Don’t go there, Dani.
As he smeared grape jelly on his toast, he spoke softly—and, if I wasn’t mistaken, even my mother was a little bit susceptible to his charms, based on how her eyes lit up. “I caught the wordmostly. What else do you listen to when no one else is around?” he asked as if inviting her to share a naughty secret.
My mother all but giggled—but she confessed. “If you must know, I like a good pop song.”
“Really?”
“I blame it on Taylor Swift.”
“You know,” Zack said, cutting his omelet with his fork, “we’re kinda doin’ what she did. She wrote country music for a while and then switched—and we’re not completely changing genres but we’re definitely doing something different, something our fanbase might not be ready for.”
“Then I’d say it’s good that you’re doing that for your second album. They won’t fall into a rut of expecting the same thing over and over.”
“Good point.”
While we ate and continued talking, I marveled at how easygoing and relaxed Zack had grown, despite the anguish I could see in his eyes once in a while. The conversation with my mom was doing him a lot of good.
Meanwhile, I tried not to feel like an asshole about last night’s kiss—and, witnessing him this morning, I wondered if he even remembered it. When Drunk Zack was sad, he liked kissing me, even when Sober Zack couldn’t care less.
After my mom left to spend the day with her boyfriend, the cloud slowly moved back over Zack’s head. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
Maybe that was why: he was returning to the full house. I wondered if his mother had even sent him a text asking where he was or what he was doing.
I knew it was for the best—especially as his ex—but as his friend who was worried about him, I said, “Will you be okay going back?”
“Yeah. And, uh…sorry for unloading all that shit on you yesterday.”
“Don’t even say that. That’s what friends are for.”
“And you are a great friend, Dani.”
Before he left, we hugged a little too long—but he never did ask for the vodka bottle, and then I wondered if he thought he’d finished it. After he was gone, I unceremoniously poured it down the bathroom sink, feeling a huge weight lift off my shoulders as it slipped down the drain.
And then I thought about Braden. God, I felt so damned guilty. Why had I not been able to resist Zack’s kiss?
But…Ihadresisted a second and a third. I’d actively told himno. That was something, wasn’t it? Maybe I needed to quit beating myself up so much.
I was making progress. Zack was my past and Braden was my future, and I made a commitment in my heart to him that day.
The next twomonths were a bit of a blur. Although it was evident that the label really wanted us to get on it, they understood that we might need extra time for Zack. The three of us—Braden, Cy, and I—attended the funeral and constantly reassured Zackandhis mother that we were there for them.
As distraught as Zack had been, his mother was far worse.
After the funeral, Zack got a tattoo on his upper arm—a grayscale heart withG&Gin the center, a way to memorialize his grandparents—and, although I was positive he was drinking, we didn’t see any of his over-the-top behavior. Still, we hadn’t yet come back together to practice.
And that was prolonged by Zack moving into his grandpa’s house. When we finally had our first practice in his grandpa’s garage in late May, Zack said, “My mom and her brothers weren’t ready to go through all his and grandma’s stuff…and nobody wanted the house. So I told ‘em I’d move in and box everything up so they could look through it when they were ready.”
“Do you have to pay rent?” Cy asked.
“Nah. The house is paid for. I just have to pay utilities and stuff.”
Braden asked, “Do you get to keep it?”
“I don’t think so—not unless I buy it.”
I’d been looking around the garage at all the tools Zack hadn’t yet boxed up. “Are you okaylivinghere?”
“It’s the strangest thing. At first, I wanted to try it to feel close to my grandpa and grandma. I lived here when I was a little kid and made that my bedroom again. But after a couple of days, itdidfeel like they were still in here somehow, keeping watch over me.” Then he started laughing. “I know that’s some weird-ass shit.”
