Chapter 17 #2
“A new riff. Tell me what you think.” He started playing a few notes, slowly at first, and they had a real bluesy feel to them. But then he got into a heavier, faster groove, and I could already hear the drumbeats in my head.
“Wow. That’s fucking amazing.”
“That’ll be on our next album.”
If we could survive our first. He kept playing for bit, and I listened, wrapping my mind around a sound much like we played every night…yet different.
“Want a drink?”
I shook my head and gave it a few seconds before asking the question I planned to start with. “How are you doing, Zack?”
His response was immediate. “Fine.”
“No…I mean really. How are you really doing?” His eyes stayed focused on his strings as I waited for him to respond. When he didn’t, I said, “I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t.”
“I can’t help it, Zack. You’re my best friend. If you’re hurting, I’m hurting.”
He still hadn’t picked another string—and, when he looked up, he was the most vulnerable I’d ever seen him. His eyes were full of unspilled tears, and there was a crease in his brow that reflected the rift inside his soul. “How could you tell?”
“How could I not? It’s so clear to me—and I want to help.”
“I don’t think you can. It’s not like a cut you put a Band-Aid on.”
I let out a soft sigh as he lowered his eyes again.
Scootching closer on the bed so that my thigh touched his, I searched inside my brain looking for the right words, thinking back to the psychology class I took during my senior year.
Although I’d found the subject fascinating, I hadn’t really applied any of what I learned to my own life—and yet there was so much there to learn from. So I said, “Talking about it can help.”
“I don’t see how.”
I had to take a different tack. “Well…even though I’m nervous about the money situation, we’ve made it. We made it, Zack, and it really didn’t take that long. You had this dream back in high school of making it big—and we are well on our way. The fans love our music.”
“Yeah.”
“So what tells me you’re hurting is that you’re…
engaging in self-destructive behavior. You’re not drinking a little to party, to celebrate what we’ve accomplished.
Instead, you’re drinking a lot to drown out—something.
” He just shrugged, moving back into that safe space of pretending nothing touched him—so I touched his cheek, hoping to make eye contact again.
When his eyes connected with mine, I continued.
“You’re killing yourself…almost like you don’t care about your life, like you believe it’s not worth living.
And you need to know you are. Not just to your mom or grandpa or our fans or even our band.
You’re more important to me than anything else—anything else—and it’s killing me to see you punishing yourself. ”
Again, he dropped his head—but this time, a tear did fall.
I so wanted to hold him, but the guitar in his lap was in the way.
So I put an arm around his back. After letting a few more tears drop, he said, “I don’t know exactly how to explain what I feel—but you’re close.
I…sometimes wonder if maybe my dad didn’t care about me because there was nothing to care about. ”
“That’s not true, Zack. You’re an amazing human being—and if he’d ever met you, he would have been proud to call you his son.”
Grabbing his guitar by the neck, he slid it off his lap to lean it against the bed. Then he wrapped his arms around me, pressing his forehead into my shoulder. “I wish I could believe that.”
“I want you to try. I…” Pausing, I tried to assess the next words out of my mouth. I knew Zack adored his mother, so I didn’t want to ruin the progress we’d made by immediately putting him on the defensive—but I had to ask. “Did your mom ever even tell your dad you existed?”
“I never asked. Part of me didn’t want to know. I thought hating my dad gave me a well of creativity and anger to draw from.”
That might have been true—but it was killing him too. “The thing is…you’ll never know for sure what he might have thought about you. Even if he’d thought he didn’t want a son, he would have changed his mind when he met you.”
Zack lifted his head and gazed into my eyes, making the breath rush from my lungs. Reflected in them, I could see everything I had locked away in my heart for years—but that had to have been my imagination. He’d already pushed me away more than once, so it had to be my own wishful thinking.
But when his lips touched mine—when his tongue made its way into my mouth—I wanted to believe it. Even though all I could taste of him was vodka—meaning I knew it was alcohol-fueled—something inside me wanted to hang onto hope.
After he removed his lips, he leaned his forehead against mine so that our eyes were so close, it was almost hard to focus. “What if this is it, Dani?”
Was he talking about us—or something else? “What if what is it?”
“What if we only get this tiny taste of fame—and then that’s it? There are so goddamned many bands that never get past the grind.” And here I was worrying about every nickel and dime—while Zack was putting on a cocky front, inside he was afraid of being a one-hit wonder.
And, right now, he didn’t need me dishing out more doses of reality.
So I tapped into my heart, into the dream I’d believed in when Zack had pulled me along—and I gave it right back to him.
“No way. All those fans we’ve been playing for…
do you think they’ll be happy with just one album from us?
They have no idea the shit you’re coming up with. ”
I touched his jawline, the soft whiskers tickling the pads of my fingers, long past the point of being rough. When was the last time Zack had shaved? And how the hell had I not seen the earlier signs of his suffering?
When he looked at me, his green eyes seemed clear for the first time in weeks.
And I dug deep. “I can’t predict the future or read the minds of any of the people in our audiences.
” Thanks to the opacity of our label, we had no idea if the tour was translating into album sales.
All we knew was that we weren’t on the Top 100 anything—and we were in the dark otherwise.
Once we got back home, we would probably press for more info but, for now, we were detached from any numbers that might reveal our standing.
Zack blinked. “If you could, I’d buy you a crystal ball.”
A soft chuckle tumbled from my mouth but I grew serious again. “I can’t tell you what any of those people think or what your words mean to them…but I can tell you what your friendship has meant to me all these years. Did I ever tell you about Ava…from my perspective?”
At that, he laughed. “Duh. Of course, you did.”
“But…remember when we first met?”
“Another duh, Dani. My memory still works fine.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think you know how important it was to me.
” I let my hand slide off his cheek, resting it in his lap, and allowed my eyes to look at different parts of his face.
“Ava was pretty controlling as a friend. I wasn’t allowed to be my own person.
There were literally clothes in my closet she told me I couldn’t wear.
She decided what we did all the time and never took my wants into consideration. ”
“So why’d you stay friends with her for so long?”
“It was tough growing up in Nopal. I know Dalton’s not exactly a metropolis, but—”
“Yeah, I get it. There’s nothing there.”
That was an exaggeration, but close. “Every single class had all the same kids, so we all knew each other—and I was…on the bottom of the social ladder. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it to you that way back then, but it’s clear to see now.
And I think Ava chose me to be her friend because I was easily manipulated. ”
“Seriously?”
Shifting my eyes back to him to acknowledge his question, I nodded. “Yeah. I was pretty meek and mild back then…probably because my mom was also looked down upon by the town. I don’t know why. Maybe because of my dad.”
“You never talk about him.”
“I don’t remember a lot about him—just that he yelled at my mom all the time and he left when I was really young.
But, anyway, we were like pariahs, and Ava’s parents were super religious, so she was maybe a bit of an outcast in her own way back in Nopal.
But she used my insecurity against me. Like when I’d try to push back…
there was this time in the seventh grade when she told me not to wear a light green shirt I loved, and she told me it made my arms look fat.
I’m pretty sure that was just her way of getting me more under her thumb. ”
“Yeah, I guess I could see that about her.”
“So when we went to high school—with lots of kids, not just from Dalton but from all the other small schools around, I saw an opportunity to break free. That’s why I went to Chess Club.
It wasn’t just because I liked playing the game but I knew she had no interest and wouldn’t come with me.
And I got a double bonus—I met the guy who was going to be a better best friend than I’d ever expected.
You accepted me at face value, Zack. You didn’t try to mold me into someone I wasn’t. ”
“To be fair, I coerced you into playing drums.”
I smiled. “That was different. You still gave me a choice. If it had been Ava, she would have found a way to manipulate me into it—like telling me not playing drums was part of why I wasn’t popular or some shit.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“No wonder you were so pissed when I dated her.”
I bit my bottom lip. “I didn’t think you knew.”
“I couldn’t have missed it after you blew up when I brought her to practice that time.”
“Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is you showed me my true worth. You were a real friend. You weren’t just using me to make yourself look good.”
“That’s ‘cause we connected.”
Unable to help myself, I moved my hand back to his jaw. “We did. And so I want you to know that you matter, Zack. Not just to this entire planet, but to me. You—”
His lips didn’t just graze mine that time. Instead, they consumed me and my mouth watered as his tongue touched mine again. As my entire body warmed up, as his hands moved underneath my t-shirt to touch the flesh of my lower back, I knew I was going to give in once more.
But this time was different. This time I would willingly give myself to Zack to save him.
So, even though I knew tomorrow would be the end of us once more, I didn’t care. For the first time ever, I felt like Zack needed this connection just as much as I did.
And I wasn’t about to deny either one of us.