Chapter 48
Chapter forty-eight
Saturday morning, Leavenworth: Zac
“Gone? Gone where?” Zac was fully aware that his voice had taken on a shrill quality and that blondie did not deserve the brunt of it, and yet he couldn’t help himself. “I know you guys are heading back today, so I assumed she’d checked out and come here.”
“And I’m trying to tell you that is exactly what she did,” Lark explained, standing on the top step of her RV wearing a short pink robe and matching towel wrapped around her hair. The shower caddie dangled from her fingers, still dripping from the shower she’d taken in the KOA’s communal bathroom.
“Then why are you here and she isn’t?”
“Because I wanted to stick around an extra week and she had to get back and write her article. You know there’s a lot on the line for her, right? Like, career make or break kind of stakes.”
“Yes, I’m fully aware. But . . .” Was his chin quivering? No, stop it. There must be some kind of mistake. Someone was confused, but Zac refused to believe it was him. “She didn’t say goodbye.”
“Oh!” Lark’s eyes widened like she’d just remembered something very important. “I have that part covered.”
“Covered how?” Zac demanded. She wrenched open her RV door, which slammed shut in Zac’s face. “Blondie. Covered how?”
“Be with you in a moment,” she warbled from inside the Winnebago. The sound of pots clanging to the ground and a sharp expletive said in that sweet voice of hers would have made him chuckle if it had been the time for laughter.
Zac had woken up bright and early, taken the fastest shower of his life, and knocked on Tabitha’s door with coffee and a bag of warm scones. But as soon as his fist made contact, the door popped open. He walked inside and scared the poor headphones-wearing housekeeper half to death.
“Where’s the woman who was staying in this room?”
“She checked out.”
“You sure?”
She’d pulled out her list and showed it to him. “Room three-ten. Vacated.”
From there, he’d tried to anticipate the next logical move: her ride home.
Except, according to Lark, she wasn’t the wheels back to Seattle anymore.
The RV door swung open with a sharp creak. Blondie stepped out with an envelope pinched between her fingers. “She dropped this off with me before she left.”
“Left how?” He took the envelope.
“In a car.”
“Whose car?” God, Zac felt like he’d joined a game of twenty questions without his knowledge or consent.
“She called up a rideshare.” Lark shrugged then peered at one of her fingernails before gnawing delicately on a cuticle.
“Don’t you think it’s kinda shitty forcing her to catch a ride home with a stranger when you drove the two of you over here? Real classy, blondie.”
“Hey! Don’t ‘real classy, blondie’ me, you ass.
” She stepped off her little metal stoop and marched up to Zac, still clutching the robe tightly around her waist. “She showed up super early this morning saying she was heading out right away. I told her we could be wheels-up in thirty, but she said she’d already booked a ride.
Then I insisted, and she said no, so I insisted again—”
“Ok, I get it,” Zac interrupted.
She’d left. Without saying goodbye. How could she do that to—oh, wait. He’d done the exact same thing to her all those years ago. Was she trying to get back at him? Punish him for safeguarding his feelings back then?
No.
That wasn’t his tabby cat. He was the coward, not her.
“You know,” Lark cut into his internal spiral, “instead of trying to puzzle it out, you could just read her letter. It says it all there.”
“You read it?” Zac said with indignation.
“It wasn’t sealed very well.”
A dry laugh eeked out of his throat. He wasn’t upset at Lark, she was merely the messenger. A nosy messenger, but still.
“Thanks for this,” Zac muttered before turning around and slinking to his van.
“Hey, big guy?” Lark called as she tugged the towel from her head and a mass of chaotic blonde curls swarmed her face.
She swiped them back and said gently, “Whatever happened between you two, in the eight or so years I’ve known Tabitha, I’ve never seen her so affected.
But she’s cautious. With her heart, I mean. ”
“I know.”
“Probably even more than when you first met her back then. She doesn’t let others in very easily. And she didn’t tell me much about yesterday, but from what I gather she’s trying to sort her feelings out. Don’t be mad at her.”
“I’m not mad,” he assured her. And he wasn’t.
Sad? Disappointed? Confused as all hell?
Sure. But he wasn’t angry with her. Zac thanked Lark and climbed into his driver’s seat.
He flipped over the envelope and chuckled at the rips and crinkles where blondie had clearly forced her way in.
On the outside of the folded paper the photographer had scrawled a note:
Hey, big guy. Give her time. She’ll come around. X, Lark
P.S. Send me all the shots you took yesterday . . . especially the spicy ones.
P.P.S. Thanks for taking care of her.
Beneath the scrawled note was her work email and Tabitha’s cell number. Zac smiled; tabby cat sure had a solid friend in that chaotic woman. Then he opened the note his lover had written and held his breath.
Zac,
First, I know how hypocritical I must seem after you confessed your reason for leaving sixteen years ago.
I’m not defending my choice to leave quietly, only asking you to understand what a jumbled mess my brain is at this moment.
What we shared meant so much. I never thought I’d feel so alive after living so long in fear of everything around me.
The time with you has made me brave, and while, yes, I can see how cowardly I may seem right now, just know that I am allowing myself space to figure out what I want my life to be.
I make no promises aside from the promise that this is not goodbye. I hope you forgive me for leaving and I don’t expect you to wait for me. But leaping before I figure my shit out would be irresponsible, and as you know, that’s not me.
Thank you for being my guide, my supporter, and my lover (if even for a short time).
Miss you,
Tabitha
Zac sat in the driver’s seat for a solid hour reading and re-reading the letter Tabitha had left. He tried his best to figure out how he felt about it beyond the overwhelming sadness of her leaving and regret for his role in further complicating her life.
No. Screw that. If he regretted anything it was that he hadn't tried to smooth things over the instant she started choking on that onion ring at The Rooftop earlier that week. He’d handled the situation with careful finesse that he didn’t typically possess, and it backfired.
He shouldn’t have been so passive. He should have made her face her worries and fears. Face him. He should have made her stay.
Why does everyone I love leave me?
A tear slid down his cheek and landed in the middle of the letter. The pen marking smudged and soon another follow the same path. Until he shook his head violently and ground his knuckles against his eyelids.
Stop this.
Not everyone leaves.
Begrudgingly, he began counting his blessings.
His health, his tricked out van, the trust fund he never touched but knew he could always lean on in case of emergency.
But what really mattered were the people in his life.
Jonathan, Lucy, Frankie, Benji (but not so much; that guy could still suck it), even he and Todd had become close during the renovation.
“Shit!” Zac wrenched the key in his ignition and flipped the van into gear.
He was due to meet everyone for the big reveal at ten, and he barely had enough time to drive out to Plain before Jon and Lucy’s return.
He tore out of the KOA a little faster than he should have and turned toward the people who loved him.
His chosen family.