by A J Lange
“Hold on, you’re going to be okay,” Harry murmured. He gripped Zane’s neck tight one more time then moved his hand to rub his back in soothing strokes. Zane gasped for air, screwing his eyes shut tight against hot tears.
“I’m sorry, Zane. I,” Harry paused, searching for the right words. “God, I’m so fucking happy he’s alive and laughing and eating cheeseburgers.” He nudged Zane’s shoulder, letting him know he was onto his earlier visit. “I’m trying to get him, all of us, over the next hurdle, and right now, he’s happy, Zane. Just,” Harry sighed and his hand fell away. “Just let him have that.”
Zane knew there were tears falling but he didn’t bother wiping them away.
“I almost lost my brother, Zane. All I can do at this point is be thankful. I’m sorry.” Harry left Zane on the trail, still hunched over his knees, still reeling.
Chapter 17
Zane had never been one to believe in fairytales. Even as a child, he had been obstinately intolerant of things he considered silly or nonsensical. It had to be realistic, he had to be able to put his hands on it, smell it, feel it, touch it, taste it.
On the day Zane left the hospital, he realized that Grayson was a fairytale.
Yet, even in his heartbreak, he couldn't deny that what they had shared had also been real and good and perfect. It was the most terrifyingly painful end Zane had ever faced. And he just wanted to go home.
It was physical, the sick hollowness that swept through him when he walked through the front door and knew Gray wasn't going to be there. May never be there again. Zane was exhausted, wrung out emotionally and physically, and the black, oily edges of anger were all-consuming, threatening to swallow him up.
He stood in the kitchen, losing time, ignoring Gray’s coffee cup in the sink, until he grabbed a brand new bottle of Jack from the cupboard. He was a third of the way through it when Tanner and Lily found him in the living room.
"What are you doing here?" He sloshed a generous amount of the dark liquid into his tumbler. No ice. No water. No Coke. Just whiskey; firing down his throat, sliding into his belly, drowning the anger and the sadness, numbing him blissfully from the inside out.
Tanner sank to the floor to sit beside him, long legs crossed at the ankle. "Mind if I have a drink?"
Zane perused him sidelong, then slid the tumbler to Tanner and watched him take a sip. To Tanner's credit, he didn't even flinch. Tanner never drank whiskey.
"Lily," Zane offered, wiggling the bottle in the air.
"None for me, Zane," she said softly. Zane looked away. Her sad eyes reminded him of things he was not going to think about. Not tonight.
"We just came from the hospital," Tanner started but Zane slammed his fist on the coffee table.
"No," he said, forceful, hard.
"Zane," Tanner tried again.
"I said no, Tanner," Zane leaned his head back against the couch. He was so tired. "Why can't you just leave it alone and let's get sloppy drunk instead."
"We can do that," Tanner said evenly. "But maybe another night, when I don't have to work tomorrow. And you should probably check in at the bar tomorrow, too."
"I don't want to think, Tanner," Zane whispered, eyes closed. "I don't want to think, or feel, or, or...anything. I just want to forget." Lily curled into Zane’s other side and the three of them sat in the quiet as the room darkened, the only sound the scrape of Zane’s glass when he would return it to the table to await his next drink. Zane laughed softly. "We got sloppy drunk here another night, Tanner, remember? You were pissed at him, Lily, and Tanner here made me play Chewie's drinking game with-" Zane stopped abruptly. He took another long drink and dropped his head.
"I remember."
Zane knew they were talking over his head in that silent way married couples seemed genetically programmed to learn, words spoken only with telling glances. He felt justified when Tanner spoke. "Zane, I've got an early meeting in the morning, so I have to go, but Lily’s going to stay with you tonight."
"Not necessary," Zane grumbled. He thought about dragging himself off the floor and to his bedroom, but he honestly didn't think he had either the coordination or the stomach for it right now.
"Don't be an asshole, Zane," Lily complained, but her voice was tinged with affection.
"Maybe you could give Lily that bottle too, save some for another day."
"Fuck off, Tanner."
When the room fell silent, Zane cracked open an eye. Tanner clasped Zane’s kneecap, giving it a hard squeeze before he hoisted himself off the floor. Zane watched as he pulled a folded square of white from his back pocket and placed it on the coffee table, next to the bottle of whiskey.
Zane knew without a shadow of a doubt that he didn't want to know what lay inside the neat folds. He looked quickly away, steeling his jaw.
"That's from Gray," Tanner said quietly.
Lily walked Tanner to the front door, and Zane could hear their whispered goodbyes. He poured himself another drink and resolutely avoided looking at the paper square. Later, Lily made up the couch for him and tucked him in, her soft hands cool on his brow as he fought sleep, afraid of the dreams that waited there, knowing they wouldn't be happy, not tonight.
"Thanks for staying, Lily," he whispered.
"Try to sleep, Zane," Lily said softly.
◆◆◆
Zane slept until noon, and woke to a pounding hangover. He was violently sick as soon as he rose, but after a shower and a cup of coffee, he decided to stop avoiding his job and drove to the bar. He needed something to do with his hands and his mind; he couldn't stay in the house alone after Lily left, and he didn't want to think about the hospital. Not yet.
He patently ignored the folded scrap of paper on the coffee table.
At Joe's, he sat at the bar, sifting through several days worth of junk mail and bills. One in particular was puzzling, a very professional-looking envelope from the bar association. He slit the flap with a knife and opened it.
We regret to inform you...
Joe's had been removed from the December pub crawl. No explanation. Zane didn't think he really needed one though; Dirk was a governing member. He would laugh at the irony if he had any laughter left.
Lily and Tanner found him working behind the bar, shifting bottles of liquor into place, painstakingly aligning the glass edges. The bar association letter lay open and Tanner picked it up and began to read. He was immediately, blisteringly, furious.
"I'm calling them. Tomorrow. This is bullshit, Zane. "
Zane, weary, said, "Don't bother, Tanner."
"Zane, at the very least, it's discrimination, you're a paid member—"
Zane threw the bottle he was holding across the bar, and it smashed against the wall, shattering into a million tiny diamonds of glass, the dark amber liquid seeping over the polished wood floor.
Lily began to cry.
Tanner moved to go to her but Zane held up a hand, stepping in front of him and pulling Lily into his arms. "Sorry, Lils," he whispered against he top of her head. "Sorry."
◆◆◆
Zane got drunk the second night, this time on tequila. He and Lily lay in the center of the dance floor after closing, while Tanner pushed the dust mop around them.
Zane made Tanner play Into the Mystic on the jukebox four times in a row.
His phone had been silent for two days.
There had always been a hidden, secret piece of Zane who feared Gray would leave him broken and bleeding, but it was worse, this was worse than anything Zane’s most terrible imagination could have conjured.
"You know what I want?" he asked, knocking his head against Lily’s shoulder, the tequila dulling his senses, making his neck warm and tingly.
"What?" she asked, humming along to Van Morrison under her breath.
"I want my vase back."
"You want what?"
"My vase," Zane said, turning his head to look at her. His vision swam and he blinked until he could focus. "I found a vase on Gray’s fancy
dig, and he has it stashed in that big old tent out there." Zane’s eyes widened and he sat up. "We should go get it."
"Zane," Lily laughed, leaning up on one elbow. "That's crazy, and ten kinds of illegal. And Tanner is right here."
Tanner snorted. "Yeah, please don't forget the licensed attorney in the room."
Zane rolled to his feet. "Then it's you and me Lils. Get up."
Lily stood and looked uneasily from Zane to Tanner.
Zane weaved on his feet, but his gaze was steady. "Either you drive me or I drive myself, but I'm going."
"Okay, okay," Lily sighed. "Tanner," she called to Tanner's retreating back. "We're not going to break into the archaeological dig and steal a priceless artifact from Gray’s collection!"
"I can't hear you!" Tanner shouted, now at the back of the bar. When no one answered, he peeked around the corner to find he was alone. "Fuck."
◆◆◆
Zane was glad Lily was sober for two reasons. One, she could drive him to the dig site. And two, she could still see well enough when they arrived at said dig site, she proved invaluable in helping him avoid face-planting in one of the troweled squares of dirt.
She was also pretty handy when it came time to pick the padlock on the tent flap.
Once inside, Zane knew exactly where to find the vase; he had spent many an afternoon in this tent, watching Gray work, tempting Gray from work. Zane shuttered all memories, locking them down tight, and dug the vase from its shipping box.
"It's not very big," Lily whispered.
"Why are you whispering," Zane whispered back.
Lily smacked him on the arm. "Let's go," she said in her normal voice, but she shivered, looking around the darkened tent. "This place gives me the creeps."
On the drive back to Zane’s house, he cradled the vase in his palm, tracing the curved shape with a fingertip. Before he made up the couch, still not ready to face his empty bed, he set the vase on the coffee table, next to the unread note.
He turned out the lights and pulled the blankets to his chest, pillowing his cheek on his arm. He stared at the note for a long while, wishing he was drunker, and stronger, wishing Lily or Tanner had stayed one more night to distract him until he was tired enough for sleep. He reached for the paper, holding it between his fingers in the moonlight from the living room window. He unfolded it slowly, peeling it open to reveal the writing inside.
Zane,
I'm not sure if what I say right now will make any sense to you, it barely makes any sense to me. When I close my eyes, I see your face and it scares me. Yours is not the face I remember seeing the last time I fell asleep, but now I know that was long ago and much has changed. I don't know what to do with that. I'm sorry you were caught off guard today. I'm sorry about much of this. You didn’t ask for any of this, but neither did I. I think I'll want to see you again, some day. Something tells me that you and I aren't finished with each other. I can't figure that out right now, though. It's too hard, too confusing, and I'm too tired. I hope you understand.
Grayson
Grayson. He hadn't been Grayson to Zane in a very long time.
Zane let the paper fall, opening his fingers and watching it flutter end over end until it hit the floor.
◆◆◆
The first thing Zane saw when he opened his eyes the next morning was the vase on the coffee table and he groaned. How the hell was he going to get that back out to the dig site without getting caught? He lay there, forearm over his eyes, thinking about things he really shouldn't be thinking about. He sat up and grimaced. His mouth tasted foul and his head throbbed. His eyes fell on the white paper at his feet. He picked it up gingerly, folding it once so he wouldn't be tempted to see the words, read it again. He took it to the kitchen to throw it in the trash.
At the last minute, he folded it back up, carefully following the original fold lines, and tucked it into his wallet.
He called Harry, leaning against the kitchen sink. It went straight to voicemail.
He took a shower, dressed for the day, took the trash to the curb, vacuumed the living room. He was very good at pretending normalcy until he took a load of clothes from the dryer; his laundry was full of Gray’s things and it nearly broke him. He left all of it crammed into the round plastic basket. He would rather buy new shirts.
He drove to the hospital, and found Gray’s room empty; Gray had been discharged. He texted Harry, Where is he?
That night, Zane sat in the dark living room, sober. He stared at the vase instead of sleeping.
◆◆◆
Harry called on the fourth day; he needed to come by for some of Gray’s things. When the bell rang, Zane answered it, his heart thumping in his chest, hoping Gray would be with him, that he could see him. That maybe the little house would trigger a memory, or that Gray’s presence alone would alleviate the sadness that permeated the walls.
But Harry was alone, and Zane had to leave, unable to watch his life be torn into jagged pieces so callously, so easily. When he returned much later, the house was dark and empty and Zane didn't know how he would ever be happy there again, not with the empty places in the closet, in his dresser, Gray’s tie rack on the door taunting Zane with memories of sneaking kisses in Home Depot and lying on the floor of the closet, making love on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when they thought they had all the time in the world. When Zane didn't realize it was limited, that he was limited. That the universe had never meant for Zane to have love, not forever anyway.
Zane dismantled the closet organizer and carted the components to the curb to await trash pickup. He stubbornly refused to look for the piece with their initials when he tossed them in a haphazard stack in the ditch. He changed the sheets on the bed and slept in it for the first time, in a long time, alone.
Chapter 18
Six Months Later
After a time, Zane began to date. He was going stir crazy at home, and Tanner and Lily were more homebound than ever; Lily was going to have a baby in the summer and she had suffered severe morning sickness at first.
So Zane dated. He dated women from the bar, women from the grocery store, a waitress from the diner down the street. And then he met Tad.
Tad was tall, rakishly handsome with dark, dark hair and blue, blue eyes, and Zane absolutely didn't want to make comparisons. He appeared in the pub one night, slid into the seat Gray had first occupied so long ago, and crushed Zane’s carefully constructed composure with the ghost of someone he vaguely resembled.
Instead of running (his first instinct now, always) Zane took his order. And they hit it off, the flirting painfully easy when Zane’s heart was never really in it to begin with. They went out on one date, and another after that. And then it struck Zane: he was in public, having dinner with a man, and not once had he worried about what people would say.
No, all he could think of, when he was with Tad, or with any of the faceless, nameless dates he'd been on in the past few months, was that he must, desperately must, fill the gaping, bleeding hole in his chest where his heart used to be. Whoever could fill it, so be it, and the rest of the world could be fucking damned.
The rest of the world, he realized, while drinking a glass of wine that he hated, with a stranger he didn't know...well, the rest of the world could care less about Zane Nolan's love life.
The irony nearly brought him to his knees.
Zane didn't date after that.
◆◆◆
"You have to hook the belt over the base, Zane," Lily said, exasperated with Zane’s apparent incompetence.
Zane huffed, grumbling under his breath. "Ok, tubby, why don't you wedge yourself in here and do it if you think it's so easy."
Lily smacked him on the arm, then bumped him with her round basketball of a belly, shoving him aside. She wiggled between the front seat and the back, and Zane rolled his eyes when he heard the muted 'click' of the seat belt latching into place. Lily straightened, triumphant grin in place. "Voila."
"Oh shut up, Nolan," Zane growled.
He bent over and picked up the tiny car seat by the handle and looked at it warily. "Now what do I do with this?"
Lily rolled her eyes. "You slide it onto the base." She pointed at the indentions in the arced bottom of the carrier. "Make sure you have it facing the correct way."
"Yes, mom," Zane grumbled again and leaned into the car to slot the seat into place. When he pressed the seat down into the base to lock it, a tiny u-shaped pillow fell over his arm and onto the back seat. He picked it up, studying it as he backed out of the open door.
"What's this?" He turned the odd-shaped pillow over in his hand. It was covered with soft blue flannel, printed with tiny airplanes, and smelled already of infant, even though Lily and Tanner's baby still had weeks before he made an appearance.
"It's a pillow, to keep their head supported in the car seat." Lily took it from him and made a motion with the legs of the "U" to demonstrate how it would fit around a baby's neck.
Zane grimaced. "Looks uncomfortable."
Lily handed him the pillow again and shrugged. "Not as uncomfortable as a crick in your neck."
Zane squeezed the pillow lightly, then unconsciously brought it to his face. He breathed in the powdery smell from the baby laundry detergent Lily had used and closed his eyes.
Lily stood very still, watching him. "Zane…"
Zane looked at her, glassy-eyed and flushed. "Sorry," he whispered. He leaned into the back seat to unlatch the carrier, then unhooked the seatbelt to remove the base. When he turned back to Lily, holding a piece of the seat in each hand, she was still watching him, biting her lip in that way she had when she was trying not to overstep her boundaries.
She was a picture in the fading afternoon light. It had been her idea to come over, to keep him company on this Monday afternoon, one of the two days of the week he had the most trouble filling.
Zane didn't plan on ever actually needing to drive his new nephew around in the Jeep, at least not until he was able to buckle his own seat belt, but Lily had insisted he learn anyway. Zane appreciated the effort, he did, but just then, with her round little belly backlit by the setting sun, her pretty blond features softened with late pregnancy and the impending thrill of motherhood; she was the most beautiful thing Zane had ever seen. His heart clenched hard in his chest and he ground his teeth together.