“I mean, it’s not like there’s much you could have done.”
He waves his fork in the air to dismiss me. “We could have flown back.”
Normally, I’d say something snarky about how superfluous that would have been. I’m blaming it on the painkillers, but all I do instead is stare down at my pasta while heat pricks the corners of my eyes.
“Um, thanks,” I force out. “That’s really nice.”
I shove a huge forkful of food in my mouth as a distraction and pull myself together before looking up at him again.
He’s staring at me like I just announced an alien has taken over my body.
“It was fine, though,” I say after chewing and swallowing. “Like I said, I had a friend here.”
“Was it that blonde girl who’s...um...”
“Really hot?” I finish.
His neck starts to flush. Ingrid’s appeal draws in more than the ladies. She’s basically a ubiquitous sex magnet that could probably be used for supreme evil if she fell under control of the wrong forces.
“No, not her,” I answer as I try not to laugh at how flustered Zach is. “She’s in Toronto with her band right now.”
“Ah. Cool. So, DeeDee said something really funny on the plane back. There was this guy in front of us, and...”
I listen to the rest of his story while contemplating just how absolutely in love with DeeDee he is. The dude can’t even unintentionally hint that he finds another girl attractive without feeling compelled to talk about how great she is.
It’s nice to hear about two happy people doing happy things, and honestly, I missed having Zach around. Heart to hearts aren’t exactly the norm for us, but we’ve come a long way from when he first moved in and spent every night being scared I’d kill him in his sleep.
“Here, let me take that.” He grabs our empty bowls after we’re finished eating and heads to the kitchen to wash them.
The apartment is so small that the kitchen is really just the back wall of the living room, so I barely have to raise my voice over the sound of the water to keep the conversation going.
“Hey, um, Zach. So...you’re a guy.”
He looks over his shoulder. “Indeed. I am.”
“Right, so...”
I’ve been waffling on the idea of asking this all night. On the one hand, I amnotthe kind of person who opens up and asks for advice. On the other, I already need more help from people than I’m comfortable with. A little more won’t kill me.
Probably.
I just feel so stuck running circles in my own head. Talking to Zach will at least be a new direction, and I’m sure I could put the fear of being murdered back in him if I really needed to.
“I have a question...about a guy.”
Zach freezes in the middle of putting the bowls back in the cupboard. “Oh.”
He finishes up and comes back to the couch. I can feel my face burning from just the simple admission. Zach is squinting at me like he’s waiting for the punch line.
“I mean, you don’t have to—I just, uh...I mean...” I trail off into silence.
“I’m very happy to help,” he says, his expression softening. “You know, I could also ask DeeDee to come over, if that would be better for y—”
“No,” I interrupt. “I mean, DeeDee’s great, but she’ll just, I don’t know, want to paint my nails or something.”
He chuckles. “Or dye your hair. That’s her thing.”
“Yeah, remember that time she convinced me to let her temporarily dye my hair blue within like an hour of meeting me?”
