We kept on standing there. With his chest inhaling and exhaling in front of mine. With his arm around the back of my neck and what might have been his cheek or his forehead resting against the top of my head. With the tips of our shoes touching. My purse resting on the top of them.
And I kept on moving my palm up and down his back, trying my best to soothe whatever the hell was bothering him.
What could have been half an hour later, he finally lifted his head off mine, and I took that moment to take a small step back, arching my neck upward to take in his features again.
He was already focused down on me, those baby blues stark against his face, his mouth still formed into a shape that wasn’t anywhere near the happy one I was used to.
I didn’t like it.
I reached up and set the tip of my finger on the end of his nose in the longest boop of all time. We didn’t need to talk about it. That was all right with me. “I’m having a crappy day and was going to order some delivery. Want to eat with me?”
Those blue eyes stayed on my face, and I was glad I’d gotten a little more sleep than usual the night before and that I hadn’t been stingy with makeup. Just because I realized we had no chance in hell for that to matter, I still cared. Whatever. I could take pride in my appearance.
He gave me another one of those half smiles that said everything and nothing at the same time.
I tapped my finger on his nose again. “I’ll let you pick what we eat if it’ll cheer you up.”
He didn’t laugh… but he did smile. A small but genuine one. A genuine one with something in its depths that made my little heart ache a bit at whatever was bothering him.
“I could use a chalupa,” he told me. “It’s been that kinda day.”
Chalupa? That was what he wanted?
I was probably going to regret it, but I still said, “Okay. The nearest one is too far for delivery, but I’ll drive.”
He made some kind of noise that almost sounded like a sniff. “It’ll taste better warm.”
I bet it would. “I’m gonna get the shits, so I hope it’ll be worth it.”
He blinked, and at the exact same time, we both burst out freaking laughing.
Zac covered his eyes with his palm as he muttered, “Jesus H. Christ, kiddo.”
He didn’t see me smiling as I poked him in the ribs, but I caught his own mouth beginning to form into one. All right, maybe everything wasn’t totally right in the world, but it was getting there.
Zac’s hand dropped from his face to settle briefly on my shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “Need to do somethin’ inside first?”
“Nah, we can go.”
I led the way down the stairs, asking, “Want me to drive after all or do you want to take your fancy-ass car?”
“Whatever you want.”
We could take mine. He seemed too distracted to be a good driver.
Zac didn’t say a word when I steered us toward my car and still said nothing when we got into it and I pulled out of the complex and onto the road. That was when the idea struck me. We glanced at each other when I stopped at a red light, and I wasn’t even a little sneaky when I slipped my phone out of my purse and tapped a few times at the screen. Just as the light turned green, I found what I was looking for and hit the little triangle at the bottom of the screen.
I waited a second.
Two seconds.
The speakers in my car finally picked up, and I still waited.
And my beloved Zac didn’t let me down.
It took two beats of the song to ring through my car before he snorted and the back of his hand nudged at my upper arm.
I grinned at him just as I hit the gas. Lifting my finger, I pointed at him and sang the last two words of the first bar, “…go girls.” The shoulder closest to him moved in time to the beat of the song I’d been forced to listen to like half a million times around him when I’d been younger. Zac snorted again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his fingers tapping along to the beat on his thigh, and I kept on singing, knowing I was pretty much yelling out the lyrics totally out of tune and not giving a single shit, especially not when he started laughing right before the chorus.
And then, then, this fool joined in.
At the top of his lungs, with that accent that felt like a hug, he sang all about forgetting he was a lady.
And together, almost at the top of our lungs, we sang about feeling wild, about short skirts, and mostly… about feeling like a woman.
We were both dying laughing at the end.
There were tears in my eyes, and he was leaning against the seat, both hands on top of his head as that lean torso puffed in and out with ragged breaths as he kept on cracking up.
“Oh, I needed that,” he wheezed, dragging those big palms down his face to wipe at his eyes and cheeks.
“Then get ready for the rest of my playlist, bubba,” I warned him right as the next song started.
And then, we were at it again. I did it for his sake. To get that smile back on his face. The light behind his eyes.
It worked.
We sang about just breathing, about someone named Jolene, and right as I was pulling the car into
