A few seconds later, he’s barging back into the room.
“I have a boner. I can’t be out in the hallway with a boner in my parents’ house. That’s just wrong.”
“How do you still have a boner?”
“Because I was about to come all over you, Delia! That’s how! You can’t be like, ‘Boner be gone!’ and it just goes away. That’s not how dicks work—they don’t deflate on command.” He throws his hands up in the air and begins pacing the short length of the room.
I can’t help but laugh again, truly amused by how worked up he is.
“You done?” I ask, rising up on my knees and beckoning him my way.
He makes his way over to me, his bottom lip sticking out. “Maybe, but I think I’m traumatized.”
“I’m sure you are. Now, why don’t you give me a tour of the rest of the house? Will that distract you from your trauma?”
He shuffles his feet. “It’s worth a shot.”
I roll my eyes, climbing off the bed and taking him by the hand. “Come on, you big baby.”
He scoops Marshmallow up and deposits him in his cage, glaring at him the entire time.
We exit the room and Zach leads me downstairs.
“The rest of the upper level is bedrooms, and I am not showing you the room where my parents have sex.”
“Zach!”
“What? I’m just saying”—he shudders—“hard pass for me.”
We round the bottom of the stairs and hook a left.
“This is the living room. We don’t use it.”
“We do too use it!” Rose calls from the kitchen.
Zach eyes me and shakes his head in the negative. “It’s all for show.”
“There are no pictures on the wall. I figured there’d be photos of you and your brother.”
“No one wants his ugly mug on their wall.”
“Zach…”
“Fine. We don’t do pictures around here. I know homes are typically full of them, but my family is big on the ‘no posed moments’ thing. Every now and then we’ll snap a candid shot, but we tend to live in the moment most of the time.”
“I think…I think I kind of like that. It’s sweet, but what happens if one of you…”
“Passes?”
I nod. “Don’t you want that keepsake?”
Zach shrugs. “I guess? I have two photos of my mother, plus my memories. It doesn’t sound like much, but I cherish them more than anything. It kind of forces me to keep her in my heart, keep her in my mind so I don’t forget, you know?”
“You’re going to make me sad, and I don’t want to be sad.”
“I’m sorry. Let’s keep going. I’ll show you our real living room. Maybe my dad’s back there and you can meet him.”
We travel through the next room, the dining area. Rose has the table already set and I have to chuckle at her arrangement.
