So I did it. I offered the only thing I could then, what they would want, but braced myself to get rejected just in case.
“Hey,” I said to him, telling myself again to prepare for a hell no. “You need a hug? You can say no.”
The lean, beautiful man in front of me—with the weight of an entire solar system bearing down on his shoulders it seemed—stared at me for a moment.
Then he nodded.
It was me who cut the distance between us until I was staring up at him, like I had so many times while I’d been growing up. I would have smiled if this had been any other circumstance, but his grandpa was in the hospital, I wasn’t sure what his mom had told him, and he may or may not know what he was doing with his career now that his NFO—National Football Organization—team had signed someone else to his position. On top of all that, I was confused and hurt and relieved all at the same time. So I settled for looking right into those eyes that were and weren’t familiar anymore.
I went up to my tiptoes and slid my arms around his neck. He was a stranger and yet not a stranger, and I pulled in his heat and the strength of his chest against my own that, in a way, felt almost frail right then.
And it just made me hug him even tighter.
Yes, he had hurt me. His distance had wounded me. But that wasn’t what this was about. This was about further back than that, back when things had been good between us. The best.
Zac waited a few seconds before wrapping his arms around the middle of my back, and then it was him pulling me in even closer to that body of his, like I wasn’t some girl he hadn’t seen in forever, like time hadn’t passed and it had just been yesterday when he’d spot me after his high school football games and introduce me to whoever happened to be around as Peewee. When he’d come home to visit from college and lay around the television at Mamá Lupe’s, throwing pillows at me when I was being a pest.
I wanted to ask him what his mom had said, but I didn’t.
As I felt his chest expand with one breath after another, hearing a sigh here, followed by another one there, I let this moment be enough for right then. I hesitated for a second before sliding my hands up and down the muscles along his back like I would have done to any of my friends or loved ones if they needed comfort. Because a third of my life ago, I would’ve given him a kidney if he’d needed it.
All right, I’d still give it to him, but I’d give it to just about anyone if they really needed it and only had me.
Things changed. People changed. Life changed. I knew it and accepted it.
His phone started ringing then, and he broke our connection and stepped away.
I met his gaze. “Let’s go. You can take your calls while I drive.”
Zac, who had seemed so happy to see me thirty minutes ago, stuck to nodding as a response, the rest of his features totally sober.
I sent my sister another text real quick before I got back into the car.
Me: Driving to Austin and back. I’ll let you know when I get home.
The man in my passenger seat talked, but only on the phone as he spoke to who I guessed were his agent, his manager—who was some guy named Trevor that I’d met once and thought he was a jerk, who was also the man who had texted him, now that I thought about it—and my cousin Boogie. He’d basically relayed to the first two that his grandpa was in the hospital and that he was going back home to be with him.
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back,” Zac had told Trevor, who, from what I had gathered, wasn’t very happy with his decision to leave Houston. I managed to hear bits and pieces of him replying to Zac using a sharp voice and saying words like “time” and “can’t afford to” and “what are you doing?” To which Zac responded by gritting his teeth and replying to him in an annoyed voice that “this was Paw-Paw” and “family comes first, Trev” and “yeah, he’s at the house; don’t worry about it.”
Their conversation had interested me the most, honestly. But I reminded myself again that it wasn’t my business what happened and I just wished Zac the best, like I always would.
Then he called someone who lived with him, based off the clues.
“Hey, I left the house. My grandpa is in the hospital, and I gotta get home to see him…. Yeah…. Look, kick everybody out when you’re ready. The cleanin’ crew will be there tomorrow; I called them this mornin’, so you’re gonna be good…. Yeah. All right. Sorry, Ceej…. Sure. Bye.”
After those calls, Zac hardly said anything, even when I stopped at a big gas station with a beaver logo on the way out of Houston. He just sat in the car and waited for me while I went in. I bought two sausages on a stick and a couple drinks, intending to share one with the man waiting in the car, but when I tried to hand him one, he gave me a tiny smile and shook that dark blond head of hair. He did take the bottle of water I’d got him.
The Zac I had known would have never turned down a sausage on a stick—or any food really. It was just a reminder that, in some ways, he wasn’t the same person. Even my cramping stomach agreed.
That or he had a really strict diet that didn’t include processed meats. Who the hell knew?
