Zack stopped next to a shiny black motorcycle. He leaned forward to take the helmet from the back of the bike and handed it to me.
“Is this okay?” he asked, gesturing to the bike, his eyebrows rising slightly in question.
Instinctively, my heart started pounding at the idea of riding on the back of a motorcycle, but I wasn’t about to let Zack see my fear.
“I’m guess if I’m working on being impulsive, sure,” I said, shrugging as I took the helmet from him and tentatively placed it over my head.
He laughed lightly, shaking his head. “You know, princess, it doesn’t count as being impulsive if you have to write a mental pro-con list before making a decision.”
I closed my eyes in frustrated amusement. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
He shrugged. “It just seems to fit,” he said, matter-of-factly.
I sighed to show my frustration but didn’t tell him not to call me that anymore. I wasn’t sure I didn’t actually it. When it rolled off of his lips, it sounded almost endearing.
“You know, it’s unnerving how you always seem to be able to know what I’m thinking,” I said, instead.
He smirked. “Emily, I could literally see the wheels turning in your head as you worked through whether or not you wanted to hop of the back of my bike with me.”
He took a step toward me, his hand reaching for my waist. He played with the hem of my hoodie, lifting the edge, so his fingers could dance along my bare stomach, as his eyes locked with mine and my breath caught in my chest. My heart started pounding wildly at our proximity and little twinges started sparking down from the spot where his fingers played. He slowly swept his hand across my stomach, his fingers falling just below the waistband of my cut-offs. I had to bite my lip to keep from gasping out loud.
“It’s really important that you don’t think,” Zack murmured, his lips moving slowly, seductively. “If you truly want to be impulsive, you just have to just go with your gut.”
I breathed in and out slowly, well-aware that my heart was pounding and my breathing was slightly labored. In all my years with Ben, nothing he’d done had ever created this much desire or want in me. It took every ounce of control I had not to grab Zack’s face between my hands and draw him flush against my body.
“Now,” he said, his hand moving up to my rib cage, just under my bra. He swept it softly across my stomach. “Do you want to go for a ride?”
“Yes,” I breathed out instantly, not entirely sure if he was still referring to his motorcycle.
His mouth quirked up on the side so he was smirking at me. “Good,” he said, as his arm ran around to my back and he pulled me against him.
I knew he was going to kiss me, and all I could do was stand there, frozen and waiting, wanting nothing more than his lip on mine. His eyes stayed locked on mine before glancing down at my lips for a few beats, as if he was contemplating whether or not to close the distance between us. Then, before I knew what was happening, he released me. I reached back for the bike to steady myself. My legs felt wobbly, and my head felt heavy from the weight of the helmet.
I breathed out a sigh as quietly as I could so he wouldn’t see how much he’d affected me.
“I’m guessing you’ve never ridden on a bike before, have you?” he asked then.
I shook my head, too afraid to speak for fear of what I might say. I could tell instantly that he could sense what I was feeling in that moment, and the smirk that again played on his lips told me I was amusing him.
“Okay, it’s not big deal, except that as the rider, you need to make sure that we don’t fall out of balance.”
He had suddenly flipped a switch and was in teaching mode, all traces of flirting gone. I raised my eyebrows, thinking that I didn’t have the first clue as to how to do what he was telling me and suddenly saw us plummeting to our deaths from me throwing the bike out of balance.
“It’s not so hard,” Zack said, smiling a sort of crooked smile at me. “All you have to do is hold on to me and lean the same way I do. Can you do that?”
I swallowed hard, thinking that in order to do that, my arms would have to be around his waist, and the flutters in my stomach kicked back up again at the idea of being so close to him. I didn’t think I’d have any problem holding on tight.
“I’ve got this,” I said, confidently, nodding my heavy, helmet-covered head a few times.
“Okay,” Zack said, as he took his place on the front of the bike. “Hop on.” He glanced from me to the space behind him.
I tentatively climbed on and leaned forward, pressing my body into his back and snaking my arms around his waist. I almost shivered as I felt his taught stomach through his t-shirt and gripped him tighter, locking my hands together.
Zack laughed and turned around slightly. “I do still need to breathe.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said and automatically loosened my death grip.
“Thanks,” he said, as he kick-started the bike.
As we started to slowly move out of the driveway, I couldn’t help but wonder what my parents would think of me riding on a motorcycle with a guy I hardly knew. I knew they wouldn’t be pleased, which sort of pleased me to no end. I did everything I could to push Ben’s clouded face from my mind, as it would surely be if he saw me holding onto another guy that tightly, as we zoomed away to an unknown location.
Once we got moving, I found the initial fear I felt ebbing more toward exhilaration as the wind whipped around us. We couldn’t have been going more than thirty miles and hour, but it felt like we were flying. I instantly loved the feeling of the wind, the freedom, and Zack’s body so close to mine. I felt the sudden urge to press my lips to his neck which both scared and excited me.
“You okay?” he asked when we stopped at a light.
“I’m good,” I said, hugging him tighter.
When we finally reached our destination, I saw that we were at the top of a small cliff of some sort. Zack parked the bike at the top and helped me off.
“You did good,” he said, as we walked toward some stairs that I hadn’t seen when we’d first pulled up. They led us down to a stretch of the beach that was uninhabited. There were no houses nearby and no lifeguard chairs. It didn’t look like the stretches of beach that were on the end of the island where we were staying.
We walked over to a large outcropping of rocks that blocked our path. The water was coming dangerously close to the rocks as the tide came in. Zack stepped on top of the lowest rocks and put his hand out for me to grab.
My eyes fixed on a pink rubber bracelet that he was wearing. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now it fell to the end of his arm, as his shirt sleeve pulled up from his wrist. I looked from it, to his eyes, to his outstretched fingers, reached out and took his hand. For some reason, I took that gesture as a sign that there was no turning back. I was crossing a line, and once I crossed it, that was it, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t even slow down.
Zack helped me up onto the rocks and held my hand as we walked the ten feet across, being careful not to slip, as the rocks were already getting damp from the spray of the ocean. On the other side, he hopped down onto hard-packed sand and helped me down so I was standing next to him on firm ground. We found ourselves on a secluded part of the beach where day trippers most likely didn’t set up their chairs and beach blankets. There was only about twenty feet of space from the back of the rocks to the ocean, and the expanse was only thirty feet wide. On the other side were more large rocks that were too tall to traverse easily.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand again.
We walked up to the back of the beach where there was a small entrance to a cave. He hesitated just outside of it but didn’t enter. Instead he sat down on the sand, so I sat next to him.
“What is this?”
“This is my other place,” he said. “I used to come down here as a kid, actually all of us did. We would camp in there a few times each summer.” He indicated to the cave opening behind us. “I used to
love how we could pretend it was our own private island. When I was older, and my parents would fight, I would come here a lot just get away from it all.”
“Did you feel like you needed to get away tonight?” I asked, wondering what was bothering him so much.
He nodded. “Yeah, I did. I’ve been coming here a lot over the past few months to think or write or just be alone.”
“You write?”
He nodded. “Music.”
“Really. How come you never play your own stuff at the beach?”
He shrugged. “Everyone likes covers. They’re crowd-pleasers. Besides, some of my stuff’s been pretty dark lately, so I figure it’s just better not to bum everyone else out.”
“You haven’t exactly been playing bright and cheery tunes,” I said recalling that a lot of his cover choices had a definite melancholy air.
He shrugged. “I play what I feel, so I guess that’s sort of rubbed off. Sorry if I’ve been bumming you out.”
I laughed a non-humorous laugh “I’ve actually been pretty bummed out this summer, so I kind of liked your music.”
“Misery loves company,” he deadpanned.
“I’m sorry about whatever’s bothering you. I wish I could help,” I said, genuinely meaning it. I knew his issues were so much greater than mine, and I suddenly felt guilty for even thinking I had it rough. I just knew Zack was dealing with something big, and it had been affecting him for a while.
He shrugged. “I’ll be okay.”
“I wish I believed you,” I said, hoping I wasn’t over-stepping my bounds.
“Yeah, me too,” he said, getting that far-off look in his eyes again.
I wished he would open up and tell me what was going on. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen someone in so much pain before. I inadvertently took his hand, not thinking about it, just acting on instinct.
He looked down at my hand in his and then back up at me. “Are you sure that’s something you want to do? I mean, you have a boyfriend and all.”
I nodded, realizing that it was definitely something I wanted to do. For some unknown reason, I wanted nothing more than to sit there on that secluded, hidden beach with a guy I barely knew who seemed to be barely holding himself together and give him my hand to hold, as if it might help to have something solid to grip when you were falling apart.
Zack leaned over then and kissed me, taking me by surprise. I leaned into it, becoming a full-on participant, knowing there was nothing that could have kept me from kissing him in that moment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, laughing lightly when he pulled back. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
He didn’t seem sorry, and his lack of remorse and boundaries should have been a red flag to me, but it sort of made me want to see how far I would let myself go with him. He was a bad boy, and I’d always dated good boys. Maybe it was time I take a ride on the dark side and see what happened. Of course, I knew Zack wasn’t all bad. He was like bad boy light.
With his dark hair, piercing eyes and serious looks, he had a way about him that screamed danger, but then he would smile and say something sweet, and I’d totally change my mind about him. Then there was the way he touched me that set my body on fire that just told me he could get me in a lot of trouble. He knew I had a boyfriend, but he didn’t care, and frankly, in that moment, neither did I.
I shook my head. “Don’t be sorry,” I said, and leaned in to kiss him again. “Just go with your gut.”
“Touché,” he said against my lips. His tongue working its way into my mouth as I leaned further into him, getting completely lost in the kiss.
When I finally pulled away, he leaned his head back against the rock and closed his eyes. I watched him closely, noticing how broken he looked again. It amazed me how he could go from flirty and happy to sad and remorseful in the blink of an eye. His moods were up and down, and I couldn’t tell when that switch would flip and he would suddenly change before my eyes.
“You’re going to regret that tomorrow,” he said.
I shook my head. “I don’t think I will.”
“Oh, princess, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into with me,” he said, not opening his eyes.
“I know enough,” I said, leaning over to kiss his cheek, my lips lingering for a few beats before I kissed the spot right below his ear, making him shiver. “Now tell me, what’s wrong?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then to my surprise, he opened up to me.
“My mom’s sick,” he finally said, rushing the words, as if he didn’t want to say them, but couldn’t stop them from coming out of his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing he was talking about something much more than a cold or the flu. I was half-holding my breath, knowing how hard it must be for him to talk about it.
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “She has cancer, and she’s dying.”
He said it so flatly, like he didn’t have any emotion left to expel on the topic. I watched as he fingered the rubber bracelet on the wrist attached to the hand I was still holding. I realized it was a breast cancer awareness bracelet. He looked at me, almost as if to gauge my reaction, but I didn’t say anything. I truthfully wasn’t sure what to say.
In my silence, Zack continued talking. “She was diagnosed with breast cancer a little over three years ago. She had a lumpectomy and they did radiation. She did everything she should have, and she went into remission for a year. Then she found out about a year and a half ago that it was back and had spread to her lymph nodes and her lungs. She fought it for a while, but it didn’t work. When she found out a few weeks ago that it had spread to her pancreas, she decided to stop the chemo. She doesn’t have much time left – maybe a month or two. She’s basically giving up.”
His voice cracked on the last few syllables, and he over up at me as I watched the tears pool in his eyes. I suddenly realized why he’d seemed like a different guy when I’d met him at the coffeehouse. Back then he’d been light-hearted and free of the dark shadows that now haunted his eyes, because he still thought his mom had a fighting chance. She’d beaten cancer once before, so he was hopeful, optimistic, that she could do it again. But now that she’d stopped fighting, there wasn’t another outcome, and he knew she would die.
“I’m so sorry, Zack,” I said, knowing it would never be enough.
He nodded. “Yeah, me too.” He wiped his free hand across his face, pushing the tears away. “I’m a fucking mess,” he said, all traces of the bad boy from a few minutes earlier gone. “I’m crying in front of a girl that I actually like and am probably succeeding in scaring her off.”
I tightened my grip on his hand. “No,” I said firmly. “You’re not.”
“You don’t understand. I’m pretty much a train wreck. I’d walk away if I were you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
For some reason that I couldn’t explain, I was drawn to him like no one else. The thought of walking away wasn’t even an option. He breathed in deeply and leaned his head back against the rocks again. I remained silent, letting him take his time.
“It’s why I was upset on the other night,” he said finally.
“Your mom,” I said, understanding completely why he’d been so angry.
“It was these assholes at the party. Some story came on the TV about some celebrity having a mastectomy, and they were laughing about it,” he said, shaking his head.
“That sucks. That’s not funny at all.”
“You know, I get it. Hell, a few years ago, I might have laughed about it with them, but things are different now. My mom didn’t have one of those, but she considered it. It just got to me, you know, that they could be so callous about something they know nothing about.”
I nodded. I could see how that would have made him upset.
He leaned his head back against the rocks, looking up at the nearly full moon overhead. He put his arm around me and pulled me close to him. I leaned my head on his chest and listened t
o the sound of his heart beating steadily and his breath going in and out. It was like it was a struggle for him just to breathe. I desperately wanted to take his pain, ball it up and throw it into the ocean. He was too young to be dealing with so much.
It hit me then that I’d been incredibly near-sighted. I’d been consumed in rebelling and fighting my parents and proving to everyone that I was a different person. I was happy that I was doing something that would disappoint them, and here was a guy who wanted nothing more than to do everything he could to help his mother, and he couldn’t. It hit me then how precarious life was, and the last thing I should have been doing was trying to piss off the people who cared about me. I should be embracing the fact that they were in my life, especially since you never knew when they no longer would be.
Zack was barely an adult and was facing losing his mother. I thought about what that would feel like if it was my mom and my chest tightened. I suddenly wanted to run home and apologize for all the hateful things I’d thought about her and the nasty things I’d said to her in the past few weeks, as I tried to distance myself from who I’d been. I couldn’t believe I’d stooped so low to do that to my mother who’d always been there to support me. Sure, she buried her head in the sand and refused to see certain things, and she had elevated expectations of me, but when it came down to it, I knew that she loved me and would do anything for me.
Maybe if I’d just talked to her about what I was going through, instead of shutting her out and making her feel like it was her fault, then I wouldn’t have had so much guilt coursing through me in that moment. I made the decision to talk to her the next day, explain everything and above all else, apologize.
“You know what I really want?” Zack asked after a few minutes of silence, pulling me back to reality.
“What?” I asked, thinking he’d say something deep about his mother or their relationship or at least something enlightening.
“Ice cream,” he said, as he smiled a small smile and surprised me again. He didn’t want to go get drunk to forget his pain like a normal person, most likely because he knew it wouldn’t help. He’d been there before he’d said, and I wondered if that was how he’d initially dealt with her diagnosis.
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