30. Chase
They stood outside the door to Zak’s room, her hands shaking as she dug around in her backpack for the key. “Do you want a drink? I do have coffee. Wine.”
Chase’s hands, buried in his pockets, were equally jittery. “I’m done with alcohol for a while.”
“It’s a shame. Drunk Chase was fun.”
“Yeah? I thought we had fun sober, too?”
She swiped her card and the lock clicked open, and all the while they stood in the hallway.
Like a scene from a movie, he could see her thoughts play out on her face because they were his own. Things had gone too far between them, but the tipping point was still unclear. Every sly comment, every stolen touch, was a drop of water into a pool now overflowing, and stepping across that threshold would trigger a flood.
“There’s something I need to grab from my room,” he said. As much as it pained him to make that detour when she was looking at him like all she wanted was for him to kiss her again.
He owed her an explanation above all else. He owed her the wrinkled piece of paper still sitting on his nightstand. It was the only thing on his mind, and he handed it to her as soon as she let him in.
“That’s Jim Abbott’s phone number,” he told her, shutting the door behind him. “The guy who called me about the job.”
“The job you don’t want?”
Zak sat on the bed, staring down at the blue ink that had bled all over the sheet. The flowy red minidress she had worn on stage hiked further up her legs as she crossed one over the other.
So maybe the job wasn’t the only thing on his mind.
“Then why do they want you?”
There it was. The question to start it all, to release everything he had avoided telling her over the past few months. When he was here, he was closer to being the person he had always wanted to be. Talking about his family reminded him of the small, insecure, subordinate person he usedto be. And talking to Zak about them was like complaining to a desert villager that his tap water tasted funny.
His chest caved. “I’m sure my parents had something to do with it.”
“Your parents have been job hunting for you?” Zak’s perplexed expression fit exactly what he would expect from someone whose parents didn’t even go grocery shopping for her as a child. “That’s fucking weird. Why? Obviously you have enough money.”
“It’s never been about the money with them.” He wasn’t actually sure what life was about for his parents, but he had a pretty strong hunch. “There’s nothing prestigious about having an unemployed, crippled son. Now they have to get creative whenever their coworkers and clients, family and friends ask them, ‘So how’s Chase?’”
Zak’s fingertips traced the edge of the mattress. “It’s hard for me to imagine anyone would look at you and not see success. For the longest time, it was the only thing about you that I did see.”
Chase kept his hands firmly planted on the surface of the dresser as he stood across from her. “That’s my family for you. My parents packed every week of summer break with camps for all the subjects, plus sports. They started taking me and Lydia on college tours when we were ten, and sat down with us to make spreadsheets about choosing smart majors, maximizing course loads, and saving for tuition. They made sure we worked part-time jobs and joined clubs to put on our resumes. They gave us extra homework to do whenever we scored less than an A-minus on tests.”
Yet, here he stood without a college education. A merit which only professional sports had been able to override in their eyes, and which Holly and Richard still reminded him it was not too late to achieve.
“That sounds a little mental, but then again I don’t think I’m the spokesperson for normal parental involvement.” Zak looked him up and down. “You haven’t talked much about your parents. Any of your family, really.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you about my family. I want to talk to you about everything.” Was that the sort of thing he should confess to her? “It’s just that my problems pale in comparison to what you’ve been through. I have two parents who loved and cared for me, and I know everything they did, they did because they thought it was best for me. But… they had a very specific idea of what was best for me. And they were very determined to make it happen.”
“I’ve learned a lot of things from my friends. Among them, that parents can do just as much damage when they’re present as they can by being absent.” Zak’s eyes searched his in quiet acknowledgment. The perfect cocktail of patience and support without sympathy. The very reason he did want to talk to her about everything. “So, tell me about them.”
Chase knew damn well she hadn’t invited him to her room to listen to his comparatively mild struggles with his mom and dad, but when she was looking at him like she cared about his past as much as she cared about being with him in the moment, those stories began to flow effortlessly. “You know how I’m not from California originally.”
She nodded. “Chetek. You cheesehead.”
Well, he hadn’t expected her to remember that detail.
“I thought it was a fun name for a city,” she explained upon seeing his raised brows. “Don’t make it into a thing.”
“Oh, it’s definitely a thing. I know I told you that a long time ago because I don’t even remembertelling you.”
She shrugged. “I guess my memory is just better than yours.”
“Must be.” He smiled. “Well, my parents were brought up on farms. Both from big families in these tiny towns, which always feel a lot bigger than they are because everybody knows everybody. And because everyone knows each other, you learn to be careful about what you do in public, what you share. How you say things. You don’t want to offend people or get wrapped up in gossip.
“Combine that with the fact that they had difficulty getting pregnant. They tried for years before ending up with a two-for-one. I”m sure they spent all that time imagining how their kids would turn out. They wanted Lydia and me so badly, and I think that made it harder for them to let go.”
Zak arched a brow. “Sounds like you’re making excuses for their inability to handle conflict or communicate with their children.”
“Probably. But only because understanding them is the only way to handle how overbearing, pushy, and cold they can be.”
Chase’s most recent memory of either of his parents telling him, “I love you,” was the day he went into surgery. Before then, the day he moved to Tacoma. Before then, he drew a blank. And when those three words were so sparingly used, it was no surprise the standard elaborations all fell to the wayside. No, “I love you no matter what,” or “I love you and I’m proud of you,” or “I love you and I’m here for you.”
“Maybe you don’t need to handle it,” she said. “Maybe they need to learn how to handle the fact that you’re your own person. Maybe they should be the ones making the effort to understand you.”
Well… yeah. Maybe. But it had always seemed more difficult to place that burden on his parents’ shoulders than it did to carry it on his own.
Chase didn’t know what he would do if he followed her advice, pulled away, and they didn’t make that effort in return. It would confirm his other speculation, that they didn’t want to understand him. They wanted to parade him around as their biggest accomplishment.
“What were they like when you played hockey?” she asked, tentatively.
“Oh, my family is a huge sports family.” Though, that only scratched the surface of what it meant to be a Payton. The name came with a curse: the pursuit of athletic, academic, and professional perfection. Each generation racing to outdo the accomplishments of the last.
“My dad played football, hockey, and baseball in high school. Went to college on a baseball scholarship. My mom was a swimmer. My grandpa on my dad’s side played football and made it to the pros for a year.”
Saying it aloud was enough to recall a blur of trophy cabinets, full of glistening cups and medals. Hallways stacked with team photos. Coat closets where there was no hanging space left because all of it was taken up by plastic-covered jerseys that hadn’t been worn in decades.
Chase smiled at the sheer insanity of it. He used to envy those trophies as a kid. Now, he had two world-renowned ones sitting in storage, gathering dust on top of his old washing machine.
“Growing up, it wasn’t a matter of if we played sports. It was what sport will you play? So when my mom and dad learned that Lydia was fast, they signed her up for cross country. And when they found out I liked skating, they put me in hockey.”
“Well, if they enjoyed going to all your games, imagine all the fun they could have with the live music scene.” The corner of Zak’s mouth lifted. “Mosh pits. Hard liquor and drugs. Bat-eating. Rock concerts are way more exciting.”
“I agree.” He gestured to the slip of paper still in her hands. “So tear it up. I don’t care, I’m not calling back.”
But she didn’t. She tossed it to the side and let it float to the floor. “So, you don’t see yourself working in sports again? Not just in Atlanta, but once this is all over?”
Never.
But he said, “Do you still want me to stay?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It matters what you want.” She chuckled softly as she shook her head. “How do you feel out there? On stage, all eyes on you. At the writing table, coming up with ideas.”
There was only one answer in Chase’s mind that could surmise the way he felt about being here. The way he had felt all summer, despite many moments of severely doubting whether he was competent enough for the job. “Like myself.”
Zak smiled at him like she was sharing a secret with herself. The slightest little quirk of her lips.
“That probably sounds stupid,” he backtracked, “but when I lost hockey, I thought that I’d lost the biggest part of who I am. The game, the competition, was everything. It was the only place I felt good about myself, the only thing that felt natural. I thought I would never feel that way again. That I would never feel that drive.”
Her eyes remained locked on his. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”
“I don’t want this to be just a competition. I want to be here for the long haul, and if I haven’t been clear about that, it’s only because I know what’s best for me might not be what’s best for you all, long term. The bigger Saint of Spades gets, the more connections you’ll have to real musicians. Professionals who pull their own weight without needing the rest of you to explain things to them.”
Chase felt like he had talked forever. Or at least, for so long that he couldn’t remember where he had started or what he had said. But maybe all those words were wasted because the ones Zak latched onto were—
“You want to be a part of the band? For good? Because you know damn well, Chase, that’s it for me. You have to mean it when you say it.”
He stepped closer to her, his thighs bumping her knees. “And you know damn well, I’m not a quitter. I don’t give up. I don’t settle for okay. And I’ll work at this until I deserve to be here as much as I want to be here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She took hold of his hands, fingers twining with his, and sighed as she looked down at them. Then let go again. “That makes this so much worse, you know that? We can’t do this. The back and forth. No dating, no relationship, nothing serious. This is casual.”
“Right,” he agreed blindly, though there was nothing casual about the way he felt for her.
“That’s it?”
“I don’t need to talk you into changing your mind.” He laid a hand on her bare thigh, thumb caressing the inside of her knee. “It’s simple. I like you, Zak. I like being with you. I don’t care what you call it as long as I get to keep spending time with you.”
Her breathing leveled out. Slow and steady. “What happens when you don’t like being with me anymore?”
“Not going to happen.”
“All sorts of things happen. People leave all the time. Life happens.”
“Life did happen. And here we are.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve had a long time to think about what I would do if we ever met again, even though I never thought it would be under these circumstances. But I know you haven’t, so whatever feels right to you—that’s what’s right for me.”
“You feel right,” she loosed like an admission from the very depths of her soul. “But music will always feel more right.”
“If you won’t believe me when I say I could never be tired of you, believe this. I’ve been happy being a part of this band without being yours before. And I could learn to be happy in it even if you decided you never wanted me to touch you again.” His free hand wrapped around her hip and tightened. “So all that matters to me is: what do you want now?”
Now was continuous. Life was made up of now, and he would take every one of those moments with her and string them together for as long as she let him. Until their past stretched on for so long that the future became as certain as a memory.
“You know exactly what I want.”