Chapter Twenty #2
“We will,” Paige promises with a pretty good poker face.
Paige reaches into the bag and pulls out three medium-sized stockings. As she passes them to Zach, Isaac, and Bea, he can see that she’s taken the time to painstakingly write their names onto the white trim in loopy cursive with glitter glue. Something about that makes Zach’s eyes get misty.
The stockings are packed with little knickknacks that Paige and Parker picked out for them.
Bea’s stocking is full of fancy calligraphy pens, a little leather notebook, and a pocket planner.
Isaac’s stocking has gross boy stuff: several small tubs of slime, a little World of Warcraft figurine, and a camo-colored multitool.
When Zach tips his stocking out onto the coffee table, he finds a multitude of little plastic gadgets.
He picks one up. It’s a cube with something different on each side: little switches that click, a metal ball that rolls freely, buttons to press.
The rest of the toys are in the same vein, pocket-size gadgets to fidget with.
“They’re supposed to help with anxiety,” Paige explains, wringing her hands together in her lap.
“These are great,” Zach says earnestly. “Seriously, Paige. Thank you.”
“Keep digging,” Parker says.
Frowning, Zach pushes his hand further into the stocking and finds a small, thick envelope. Inside are printed photos. Zach recognizes them immediately as the pictures that he and Parker had taken at Saratoga.
“Oh,” Zach says.
His heart squeezes. He looks up at Parker, wishing he could, like, kiss him or something.
But his mom is there, reaching over to take the photos so she can gasp and fawn over them.
Everyone passes them around, and even Isaac making fun of some of the more embarrassing pictures can’t wipe the big, goofy smile off Zach’s face.
The full house puts Zach’s mom in the Christmas spirit like never before.
She rounds everybody up into the kitchen, because they still have leftover Christmas cookie ingredients.
Zach isn’t even embarrassed about his mom being, you know, a mom.
It feels like something that a normal family might do on Christmas, and he’s been a big fan of feeling normal lately.
While Bea reads off the recipe, and Isaac and Paige tussle over who gets to crack the eggs, Zach tugs gently on Parker’s wrist, pulling him out of the kitchen.
“Hey,” he says softly, as they back into the hallway. “Come with me a second?”
Parker glances over his shoulder, presumably to make sure no one’s followed them. “Yeah, just—hold on. I’ll meet you down the hall,” he says before darting back into the living room.
Zach wrinkles his brow, but hurries to his room and goes right for his desk.
He hasn’t wrapped the gift he got for Parker because they’d agreed not to get each other gifts.
Or rather, Parker had insisted it would be dumb but Zach hadn’t been able to resist. He’d seen the journal at the store with his mom and sheepishly slipped it into the cart.
It’s a little faux-leather black book with The Book Lover’s Reading Log embossed on its front.
Parker bounds down the hall and rounds through Zach’s open doorway. He’s holding a small, wrapped gift in one hand.
“We said we weren’t doing gifts!” Zach says, grinning as he holds up the book journal. He hands it to Parker.
“Oh, you dick,” Parker laughs. “You weren’t supposed to get me anything.” He passes Zach the wrapped gift and looks down at the journal in his hands. He flips it open, leafing through the pages.
“I thought, you know, cause you’re always reading, you can track all the books you’ve read and stuff,” Zach explains.
“Oh, man,” Parker says, still scanning the pages. He looks up and grins at Zach. “We’re so fucking gross.”
Zach gives him a quizzical look and Parker gestures to the gift, saying, “Just open it.”
Zach sits on the edge of his bed and carefully peels open the wrapping paper.
The gift is a gray clothbound book, the words Backcountry Log across its cover in green.
Zach opens it carefully. Inside are pages with places to log the locations of hikes and campgrounds, guides to trail etiquette and first aid, even instructions on how to hang a bear bag.
“Now you can, like, track all the nature shit you’re gonna do,” Parker tells him, teasing. He drops to sit on the bed beside Zach, pressing his knee against Zach’s. He asks, a little softer, “Do you like it?”
Zach does like it. Over and over, he’s been reminded that, despite Parker’s thorny exterior, he cares—like, so much. He goes out of his way to care. In retrospect, their trip to Saratoga feels like a love letter. And he’s right: They are so gross.
Zach leans his shoulder into Parker’s gently. “I really, really like it,” he says. “Do you like yours?”
Parker squeezes the book log in his hands. “Of course I like it,” he answers. “You’re always, like, so fucking thoughtful.”
“Oh,” Zach says, blushing. “No, I just—you like to read, so.”
Parker leans in to kiss him and Zach melts into him.
They don’t stay in his room much longer, eager to fight off Isaac’s inevitable innuendos.
When they return to the kitchen, Zach’s mom has taken over putting the ingredients together while Isaac and Paige guiltily scrub eggs out of their shirts.
They end up with enough cookie dough for everyone to make their own cookie.
Everyone fights for the best plastic holiday cutters, and Parker uses extra dough to try and turn his Christmas tree cookie into a middle finger. The end result looks more like a penis.
Things have never been this good for Zach, pretty much ever.
He has friends, a boyfriend, and a new laptop.
Parker is alive and wants to be alive. Maybe all those feelings haven’t gone away with the start of their relationship, but Parker sees life as worth living.
For Zach, things are starting to look pretty optimistic too.
After his friends leave and his mom goes to bed, Zach lays on the couch, watching the lights on the Christmas tree. He thinks really hard, maybe hard enough that something out there will hear him: Please stay good. Please let everything stay good, just like this.