He stood by the arch in the doorway not yet entering the room.
Late afternoon sunlight fell across the room, missing Zach in his position on the sofa, hiding his face in the shadowed dimness. In the short time they’d been together, Sam had learned Zach’s eyes reflected every emotion inside him; they truly were an insight into his heart and soul. Right now he’d lay bets they were dark with sadness.
“No. I’m good,” he said softly. Zach shifted into the sunlight. “Look. I’m sorry I forced you into this. I don’t have the right to push you into something that for whatever reason makes you so uncomfortable.”
Sam sat on the opposite side of the sofa from Zach. “It’s important to you. I’m not good at this kind of stuff; talking about personal issues. That’s more my best friend Henry’s job. He loves all that stuff, him and his wife, Heather.”
“You’ve known him a long time?” Zach wound the tassel of the sofa’s pillow around his finger. “He’s the one you went to Atlantic City with, right?”
“Yes to both. I’ve known Henry since we were teenagers. He’s like my brother.” The tension in his chest eased some. He could do this, keep the talk light and easy. “He runs the computer security firm I do jobs for and was the one touting your brilliance to me.” Sam grinned. “I think he has a bit of a fan boy crush on you.”
“Me? That’s crazy,” Zach scoffed, then grew serious again. “Do you have any brothers or sisters? Parents?” The question hung in the air.
The prick of a guilty conscience hit him when Sam remembered he hadn’t called his mother in a few weeks. They had an odd relationship, so different from the close-knit, loving one he’d seen between Zach and his mother. At one time it had been, and if Sam searched his memory, he could dimly recall late-night kisses and hugs from her.
Always dressed in the clothes Sam knew were more for young women in their twenties, Barbara Stein fought the aging process like a five-star general waging a war. And it was for her—the march of time and creep of age was an everyday battle for her, leaving little time to parent her bewildered, lonely son. After his father died, her time was spent in the gym exercising, at the salon getting hair extensions, facials, and whatever else they sold to keep her on the singles scene, hopping from man to man, each one richer than the last.
“My father died when I was fourteen; young, like you. And also like you I was an only child.”
“What about your mother? Is she alive?” Letting go of his hold on the pillow, Zach tucked his feet underneath him on the sofa, settling onto the armrest. He looked expectantly at Sam.
“Yeah. She lives in Florida, so I don’t get to see her too much.” Not that either one of them made an effort. Desperate about money after his father died, she brought a succession of men through his life, none of them leaving any permanent mark. Some were nice to him, trying to curry favor with his mother, some ignored him, and most only wanted him out of the way. All of them demanded his mother’s time, and she freely gave it to them, as they were the ones financing her lifestyle with their gifts of expensive clothes, jewelry, and dinners.
The one thing she never made time for was her son.
