by Cynthia Dane
A man like Zack had to tell himself that. He couldn’t get his hopes up with Rachel. She had made that clear. She was celibate, if nothing else.
Still, that didn’t mean they couldn’t hang out, right?
It only took half an hour to reach the lakeside cabin, and Zack considered that lucky since Friday afternoon traffic in the summer was usually way worse than what they encountered. But thanks to getting there in record time, neither he nor Rachel were too sore to hop off with vigor and take in the sights of a sunny day by the lake.
“Wow,” Rachel said after taking off her helmet. “That was… amazing!”
“Glad you liked it.” Zack secured the helmets to his bike. “See that cabin right there? It’s ours for as long as we want it.”
“No way. You didn’t rent it, did you?”
“Ha! No. It belongs to my family. My grandfather bought it thirty years ago when he got really into fishing and my grandmother wanted to stay away from the city more often.”
“You… own it?”
“Not personally. Don’t worry, I cleared it with my family. Nobody else is here.”
“Is that so?”
Zack recognized that look. “This ain’t a romance pleasure cruise, Rachel.”
“Ew. You said ain’t.”
“Sorry. Am I too rich to be able to say ain’t?”
She giggled. “No. But I forget how rich you are until you’re showing off your motorcycles and one of your family’s vacation homes.”
Zack ignored that. “Come on. Check out the dock here. It’s my favorite spot.”
Rachel’s happiness crashed. “The dock?”
“Oh. Right.” Zack cleared his throat. “We’re not going in the water. We’ll be right on the shore. Is that okay?”
“Well… we’ll see.”
Zack offered his hand. “You’re not gonna fall in. The lake is super shallow by the shore.” He doubted it was all that deep in the center, either. Or at least he remembered finding the bottom easily enough the last time he swam in it.
He took the initiative to show Rachel how safe it was to sit at the end of the wooden dock jutting out into the tranquil lake. Zack wasn’t quite tall enough for his sandaled feet to break the surface of the water, so a shorty like Rachel wasn’t going to have any issues at all. (He assumed. He didn’t have any fears of the water, after all. His uncle Roy made sure he knew how to swim at the tender young age of five.)
Even so, Rachel approached with incredible hesitation, her feet sticking to the center of the dock and arms slightly out to protect her balance. Zack wanted to roll his eyes but kept his breath pent up in his throat. The last thing he should do was make fun of her in any way.
“Rachel,” he said with pep, “I swear if you don’t sit down right here, right now I am going to personally call your mother and demand she come in here and throw you in like she should have done when you were a baby.” That’s how he and his brothers learned to swim. Roy had shown no mercy to his land-loving nephews. (Daniel was still a little traumatized. Hm. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for Rachel’s mother to do that after all.)
She sat down on the dock before letting one foot hang over the edge. “You can try calling her if you want,” Rachel muttered. “But she won’t know who you’re talking about.”
Zack folded his hands in his lap. A dragonfly whizzed by, and the water beneath his feet rippled when he kicked a pebble off the dock. Aside from that, the private property was picturesque tranquility. Not even a boat here. Had Zack planned far enough in advance, he could have conned Uncle Roy and maybe Seth into making it a guy’s weekend, complete with freshwater fishing, should Zack convince his father to lend him one of his smaller hobby vessels. Littoral living was mostly a Zack thing in the end, though.
“That so?” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Unfortunately. My mother has dementia.”
“Wow.” Zack had certainly not been expecting that. “That’s… I take it all back now.”
Rachel chuckled. “It’s fine. I’ve grown accustomed to it.”
Accustomed to dementia? Zack didn’t even know that was possible. Not that he knew anyone who had dementia. There were rumors that his grandfather had Alzheimer’s when he died, but that was yet another family secret buried. I didn’t speak to the man the last few years of his life. Zack had been a kid, and if something happened to his grandparents, his own parents did their best to shield him from it. Like that time his dear grandmother fell down a flight of stairs and split half her leg open. Rude. I would’ve loved to have seen that.
“Who’s taking care of her?” Zack doubted Rachel had her memory-addled mother locked up in her tiny apartment. “Your dad?”
“I don’t have one,” she was quick to say. “He skipped out when I was a kid.”
“Damn.”
“After I left to go to college, my mother moved in with a friend of hers to split the rent and so neither one of them had to be alone more than necessary. My mother was always older than my friends’. She had me when she was forty. I was used to hearing her concerns about aging, and I supported her when she was in her sixties and worried about living alone.”
“Makes sense.”
“But one day I got a call from her roommate telling me that my mother had gotten in the car, pantsless, and was convinced she was going to work at a job she retired from two years before. Because the clock said it was eight, and she knew she had to go to work at eight. Except it was the middle of summer, so it was actually eight at night and not in the morning.”
“Damn,” Zack said again. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.” I can’t imagine that happening to my parents. Let alone his mother! The thought of that put-together woman running out of the house without any clothes on, convinced she had somewhere to go well into the night, sent a shudder through Zack’s body. Except, even if something like that did happen to his parents, there were people, organizations, and money in place to immediately take care of it. They could hire the best in-home care or, if it truly were too dangerous to keep someone at home, they would afford the best facility in America. Barring that? Build it. Zack’s grandfather donated an entire wing to a hospital because its oncology department was too subpar for his mother-in-law’s breast cancer treatments.
“Yeah, well, she’s in a better place now.”
Zack swallowed. “My condolences.” Wow, I sound like an asshole.
“I mean she moved into a memory care facility where they specialize in taking care of people with her condition.”
“Oh. Either way, that really sucks.”
“Yeah, in many ways, I feel like I’ve mourned her already.”
Jesus. “That’s…”
“Because she’s gone, you know?” Rachel kicked both feet over the edge of the dock. “The woman who was my mother isn’t coming back. I can’t go to her when I need something. I can’t ask her for advice. There are no more birthday presents and no more Christmas dinners. It sucks, because I knew I would have to deal with the death of my mother one day, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“And you don’t have anyone else to help? How are you paying for it?”
“She had insurance thanks to the job she had, but they’re always fighting me on making payments. So I have to pick up where it slacks off.”
Holy shit, that can’t be inexpensive. There was no way Rachel was making enough money to pay for that and her own expenses. How was she holding herself together? No wonder she kept bugging Zack whenever he interrupted her!
Like that day. I interrupted her work, making the money she needs to support her mother, and she still came out with me? Granted, she took some convincing, but…
Zack felt like shit. This may have been his first time hearing about her mother, but the least he could’ve done was be more considerate of her time.
“You have an interesting life, Rachel.”
She looked at him, the sun illuminating her brown hair from above. It’s a bit gold in the light, isn’t it
? Brunettes always had the most interesting hair coloring in the summer sunlight. Rich, delicate, and bold. While Zack never subscribed himself as a man with a love for only a certain hair color, he had to admit that Rachel really raised the bar when it came to beautiful brown hair. Wonder if she got it from her mom…
“It’s not interesting. Nothing exciting has happened.”
“You’ve studied and worked abroad. You’ve moved to the city from the countryside. You’ve known what it’s like to take care of your parents and experience loss. You run your own business. You know more languages than I’ve bothered to remember. And you’re only, what, twenty-eight? How is that not an interesting life?”
“I’ve also been through some pretty nasty shit not on that list.”
“It makes life interesting, right?”
“What a privileged thing to say.”
She had him there. Then again, Rachel made a lot of her own assumptions by thinking Zack hadn’t been through anything substantial in his life – yet he was somehow more interesting than her? She couldn’t have it both ways.
“That’s not what I meant.” Zack cleared his throat. “I meant that…”
“You ever been in an emotionally abusive relationship?”
Zack wasn’t going to get through to her, was he? Not with shit like that flung at him! There goes my idea of a pleasant evening by the lake. Sheesh.
“No. I haven’t.”
Rachel hanged her head. “It sucks.”
“Was that the guy who fucked up your views of sex?”
“Yeah.”
Zack didn’t say anything about that guy, although there was plenty he’d love to spit out. Stop thinking about him. He doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t reflect how much worth you have. I swear to God, Rachel, if you base your self-worth off some huge asshole who had no manners and thinks women are disposable…
He may not have said any of that, but he said something that could have easily been seen as him not taking her seriously. “You remember that girlfriend from college I mentioned the other night?”
Rachel lifted her head again. “Yeah. The last woman you enjoyed being with?”
“Yup. She did some pretty fucked up shit too.”
“I’m sorry.”
Zack didn’t usually think of it as Sadie fucking up. He had always been so focused on the man who seduced her to think logically about the role Sadie played as well. I mean, if she really loved me, she wouldn’t have… “She cheated on me. With one of my frat brothers.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Yup. Could say it sort of spoiled me on that whole dating and love thing for a long time. What was the point of putting so much effort into a relationship with someone if it was that disposable to them?
“You really haven’t had a real girlfriend since then?”
“Have you had a boyfriend?”
Rachel blushed. “No”
“There you go. People suck.”
“When you put it that way, I can’t help but agree.”
Zack looped his arm around her shoulders, careful to not bring her too close – or to hold her too tightly. “Love sucks. Down with love.”
She snorted. “Why did you invite me all the way up here today?”
“Hm?” He lowered his arm again. “Because we’re friends, of course. I always bring my friends up here for some good old-fashioned fun. Er. Non sexual.”
Laughter rang out across the water. “You really think we’re friends like that? We barely know each other.”
“True, but let me tell you about my best friend Seth. Literally the only reason we’re friends is because we both happened to be working the same gallery exhibition a few years ago. It was right after he retired from gynecology…”
“Wow.”
“…and I had graduated art school. It’s a classic Romeo and Juliet tale of male friendship. There was me, the loud, boisterous, extroverted guy going through his Dali phase with melting metal bowls of fruit, and him, the quiet, reserved, introverted guy who had traveled through all fifty states and painted a five-by-five canvas with a scene from each. We bumped into each other in the men’s room and the rest is history. Er, I think. We got so smashed that night I barely remember it.”
“Again. Wow.”
“So I’m used to some of my best friends being people I got to know in as little as two weeks. As far as I’m concerned, you and I are on track to becoming the bestest of friends.”
“Meanwhile, it usually takes me weeks, even months to realize I’ve made a friend with somebody. Parvati didn’t actually become my friend until we both realized we love Bollywood movies. Next thing I know, she’s inviting me to one of those movies at the park and we’ve been inseparable since. Sort of. We don’t hang out as much as we should, honestly. But that’s because I like having time to myself. Plus I work so much that…”
Zack lay back and stretched his arms above his head. His fingers curled into one of the large knots in the wooden dock. “At some point you really gotta slow down and start enjoying life again. If you work your whole twenties away…”
“Thirties, at this point.”
“You’re not thirty yet.”
“Besides,” Rachel continued, ignoring what Zack was eager to point out, “it’s easy to say that I should take more breaks. I know that. If I’m overworked, it means health problems down the line. It means waking up at fifty and wondering where everything went and trying to figure out why I’m too tired and too stiff to do anything now.”
“At fifty?” Zack must’ve known some fairly spry fifty-year-olds.
“But I can’t stop working because I’m tired. Do you know what’s it like to actually depend on self-employment income? If you stop working, you stop making money. And you don’t know if the client you have to turn down now will still want to work with you when you have the time. So you take on anyone who offers to pay you for whatever skills you have. You want to build a rapport with them right now. You want their money right now. Clients are fickle as fuck. They know you’re not the only one who can do what you do. So not only do you take on more than you can realistically handle, but you undersell yourself so you have an edge over everyone else. You tell yourself that it will pay off in the end. You’ll have your client base and will be able to raise your rates. You’ll start paying off debt and take a breather. It may take ten or twenty years, but hard work and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps works like that. Right?”
Zack dipped the tip of his sandal into the water and kicked a light spray toward the center of the lake. “I’m an artist. You think I don’t know what it means to hustle and to worry about clients?” Zack didn’t take commissions for a lark. He did it to build his prestige and a name for himself in the critical art world. His friends and family liked to joke that he was playing around and could get away with anything because he was good looking and knew how to turn up the charm. But that was a part of his package. Zack knew how to use his natural good looks and the personality he had acquired over his life to grow his reputation.
“I’m not saying you don’t work hard.” Rachel flipped her hand as if she flicked a bug off her shoulder. “I’m saying you don’t have to rely on that income. You don’t have fear and financial insecurity making you overwork yourself. I know you take your art seriously and stressed out about completing things and having them be up to par. But it’s not the same if you’re counting on selling a piece to cover rent or even get some food for the next month.”
Zack was pushed into a corner without a thing to defend himself. What? She’s right. I’ve never relied on the money. It was only a bonus to shove in my father’s face. “Look, Dad, I made a hundred grand off this painting I did in two days.” That money went straight into his yacht, trips around the world, spoiling whatever woman he fancied at the moment, buying the rarest art supplies, investments… all it meant was that he didn’t have to touch his trust fund as often. He wasn’t much different from his older brothers in that way. They worked for mo
st of the money they spent, too. But they didn’t have to. The Feldmans were collectively worth billions of dollars. Not a single child of the family had to work in any field if he or she didn’t care to.
“If you’re that worried about getting work done,” he said, careful to choose his words. “Then why did you blow it off to come up here with me?”
Rachel was quick to shrug. “Because I wanted to that badly.”
“Badly enough to stop making money for a few hours? Money you really need for rent and food?”
She turned her head away from him. “You offered me a quick escape with the promise we could go home later. I’ll stay up late tonight and finish my work then. I don’t have any plans in the morning. I can sleep in a little.”
Zack sighed. I feel like I keep fucking this up. Every time he tried to bring a little excitement to Rachel’s life, he ended up inconveniencing her or giving her some kind of crisis. His fault, he supposed. He kept making assumptions about her life. They hadn’t known each other that long. He was liable to make a fool of himself, treating her like he would one of his for-the-weekend girlfriends. How many of those women had fears and worries like Rachel, but they never shared them with me? Because he was a fling. A sugar daddy. A man that needed to be impressed or seduced. Women saw him as a reprieve and an answer to their temporary problems. Deep down, Zack had always known this. His father and brothers had warned him, and Uncle Roy had flat-out told him that women saw Feldman men like that.
“A quick escape… yeah. I guess I do that. I blindly decide to do things because, like you said, I can. I can afford it. I have access. I don’t deny it.” He jerked his thumb toward the stately lake house behind them. “I was able to put off some work because I don’t need the money. It’s a passion I’ve made a career out of, but it will always be a passion first. It’s not a legacy I would leave to any children to pick up unless they really wanted to. It’s not Feldman Steel.” Zack lay back on the dock, shielding his face from the sun making its slow summer descent to the forest canopy. “And you always seem so stress out. I haven’t known you that long. You’re right. I’m not a good friend yet if I don’t know these things about you.”