Instead of following the walkway that led around to the back of the house and his own entrance, Zack banged on the front door. He realized only belatedly that the sound was too urgent.
From behind the wood, he heard Marie's irritated grumble. "If you think a nun's gonna be alarmed by the end of the world, you're knocking on the wrong door."
Zack chuckled guiltily to himself.
The door opened. Marie, in a bathrobe and holding a coffee mug, stared at him. "Oh, it's you."
"Were you expecting someone better?" Zack asked.
"I don't know. Depends what you've got to say."
Zack felt impossibly grateful for her kindness, masked as it was with brusqueness. It was a language he understood. "Do you have anyone else due to take the apartment?"
She narrowed her eyes at him and took a sip from her mug. "Why? Are you procrastinating writing your article?”
"No! I mean, yes, a little, but... can I come in?"
"You know nuns don't do Confession, right? And also that I'm not one anymore?"
"Yes, but you do keep bringing it up. Also, you’re a gossip with good taste in bourbon and that will do?"
Marie tipped her head to the side in acknowledgement and offered Zack the mug.
He took a grateful sip and stepped into her house.
"So what's going on?” Marie asked, leading the way to her kitchen. “I can't imagine it's a sudden uncontrollable love for the Twin Cities."
"It’s a little bit that,” Zack admitted.
“But not all?” she asked.
Zack shook his head.
Marie flipped on her coffee maker and dumped the old grounds in the trash. “I’m too old for small talk, and it's too late for the same. ’Fess."
"I don’t want to leave.”
"Because?" She drew out the words, leading him, but Zack had to say all these things aloud sometime.
"Because I don’t. I went out to Katie and Brendan’s farm for dinner tonight, and I could breathe there, and I sure the hell can't in Miami. Sorry,” he added, belatedly.
"What part of ex-nun are you not getting?" Marie asked as she refilled the coffeemaker with both water and fresh grounds.
"All the parts. Which is kind of why I want to stay."
"That requires an explanation,” Marie said firmly.
Zack slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table. “I’ve got enough material for ten articles about this place. The people, the atmosphere, the work, the stakes, Katie’s ridiculous cows. I could write it in my sleep at this point. The article’s not the problem. It’s this place. I don’t want to let it go. Or the people. Every single person I've met up here is completely bizarre and I kind of love all of them. Brendan and his goofy all-American cliche. Katie, who’s like a wild cat who mostly remembers how to be a normal human but only by trying really hard.”
“A not inaccurate assessment.” The coffeemaker started percolating, and Marie slid into the chair across from his.
“There’s whatever your deal is. And Charlotte, and the juniors, and Huy who I met for the first time tonight.” He paused. “And Aaron.”
“Oh yes,” Marie said, her gaze far too knowing. “Aaron.”
“And then there’s me.” Zack felt unaccountably emotional. “You have all welcomed me, in your ways, and made this the best place I’ve been for a long time.”
“You haven’t even been here two months,” Marie pointed out.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Mmmmmmmm.”
"You don't believe me. And you haven't told me if the apartment is available,” Zack said.
"It's available. But nothing you've told me is gossip. I was hoping you’d have gossip. Which is why I let you have some of my bourbon."
Zack sucked in a breath. What he had to tell surely qualified as gossip. And was probably necessary for Marie to understand the rest of his choices, questionable and otherwise. “I kissed Aaron.”
“Of course you did. I bet he kissed you too.” There was something almost pitying in Marie’s eyes.
“I know. I know.”
"Oh, darling,” Marie said. “I don't think you do.”
ZACK RETURNED TO HIS own apartment full of both relief and urgency. While he had solved several of his problems—including wanting to kiss Aaron and staying on in the Twin Cities—he had also created several new ones for himself.
There was no way around it: he was wildly compromised when it came to the article he was writing for Sammy, and there was no way to become less so. He couldn’t undo either his actions or his feelings when it came to Aaron. The only truly ethical thing to do would be to withdraw from the assignment. That, however, would leave Sammy in the lurch and make his own life even more of a disaster than it already was. If he couldn’t bring himself to extricate himself from the situation, his only other option was to uncomplicate the situation as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
Zack was going to write this article tonight, send it to Sammy, and never confess to when, exactly, he and Aaron had first kissed. Was that sketchy? Sure. But life was full of sketchiness. If anyone was keeping an account of his sins, he rather imagined this one wouldn’t even rank.
There were, of course, issues with this brilliant idea. It was already after midnight, and Zack was supposed to be up early to be at the rink, and Sauer, who was supposed to make up half his article, was still perpetually unavailable. Oh well. He’d write what he could and let Sammy sort out the rest.
An hour later, Zack had written and deleted a half-dozen openings. None of them had been bad; they just hadn’t been about what he’d been sent here to write about. They hadn’t been about Aaron, who he was infatuated with, or Sauer, who he had decided was a dick and who he kind of hated. They’d been about himself: His own strange path that had brought him to Twin Cities
