Chapter Twenty-Six #2
The only other person who’s ever said those words to him is his mom.
If his dad ever did, he would have been too young to remember.
Zach has thought something similar about Parker, in a more abstract sense.
He’s thought about how he would be happy spending as much of his life with Parker as possible: college, and then after college.
He’s spent long nights constructing the fake life they built together on the drive to Acadia, considering how he could bring that fantasy into the real world.
His mom had said: No matter how much we love people, there are some things we can only do for ourselves.
And Zach had wondered if that’s what all this is—all these feelings… Could it really be love?
Parker laying out those three, specific words, right there at the beach… Zach’s heart skips about ten beats. Zach pushes his hands into the towel beneath him, digging his fingers into the fabric.
“I said don’t freak out,” Parker sulks, when Zach takes an uncomfortable amount of time to reply.
“No!” Zach says quickly. He shifts on the towel, turning to face Parker fully.
He reaches out, sliding one hand along Parker’s arm until he can lace their fingers together.
He squeezes so hard he feels Parker’s knuckles grinding together under his grip.
“I mean, yeah, I think—I think I’m freaking out, like, a little, but… ”
Say it say it say it say it say it, a wonderful little voice hisses in the back of his brain. The same voice that had urged him to kiss Parker that night after the play.
So, he does.
“I love you too,” Zach breathes, unable to stop the way his lips split into an incredulous smile. “I love you. Totally.”
Parker’s lips twitch into a slow smile, his cheeks flushed from more than just the balmy May air. When he kisses Zach, they go sprawling into the sand. Somewhere nearby, one of their friends wolf-whistles. Zach laughs against Parker’s mouth, and Parker throws his middle finger up in reply.
It’s perfect.
- - - - -
The days leading up to graduation slip away as easily as sand, marked with moments that shine like constellations in Zach’s memory.
Zach’s mom arranges to have the night off work for the graduation ceremony.
She drives him to the school, and for a quiet moment they sit together in the parking lot, his mom gripping the steering wheel and staring pointedly ahead.
Zach keeps his own gaze forward and they both do their best not to blubber and cry about the milestone.
“Oh, honey,” Zach’s mom whispers, finally turning to look at him. Her smile isn’t as sad as Zach is used to seeing it. He smiles back, feeling his chin getting a little wobbly. She reaches one hand out, gripping the back of his neck, her thumb stroking beneath his ear.
“I know we went through a lot this year,” she says. Her voice is croaky with unshed tears. “I just want you to know how proud I am of you.”
Zach swallows against the lump in his throat. He twists his fingers into the fabric of his graduation gown.
“I know,” Zach says. He keeps his eyes fixed on his lap. There’s nothing more embarrassing than showing up to your own graduation covered in snot and tears. If he looks his mom in the face he’s definitely going to start bawling.
“I love you,” his mom says, and Zach has to wipe at his eyes.
By the time he gets inside, Zach has managed to choke back the flood of emotion.
The ceremony takes so long. He sits in the back next to Bea—U and W, with no Vs between them.
Paige and Parker are a few rows ahead of them.
Isaac is somewhere near the front. Of the five of them, Isaac is called first, and Zach cheers as loud as he can; Bea cups her hands around her mouth and lets out an even louder whoo!
Over the polite applause, Zach can hear Parker and Paige hooting as Isaac shuffles across the stage for his diploma.
Parker crosses the stage directly after Paige, and Zach watches him with a thrumming, live wire of a heart.
Parker is alive, and graduating, and Paige stops midway across the stage so that they both have a moment together, arms around each other, waving their diplomas in the air.
Bea and Zach both stand to clap and cheer.
When it’s finally his turn, Zach hears them all—Paige and Parker, Isaac, Bea, all of them shouting in the sea of students.
He catches a hint of his mom somewhere in the audience, too.
Parker and Isaac are hollering from somewhere in the crowd of other graduates.
They try to start a chant of Will-iams, Will-iams, Will-iams, much to Zach’s mortification.
Bea waits for him on the other side of the stage, at the bottom of the stairs, and she hugs him so tightly that he can barely breathe.
Afterwards, the pictures are endless. All the parents demand every combination of picture imaginable: group photos, then just the girls, then just the boys, then Paige with Alicia and Ben, who are still juniors, then Paige and George, then Parker and Paige…
It’s a parade of pictures that Zach must smile through until his cheeks are sore and pink.
The last picture is all of them throwing their caps into the air, grinning and laughing.
When it’s over, Bea hugs them all and cries.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says to Parker specifically, holding his face in her small hands, pressing enthusiastic kisses to each cheek.
Not a single one of them tells her that Parker graduated only because Isaac helped him cheat his way through his Physics final.
- - - - -
The week after graduation, his mom knocks gently on his bedroom door. Zach is sprawled out on his bed, a book on North American mushrooms propped open on his chest. He sits up when she enters, nudging open his bedroom door.
“Hey,” she says, barely able to contain a smile. She looks excited about something, which is a rare enough occurrence. Zach sits up, dog-earing his page and setting the book aside.
“Hi,” Zach replies, unable to stop himself from sounding a little suspicious.
“Well,” his mom says, tapping her fingers against his doorframe. “I was checking my vacation time, and I’ve got quite a bit of it saved up. Now that you’ve graduated, I thought… Maybe we could take a trip together?”
She’s smiling, one hand moving his door back and forth, like she can’t quite contain the excitement. Zach smiles back, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. Sure. Where?”
“I already talked with Mrs. Reid about this,” his mom goes on.
“I didn’t want your first time seeing Acadia to be…
you know.” She makes a vague gesture with one hand, and Zach gets it.
Despite all of the good that happened after the trip, the memory of Acadia is marred by fear and pain and desperation.
“I thought we could all go camping!” his mom continues, grinning as she finally lets the cat out of the bag. “You, me, Parker, Paige… It would be nice, wouldn’t it? To see it again? You know, for real.”
Zach blinks, struggling to process what his mom has just said. “Wh—seriously?” he asks.
His mom nods, her smile nervously tightening a little. “Think of it as a graduation present,” she offers. “I’ve been reading all about it. There’s campgrounds, and a lot of activities, and—oh!”
He doesn’t mean to cut her off but Zach absolutely has to hug his mom at that moment. She folds him up in her arms and they stand there, squeezing each other, for once not crying while they do it.
“Yes,” Zach says, leaning back to look at her. “I would love that.”
His mom grins. “Great. We’ll go this weekend.”
The Reids let them borrow expensive camping equipment that was bought on a whim and then never used out in the wild.
They pack up Parker’s Subaru for the drive, which is much less stressful this time around.
Zach even drives for a leg of it, cruising at a solid sixty-five miles per hour in the rightmost lane.
They make the drive in a day-and-a-half before heading into the park.
On the way in, Parker makes Zach’s mom pull over into the visitor’s center.
“You brought your passport, right?” he insists, pulling Zach out of the car. “We have to do it right this time. You need a stamp.”
Zach opens the trunk and digs around in his packed bag. Inside the front pocket is his national parks passport. It’s still dressed in the beautiful leather cover that Parker had bought for him. He smooths his thumb over the little embossed tree.
The four of them make their way into the visitor’s center.
Parker pulls Zach along by the hand to the cancellation station, and Zach’s cheeks turn red while the twins and his mom all watch him carefully press the stamp into the next white space in his passport.
The green ink leaves behind a memory that Zach never wants to erase.
The campground they stop at is beautiful and lush, brimming with the sounds of nearby campers and insects.
They unpack the car and put together the massive tents that the Reids have lent them, and Parker talks ceaselessly about how he’s a camping expert thanks to that one harrowing summer with a wilderness program for troubled teens.
Zach’s mom keeps glancing at them like she’s waiting to step in for another Reid Twin Intervention, but Parker cracks jokes about the experience as he starts the campfire. Not even Paige winces.
“Admit it,” Parker says into Zach’s ear that night, one arm wrapped around him even though they’re zipped into two separate sleeping bags. “Admit that you’re weirdly turned on because I know how to camp.”
Zach grimaces. “My mom and your sister are, like, three feet away.”
“You’re the one that’s weirdly turned on,” Parker counters, burying his nose in Zach’s hair.
“Hmm,” Zach hums. He squeezes Parker’s hands, clenched around his middle, with one of his own. “Maybe.”