Zenn Diagram

by Wendy Brant

  What if this is it? Oh, God, this can’t be it. But he’s shutting down and I don’t have anything to say that will change

  anything. I know he needs some time.

  “I’m gonna go. But don’t …” I struggle to find the right words. “Don’t give up yet. Okay? There’s a reason we found each other. There has to be.”

  Chapter 29

  I sit at the computer, my hands frozen on the keyboard. I can’t concentrate. I can’t do anything, lately, other than think about Zenn. It’s been four days and I haven’t heard a word from him. Maybe I was foolish to think we could somehow forget our dysfunctional history and be together. Maybe some obstacles are just too big.

  Since I haven’t been able to focus, I’ve distracted myself by hanging out with Josh and Charlotte. I tell Charlotte that Zenn has to work instead of telling her the truth: that our lives are like something out of a Mexican soap opera. She seems happy to have me with them, excited to share Josh with me away from his friends. Charlotte is right — he’s different. When he’s with his friends, he has to pretend to be something he’s not, and it has left him lonely and exhausted.

  The funny thing is, I learn this more from conversation than from his fractals.

  When I actually do touch him, his fractal is better than it once was. Lighter, brighter, happier. The thing that I’ve always found so daunting about my visions is that I can’t change the past. But maybe I underestimate how much people can change their own futures. Josh still looks like a popular kid on the outside, but just by being himself with Charlotte, something is changing on the inside.

  Meanwhile, my outsides and my insides are equally a disaster.

  I lean my head onto the desk and close my eyes. What makes everything worse is that I had pretty much gotten used to my isolation. Before, I mean. My family, Charlotte, and a couple of acquaintances who could loosely be categorized as friends were enough for me before I met Zenn. But now I don’t know if I can go back to pretending I don’t need connection or intimacy or deep and sometimes complicated feelings. I don’t know if I can go back to being that lonely, that flat.

  My phone buzzes and I peek at it halfheartedly. After four days of waiting for a text from Zenn, I’m trying not to get my hopes up. My parents took the kids to see the newest Disney movie and it’s probably my mom reminding me to put the leftovers away, as if any of us will want to eat them again. But when I glance at the screen, I see it is from Zenn.

  Zenn: Hey

  Me: Hey

  Zenn: I’m outside. Are you alone?

  Me: Yes

  Zenn: Can we talk?

  Me: Yes

  My replies are probably too quick and eager, but I don’t care at this point. I glance at myself in the computer-screen reflection and figure it will have to do. I hop up and run to the front door.

  He’s standing there, hands in his pockets. My stomach feels like it’s filled with helium.

  “Hi,” I squeak. My voice sounds helium-filled, too. I invite him to come in.

  He studies his hands for a minute, rubbing his palms together. When he finally looks at me, I see in his eyes that something has changed. I open my mouth to ask him what he’s decided but I probably should just let him speak first. I close my mouth again.

  He reaches out and puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls me closer. He dips his head down toward mine until our foreheads touch. I feel his desperation, his sadness, his need, so similar to mine. We stay that way for a long, intense moment. When he opens his eyes again, I can’t help myself. I rise up on my tiptoes and kiss him.

  He hesitates a moment and I start to pull away, thinking I’ve misread him. Maybe he was gearing up to say goodbye. But then he pulls me closer and kisses me back, almost apologetically, and then a little urgently, like we’re making up from a fight. It tells me he has missed me. It tells me that he’s willing to try to make this work.

  My whole body sighs with relief.

  I have a choice here: a choice to take what I want and maybe even deserve, after living most of my life in relative isolation. My mom’s resentment is not my problem. His parents’ guilt is not his problem. We can’t control many things in life, but I can choose this. With him.

  I know the couch is right behind me so I step backward until my legs hit it and I sit, pulling him down by the front of his shirt. There is no grace, no smooth moves. We are a frenzy of hungry mouths and tugging fingers. He leans me back against the couch so that he’s half on top of me, and I press my whole body up toward his, as if I’m trying to meld us into one.

  His mouth moves to my ear, to my neck, to my collarbone. I take off my glasses and toss them on the coffee table.

  “I thought you wanted to talk,” I tease him quietly. The helium is gone and now my voice is throaty.

  He stops abruptly.

  “Kidding,” I say. “Totally kidding. We don’t have to talk.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid Eva. Shut your big fat mouth! I pull him down to kiss me again, but he resists.

  “Sorry,” he says, his voice apologetic. “Maybe we should talk.” It seems like he’s embarrassed or regretful for kissing me instead of using words, as if he’s been rude. But I’m the one who started it. And if he knew that I’ve been waiting my whole teenage life for a boy to kiss me like this, he’d know he doesn’t have to apologize for anything.

  I shake my head a tiny bit, my voice more serious now. “We don’t have to. Not … right this minute. Or maybe … ever.” Nothing else really matters now. Just this.

  So he kisses me again and then somehow I’m sliding my hands all over his torso until his shirt is just a barrier to my exploration. I’d like to slide my hands under it, but I’ve barely touched another human in six years. I can’t imagine just putting my hands wherever I want, skin on skin. And it feels too personal, too presumptuous, like maybe I should ask first. Do normal people ask before they touch each other’s bare skin?

  “Can I ...” I start, not knowing exactly how I’m going to finish.

  “Mmmm hmmm,” Zenn breathes in my ear.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” I whisper back, mimicking him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he says, mimicking me.

  I don’t say anything for a moment and Zenn nudges my ear. “What?”

  “I was just going to ask if I can … like … feel your skin.”

  He pulls away to look at me, amused.

  I cover my face with one hand. “God, that’s weird, right? That I asked?”

  Zenn pries my hand off my face and places it under the hem of his T-shirt and there it is: his smooth, hot, incredible skin and the taut muscle underneath, like a cotton sheet fresh from the dryer stretched over granite. I slide my fingertips up just an inch or two but I’m too timid and embarrassed to go much farther. Plus, Zenn is watching me, serious now.

  Self-conscious, I lift my hand but he immediately places his hand on top of mine, pressing it back against his body.

  “Sorry,” he says quietly. “I forget about your … that you can’t ...” His voice trails off.

  He forgets that I’ve been living in a self-made bubble, that I’ve never touched a boy’s bare skin before. At least not the skin of a torso, a back, the intimate slopes of muscle and bone that have piqued my curiosity since I hit puberty.

  He doesn’t finish his sentence. He just kisses me again and I allow my hand to slide up, over his shoulder blade, down the valley of his spine. I feel myself blush when my fingers touch the waistband of his underwear poking slightly out of the back of his jeans. He doesn’t seem to notice, or to care.

  I toy again with the idea of pulling his T-shirt over his head, getting it out of the way so he can press his heated body down on me like an electric blanket. It creeps up higher and higher as my hands slide up his back, but I’m so new to all this that I can’t even imagine removing my own clothing, much less someone else’s. So I make do with exploring underneath, sliding my fingers over the ridges of his rib cage, letting my
knuckles graze hip bones and stomach muscles.

  One of Zenn’s hands finds the buttons on my oh-so-sexy flannel shirt and undoes one, two, three of them. I swallow my fear and self-consciousness and let him open my shirt just a bit. He doesn’t unbutton it all the way, just enough to reveal my collarbone, the edge of my pale pink bra.

  I’m suddenly a little nervous about what I’ve started. Once hands start exploring under clothes, and then the clothes start coming off, I suppose things can move pretty quickly at our age. I’ve only just started playing ball and already I’m close to rounding second base. Even though I’ve never done anything remotely like this with a guy, for obvious reasons, Zenn is an attractive eighteen-year-old male. I seriously doubt this is his first time unbuttoning a girl’s shirt.

  “Zenn,” I whisper, my voice sounding slightly frantic in my own ears.

  “Mmmm?” he hums. His lips press lightly against the skin just at the edge of my bra.

  “I just ...”

  He must hear the panic in my voice because he raises himself up onto his elbow. He must be getting tired of all the interruptions.

  “I’m just ...”

  He doesn’t let me finish. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “We’re just ... talking. Right?”

  I nod and bite my lip.

  “You’ve got, like, eighteen years of touch phobia to make up for.”

  “That’s true,” I say. I tentatively run my hands up his sides, climbing the gentle incline up from his hips.

  “So, whatever. There’s no rush.” He kisses me once. Twice. “But, you know ... feel free to explore. Consider me, like, therapy.”

  I laugh. “Therapy?”

  He nods. “Cheap, too.” He kisses my neck. “No co-pay, even.” He kisses my collarbone.

  “And you’re a qualified therapist?”

  “Not even a little bit. But seeing as I’m the only person you can touch ...”

  “You’ll have to do.”

  He nods. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  I laugh, and then he kisses me and I don’t feel like laughing anymore. We lose track of time, kissing so that we don’t have to talk about dead parents and felon fathers and all the reasons we probably shouldn’t be together. Eventually Zenn grants my silent wish and grabs his shirt at the back of the neck with one hand and pulls it off in the way that only guys do. Just like that, his bare chest is inches from my body, the ridges of his stomach muscles casting shadows in the dim light. Somehow the fact that his body has been defined by actual work — raking and shoveling and moving heavy boxes — rather than by long hours at the gym makes it that much sexier. I tentatively explore the bridge of his collarbone, the thick rounded muscles of his shoulders, the long lean lines of his arms. I didn’t know skin could feel so soft and hard at the same time.

  We kiss and touch and press until I vaguely hear, somewhere in the distance, the garage door open. I sit up in a panic.

  “Shit.” I fumble for my glasses with one hand, the buttons of my shirt with the other; somehow two more have come undone. Once I can see again, I toss Zenn his shirt. Wow. He looks even better when I can actually see.

  Focus, Eva!

  I run my hands over my hair, take a few deep breaths, make sure my pants haven’t somehow become unbuttoned as well, hope you can’t see any evidence of arousal on me or Zenn. He should have left before they got home — that would have been smart.

  But I forgot they were coming home. I think I forgot they even existed.

  Either way, it’s too late now to do anything but try to look innocent. Luckily I have eighteen years of practice for that.

  We make sure there is a good foot between us on the couch. I turn on the TV and search for something — anything — that we might be able to pretend we were watching. I settle on Duck Dynasty. It’s a stretch.

  Libby and Ethan bound in, still full of energy even though it’s an hour past their bedtime. Eli is sleeping on my dad’s shoulder, Essie on my mom’s. My mom sees me on the couch. And then Zenn.

  I focus my attention on Libby and Ethan.

  “Hey, guys! How was the movie?”

  “Goodgoodgoodgood!” Libby bounces for each good.

  Ethan nods, surprisingly quiet for a change. I suspect he’s infatuated with Zenn.

  “C’mon, let’s get your jammies on.” I turn to Zenn. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  He nods, and gives Libby and Ethan a high five. He shakes his hand in pretend pain afterward.

  In the girls’ room my mom is carefully removing Essie’s coat, trying not to wake her. I put my finger to my lips to remind Libby to be quiet, hoping my mom will take the hint, too. She doesn’t.

  “How long has Zenn been over?” she asks.

  “Not too long,” I lie. “He had to work tonight.”

  I wonder if she can sense my deception, smell the lingering lust on my skin. It feels like she is weighing saying something else, maybe reprimanding me for having a boy in the house when they aren’t home. She must decide against it, figuring I should be allowed what simple pleasures I can find in a boy’s company. Little does she know that the pleasures I can find with Zenn are more extensive than she imagines.

  We get the girls in bed while my dad handles the boys. I’m hoping we’ve given Zenn ample time to catch his breath. When we return to the living room, he stands and says hi to my mom. I realize he has never met my dad.

  “Dad, this is Zenn.”

  Zenn reaches out and they shake hands.

  “Good to meet you, Zenn.”

  “You, too, sir.”

  The sir is a nice touch.

  The moment is made so much more awkward by the knowledge that Zenn and I have and my parents don’t. I feel like we are deceiving them, not just by pretending that we were watching Duck Dynasty, but by not telling them what we now know about each other.

  “I should get going,” Zenn says. “I have to work pretty early.”

  My parents tell him goodbye and I walk him out to the car, careful to maintain a safe distance between us.

  At his truck, when I’m pretty sure my parents couldn’t see us even if they tried, I lean in to feel his body against mine one more time. He wraps his arms around me.

  “We can’t do this forever,” he says quietly. “Can we?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  He smiles, but I can tell he’s serious. Maybe I am, too. I think I’d be willing to do just about anything to keep this feeling, this closeness that I’ve never had before. Lying to my parents seems a small trade-off for what feels like love. “They might never find out,” I argue.

  “You did.”

  “That’s because I’m freakishly persistent and love research. I tried to find out.”

  “Why? Because my mom said my dad was in jail?”

  I nod, feeling a little guilty. “And I saw my stone in your kitchen.”

  He shakes his head, “I can’t believe that was you.”

  “Who did you think it was?”

  “I had no idea. The gardener? Some random relative of theirs? Not you.” He looks back down at me. “Who did you think it was?”

  “My mom.”

  He thinks about this for a minute and then says, “We watched Schindler’s List in history last year — have you seen it?”

  I shake my head. We never got to watch movies in my AP U.S. History class, unfortunately.

  “There’s a scene at the end when the people Oskar Schindler saved leave stones on his grave. Our teacher said that the stones are supposed to …” He searches for the right words.

  “Represent the permanence of memory,” I finish for him, remembering the phrase from my own research.

  He nods.

  “I looked it up, too. When I found your stones.”

  We’re quiet. He reaches up and tucks a loose hair behind my ear.

  “It’s just a matter of time before she figures it out,” he says.

  I take a deep breath. Exhale. “I know.”

  “Sh
e looked at me funny tonight.”

  “It’s probably because your shirt is on backwards.”

  “It is?” He looks down, pulling the neck out to confirm. “Fuck.”

  I laugh. “That’s not why she was looking at you funny. I think you look familiar to her.”

  He looks down at his shoes and says, “Fuck” again, more quietly.

  “You’re right. She’s going to figure it out.”

  He nods. “Do you think we should tell her first?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to.”

  “Me neither.” He kisses me lightly, then not so lightly.

  Chapter 30

  It’s Friday night and Charlotte has finally talked me into going on a double date with her and Josh. She sweetened the deal by offering to pay with her dad’s credit card and who am I to turn down a free meal? Zenn and I are still in denial about the gravity of our situation, casually dating as if our backstory is normal and not about to blow up in our faces. We meet at the restaurant and when Josh and Charlotte walk in, I’m once again blown away by how stupidly good they look together. Zenn notices, too. “Hey, look. It’s Barbie and Ken,” he whispers.

  I punch him in the arm.

  Our hostess leads us to a table and we sit, adjusting our napkins and fidgeting with our water glasses. I have to give Josh credit; he makes the first effort. He has more social skills than the rest of us combined, so I suppose it’s the least he can do.

  “Char says you’re a good basketball player,” Josh says to Zenn. “Why didn’t you try out for the team?”

  Zenn takes a sip of his water. “Didn’t think I’d have the time.”

  Josh dismisses him. “It’s not that much. Just after school until five thirty or so. A couple of games a week. Maybe a tournament on the weekend.”

  “Zenn works every day,” I say. I may sound defensive, but I’m actually proud.

  “Every day?” asks Josh.

  “Sometimes two jobs.” I spit it out before Zenn can stop me.

  “You have two jobs, dude?”