Zach smiles from where he’s sitting on the last step of the deck, squinting from the sun. He stabs his cigarette butt into the concrete. “How do you figure?”
“We’re all, like,innardsat this point. All our characters. You”—I step toward him, wielding my hose like a weapon—“are practically unscathed so far.” I let the hose spray the grass where his foot is.
Zach laughs, moving his feet up and holding his hands out. “Okay, stay calm. Disgruntled actors should be able to calmly address their grievances withtheir director.”
“I’m actually really, really calm,” I say, flicking the hose up a few inches. “Are you?”
“Oh shit!” he exclaims as I let the hose spray his shirt. He’s up and laughing immediately. I let the hose spray his face now, taking a few steps back as he runs straight for me.
I laugh maniacally, aiming the water right at his eyes so he’s too disoriented to come after me.
“Where is my ketchup when I need it?” he sputters between gulps of water.
It’s my overconfidence that does me in, or the fact that Zach is really fast and not as deterred by getting wet as I hoped. Soon he’s gotten a portion of the hose and we’re fighting for it. Then I’m completely wet,soaked,and now I’m the one squealing and looking for ketchup.
After begging for mercy—and Zach double-checking my surrender a few too many times—we wind up on the lowest step of the deck, breathing hard, Zach’s T-shirt sticking to his chest just as tightly as my tank top clings to me. We’re both still laughing, our knees touching, and then slowly, we grow quiet, listening to the cars passing behind the fence of his house, birds chirping somewhere far away.
My heart is racing even though I’ve caught my breath, and although it’s the oldest trick in the book, I put my hand on the wood between us so he knows it’s okay to touch it, to take it.
He doesn’t.
“I finished recording the CD last night,” I say, when neither of us has spoken for minutes. “I can bring it tomorrow.”
“Huh?” Zach looks like he’s missed an entire conversation, and it makes me feel better that he’s flustered, that maybe he’sthinkingabout taking my hand.
“The sound track?” I say, and turn my hand over in the space between us. Just a reminder that it’s there.
A couple days ago, Zach and Raj picked out some classic horror music that they wanted me to play and record so we could use it for the movie. Not full songs, but a couple of bars fromJawsand something calledNight of the Electric Insects,lots of minor chords and unresolved phrases.
“Oh, yeah.” Zach nods. “Great. Thanks.”
“Addie,” he says all of a sudden, and I look up at him. “I’ve been thinking…and, I mean, maybe it was fine, maybe you didn’t think anything of hanging out last week. You were missing your friend and I…” His voice drones out for a second, then resumes. “Maybe I should apologize for it.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
Apologize?
No, no, no.
“Lindsay and I only broke up three months ago.”
His gray eyes stare into me. I should be wondering why he’s bringing this up, but I am busy being amazed that he saidonlythree months. Katy has started and ended three “relationships” since she’s been on her road trip. Texting me details of one guy, sometimes forgetting to mention that it is a different one now before she launches into the details of another life-shattering but short-lived connection.
“I just think it would be more fair to both of us if we were just friends.”
“Oh.”Oh.
My heart is tumbling down through my body. I can’t look at him. I pull a blade of grass from the lawn. Then another.
Zach focuses on a different spot in the grass ahead as he speaks. “I’m not an idiot. And I’m not blind. You’re beautiful, and I like hanging out with you. I mean, I dolikeyou,” he says, continuing to rip out every shred of hope I have, the way I’m doing to the grass in his lawn. I glance quickly at him and see that he is blushing. He has, after all, just admitted to liking me. He just called mebeautiful.But. “But,” he says, “I think I’d be a better friend than boyfriend right now.”
I yank one more blade of grass out of the lawn and set it in my lap.
“Why did you break up?” I ask. “You and Lindsay?”
“We were together since we were Kevin’s age and I guess…that our love was stifling. She said that it wasliterallydraining the life out of her,” he says. “Which I wasn’t aware was something that could happen. I mean, with real love.” He says this wryly, but I can tell that he is mostly serious. Our eyes meet and then flicker away from each other again, and because I’m in the process of being devastated, I don’t tell him I agree with him. That I think love wakes people up. Even the idea of it. Even the whisper of the idea of it.
My body is thrumming, a timpani beat of want and disappointment and embarrassment.
