Chapter Twenty-Four
The drive back home feels both impossibly short and terribly, insufferably long.
They drive as far as Parker can stand it before his eyes start growing heavy.
When they run out of crumbled bills from Parker’s jacket pocket somewhere on the highway after getting gas, he pays for their hotel room with a credit card that clearly has Henry Reid’s name on it.
Zach has a feeling that Parker’s dad isn’t entirely aware that he has it.
In the hotel, they finally get a signal back on Parker’s phone, and it buzzes with incoming messages from Bea, Isaac, and Paige.
Zach reads them out loud to Parker and they laugh, incredulous, at the play-by-play of Bea’s presentation from Isaac’s point of view.
Paige’s messages feel more intimate, something for just her brother to read, so Zach skips them, letting Parker scroll through them on his own while Zach takes a shower.
When it’s time to sleep, Zach holds Parker through the night again, his heart racing. Despite his mom’s reassurances, he can’t help but fear that this is going to be the last time that they get to hold each other like this. What if their whole relationship is over before it’s even begun?
Parker’s words on the fire tower echo in Zach’s mind.
The thought that Parker liked him all this time, had found his friendship worth living for—it makes Zach feel indescribably small.
A speck in the churning universe. A moment in time that changed Parker’s entire course of action, from death to life.
How could Zach have been so important without ever realizing it?
The second half of the drive is done mostly in silence.
Paige doesn’t have the same kind of music that Parker has in his Subaru, and Parker is too twitchy for the radio.
Each mileage sign tells them they’re closer and closer to home, until Parker takes the highway exit into town.
The rain from the night they left has turned to snow, coating Zach’s neighborhood in a fresh blanket of white.
Zach’s stomach is twisted up in knots by the time Parker pulls into the driveway behind Zach’s mom’s car.
The porchlight is on even though it’s barely past noon.
Neither of them make a move, reluctant to part ways again.
The last time Zach walked away from him that day at school, he hadn’t known he might never see him again.
Finally, Zach says, “I have to go in.”
“I know,” Parker mutters, scratching at Paige’s steering wheel cover.
“Bea made a PowerPoint,” Zach reminds him, his voice too shaky for the joke to land. “So… it’ll be fine, right?”
Parker’s lips quirk at the corners, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Right,” he agrees.
They kiss briefly at first, but neither pull back after the first few chaste kisses.
Parker cups his hand against the back of Zach’s neck, and Zach gets his fingers into the long hair at the back of Parker’s head.
What if the Reids have changed their mind in the last twenty-four hours about Vermont?
What if this really is the last time that they’ll see one another?
What if everything his mom said was just to get him to come home?
Zach’s never known his mother to lie, but the fear keeps him stuck in the passenger seat, holding Parker by the face.
Finally, Zach peels himself out of the front seat. As he stands on the porch, he watches as Parker pulls out of the driveway and turns recklessly back onto the road. His taillights disappear around the corner at the end of the block and Zach can’t put off going inside any longer.
His mom is sitting curled up on the couch in the living room.
She’s already looking at the door when he enters, like she’s been waiting for him to come in from the porch the whole time.
Her face is pale, and her eyes are red like she’s been crying all night.
Zach knows the feeling. He shuffles out of his boots and jacket, and the minute he sits down beside her, she throws her arms around him, pulling him against her.
Zach stiffens briefly, then gives in, tucking his arms around her shoulders.
He can hear her teary breathing as she rocks him from side-to-side, her face pressed against his hair.
Seeing his mom cry triggers some automatic reflex, and tears begin to sting behind his own eyes.
They stay like that for a long while, holding each other.
Zach can’t remember the last time he let his mom hold him like this.
He tucks his face against her shoulder, lip quivering.
When his mom pulls back, Zach almost doesn’t want her to go. She wipes her face with both hands, letting out a slow, shaky exhale.
“Oh, Zach,” she sighs, pressing one hand against his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” Zach says immediately. “Mom, I’m really, really sorry.”
His mom nods, dropping her hand to his knee. She squeezes him there and Zach covers her hand with his own.
“I know,” she says softly. Zach’s jaw quivers as he struggles to swallow down another fresh wave of tears.
They’re both quiet while his mom gathers her words and Zach does his best not to cry or throw up.
Finally, his mom takes a deep breath and says, “I know your friendship with Parker is really important to you. And you’re both really important to your friends.
They all had a lot of… of really kind things to say. ”
Zach wants to ask about Bea’s PowerPoint.
What did it say? Did she really present it to his mom and the Reids like it was a school project?
Isaac’s texts updates said that one of the slides had included statistics about how important it is for teenagers with suicidal thoughts to have friendships.
Now isn’t the time to ask but Zach barely resists bringing it up as his mom keeps talking.
“Clearly, you both felt strongly enough about your friendship to…” She makes a vague gesture with her free hand. Neither of them say the words run away. “And I want you to be able to see each other. I don’t want to… take a friend away from you. But, Zach, those emails…”
“I know,” Zach says quickly. His stomach drops to his feet, and he scrambles to get the words out before his mom gets the idea that Parker isn’t good for him or something.
He can’t let Parker take the fall just because he looks the way he does and says the things he says.
He knows what people think of Parker when they see him—he used to think that way too.
“Look,” Zach keeps going. “I… I know how awful those emails sound. But we wrote them before we even really knew each other. Before you helped Parker and Paige with their parents and before all the really good things that happened. So… so many good things happened. And—and Parker told me, he said that… that he wanted to be alive. And…” Tears come now, and he scrubs his face with his hands. “And I do too.”
“Oh, honey,” his mom says, her own voice tight with more unshed tears. Her arms wind around him again. Zach collapses against his mom, letting her hold him.
They stay like that until Zach feels wrung-out from crying.
When he sits back, his mom smiles sadly, her own eyes teary.
Other than this whole mess, he can’t remember the last time he saw his mom cry.
She didn’t cry when she left his dad. She’s always been this pillar in his life, immovable, no matter how much he sucked as a son.
“I’m so glad those good things happened for you,” his mom says earnestly.
“We’re better together,” Zach presses. “We… we make each other better. And—and not just me and Parker. But Paige and Isaac and Bea. We’re all… We all make each other better.”
His mom takes a deep breath and nods, picking her words. Zach clenches his hands in his lap, not sure he wants to hear what she has to say.
“Zach,” she starts, squeezing his knee again.
“Having friends, having people in your corner… That’s important, you’re right.
And I’m so happy that you have that with Parker.
But… he’s not going to fix everything for you, honey.
” Her voice is so soft and sad, and Zach swallows thickly as she keeps talking.
“And you’re not going to be able to fix everything for him.
No matter how much we love people, there are some things we can only do for ourselves. ”
Love. The word strikes Zach somewhere under his ribs, a kind of jolt, like when you wake up from a dream about falling.
Is that what this is? This feeling that crawls inside his skull and his ribs and his nerve endings whenever he looks at Parker?
Love, like for real? Like the kind of love you see in the movies?
“I know,” Zach whispers, his face burning.
“He just… he makes me feel normal, Mom. Even if I’m anxious or…
or stammering, or weird, he doesn’t see any of that.
I don’t think I would have started hanging out with Paige or Bea without him—and Isaac, he thinks Parker is so cool.
It’s like… it’s kind of like Parker brought us all together. ”
His mom looks like she might cry again but maybe this time it’s not really a bad thing.
“I’m so glad you have friends, honey,” she says.
“They were all very thorough when they talked with me and Parker’s parents.
We had… no idea how much he meant to you.
Or how much you all meant to one another.
” She takes a deep breath, lifting her hand to the side of his neck, giving him a squeeze.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him, her voice breaking. “I’m so sorry I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry I didn’t know that you were dealing with all of those feelings. That you felt… so sad.”
“I didn’t tell you,” Zach says. “It was—it felt like too much. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“No,” his mom says, giving him another squeeze. “You have nothing to apologize for. Let’s just try to be more open, okay? Let me help you.”
Zach can tell that the universe is giving him an opening. It’s now or never. His heart begins to rocket behind his ribs, and when he swallows, his throat grows sticky and thick.
“Okay,” he says, slowly. “I haven’t been very…” He sucks in a breath and sits a little taller on the couch. “I want to be more open. And, um… to tell you more stuff. About me. So, in the interest of… of not keeping any more secrets… there’s something you should know.”
His mom steels herself. He can see her shoulders tighten as her face becomes carefully blank.
“Parker and I—we—um, I mean, we’re…” Boyfriends? Dating? Seeing each other? “Like, together,” Zach decides.
His mom’s brows lift, her eyes widening a fraction. “Together,” she repeats.
Flustered, Zach clarifies, “I’m, like—he’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh,” his mom says, then again, with a little more intensity, “Oh! Oh, honey—okay, alright. That’s—your boyfriend.” She repeats the word slowly like she’s hoping to get it right. Zach nods, feeling his face go hot.
After a brief moment, his mom asks, “Has he been your boyfriend since those emails…?”
“No!” Zach says, eager to stop that line of thought in its tracks. “No. It wasn’t like—it wasn’t, like, a Romeo and Juliet thing. We’ve been, like, together since December. Since the opening night party.”
Relief washes over his mom’s face immediately and she pulls him in for another hug, her arms tight around his shoulders. She rocks him again, but this time the hug is relieved and happy. “Thank you for telling me,” she says, her voice soft in his ear.
They pull away, his mom’s hands still firm on his shoulders as she rubs her thumbs up and down the line of his neck. Zach feels so soothed and so small and so tired. He could probably sleep for a week.
“Okay,” his mom says softly, mostly to herself. She gives a little nod. “You’ve had a long day. Why don’t you go take a nap?”
Zach nods back, relieved. “Okay.”
Then, as if suddenly remembering everything that had brought them to this emotional conversation again, his mom adds, “I think you should be grounded, though, for… you know. Running away.”
They look at one another, neither of them knowing what that might entail. Zach has never been grounded before. Still, he nods again, because it only seems fair.
“Right,” he agrees.
His mom smiles, satisfied, and pats him gently on the knee. “Good.” She wraps him in another tight hug, then pulls away slightly to press her forehead against his. Zach closes his eyes, relief sweeping over him in cool, lapping waves.
No more secrets.