“Sorry. Did I shock you?” I asked, keeping my perfect composure.
“Uh… yeah. Sort of.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Just kind of hard to believe.”
“Why’s that?” I wasn’t sure how much longer I be able to keep from laughing in his face.
“Well, for starters, you look like… ” He moved his hands in front of me to indicate my entire body. “This. Secondly, you’re funny and great. I’m surprised some guy hasn’t snapped you up and kept you hidden in his room.”
“‘Snapped me up’?” I stopped to look up at him my hands briefly on my hips before I gave him a good hard push. “You’re an idiot. I’m not a virgin, moron. But no one has ‘snapped me up.’” I used air quotes on that last part.
The look on his face was priceless. It was good to know that Zac’s mind still worked the same way. The things going through his head when I said I was a virgin were things I shouldn’t want to know about but part of me did.
“That was mean,” he said, then he broke into a smile, making him look exactly like the boy I’d left four years ago. “But I deserved it.”
“As if you care,” I said before I could stop myself.
His smile fell, then he took a step closer to me. “Of course I care.” Zac pushed a piece of hair back behind my ear.
It was such a small, intimate gesture that tiny pulses of excitement skittered through my body, settling in the important parts. I needed to man up, as he’d put it, or find a way to get over my crush on this guy.
“Why’d you kiss me that summer?” I asked quietly. It happened the summer before our sophomore year. He’d already done a lot more than kissing than me and as soon as I asked, I’d wished I hadn’t.
“You said you thought Drake Shilling was going to kiss you and that you were really nervous because you hadn’t kissed anyone. So, I offered. You took me up on it.”
What he’d said was a completely accurate retelling of what had happened, but that wasn’t what I’d meant.
“No. I mean why’d you offer? Did you just not want me to be nervous? Did you want me to know what I was doing so I didn’t ruin it for him? What?”
Zac rubbed a hand over his clenched jaw. “I’d rather not talk about that.”
I folded my arms across my chest and pursed my lips, waiting for him to give me something more than that. “Fine.” I threw my hands in the air, turned on my heel and walked away from him. If nothing else, he was frustrating me more than what I could tolerate for one night. “I thought you wanted to be friends again,” I called over my shoulder. I could feel him behind me, so there was no need to turn his way. To give him that satisfaction. “I thought you’d answer any of my questions because you wanted things to be as close to how they used to be as we could get. But apparently, you’re still picking and choosing what you want to talk about. Fine. Whatever.” I kept going until he grabbed my wrist and yanked me to a stop.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“Home.”
“You’re not walking.”
“Well, I think riding with you is a bad idea.” My voice had come back down to normal because I didn’t feel like yelling anymore.
“God, Laney,” he said running his hands through his hair with as much frustration as I felt. His face was clearly tightly controlled yet behind his eyes, he was at war with himself.
Maybe the battle was about telling me the truth or to let me walk off into the night alone. I didn’t know. But then he groaned and came a step closer, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It wasn’t too often someone got the best of him in any way.
Clearly, I had.
He dropped his hands and took a step toward me.
“You want to know why I offered to give you your first kiss? You want the truth? Because if I tell you and you walk away… I don’t know what I’ll do.”
My heart thudded against my chest. “I want to know,” I whispered.
“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of that asshole getting it. I couldn’t stand the thought of him getting any of your kisses. I couldn’t do anything about that. But I could do something about him getting your first.” He took a deep breath, closing his eyes tightly before opening them back up. “You were nervous. I knew I could offer to help you without being the douche best friend making a move on the girl next door. You could’ve said no, and I would’ve handled it, but you didn’t. Then you asked how good you were and, so help me God, Laney, I fucking lied right to your face.” My eyebrows shot up in surprise. None of this was what I’d been expecting but he kept going before I could utter a word. “I told you that you could use some pointers to make it better.”
“How was that a lie? I didn’t know what I was doing.”
He stood to his full height. His back was rigid, so I took a small step back to see something other than his chest. Something inside me said that I needed to see his face when he answered.
“The fuck you didn’t. That was the best fucking kiss I’d ever had. Still is. You didn’t need me to show you what to do, but I told you that you did just so I could kiss you again. I’m an asshole. A selfish asshole. The question is: Now that you know, are you pissed?”
I stood there blinking. Rapidly.
If he was saying what I thought he was saying, then I was kind of the asshole. I’d made sure he and everyone else had known how deep in the friend zone he was just so they wouldn’t find out how I really felt. All because I’d known he hadn’t felt the same way.
Or I thought I knew.
“So?” He folded his arms over his chest as he waited. “Are you pissed? Going to buy that weed whacker?”
A laugh burst out of my mouth. Loudly. I couldn’t help it. The ridiculousness of this entire situation was too much for me to handle anymore. My hair fell in my face when I doubled over from the growing pain in my stomach.
“Well, I’m glad you find this funny,” he said.
“Oh, Zac.” I heaved in a breath. “If you knew everything, you’d be laughing too.” I swiped a finger under each eye to wipe the tears that had started to fall. Yup.
I found it that damn funny.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh.” I started walking away while still facing him. Distance between us was probably a good thing. “Just that I’d been half in love with you since we were fourteen.” His reaction silenced any humor I found in what was happening between us. The concern on his face—gone. Any humor—completely gone. Hard, clenched jaw—completely present.
“What?” He closed the gap between us.
“Yeah. I’m surprised no one ever caught on to the ‘she doth protest too much’ thing. I spent so much time trying to convince everyone that you were just my best bud that I actually succeeded.”
Dad had never fallen for it. He’d been sitting on the porch with me one day when Zac brought a girl back to his house when his parents hadn’t been home. I’d tried to play it off, but Dad had known better and promised that I had his confidence. He’d never betray me and apparently that had been true even after I’d moved.
“I… I don’t even know what to say about that,” he said.
Honestly, I wasn’t looking for a response from him. “All I meant to say was that you could’ve kissed me at any point and I wouldn’t have pushed you away. I wanted that first one with you, which is why I was so nervous about Drake.”
Zac ran a hand down my arm until he got to mine. “Were you nervous with me?”
This time, I wrapped my arms around my midsection, partly to have something to do and partly for some imaginary protection.
“No.” My voice was barely there. “But you’re Zac.”
His gaze became so hard against mine that I could feel its weight on my skin. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand there under it.
“We wasted so much time,” he said but I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear it. He’d said it like he was talking to himself.
“And whose fault is that?”
“Mostly mine,” he admitted.
“Mostly?” That’s when the irritation strung back up. If I looked at it objectively, I would’ve known that I did deserve some of the blame for our situation back then because I didn’t make my feelings clear. But everything from the time I moved on was on him and fuck this. If we talked about the situation anymore tonight, I didn’t think it’d end well. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Let’s get you home then,” he said just as quietly as I’d spoken.
The only other words that we spoke that night was the good night when he walked me over to my house.
That wasn’t the Saturday I’d expected.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, I decided to tackle the garage. Throwing myself into a little physical labor to get all my thoughts in order seemed like a good idea at the time and I couldn’t continue to just sit around doing nothing. The house wasn’t really all that big, yet I’d made such little progress. The garage seemed like the safest place to start. The place with the least amount of memories for me. Plus, there shouldn’t be anything out there that I wanted to keep, which meant just bagging things up and taking it to the trash.
I still hadn’t gone inside his bedroom. I’d tried once, but my hand never turned the handle. And I hadn’t touched the attic, either. It was small and strictly used for storage, but I just couldn’t do it yet. Even the idea of the memories there was crushing.
With my hair pulled into a knot at the back of my head, wearing an old T-shirt and shorts, I pulled that garage door open. On the up side, Dad had liked to park his car inside, which was something I needed to consider. It wasn’t an attached garage but still offered more protection than the driveway or the street where my Jeep had been sitting because I’d wanted an easy getaway when I arrived. But since he’d liked parking in there, it wasn’t as full as it could have been. There were things stored in the rafters that I didn’t want to think about. Honestly, I didn’t want to think about any of it. It was so unfair, but it was time to put on my big girl panties and get to work.
A large red tool box sat in front of a stack of boxes, so I needed to move it. While it should probably have rolled, I didn’t think it’d been moved in a decade and even with my full weight behind it, it barely budged. I pushed again, giving it everything I had. Still nothing happened.
“Ugh!” I yelled at the stupid thing, kicking it twice. Probably regret that later.
I wanted this to be easy, something I could do quickly where I didn’t have to think about Dad out there tinkering with anything. Instead, my life was a clusterfuck of a dead dad and finding out that I guy I’d wanted so badly I could taste it in high school had maybe wanted me back then too, if I read into the best kiss thing he’d said.
What the fuck ever. I was done for today. And the loud frustrated scream I released let everyone else in the neighborhood know I was done as well.
“You OK in here?” Zac was leaning against the frame of the garage door when I spun around to see who’d broken into my solitary misery. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there watching my little meltdown and I couldn’t be bothered to care.
“Fucking peachy.”
“Whoa.” His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Must be serious. You pulled out the F-word.”
“I’m so totally not in the mood today, Zac.” I hadn’t even showered that morning because I knew I’d be getting dirty in the garage. I felt gross. I wanted to wash my hair and mostly wanted to stop feeling like a whiny-ass kid. I could maybe do something about that last bit.
“OK.” He stood to his full height and shoved his hands into his pockets. I’d been seeing him do that a lot but didn’t remember him doing it before. Maybe it was a nervous habit he’d gained in the years we hadn’t seen each other. “Anything I can help with?”
“Want to clean out the garage for me?” I asked, but not seriously.
He shrugged. “I can do that.”
“I was kidding.” Though I’d gladly pay him every cent I had to do so I didn’t have to. I wasn’t actually thinking someone else should do this for me.
“I’m not. I can get Porter over here to help me. It’d probably take a few days since we have to work tomorrow, but it’d get done.” He wet his lips. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Laney.”
My eyes closed to keep the forming tears back. It was sheer relief I was feeling, and I didn’t hesitate to take him up on the offer. If he was willing to do it, I’d be willing to let him.
“Thank you,” I whispered once I’d pulled myself back together. Then I tossed him the key to the garage. All I wanted now was that shower. “Oh, hey, Zac.” I turned back to him on my way inside. He was still standing right where I left him. “If there’s anything in there that you want, you can have it. Or sell it. Or eat it. I don’t care.”
“Laney, your dad had some valuable tools and old parts. You should sell them, or I could do it for you, but it’s all yours.”
My head was already shaking before he finished. Those were not the kinds of things I wanted from my dad.
“I’m serious, Zac. Put it in your parts store fund. You’re doing the work and I promise that I don’t want any of it.” He as going to argue some more. I could see it on his face. “You know that my dad would give all this shit to you himself for that store if he could. You know it and I do, too.”
Finally, he gave in and nodded so I could go make friends with the hot water in the bathroom.
And boy, did that shower give me an entirely new outlook on the day. It was like I was washing away grime I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying on me. With my hair clean, I felt human again. Yesterday had been exhausting physically and emotionally. My mind hadn’t stopped replaying what Zac had said at the pond.
Or how he’d said it.
Or how he’d looked when he’d said it.
Or how he’d looked just standing there in the moonlight.
My brain seemed to be Zac-obsessed. Not that I could blame it. He was even hotter than I remembered.
The only imperfect part of my reprieve was the pounding on my front door as I stepped out of the shower. Groaning, I wrapped a towel around my body while shaking my hair out a little. It wouldn’t really change how I looked, but I couldn’t help it. No way did I want to answer the door with my hair slicked back onto my head and whoever was out there was interrupting me. I wasn’t interrupting them.
Zac’s mouth held part of the way open like he’d already been saying something as I swung the door open. Whatever it was got swallowed back down when he saw me. His eyes tried to stay on mine, but they traveled my towel-covered body quickly, stopping at the swells of my breasts. I could’ve sworn I heard a small hiss of air between his teeth.
Keeping a smile at bay, I said, “Did you need something, Zac?”
His gaze snapped back up to mine.
“Uh, yeah. I just wanted to let you know that Porter and I are going to get started. In case you hear us out there.”
“Thanks.”
He stood there another thirty seconds before walking away. Once the door shut behind me, I let that smile loose. Oh, there had been definite interest in his eyes. Even he couldn’t hide that. I may have danced my way back to the bathroom.
As they worked on the garage, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt then did a little cleaning inside and made a list of calls to make in the morning. After thinking about it, I decided to have all the utilities changed into my name since the house would be mine within the month and I don’t know… something about taking his name off things seemed right.
Truth be told, I hadn’t decided for sure if I wanted to sell the house just yet. That had been my intention at first, but if I did come back here for a job as I hoped, it’d be convenient to have a place to live. Something I wouldn’t have to worry about. Dad probably would want me to move to a nicer area, but the longer I stayed, the more I realized that this really was home. I could always rent it out until graduation.
Plus, Maddie
and Zac were in my life again, along with Porter, Brad, Jay, and Andy. The last three I’d only see occasionally, so they didn’t factor in. But the other three…
By the time I looked up from my list, it was almost lunch time. I went into the kitchen to make the guys something to eat because they were doing me the favor. The least I could do was feed them. I didn’t have much in the kitchen but was able to pull together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and grab a bag of chips along with a few bottles of water to take out to them.
I just set it in the shade on the back porch because I wasn’t eating in the garage and the sun was hot.
“Are you guys hungry?” I asked, startling the both of them.
They’d definitely been working. I almost wished I wouldn’t have said anything right away because the way Zac’s muscles strained across his back was something I should’ve watched a little longer and appreciated. Neither of them were wearing shirts and both only had basketball shorts hanging low on their hips. I didn’t care about Porter’s hips, but he had totally filled out since high school and probably had several happy women somewhere.
“I could eat.” Porter left the garage first.
He got to the porch, dropping into the only single chair. I came up second with Zac behind me. He lagged behind since he’d gone back for his shirt. Zac handed me a plate with a sandwich before taking one for himself, then offered me some chips, which I declined.
I was barely hungry as it was.
Porter started chattering about things they were finding in the garage, but I couldn’t be bothered to listen. I just didn’t care. Zac sat next to me on the bench he’d held me on the other night. That was where my attention was.
“Laney… ” Porter drew my name out, letting me know he’d been talking to me.
“What?” I snapped to attention.
But Zac didn’t let that go. He nudged my arm with his elbow.
“You OK?” he asked quietly, even though Porter would’ve been able to hear him either way.
Last Good Thing (The Fallout Series Book 1) Page 6