Page 102 of All the way home

Zach curls his hand around his glass, relishing the cool condensation. “Almost a year ago.”

“So on a scale of one to currently heartbroken . . .” He doesn’t finish the question, but the rest of it is obvious in the lift of his eyebrow.

“Not.” Zach shakes his head. “One and a half, and the half point is for being a little pissed off.”

“I don’t want to pry—you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, I—” Kieran heaves a great, resigned sigh, sounding slightly helpless. “I just think you’re interesting.”

What is Zach supposed to do with that? The unflappable Kieran he’s been getting to know is already disarming and fascinating enough; this earnest, uncertain version of him is somehow a thousand times more enthralling. And he thinks Zach is interesting?

“I, um.” Nerves simmer as he taps the floor with his foot. “I also think you’re interesting.”

“Wonderful.” Kieran smiles like this amuses him greatly. “Glad we’ve cleared that up. Am I allowed to ask why it ended?”

Zach thinks about it, and then he goes with the practiced lie that everyone else bought without question. “I dunno. I guess we just grew apart.”

“Bullshit,” Kieran says without hesitation. Matter-of-fact.

He stares. “Sorry?”

“Bullshit,” Kieran repeats, like it’s obvious. “Sorry, but I don’t buy that at all.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t.”

Zach sighs. “It—he got involved with the wrong crowd. Started drinking a lot. Really . . . destructive behavior.”

Expression abruptly grave, Kieran nods.

“He was a wreck toward the end.” Zach picks at a hangnail. “I still don’t really know what was going on with him, but I knew he was lying a lot about where he was going and who he was seeing, and it just got to the point where there was no coming back from it, you know?”

“He cheated?”

The question stings just as much from Kieran as it had from everyone else.

“I don’t know,” Zach says simply, because it’s true.

And Kieran doesn’t call bullshit.

“I thought maybe he had. I don’t know. He said he didn’t, but would you admit to it if you had?”

“I wouldn’t cheat in the first place.” Kieran’s voice is laced with a fierce determination. Then, gentler, he asks, “So, you were the one to call it?”

Zach nods. “He did not take it well, but he wasn’t really taking anything well at the time.”

Seth had been furious. The memory is sharp and stinging. A door slamming, Seth’s shoulders hunched, eyes rimmed red. Seth had never been angry with him before that. He’d been angry around him, a lot, but it had always been Zach and Seth against the universe.

Until it wasn’t.

It hadn’t been genuinely frightening, because Zach knew that no matter how far off the rails Seth went, he wasn’t stupid enough to try to hurt him. Still, there had been something unsettling and eerie about the abrupt pivot, all that rage he’d seen flung outward turned on him.

Zach doesn’t know how to say any of that, but it feels essential that he figure it out. Slowly, he starts, “You know how sometimes you’re with someone and it feels like all of a sudden you don’t even know who they are?”

With a tight, nearly bitter laugh, Kieran nods.

“It was like that. Like the person I knew just evaporated. And I’d had a lot of time toward the end to prepare, so it was almost a relief, you know?”

Kieran nods. His expression could cut through steel, all cheekbones and dark eyebrows. Not accusatory, just knowing, like he’s already been inside Zach’s head and spent time unraveling the tapestry, like he already knows the story.