Chapter Twelve
Zach can hear Parker and Paige talking down the hall in the kitchen as he sits on the edge of his bed, holding onto a bottle of water, an Ativan working its way through his system.
Parker and Paige Reid are in his house. Both of them, at the same time.
If someone had told Zach a year ago that Paige Reid would be sitting at his kitchen table, he probably would have hurled.
Zach rubs his face, wiping away sweat and tears and snot.
His Ativan is starting to work, and he’s glad—not only because a panic attack isn’t fun, but because Parker and Paige don’t need to worry about him right now.
They’re on the precipice of something huge.
The fact that they’re having this life-changing moment in his dinky little kitchen is more than surreal.
“I can’t believe they would do this,” Paige says, her voice rising with each word. She’s been saying it since they got into the house. Zach squeezes his water bottle, his gaze focusing absently on his retro Shenandoah poster. The sticky-tack is peeling in one corner.
“Really?” Parker replies, not for the first time. “I can.”
After taking stock of all his limbs—he still has them all, even if they feel like they’re floating away from him—Zach stands and edges carefully out of his room.
He makes his way back down the hall, calmer now, breathing successfully: in through his nose and out through his mouth.
When he passes into the kitchen, he sees that one of them, probably Parker, has dug out two store-brand colas from the fridge, and he and Paige are sitting with them sweating in their hands.
“Zach!” Paige breathes, sitting up straighter. Her face is damp with tears, her eyes red-rimmed. Parker’s expression is blank, focused on the grain of the table. “Are you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry, this is all so—”
“No!” Zach says quickly. He sits at the table with them, his knee knocking against Parker’s. He’s solid, and Zach focuses on that. “No, don’t… don’t apologize, that was… that was crazy, but you’re—I mean, you’re so welcome to be here. You can stay as long as you want.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell me?” Paige anguishes, pressing the heels of her hands against the hollows of her eyes. She grinds her hands from side-to-side, fingers digging into her hair. “What the fuck were they thinking? What if you had—”
She drops her hands and looks up at Parker, and Zach looks between them, the way they look at each other.
It’s like they’re able to communicate telepathically.
He suddenly wishes he had stayed in his room longer.
The moment lingers long enough that Zach’s brain whirls trying to find an excuse to leave the room.
“I’ll go call my mom,” Zach offers quickly, anything to give them more time to process this without him there. “And, um… I’ll let her know you’re here.”
“We’re not going home,” Paige says, not looking away from Parker.
“Yeah,” Parker says after a moment, turning to Zach. “Can you ask your mom if it’s okay if we spend the night?”
“Of course,” Zach says softly. He might say yes to anything Parker asks him at that moment.
He gets up from the kitchen table and grabs the landline from the hook by the kitchen doorway.
He takes it out to the porch and dials the front office of the warehouse.
Even if his mom took the emergency cell with her to work, she wouldn’t be able to answer it on the floor.
After a few rings, one of the supervisors picks up.
“Hi,” Zach says shakily into the phone. “Um, can you please have Kate Williams call me back? It’s, um—I’m her son. It’s—it’s not an emergency, but it’s, like, really, really important, and—so, I need to talk to her? Please? Thank you.”
Zach sits on the front step of the porch, holding the phone in his lap.
The air is starting to get cold. The sun is moving behind the horizon, leaving everything a quiet blue-gray color.
When he looks across to Isaac’s house, he can see his car parked in the driveway, dark.
He almost gets up to go over there and spill his guts, but the hollowed-out look he had seen on Paige’s face keeps him mounted on his steps.
After about five minutes, the phone rings. Zach fumbles with the phone in his hand to answer it.
“Zach?” His mom’s voice is tinny through the speaker. She sounds worried. “Are you okay, honey?”
He’s not. He’s not okay. Zach almost tells her everything.
He almost falls apart and tells her all of the secrets that aren’t his to tell, but that he’s been entrusted to keep anyway.
All he wants is for his mom to come home and fix everything that’s broken.
Zach rubs his nose and focuses on breathing.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he says, even though his voice is wobbly and tight. “I’m okay.”
“What’s going on?” his mom asks. Each word sounds more and more concerned.
Zach scrubs one hand over his face, pressing his palm into his eyes as he tries to think clearly. “Um,” he says slowly. “My friends… my friends, that I went to the carnival with? Things are really weird for them at home.”
“Oh, honey,” his mom says softly. He can hear a quiet click, and then her voice echoes, like she’s stepped into a hallway. “What’s going on? Do you need me to come home?”
Zach hesitates just a second too long. “No, I don’t think—”
“I’ll come home,” his mom says firmly. “It’s fine. I have more than enough off time saved up.”
“Can they stay the night?” Zach asks quickly. “I know it’s a school night, but—but things are… things are weird, really weird for them right now, and I think—I told them they could stay? Is that okay? Can they stay here tonight?”
“Zach,” his mom says, her voice deliberate and soothing in a way that Zach usually resents. Now, though, he clings to it. He can’t do this by himself. He needs his mom. “It’s okay, honey. Alright? I’ll be home in an hour, okay?”
Zach sucks in a little breath. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. Thank you.”
“I love you,” his mom says, her voice fierce.
“You too,” Zach says.
Zach sits out on the porch for a few minutes after his mom hangs up, holding the phone in his lap and doing that thing he learned from his psychiatrist where he counts things he can see and hear and smell.
Eventually, he gathers himself back up and goes into the house.
Parker and Paige are still talking in the kitchen, so he loiters in the living room, not wanting to interrupt and not really meaning to eavesdrop.
“—I thought they were going to tell you, like, eventually. I didn’t know they were going to just ignore that it happened,” Parker is ranting. They’re retreading the same ground over and over again, trying to make it make sense.
“You almost died,” Paige says, choking out the last word. “Why? Why would they—”
“I mean, the same reason that Henry gets on my ass about the long hair and the nail polish and my clothes and, you know…” There’s a little whump, the sound of fabric against wood, and Zach imagines Parker slumping over the table, his long arms folding in front of him.
He deepens his voice mockingly and says, “It’s not good for the Reid family image. ”
There’s a moment of quiet, punctuated by Paige’s sniffles, and then Parker sharply adds: “Even though he’d probably rather have a dead son than a gay one.”
He huffs a little after he says it—a nasally half-laugh, like maybe that will make it into a joke. Zach’s heart picks up, racing wildly in his chest.
“Parker,” Paige’s voice is rasping and pained “Don’t. Don’t say that. That’s not true. He doesn’t want you dead.”
There’s a beat of silence from the kitchen.
“That’s why I get so fucking crazy when he digs at me,” Parker says, softly this time. “It’s like he can’t even try to hide the fact that he wishes he didn’t have a sissy for a son.”
Paige inhales, the sound teary. “I didn’t think of it like that,” she whispers, her words careful, considered. Then, after another moment of silence: “Thanks for telling me. That you’re… you know.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I mean, I wasn’t sure, but… I don’t know…” Paige says. “I kind of assumed. The nails, and stuff. You know.”
Parker snorts. “Right, yeah.”
Paige laughs a little too. “Yeah.”
Zach makes sure to step more loudly than usual to alert them of his approach. When he makes his way back to the kitchen, Parker and Paige look less weepy, though Paige’s eyes are still red-rimmed and wet.
Zach’s thinking about what Parker said—about being gay, and about Mr. Reid hating that he’s gay.
The thing is, Zach is pretty sure he’s never actually met a gay person before.
Or at least, someone that he knew was gay.
Gay people don’t always announce themselves, or whatever, Zach knows that, but still.
This is maybe the first time he’s known someone gay.
“She’s coming home,” Zach says, gripping his hands in front of his shirt. “My mom. Um, but she’ll probably let you stay. She’s kind of—I mean, she’s cool? As far as moms go.”
“Thank you,” Paige says, taking a big breath in, releasing it slowly through her mouth.
They eventually move out into the living room and Zach turns the TV on.
He sits on the couch next to Parker and Paige curls up on the love seat, in control of the remote.
Zach’s brain whirls with thoughts—about Mr. Reid, and Parker, and Paige, and everything that happened at dinner and everything that’s happened since dinner.
It’s like they’ve all lived a thousand lifetimes since sitting down at the Reids’ dining room table.
Despite the absolute agony of what Parker had to tell Paige, Zach feels a weight start to lift off his own shoulders. It’s one less secret he has to keep.