“Okay,” he says. “So the Costco parking lot thing actually makes sense now.”
“I TOLD you I was a good driver.”
“You’re not a good driver. Good drivers follow traffic laws. You’re something else.” He’s looking at me like he’s putting something together. “The yellow light thing. The way you take turns. That time you parallel parked in a spot I would’ve driven past.”
“It fit.”
“It fit with two inches to spare and you didn’t even check your mirrors.”
“I didn’t need to check my mirrors.” I’m grinning at him and this is the part where I go for it. “So now that you’ve seen what I can do, when do I get to drive the Mustang?”
“No.”
“Zach. I have been sitting in that passenger seat watching you drive your car like you’re transporting a wedding cake. It’s a Mustang. It has a V8. You take it to the grocery store at thirty-five miles an hour.”
“It gets me where I need to go.”
“It could get you there so much FASTER.”
“I’ve actually been thinking about selling it.”
“SELLING it? You can’t sell it. Why would you sell it?”
“It doesn’t really make sense for me. It was kind of a nostalgia thing.” He fiddles with the edge of the racing game’s steering wheel. “My dad had one. Before he left.”
And just like that, there it is. One tiny, little hint into his childhood. The thing he keeps locked down tight and never lets anyone see. I want to ask a hundred questions but I don’t because Zach gives you things when he’s ready and pushing gets you nowhere.
“Hey,” I say. “That’s actually really sweet.”
“It’s not sweet. It’s impractical. I don’t drive it the way it’s supposed to be driven.”
“I KNOW. That’s what I’m SAYING.” I bump my knee against his. “Don’t sell it. Let me drive it. Just once. Somewhere with no traffic and no cops and actual room to open it up.”
He looks at me. “Maybe some night. We could take it somewhere you can actually drive.”
“I know the perfect spot.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “Of course you do.”
We play three more games after that and by the end of it we’re tied 3-3 because he wiped the floor with me at skee-ball. He figured out the angle in about thirty seconds, which is genuinely offensive because I’ve been playing skee-ball since I was eight and I still aim for the 100 and miss every time. He rolled consistent 40s like a machine and then looked at me like this was a normal thing to accomplish on your first attempt.
“When’s the last time you did something like this?” I ask.
He looks around the arcade. “I don’t think I’ve ever done something like this.”
And suddenly my brain just starts making a list of all the things he’s probably never done because he was training or traveling or being raised by grandparents who loved him in their quiet way but weren’t taking him to arcades on a Saturday night. Bowling alleys. Laser tag. Making out in the back of a movie theater. I want to do all of it. I want to figure out every normal stupid thing he missed and take him there and watch his face when he tries it for the first time.
I’m falling for him. That’s what’s happening. I’m sitting in an arcade and I’m falling for a boy who’s never played skee-ball and says things without realizing he’s breaking my heart.
He stops in front of the claw machine that we passed on the way in. The one where I pointed at the stuffed penguin in the corner and said ‘I want that one’ and he told me claw machines are just gambling for children.
He puts the last token in.
I watch him maneuver the claw with his tongue between his teeth and his whole body leaning into it like he can physically will it into position. He looks like he’s defusing a bomb, completelylocked in. The claw drops, grabs something, and for a second I think it’s going to fall because they always fall, but it holds. It drops into the chute and he reaches in and pulls out a small orange stuffed fish with one eye lower than the other and a fin that’s bent sideways.
He holds it up and studies it then hands it to me. “It’s Shredder’s brother.”
I look down at this misshapen little stuffed animal and I’m suddenly blinking back tears, which is insane because it’s a stuffed fish from a claw machine, but it’s also the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me and he didn’t even mean to win it. He was aiming for the penguin. He remembered I wanted the penguin.
