And then there was Zyan, who'd refused to take even a sip of alcohol. After about an hour of drinking, he'd hoarded the bowl of potato chips before settling down on the couch with Carter, who was acting as a barrier between Zyan and Ava. He wasn't in the mood to handle her drunken shenanigans. He'd never liked the smell and taste of alcohol, and after over two centuries, he doubted this would ever change—though it was quite entertaining to watch other people getting drunk.
Over the course of the last few hours, Ava had lived through quite the rollercoaster of emotions—at first, she'd been giggly, then she'd gotten philosophical ("Our future selves are currently watching us through memories, Jessie."), and now she was being touchy-feely with everybody, including Carter, who she didn't know too well, and Zyan who'd never appreciated physical contact that wasn't initiated by him.
Jessica was still stuck in the giggly stage and open to receiving all the physical attention Ava was offering, while Sebastian had fallen asleep about an hour ago after he'd come back from the bathroom, hit his shin on the coffee table, and collapsed onto the carpet.
Carter, unlike everybody else, had an incredibly high alcohol tolerance and was mostly just watching Jessica and Ava with amusement, while occasionally taking a sip from his drink.
"What're you guys' favorite Disney princesses?" Ava asked into the room.
"Belle," Jessica answered immediately.
"I don't know," Carter said. "Rapunzel?"
"Lilo," Zyan replied.
Ava frowned. "But…she's not even a princess."
"I know. I don't care," Zyan replied.
"Don't argue with him about this," Carter told a drunk Ava, who looked immensely confused. "He's emotionally attached."
"They actually consulted their Hawai'ian voice actors for the dialogue. Excuse me for being happy about that."
"I'm really happy for you. It's a cute movie." Ava reached over Carter to pat Zyan's face, despite Zyan's attempt to smack her hand away. "We could watch it right now if you wanna."
Zyan pulled at Carter to shield himself from Ava, who looked like she was coming in for a hug. "I'm fine, thank you!"
"Okay." Ava nodded to herself and looked back at Jessica. "Hey, beautiful."
Zyan breathed a sigh of relief.
It was silent for about five minutes, during which everybody was involved with their own thoughts—except for Sebastian, who was still passed out on the carpet.
"I think clocks are a pretty good invention," Jessica said, apropos of nothing.
"I just wish they'd get rid of daylight saving time," Zyan replied. His voice was muffled by the food in his mouth.
"Oh man." Carter turned to face Zyan. "Remember the town-time-difference thing?"
Zyan nodded, making sure to swallow his bite before speaking. "That was so annoying. Traveling was a nightmare."
"Only because you were obsessed with syncing up your pocket watch to the city time, even if we were just passing through."
"You gave me that watch as an anniversary present—it was your own damn fault. And for the record, I was ahead of everyone else. I saw this as a problem before all those train accidents happened."
"The time differences messed with the railway schedules," Carter told Jessica, who looked back at him in confusion.
"What?" she asked. Her frown and narrowed eyes showed how drunk she was.
Carter waved the conversation aside. "Forget it."
"I still have that watch, by the way," Zyan said.
"It still works?" Carter sounded impressed.
"No. But Ava used it to add to her steampunk-inspired Purim costume."
"And the engravings didn't throw her off?"
Zyan remembered how Carter had added their new names to the back of the watch each time they got remarried. The letters had gotten sloppier over time as Carter had switched careers and gotten out of practice, but tradition was tradition. "I told her I got it off eBay."
"And all those gay couples' names didn't strike her as unusual?"
"She was in a hurry, and I'm good at avoiding confrontation."
Carter shook his head with a smile.
More time passed, and Zyan was getting restless, mostly because he'd run out of chips. But so far, no opportunity for escape had presented itself.
Then Ava suddenly got up and loudly declared she had to go use the bathroom.
Zyan waited until she'd closed the door behind herself before leaning forward to put the empty bowl on the coffee table. He could feel Carter's eyes on him.
"You wanna get out of here?"
Zyan threw him a grateful look over his shoulder. "God, yes."
Carter smiled before he looked at Jessica, who appeared to be dozing off, and Sebastian, still snoring on the carpet. "But before we leave, we should probably make sure they don't manage to drown themselves in the dishwasher."
"I don't think that's even remotely possible."
"There's a first time for everything." Carter got to his feet and looked down at Sebastian. "We should probably get them all into their beds if we don't want them whining about hangovers for all of tomorrow."
Zyan groaned as he got to his feet. "I swear, if one of them throws up on me…"
Carter didn't respond as he leaned down to shake Jessica's shoulder. "Come on, Jess, time for bed."
She made an unhappy noise as she rubbed over her eyes, successfully smudging her eyeliner all along her temples. "Wha—?"
Carter grabbed her arm to pull her up and wrap an arm around her waist. "There you go. The bedroom's right down here." After only a few steps, he groaned. "Could you at least try to lift your feet?"
Zyan watched them stumble through the door before he looked down at Sebastian and sighed. "All right, your turn." He crouched down and rolled Sebastian onto his back. No reaction. He was out cold. Zyan took a deep breath and grabbed Sebastian's arms to heave him up and onto the couch. It was a struggle.
"You need some help?" Carter sounded amused.
Zyan turned to find him leaning against the wall. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Since you hit your foot on the coffee table and nearly dropped the poor guy."
"He would've landed on the couch."
"With the armrest jammed into his back and his head hanging over the edge."
"You could've helped."
"And where would be the fun in that?" Carter teased. Still, he pushed off the wall and came over to help cram Sebastian onto the loveseat.
While Carter was off to get a spare blanket from the bedroom, Zyan headed into the kitchen to fetch water and painkillers. When he got back, Carter had already started to clean up the dishes.
"Has Ava still not gotten back?" Zyan asked.
"Uh…"
"Oh god." Zyan bolted and threw open the bathroom door, only to find her asleep in the bathtub. "How?"
He heard Carter's footsteps stop behind him. "Drunk people do strange things."
Zyan shook his head and pulled Ava out of the tub. The moment she stood on her feet, she barked laughter right into Zyan's ear. He jumped so hard he nearly dropped her.
"They turned my apartment into a fun-house." Ava was nearly shouting but didn't seem to notice. "Look, Zy, the ground is swaying." She giggled again.
"Please don't call me that ever again."
Carter chuckled and stepped aside to let them through the door.
When they reached the bedroom, Zyan had to pause to twist the doorknob, which gave Ava the opportunity to press her face and free hand against the wallpaper. "There's so many bumps…I wish I could read braille."
"I don't think it's braille," Carter got out. He sounded like he was about to cry from repressed laughter.
"Oh." Ava sounded genuinely disappointed.
When Zyan pulled her closer and pushed her through the door and into bed, Ava was leaning even heavier into his side.
"Why's there a woman in my bed?" Ava asked as she frowned at Jessica passed out next to her.
"That's your girlfr
iend," Zyan informed her.
"Oh. Oh! Jessie, Jess, Jessica. How could I forget? I'm a horrible girlfriend, Zy, please don't tell her! No wait, I have to tell her. I can't lie to her!"
"Calm down, Ava, it's okay. She's not gonna be mad about it. Just—just lie down. You need to sleep this off."
"But—"
"No buts."
"Ha, butts."
Zyan rolled his eyes. "Okay, that's it. Sleep. Now."
"I got you water!"
Zyan looked up to find Carter approaching them with a small plastic bottle and painkillers. He passed them to Ava, who took them with a frown.
"Are they safe?" Ava asked.
"Yes," Zyan assured her. "I promise."
Ava nodded and gulped them down, dribbling onto the collar of her shirt in the process.
Zyan wrinkled his nose and gave her a moment to adjust herself before he took the water from her and put it on her nightstand. "You good to sleep now?"
Ava nodded and fell back into her pillows. Her eyes were already drooping.
Zyan waited until her breathing evened out before he sighed in relief and looked over at Carter. "Is this what being a parent would be like?"
Carter shrugged. "Probably."
Zyan looked back at Ava. He was quiet for a moment. "Come on, let's go. We're going to need our sleep before we have to nurse their hangovers tomorrow."
*~*~*
Back at Zyan's, the atmosphere shifted when the reality of the situation sunk in.
"I better head home," Carter said eventually, still standing by the door, as if he didn't know what to do with himself.
Zyan shook his head. "I'm not letting you walk out there by yourself. You can take the couch."
Carter seemed caught off-guard. "Are you sure?"
"Of course. Just…take off your shoes and make yourself at home. I'm sure I still have a pair of your old pajamas somewhere."
He didn't look to see Carter's reaction to the words before he rushed off to his bedroom.
There was already doubt infiltrating his mind. The light flirting, the cheeky compliments, and teasing…It was easy, it felt natural, but he feared it would cause them to fall back into old habits instead of working out a new dynamic free of past flaws and mistakes.
He silently shut the door behind himself and approached his closet. There were boxes and plastic bags stuffed into the shelf space above the hangers. Stuffed in there somewhere were clothes that had gotten mixed in with his own after their past divorces. He'd just knocked over a stack of boxes when he heard a muffled voice through the walls.
"What did you say?" Zyan asked, halting in his movements.
Carter's voice steadily gained in volume as he approached Zyan's bedroom. "I asked if you're hungry."
Zyan looked up at him from his position on the floor. He was kneeling in front of a large box marked 'C.A.,' which meant it was a leftover from their second-to-last divorce, since they'd both changed their first names afterward.
Zyan shrugged. "No, but feel free to raid the fridge if you are."
Carter came in and leaned against the wall beside the door, hands pressed together and squeezed in between his lower back and the wall.
Zyan lowered his eyes back to the mess spread around him. "I can't find anything in here right now. Come in. Look for yourself."
Carter might have nodded, but Zyan wasn't looking at him, until he knelt close by and started digging through the boxes. He found several keepsakes that he muttered he'd been searching for over the last decades.
"You can take them with you," Zyan said quietly. "I'm sure you've been missing some of these things."
Carter shook his head, the motion blurry out of the corner of Zyan's eye. "It's okay. You can hold on to it for me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. You keep them for now. I think I have some things of yours as well. You can come over and look through them some day if you want."
"No. It's okay."
Carter nodded and focused back on the task at hand. He untied the knot on a plastic bag and found a bunch of fabric that he started to dig through. "Ah, there you go," he said victoriously. He got up and pulled out fancy—albeit wrinkled—dark blue pajamas with silver and gold stitching.
"This was from our honey moon in India, right?" Zyan asked.
Carter nodded. "You'd gotten a matching one in green," he recalled.
Zyan smiled a little without taking his eyes off the fabric. "Do you remember the saleswoman we bought it from?"
"She mistook my mother for my wife."
Zyan cringed. "Even if she weren't our age, that woman should have still seen the family resemblance."
Carter chuckled at the memory. "In her defense, we weren't behaving remotely like a couple while my mother had linked her arm with mine."
Zyan huffed a breath. "She hated me back then."
"She didn't. She just wanted to spend some quality time with her son."
"No, she literally hated me. She thought I didn't deserve you. Not that I blame her. I was still dealing with my sudden immortality. The way I acted, it was…unacceptable."
"You were going through a lot," Carter pointed out. "And she did warm up to you eventually."
"Yeah. I guess."
Carter sighed. "I'm sorry, Zyan."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure. That I wasn't there for you as much as I should've been? That I assumed you'd adjusted before you actually had? That I turned you immortal in the first place?"
"We've moved past that, Carter."
"Have we?"
Zyan took a deep breath. It had all happened so long ago, the memories so far away, yet more frequently remembered than all others. After so much time had passed, he couldn't even be sure how much was accurate and how much had been warped by dreams and nightmares. "I can still see her in my dreams sometimes, did you know that?"
He looked up to find Carter watching him, visibly unsure how to respond.
"I remember the exact words she yelled after us. I remember how overwhelmed and confused I was. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what had just happened and what that would mean for my future."
He knew Carter had heard this before. Even in pretty much the same wording, but he also knew Carter would never interrupt him.
"I envy you, Carter," Zyan said. "You've always had your mother. You were born and grew up with the knowledge that this would be your life, and you had your mother to train you and be there for you. She could explain everything and ease you into this life, but you just dragged me along without giving me the option to decline. And before you say anything, no, I'm not blaming you. Not really. Not anymore. I decided a long time ago that wondering about what-ifs isn't something I should waste my time on, but this…this is the one what-if I still can't stop thinking about." He looked back up at Carter. "What if you hadn't saved me?"
"You would've stayed dead," Carter said quietly. "Your mother and your sister would've found your body. And they probably would've gotten the same infection by touching your corpse."
Zyan nodded but didn't say anything else.
They kneeled in silence for a while, lost in thought.
Zyan felt the past settle on his shoulders and weigh him down. Would it ever get easier to bear? He doubted it. There would only be more added to the pile the longer he went on. When he looked up, he found Carter hunched over the fabric in his lap. His fingers danced over the pattern along the hem of the collar.
Part of Zyan wondered what Carter might be thinking about. Whenever he'd told Zyan about that day, he'd spoken of hopelessness and grief upon Zyan's death, about betrayal at the world for tearing them apart so soon. Was he reliving all of that now? Without seeing his face, Zyan had no way of telling.
"I'll prepare the couch for you," Zyan said. Even as he kept his voice low, the break in silence felt harsh. He pushed to his feet, while Carter remained kneeling. Zyan furrowed his brow in concern and reached to lightly trail his fingers over the soft fabric stretching across Carter'
s back.
When he squeezed Carter's shoulder before letting go, he could swear he felt Carter shiver at the touch.
*~*~*
The following day, Zyan was awoken by voices in his apartment. His first instinct was to lock the door to his bedroom and call the cops, but he relaxed as he realized he recognized one of them. It was Carter. He hadn't left yet. He was probably right there in Zyan's living room, in his pajamas, with a massive bedhead and pillow creases on his face.
Zyan dropped his arm over his eyes as the events of the previous evening and night filtered back into his mind. The hungover trio was probably on their way to waking up, which meant Zyan would have to get up eventually to check on them and make sure they were all still alive and breathing.
About a minute of lazing in bed later, a knock at his bedroom door had Zyan look up to find Carter peeking into his room.
For a few seconds, they simply stared at each other. Zyan took in the messy state of Carter's hair, which fell into one of his eyes before he averted his gaze to look at how Carter's fingers silently drummed against the edge of the door.
"There's a woman called Carol in your living room," Carter informed him. "She says she's been knocking at Ava's door for almost ten minutes and that nobody's answering, and now she's worried about her and refuses to leave until she's seen that she's safe."
Zyan's brain wasn't fully functional just yet, and there had been way too many pronouns in that endless sentence for him to comprehend, but he rolled out of bed nevertheless.
"Since when do you sleep shirtless?" Carter asked as Zyan brushed past him.
Zyan looked down at his naked torso. "I'm not sure," he answered honestly, wondering if he'd gotten drunk after all and just hadn't realized. Or maybe he'd just been tired. Really damn tired—like he felt right now.
He contemplated returning to his bedroom to get dressed when he spotted the young woman standing near the front door, tapping her foot on the ground with her arms crossed. She looked a little older than Ava, but then again, Ava looked younger than she was due to her height and round face, so maybe this woman actually was the age she seemed to be. Her hair was black and her eyes so dark they flawlessly blended into her pupils. Her skin was light brown. She seemed distinctly familiar.
The Thing About Forever Page 19