Zach tells me to check my phone, and I find it in my Maps history with a bit of help from him. The letters are a little blurry.
“Okay, ride will be here in five minutes. I’ll wait outside with you.”
I get up from my chair and wobble in my heels, grabbing the edge of the table before I can fall over. “You’re not coming in the Uber?”
He gets up and takes my arm. “Well, I wasn’t going to, but seeing as you couldn’t read your own address and almost couldn’t stand up, I think I’d better.”
The wedding is at some big warehouse that’s been converted into an event space. Zach says it will take about half an hour to get to my place. I must pass out pretty fast in the car, because it feels like I’ve only just put my seatbelt on by the time we arrive.
“Hey.” Zach’s whisper just above my ear wakes me up. “Time to get out.”
My head is on his shoulder. I blink the sleep out of my eyes. It’s dark in the car, but the streetlight outside is shining on his face, and he’s staring at me like I’m the prettiest, sweetest thing he’s ever seen.
I won’t lie about it; a lot of people stare at me, but nobody stares at me like that.
I let him help me out of the car and then hunt around for my keys.
“Will you come up with me?” I ask as I jam the front door key in. “It’s just Valérie is at her boyfriend’s place tonight, and I...I just hate going into an empty apartment alone. I know it’s stupid, but it freaks me out.”
“Hey.” He grabs the edge of the door when I swing it open. “It’s not stupid, and of course I’ll come up.”
Our place is on the fourth floor, and there’s no elevator, so we trudge up the stairs, me in front and Zach close behind.
“Moving must have been a bitch,” he comments.
“You swore!” I whoop.
He sighs. “I do swear sometimes.”
“Itwasa bitch. Valérie and some of her friends helped, and so did Monroe and her boyfriend. I don’t have much big furniture, but the bed and stuff was hard to get up here.”
I don’t say it, but I missed him so much that day. I was planning on inviting him before everything went to shit between us. It was a fun afternoon. The moving didn’t take long, and after, we all sat around drinking beer with the windows open, breathing in the warm breeze like we couldn’t get enough of it.
People go a little crazy in Montreal during winter. Every year, the whole city starts to believe that spring will never arrive again, and then when it does, all everybody wants to do is dance around and hug each other. Even when we were hauling my bed frame up four flights of narrow, creaky stairs, we were laughing, but every smile felt forced when I was thinking about Zach.
“This is us,” I announce. It takes me a couple tries to get the key in. I flip some lights on after stepping through the door.
It’s not much, just a tiny two bedroom, but Valérie is very clean and organized and has cute decorations like plants and little string lights shaped like turtles. It always smells like her vanilla candle in here, even when she hasn’t had it on for a while.
“This is nice,” Zach says after taking off his shoes and walking into the living room. “Nicer than me and Paige’s place.”
“Ben, you and Paige both decorate like men.”
He stops in the middle of the living room and looks around, like he’s wondering if he should sit.
“Zach.” I’m still standing at the edge of the little front hallway that leads to the kitchen.
“Yeah?” His voice has gone all raspy and quiet.
“What are we gonna do?”
I don’t have to explain. He knows I’m asking what we’re going to do aboutthis, about us.
He closes his eyes for a second and sighs. “We’ll figure it out, but right now, you’re going to drink about three glasses of water, take some Advil, and head to bed.”
I lean against the wall and laugh. “Okay,Mom.”
“You’ll thank me in the morning. Here. Sit on the couch.”
