Chapter 32
thirty-two
ZEKE
Zeke: Autumn. I’m so sorry.
Zeke: Okay??
Zeke: I don’t expect you to talk to me, but just… Idk. Let me know you read this?
Zeke: God, I suck.
Will opens the door, and I don’t even want to look at him.
He moves aside to let me through, and I stomp into the living room, two rolling suitcases bumping over the floor behind me.
I hurl myself into a chair and stare at the floor, waiting for him to say something.
Because even though he’s still silent, he’s watching me under that cranky-ass, furrowed brow of his, and I know whatever he’s thinking is pure judgment.
“Serves you right,” he says.
Welp. There it is.
“Gee, thanks. That feels great, Will.”
Will cocks his head, leaning back against the living room wall as he folds his arms across his chest. “You know it’s true.”
“Yeah, I know it,” I snap. “So I don’t need you to pound it into me—okay? Trust me, I feel enough like shit the way it is. You can pummel me all you want, but I guarantee it’s not gonna be any worse than what I’ve been doing to myself.”
“I’m not trying to pummel you.” Will’s voice is even, but there’s a softness to its edge. “But I’m not going to sugarcoat things. You fucked up, you deserve what you got, and that’s just how it is. It happens.”
I slide off the chair and onto the floor, collapsing into a heap in the middle of the living room.
I hear Will scoff, but I don’t get up. I just roll over onto my back to stare at the ceiling, a languid, pitiful starfish in the middle of the hardwood.
Autumn hasn’t replied to any of my texts. Which… good on her.
But I don’t want to move.
I hate everything. Mainly myself.
“I’m so fucking stuuuuupid,” I moan, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I don’t even know how it happened! Like, I didn’t try to get plastered. I didn’t plan it—I just… fuck! I can’t do anything right!”
Will surveys me, still leaning against the wall. From this angle, he looks like a swarthy, unshaven outlaw, but I swear I see him roll his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Why not?! It’s truuuue!”
I know I’m legit wailing, but I don’t know what else to do with myself. I have two modes: ‘I don’t care, everything’s fucking dandy’ and ‘kill me now, everyone hates me’. Right now, I’m quite firmly in the latter, and I’m spiraling by the second. I can’t help it. Autumn hates me.
Will comes over to me, arms still crossed over his solid chest, and digs the toe of his boot into my ribs. Even though it doesn’t hurt, I let out a yelp and roll in the opposite direction, curling up on my side.
“Don’t kick me when I’m down, Will,” I moan. “She hates me! I’ll n-n-never be good enough for anyone. Not Autumn, not Dad, not you, not Benji or Phoebe, not any goddamn TV producer—”
“Hey, I thought you said your pilot filming went pretty well, no?”
“Fuuuuuck,” I wail, pounding my fist into the floor.
I can tell by the suddenly chipper tone of his voice that he’s only trying to find something positive to placate me with.
He doesn’t actually think I’ll win. No one thinks I’ll win.
Because I fucking won’t. “Don’t talk about it!
It’s all cursed—I am cursed. It’s all going to shit! ”
I hear Will mutter, “For fuck’s sake,” as he steps over me and sinks onto the sofa.
We stay like that for a minute, Will watching me from the couch, probably pinching the bridge of his nose, and me, lying in the middle of the floor wishing Autumn’s ex-husband’s murderous grandpa’s ghost would come and put me out of my misery. At least Lena would be in the afterlife. Lena likes me.
God. I am so dumb. The coolest, hottest, most talented woman in the world—or at least in greater Boston, what the hell do I know about the world?
—somehow got past my walls, saw past the shallow player spoof I’ve learned to wear like a comfy pair of sweatpants.
And she didn’t even flinch—she just kept seeing me. Accepting me.
Until I fucked it up. Like I always do.
And now it hits me why this time is different. I care about Autumn. I care about her in a way I’ve never cared about a woman before. I care what she thinks of me, sure, but even more than that, I care about her. How she feels. And I let her down.
I can’t do this. This is exactly why I’ve learned to always shake things off and never get attached. It’s why I don’t think, don’t care. This caring shit is a trap, and I fell for it. I need a distraction.
I grab my phone and open Tinder, a surge of desperate relief flooding through me at the mere sight of the little flame logo.
Now, this is familiar territory. This is safe.
Phoebe can bitch all day about how shallow I am, swiping through dates on looks alone to find my next conquest, but she’s just jealous.
I guarantee there’s a whole boatload of chicks in Amherst that’ll—
A huge figure slams into me, and any thought I had is shattered.
It takes a second for it to register that this gigantic, hulking mound that’s got me pinned to the floor is Will, and by the time it does, he’s knocked my phone out of my hand.
It skitters to the floor and I reach for it, but Will grabs my wrist and pulls me into a headlock with only his left arm. Goddamn show off.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Will growls.
He plucks my phone off the ground, and I watch helplessly as he shoves it down the front of his pants. Like, in next to his junk in front. No way am I going after that. Nasty.
“What the hell, Will?” I howl, my head still locked in his elbow.
This time, Will chuckles. Now that my phone’s down his pants, he lets go of his grip on me and I shake myself loose. He turns to me. “You’re being an idiot.”
“Wow, you found me out. Now give me my phone.”
“No,” Will says. He shakes his head, his blue eyes boring holes in mine. It freaks me out how much he looks like Dad right now—but kinder. Always kinder. “You know good and well there’s a reason you’re rolling around on the floor like a toddler right now—and Tinder is not the way to fix it.”
“Fucking duh there’s a reason. I screwed everything up. I’m a failure.”
“You’re not a failure, Zeke.”
My eyes jerk to his. “What do you mean?”
Will shrugs his huge shoulders. “Exactly what I said. You’re not a failure. You’re just… taking your time. But you’re getting there. I see it.”
“Ha,” I scoff, rubbing the back of my neck. Will’s every bit as strong as he looks. “You see it, huh? What, in how I’m back in your fucking house? In how I let Lydia’s friend down? Or maybe you see the nonexistent money I’m raking in with my nonexistent TV show.”
“No, what I see is that you care deeply for someone. You care about how Autumn feels. And that’s something I’ve never seen from you before.”
I’m silent a beat. It’s true… but I hadn’t put it into words.
I had no idea Will saw that.
“Okay,” I say. “But I’m still a failure. I let her down. I hurt her.”
“Yeah,” Will agrees. “You did hurt her. But I can tell from the way you’re lying there on the floor that you also want to fix it. Failures don’t fix stuff.”
“I can’t fix it.”
Will sighs, rubbing his chin. “I didn’t think I could fix it with Lydia, either.”
I sniff. “Yeah, well. That’s you. You’re not a screw-up.”
“Neither are you. Everyone screws up sometimes.”
God damn it. My throat’s suddenly tight, and I’m not sure what’s going to come out if I try to speak, so I just stare at the floor.
But Will doesn’t wait for an answer. He gives me a friendly slap on the back that jostles my bones, then gets to his feet. I swear the floorboards fucking shift.
“I know it sucks,” he says, his voice calm above me.
“But my advice…? Find those balls you’re always bragging about and figure out how to fix this—for Autumn’s sake and yours.
Because you found a kick-ass woman who likes your weirdo self and you better not let that go.
That shit doesn’t come around every day. ”
I can’t respond. My throat’s too tight, and the fucking tears are back, threatening to start spilling out again if I do anything more than blink.
Because Will’s right. A woman like Autumn doesn’t come around every day. I knew the minute she stripped down and jumped into that lake naked with me that I was dealing with a woman I wouldn’t have to hide from.
But there’s one thing Will’s wrong about. I don’t think I can fix this. There’s no way Autumn will ever trust me again.
Will reaches down a hand and helps me wordlessly to my feet. He doesn’t ask what I’m thinking, what I’m going to do, and I don’t offer to tell him. We’re brothers. He’s got my back, and it’s enough.
He claps me between the shoulder blades as I trudge toward the hallway, ready to fall into bed and call it a damn night. Autumn’s fashion show was this morning, but it feels an absolute lifetime ago that I stumbled into her shop and puked outside the door. This day’s been too goddamn long.
Will gives a sharp whistle, and I jerk my head around. Tossing me my phone, he gives me a pointed look that tells me he’s going to be on my ass if I make any missteps—which, honestly, I kind of appreciate for once in my life.
“Better go edit that footage,” he says, jutting his chin toward the hall. “I’m pretty sure I heard you say submissions are due Monday night. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
Fuck. He’s right. In all this, I forgot about that damn competition—even though it’s the underlying reason I’m even in this mess to begin with.
But it’s not the competition’s fault. That competition still needs to be won. And even though I’m pretty sure that someone like Jaxon Slade is going to beat me by a mile, I guess I owe it to myself to at least try.
“Yes, it’s worth the energy. Yes, you should at least try,” Will says, using a fake kind of bored voice to answer the questions I didn’t ask aloud. “Just do it. Who cares if you win? Follow through for once.”
As he turns to head to the kitchen and I make my way to the bedroom, I hear his voice echo down the hallway: “And don’t fucking open Tinder!”
But he doesn’t need to say it. I’m past it.
Autumn’s all I’m thinking about now, and I will set things right. Regardless of whether she ever looks at me again.
I’m gonna grow that pair of balls if it kills me.