Chapter 3 Zeke
three
Zeke
I’m exhausted.” I groan, falling onto the locker room bench.
“Maybe if you would’ve been a little more serious about our workouts this summer, you wouldn’t be dragging your feet.” Declan throws a towel at me, and it hits me right in the face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I took my cardio very seriously this summer.” I wink. “And I was at every training session this summer.”
“And somehow you’re still falling behind,” Jaxon jokes, coming out of the shower.
“Well, you guys don’t also spend ten-plus hours a week in a hospital,” I respond, picking myself off the bench. “That mixed with the twenty-plus hours of weekly training, and then classes and homework.”
“Is Zeke Harris pulling the sick mom card?” Brooks leans against his locker, and I roll my eyes.
“I’m not pulling anything,” I reply. “Just being honest.”
I give him a playful shove as I walk toward the showers.
I’m definitely moving a little slower today. I don’t know if it’s because I stayed at the hospital past visiting hours last night or because the start of the season next week has been stressing me out. Whatever it is, I’m wrecked.
“You have class in ten minutes, Zeke!” Jeremy yells. “So, if you were thinking about getting a load off during your shower, I highly suggest rethinking that.”
“Fuck off, Jere.” I laugh as I turn the shower on. I know he’s joking; I’m used to it by now. I mean, I can’t exactly argue with fact. I sleep around. I masturbate… often.
I like to call it sex positivity.
Who would I be if I denied a beautiful woman the opportunity to sleep with Zeke Malakai Harris?
“Are you gonna actually get in the shower, or are you just gonna let the water run until you need to leave?” Jaxon wonders, a smug smile on his face. “Because typically, to get clean, you actually have to step into the water and get some soap and—”
I push him away. “I didn’t realize it was gang up on Zeke day.”
“Well, if you want company on your walk to class, you should probably pick up the pace.”
“Trust me when I say this, I may not be walking with you guys, but I definitely won’t walk alone,” I smirk. “Company always finds me.”
I whip off my shirt and see Jaxon, who’s shaking his head. “Are you waiting for a show? I usually don’t do those for free, but I could give you the friend discount.”
“Sometimes I wonder why we’re still friends with you,” he says.
“Because I’m awesome!” I yell, and once he’s out of sight, I drop the smile.
I know they don’t expect me to be the happy-go-lucky Zeke all the time. I know they’re aware of the fact that I’ve been watching my mom slowly die since I was sixteen, with tiny stints of hope that maybe she’ll be okay, just to be let down by more bad news.
I know they’d be there for me in a second if I let them see through these walls I’ve built up. And sometimes, I know they can see the truth when I bring my mom up.
This doesn’t happen often, but not because I don’t want to talk about her and how I feel. I just don’t know how.
I don’t put on the smile for them.
I put it on around them.
Because if I let myself feel all this pain all the time, I don’t know if I’ll ever be that happy-go-lucky Zeke again. If I allow myself to feel everything I’ve denied for so long, I’ll lose the Zeke I used to be.
The one who made jokes. The one who liked to have a good time. The one who played hockey because he enjoyed it and not because he needed the escape.
I’ll lose the kid who knew life before his mom got sick.
And if I lose that Zeke—
I don’t know if I’ll ever get him back.
Your econ partner still riding your ass?” I flop down on the couch next to Declan.
“She hasn’t been riding my ass.” He rolls his eyes. “If it were up to her, she’d be working with someone else. I feel like every time I make progress, I somehow screw it up.”
“Sounds about right,” Brooks says, taking the spot on the other side of Declan.
“Maybe you could get Brinley to put in a good word for you,” I continue. “You said it yourself; they’re besties now.”
“Yeah.” He groans, running his hands over his face. “Just my luck that my sister befriends the one girl on campus who wants nothing to do with me.”
“There’s probably more than one,” Brinley drops a few pizza boxes on the coffee table. “And, maybe if you didn’t storm out the other night, things wouldn’t be as tense.”
“She was eavesdropping, Brin. Was I just supposed to stick around and act like she didn’t listen to our entire conversation from your bathroom?”
“Or here’s a crazy idea, she was just using the bathroom.” Brinley stares Declan down. “You need to apologize to her.”
“For what?! She pulls that kind of shit with me all the time.” Brinley flicks him in the ear. “Ow, Brin. What was that for?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Do you want me to use my charm to try and convince her to like you?” I waggle my eyebrows, and there’s a universal No from around the room.
“I think you’re the last person to help anyone in this room,” Fletcher adds, dragging in a giant bean bag for him and Tate.
“That’s just mean,” I argue. “I don’t have to be here right now. I could be out getting laid.”
“Trust me, we know.” Tate grins, falling onto the beanbag, and Fletch drops beside her.
We aren’t together like this often, which is weird because most of us live here, but Brooks spends most nights with Olivia, and she isn’t a huge fan of us.
But tonight, we’re celebrating Tate and Fletcher’s birthdays, which we always celebrate on the same day since they’re only three days apart.
We’ve celebrated the two of them the same way every year since we were kids. Pizza and a scary movie. The only difference now is the booze—
This means Tate and Brinley will both be crashing here tonight.
“Are you guys gonna shut up so I can play this movie?” Jeremy wonders. “Or are we going to keep bickering?”
“We aren’t bickering,” I reply.
“It sounds like bickering to me,” Jaxon says.
“Yeah, and that’s no way to celebrate Tate and Fletcher,” Brinley adds. “Brooks, make yourself useful and grab the candles and a lighter from the kitchen.”
“But I just sat down,” Brooks pouts, but Brinley doesn’t care. She just crosses her arms.
He gets up.
“Thank you!” She grins, hopping over my legs and squeezing past Declan to take Brooks's previous spot in the corner of the couch.
“Oh, fuck you.” Brooks groans when he gets back. “You just wanted my seat.”
“When I’m here, it’s my seat. We’ve been over it,” Brinley replies as he tosses her the candles and lighter. She opens the top pizza box, sticks on a 21 candle, and lights it.
We don’t sing; we haven’t since we were kids, but they still make their wish, each blowing out one of the candles.
“Don’t forget, it’s also the anniversary of Zeke finding out Fletcher and I aren’t related.” Tate laughs.
“In all fairness, Fletcher has like fifty-three siblings, and you were always over at his house.”
“Thirteen,” Fletcher argues.
“Same thing. Plus, you were screaming and crying.”
“My dad was terrified when you started screaming that he was abducting me.” Tate reaches for a piece of pizza. “We laugh about it now.”
“I was trying to be a good friend.” Now I laugh, thinking back to that day. We had been friends for over two years, so I probably should’ve known that Tate and Fletcher weren’t related.
Fletcher’s moms looked mortified when I told them someone was trying to take one of their kids. Then they saw Mr. Lewis and Tate standing in the middle of the yard and realized I thought this whole time that Tate was one of their foster kids.
I’ll never live it down.
Tate’s mom is Chinese and Swedish. Tate’s basically her twin. She did get her dad’s black curly hair, but that’s the only thing that ties her to him. Her older sister, from her mom’s first marriage, also looks just like their mom.
That’s one thing Tate and I have in common: we get most of our looks from our mom. Everyone’s always told me that if we used a gender-swapping filter on my mom, the outcome would be me. Like Tate, I got my dad’s hair. Aside from my dad’s hair and his warm umber skin, everything else is all her.
“I don’t look like my dad at all,” she continues. “So, I can understand why seeing a six-five white man dragging me across the lawn was a little jarring.”
“Thank you,” I respond. “And yeah, six-five seemed fucking tall at eleven.”
“Dad likes to say all of my height came from him.”
“Your mom’s like five-ten,” Fletcher states, and Tate shrugs.
“I was just looking out for a friend,” I add.
Tate reaches back to give me a fist bump, and as our fists collide, I give her a friendly wink.
“Alright, everyone, find your spots,” Jeremy says, pressing play on the movie. “And shut up. I don’t want this to be like The Conjuring, where you guys talked so much that you had no idea what was happening when we hit the halfway point, and we had to start it over.”
“Yeah, I had to relive all those jump scares because you don’t know how to shut up, Zeke.” Brinley eyes me, grabbing a piece of pizza.
“Whoa, it was your brother who started talking about an upcoming hockey game,” I argue, but she doesn’t seem to care; she presses a finger to her lips, telling me to shush.
Jaxon grabs a couple slices of pizza, stacking them together like a sandwich, and sits beside Brinley. She drops her legs over his lap, and he moves his arms, allowing her to do so. Like it’s second nature.
I guess, in some ways, it might be. They do movie nights by themselves occasionally, and I’ve always wondered if they sit on top of each other like they are right now. Tonight, there’s an excuse, everyone’s piled onto the couch. But when it’s just them…
I know Jaxon would never go there, though, because of Declan. Declan’s his best friend, and even though the no-sisters rule we came up with years ago applied to any sister within the friend group, I think we all assumed it was to keep Jaxon away from Brinley.
Because Brinley was the sister who was always around. We were always at the Sandersons if we weren’t at school or practice. And there’s definitely something between them, even though it’s been denied by both parties.
Jaxon always argued that the Sandersons were like his second family, so what we saw between him and Brinley was nothing more than that.
I think we all used to buy it. Until Fletcher said the same thing about Tate and him. That they were like family.
I stare at Tate and Fletcher, who are silently laughing to themselves. They’re practically sitting on each other even though half the beanbag is unoccupied.
My eyes then meet Brinley and Jaxon, who have gotten closer on the couch, if that’s even possible. Declan’s too focused on the movie to notice.
She holds out her pizza, and he takes a large bite from the bottom. Even though he’s holding two slices of his own.
Jaxon holds back a laugh as he chews, and then he notices me watching them. I lift an eyebrow, and he rolls his eyes. It's like what I just saw means nothing.
As he leans forward to grab his drink, he flips up his middle finger for only me to see, and I stifle my laughter.
But when he leans back, the distance that’s been created between him and Brinley is obvious.
So much for nothing.