Chapter 24
ZARIAH
TESTING THE WATERS
Elijah’s room wasn’t finished until it was time to clock in for my overnight shift. Once we were done, I opened the door and let their team whisk the boys away. It wasn’t a gift. Elijah and Denali clearly didn’t want to leave but nobody cared about their complaints.
It was probably a good thing for them to go out, at least I could have a quiet dorm for the beginning of my shift. I bought Thai food, and a six-pack of iced coffee in preparation, thinking I was ready for my shift.
Not even close. It was a shit show.
I dealt with lockouts, screaming matches, and a swimmer who required an ambulance because he got tased on the ass on a dare. Elijah and Denali came home around ten, but I barely saw them. A track and field runner got stuck in a washing machine, and by the time I returned, the boys were fast asleep.
Alone, I opened my script between calls. It was harder and harder to type dialogue. The pages were crammed full of happy, go-lucky feelings until the peachiness made me sick.
“Shit.” I slumped back to the couch. “I hate this script too.”
After such a high from the hockey game, everything on paper felt like a cheap imitation.
Maybe it was because I was so exhausted.
I gave up on the script around four in the morning.
I was a walking zombie. I didn’t have on a bra, hair in messy braids, and I was rocking pajamas because, honestly, I didn’t give a shit what the athletes thought of me.
My phone rang again and I answered it, mentally fried. “What, Harry?”
“There’s goats in the elevator,” the desk assistant sighed, despondent.
“Goats?” I echoed. “What the hell am I supposed to do with goats?”
“No idea. But it’s your problem now.”
With a groan, I ended the call. Technically, the goats weren’t an emergency, or not an emergency I had to sprint for. I took precious seconds to muster up the energy. Time to down another coffee and handle more bullshit.
“Hey?”
My eyes flickered to the darkness between the bedrooms. Denali emerged in a t-shirt and basketball shorts, his hair scruffy from sleep, his body wonderfully filling up the frame of the hallway.
The last time I saw him, he’d been buzzed, his eyes glassy from liquor, but now he was quiet in his hangover. Not quite awake, but quiet in that sleepy in-between place that made his voice so delicious.
And he was wearing his glasses. I perked up at the sight of them. The dark frames were such a nice contrast.
He seemed to realize he had them on and pulled them off.
“I’ve seen you in glasses before,” I reminded him.
“I try not to wear them.”
“Why not?”
Confused, he frowned. “The lenses are really thick. They look—”
“I think they’re cute.”
Denali stared at me before his eyes darted to the glasses folded in his hand. He opened his mouth then closed it again. The hesitation layered between us, heavy in the air. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm. I always liked them.”
He slipped on the glasses again, and I smiled. I was bone-tired, but still, I could recognize art.
And I genuinely meant it. From fifteen years old to now, I loved Denali’s glasses. I loved how he blushed when I mentioned them. I loved that he helped me with Elijah’s room, and agreed to Montoya’s lessons—I was very, very happy with him.
I stretched, keeping my eyes on him. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
“No. I’ve been awake.”
There were goats in an elevator, but I couldn’t pull myself from watching Denali as he crossed the creaky floor to the kitchen. He held his water bottle under the faucet.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “Pretty regularly. How’s the shift?”
“There’s goats in the elevator,” I sighed, slipping on a hoodie because this would no doubt be another annoying adventure. “Wish me luck.”
I made it to the door when Denali stopped me. “Zariah?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want breakfast?”
I picked up my clipboard. “Breakfast? Like…cereal?”
“No.” There was only the lamp on in the living room, and it illustrated the tired smile on Denali’s face. “I can cook.”
“You can cook?”
“I’m a grown man. I can cook.”
Another surprising new thing. First, he kept his dorm clean, and now he could cook?
I didn’t know what to say. My stomach did though and it grumbled.
I’d stayed up most of the night and was too tired to make anything substantial.
Having someone else make breakfast, especially the sexy man in the dorm I was bumming in, sounded like the best part of my shift.
“Don’t you want to try to get more sleep?” I asked.
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“No.”
I grabbed the door handle. “Then breakfast sounds…good. Thank you.”
“Have fun with the goats,” Denali chuckled and I had to bite back the smile until I walked to the elevator lobby. The elevator doors opened to reveal two baby goats, fluffy and bleating at me.
“Hey, dudes.” I walked into the elevator with them and slipped my hands into my pockets, careful to whisper. “You’re not going to believe this. I think I have a crush on my ex-boyfriend.”
I had no idea what bonehead athlete abandoned barnyard animals in the elevator, and without the security camera login credentials, I had to hand off the problem to my boss.
Tadrick was pissed to have to deal with it but I didn’t care.
After twenty minutes of comforting goats, I returned to my dorm in a realm of exhaustion I didn’t know was possible.
The smell of freshly-cooked bacon and eggs overwhelmed me. It smelled so good. Tossing aside my clipboard, I sat at the kitchen island.
“I’m starving,” I admitted.
“Almost done,” Denali said quietly, slicing something on a cutting board.
“What are you making?”
Denali slid a plate across the kitchen island—breakfast tacos. Not dollar tacos at the gas station, but corn tortillas, perfect eggs, warm, greasy bacon, cilantro, salsa, and two slices of lime on the side. The plate was cast in heaven’s everlasting glow, my mouth watered obscenely.
“You really know how to cook?” I whispered, stunned.
“I really know how to cook.”
Fuck the ladylike manners, I inhaled the first two tacos. They were so good. The hot sauce woke me up like an iced coffee. I finished the third taco and realized Denali was watching me, a satisfied smile across his lips before he ate a taco too, and then we ate together.
“These are really good,” I admitted.
“Mm-hmm.”
Salsa dripped down his thumb and he licked it up. I watched that a little too closely. I forgot how big his tongue was. Before he could catch me in the act, I took another bite. “When’d you learn to cook?”
“When we moved to Michigan,” Denali said. “My mom threw me into a bunch of afterschool programs. I took a Life’s Skills class, a big part of that was cooking.”
“When’d you move to Michigan?” I asked.
“After Colorado.”
“Like…after your sophomore year?”
“No.”
“When?”
Denali chewed for a while, seeming to consider his answer. “A couple of months after Hersch died.”
“Because of…me?”
“My dad had the choice between Colorado and Michigan, you know that. We hadn’t bought a house yet, we were still renting—”
“But you made the transition because of me,” I said quietly.
“I—yeah,” he admitted. “When my parents found out about the emancipation plan, they—uh—freaked out.”
My heart twinged. “Was Michigan okay?”
“Yeah. I made friends in Michigan. It was different than Colorado.” He hesitated. “I think we moved to Michigan because my parents were worried you’d randomly show up. Or call.”
Nothing he said was accusatory, we were speaking in past tense, drawing a line between the here and then. Walls were put up to keep things friendly. But I didn’t want to talk through walls, it left things too cold, too clean to resolve anything.
No matter how uncomfortable it made me to be that open with him, I couldn’t avoid the topic.
“I did call, Denali.”
His eyes flickered to mine. He put down his water bottle, but it caught the edge of the sink. He fumbled with it. “What?”
“I did call. A couple of times.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did.” I swallowed while Denali stared at me, frozen. “Before the funeral. Your mom answered and she yelled at me. And then your dad answered and he got a hold of my parents…I got in so much trouble.”
“You talked to my dad?”
“We had this conversation with my parents about how you and I were teenagers, we were lonely and hormonal, and this wasn’t healthy for either of us.
I didn’t have anyone else to talk to. I told them so much, and your dad…
” I drew my arms close. “He told me I shouldn’t ever be in a relationship where I’m nervous to talk about boundaries.
I think he was scared for you. About the decisions you were making, how controlling you were becoming. ”
“But you called and he didn’t tell me?”
“Denali, you’re not listening.” I shook my head. “You can’t be mad at your parents about this.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to listen—I just—I had a right to know that you called—”
“I don’t think you did.”
“You don’t know how hard it was for me after we broke up.”
“It was hard for me too, Denali, but maybe we needed that.” I hesitated. “Your parents convinced me to cut off contact, and I think they were right. We weren’t old enough to understand what we were doing. We weren’t mature enough.”
Denali fell silent, his eyes dropping to the sink.
“We were using sex as a coping mechanism, we were ridiculously codependent,” I said as gently as I could.
“We were helping a terminally ill man hide from his doctors. And do you ever think about how lucky we are that we didn’t have a teenage pregnancy?
Statistically speaking? It’s astounding I never got pregnant. ”
“I wouldn’t have left you or anything like that,” he said quickly. “I would’ve stepped up. I would’ve given you everything, I would’ve been a good dad.”