Chapter Twenty-Five
Zach has no idea how to be grounded. His mom has never had to discipline him for something as serious as running away.
Zach can’t even remember the last thing he got in trouble for in a major way, actually.
They’re both a little awkward about carrying out the punishment.
He’s not allowed to watch TV and he can’t go out after school, both of which he already does very little of.
On Monday, Parker returns to school. When he walks in with Paige, Zach’s heart leaps into his throat.
He looks tired, eyes sleepy, hair damp, bundled in his jacket and a black-and-white striped scarf.
He looks so soft. Zach wants to kiss him right there in the hallway but he settles for hooking their pinkies together.
Despite his mom not being around most of the time to enforce the new rules, Zach follows them to the letter.
He wants to show her that he’s taking their conversation seriously.
He comes right home with Isaac after school and sits in the living room with the TV off, reading or catching up on homework.
Nothing goes back to normal because, maybe, in retrospect, normal wasn’t working. Zach starts to see life in two phases: Before the Emails and After the Emails. And frankly, he thinks he prefers the After.
Despite being barred from seeing each other outside of school due to their respective punishments, Zach and Parker still have study hall and lunch together.
They sit in the back of the library during their free period, shoulder-to-shoulder.
Parker peruses the shelves for books to read in order to avoid doing his own schoolwork, while Zach slogs through Calculus homework.
Zach’s punishment only lasts a week. He chalks that up to his mom’s inexperience with grounding a teenager. Parker, on the other hand, has parents who are experts at punishing Parker for everything from totaling his car to running away.
“Wasn’t even his first time,” Paige tells Zach one afternoon after school, rolling her eyes. “Except the last time he tried to run away, he was thirteen. He made it to the bus stop downtown before Dad found him.”
“It’s bullshit,” Parker complains, not for the first time. They all sit shivering on the front steps, drawing out the time before they have to go home. It’s technically not hanging out after school if the parking lot is still full of student cars, Zach reasons to himself.
“Maybe if you hadn’t stolen my car,” Paige points out.
“It’s not stolen if I brought it back,” Parker mutters around the end of his cigarette.
“I think it was very romantic,” Bea says, sitting as far away from Parker and his cigarette as she can. She rubs her hands together through her knitted mittens. “Inappropriate and dangerous, but… romantic.”
“It was fucking ballsy is what it was,” Isaac says, clapping Parker on his back.
Things aren’t normal, but things are better.
Zach keeps going to therapy, slowly opening up to his therapist in ways that feel more real.
He starts with his run-in with the train over the summer, then talks about Parker, and the emails, and the Dead Boys Club.
It’s rough and he understands now why Parker found family therapy so taxing.
Bea is the first of them to turn eighteen on the last weekend in January.
Parker’s punishment is lifted long enough for the rest of them to throw her a birthday party.
Paige does most of the planning, but she comes over to Zach’s house on Saturday morning and they bake a birthday cake together for Bea.
Parker tags along. He’s pretty unhelpful but Zach doesn’t mind.
The birthday party is Zach’s first time in Bea’s house.
He’s immediately met with the evidence of all of Bea’s theatrical accomplishments hung up in the living room.
Like Zach and Isaac, Bea is also an only child.
Her parents have hung professional photographs of her all over the house, and when Zach meets Bea’s dad he understands immediately where she gets her managerial attitude.
After pizza and cake—Paige and Zach’s homemade one, as well as the store-bought cake Bea’s parents purchased for the party—they pull out a stack of boardgames from a wardrobe in the living room.
They play a four-hour game of Monopoly that ends only when Bea’s dad has to split up Parker and Isaac, because Parker has Isaac in a headlock after getting caught on Isaac’s four mansions on Pacific Avenue.
Time keeps moving forward.
Parker is finally released from house arrest on the first weekend in February, and they all celebrate by driving to the Baskin-Robbins by the fairgrounds, which are now empty and covered in tightly-packed snow.
Zach can’t remember who initiates the snowball fight, but they spend the afternoon chasing each other through the abandoned lot, pelting each other with slush.
Once Parker is no longer confined to his own house, he spends a lot of time at Zach’s.
The empty house becomes a refuge. They retreat from the biting February chill and from the watchful eyes of their friends.
After school, they spend most days in Zach’s room, where Zach reads Parker’s English homework out loud to him.
Sometimes, Parker sits in silence with him while Zach does his homework and those moments are so good too. Special. Fleeting.
Sometimes, they forget about studying altogether.
It’s easy to get lost in one another. Zach thinks about it more and more, these days—sex, and things to do with sex, and more importantly, sex with Parker.
Or sex-like things with Parker. It drives him to distraction with both desire and worry.
Because he wants to know what it would be like to do those things with Parker.
But Parker has done things before—things like sex.
He’s more experienced. Zach volleys between imagining all of the ways their bodies could fit together and worrying he’s going to embarrass himself if he tries.
What if Zach is, like, bad at it? What if he has no idea what he’s doing? There’s no way that he can live up to whatever experiences Parker has already had.
Jerking off, before dating Parker, had been more like standard maintenance, like getting your oil changed.
His body needed it so he would do it. It felt good, but that was it.
Now, it’s become almost a nightly thing, driven entirely by how much every little thing about Parker turns him on. He’s become some kind of fiend.
They finally go beyond kissing one unassuming day in February.
The house is quiet and empty. The air outside is so frigid that it wages war with the hot air blowing into the room from his floor vents.
Zach and Parker retreat to Zach’s bed, burrowing under the blankets to try and thaw from the biting winter chill.
Parker’s breath ghosts against his cheek as they whisper together.
And then, suddenly, all at once, they’re not talking at all.
It’s Parker who initiates, his enthusiasm for Zach so overwhelming that it runs over any worry he had about Parker’s experience and not being good enough for him.
Parker’s hands, firm and soft, pushing up under his clothes, over Zach’s own skin—the feel of Parker’s muscles, his body, moving against him, in entirely new ways.
“Is this okay?” Parker murmurs. “It’s okay for me. Is it okay for you?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Really—really okay actually. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks.”
A soft breath of a laugh. Parker’s mouth against his jaw. A grin pressing into Zach’s skin. Everything is exciting and scary and wonderful, all at once. Parker’s body is solid under his hands. Just like he’d imagined he would be.
“Are you sure? We can stop whenever you want.”
“I am so incredibly sure. Like—top five things I’ve ever been sure about. I really, really want this.” Zach pauses, face hot. He forces himself to be brave when he says: “Show me?”
Parker sucks in a breath. His skin shivers under Zach’s hand.
“Fuck yeah.”
The air beneath the blanket becomes humid.
Parker’s mouth is warm and slack against his when they try to kiss.
Their clothes get caught beneath their bodies, around their arms and ankles.
When they’re naked, Zach looks between them both, between their bellies and hips.
There’s giggling. Zach never imagined there would be giggling.
He likes the feel of Parker’s shaking laughter against him.
He likes when Parker tells him how to touch him, and what feels good.
Parker feels like a burning star beneath him. Zach’s skin prickles with sweat and his world lights up, sharp and bright and so good that he can’t help but chase after it. It’s strange, but in a good way. After it’s over, he feels entirely different but exactly the same.
Winter marches on.
They study for exams. Even Parker, who’d all but given up on school, spends hours trying to squeeze in an entire year’s worth of learning into the last half of the semester.
The rest of them rally around him: Isaac lets him copy his Physics homework and Bea makes flashcards for his History and Social Studies.
Paige edits one of his essays for him. Parker is a perfectly fine writer as far as Zach can tell; he just doesn’t care.
Paige painstakingly adds commas and full stops where required.
There are so many moments where Zach stops and thinks, If I’d stayed on those train tracks, I wouldn’t have this.
On the Friday before Valentine’s Day, the student council hands out roses bought by other students for five dollars.
When Zach sees Paige in the hall right before his lunch period, she’s carrying an entire bouquet, presumably purchased for her by George.
Zach grins, watching the way her olive cheeks flush with pleasure.
“Are you doing anything nice for Valentine’s Day?” Bea asks the three of them at the lunch table.