Shift
I knew it was too good to be true. I had known that since the very beginning of this thing with Zac. The fact that he was even attracted to me was a miracle; for me to expect anything more than that was just foolish.
When he took his ring off, I wanted to believe that it meant something. I wanted to believe that, even though I knew he truly couldn’t, he was making some kind of promise to me. I wanted to believe that we were together.
I knew it couldn’t last, but I didn’t expect it to end so quickly.
The next morning, I slipped back to my hotel room before Annalee returned and hurried to shower. No one suspected a thing, and the entire next day in Chicago was good. Zac didn’t even seem bothered when person after person asked about his ring. The lie that his necklace had broken fell easily off his lips. If anyone asked why he didn’t just wear the ring on his finger, I didn’t hear. We seemed to be in the clear.
Even though we didn’t have a lot of time together that night or during the drive to Kansas, things were good. I felt content. I should have known it was only a false sense of security.
As the day in Lawrence went on, I could feel something changing, but I wasn’t sure what. I became paranoid, convinced everyone was talking behind my back. I told myself that was silly. They didn’t have any reason to talk about me — except they would have, if they had known the truth. But surely no one knew, I told myself.
After the show, I rushed to load out, then headed to the bus to find Zac. I was sure he could ease my worries. When I found him, his back was to me and his cell phone was to his ear.
“I know… in about twenty–I know, I’ll be there as soon as.. we’ll just have to see, okay?”
His voice was clipped and impatient, and I could tell whoever he was talking to kept interrupting him. I knew I shouldn’t listen in, but before I could leave, he ended the call and spun around.
“Are you–oh. Colby.” The angry yet distant tone of his voice sent a shiver down my spine. “I’m going back to Tulsa.”
I frowned. “We all are, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m… I’ve got to leave now. Dad should be here soon. The man drives like he’s in a Nascar race, I swear. He’ll probably get a damn speeding ticket just to get here faster.”
He was rambling, and nothing he said made sense to me at all. I supposed he sensed this, because he suddenly stopped rambling. and stared right at me.
“Colby, she… she went into labor tonight. Early. I have to go.”
“For… for how long?” I asked. I had known, or should have known, that this was a possibility, yet it still made me feel sick.
He shrugged. “Until she has the baby. We’ve got tomorrow, and I can skip the walk Thursday… I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Okay,” I replied. “But you’ll be back.”
Zac gave me the faintest smile possible. “Of course I’ll be back.”
His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it quickly before shoving it back into his pocket and picking up the suitcase I hadn’t even noticed sitting on the couch. He took a few steps closer to me and smiled, but didn’t say a word. I noticed his ring was back around his neck like it hadn’t ever been anywhere else.
As Zac walked off the bus, I knew he was wrong. He might be back, but things between us wouldn’t be the same. The Zac I’d thought was falling for me too was long gone.
I spent the next day in a drunken haze. I wasn’t working, so I didn’t feel unprofessional for doing it. Taylor seemed to know it was what I needed when he asked if I wanted to come to Oktoberfest and help with their beer promo. The pointed look he gave me said he knew I would be doing more drinking than promoting.
If it had been up to me, I would have avoided everyone with the last name Hanson entirely. It was all too much and reminded me far too much of Zac. At least I got to spend the night with Annalee’s family. Getting trashed in the middle of a festival where I could count the people I knew on one hand helped, too.
I wanted to completely lose myself in the crowd. Maybe I could just stay drunk. I couldn’t stay in Tulsa, though. It was the last place on earth I wanted to be. And that was why I kept sampling more and more of the surprising amount of local beers Tulsa had to offer.
I had just started on a cup of cider when I felt a hand closer over mine. The hand, which I slowly realized belonged to Taylor, eased the cup away from my mouth.
“Why don’t you slow down a bit?” He asked, pulling the cup from my hand and taking a drink from it himself.
“Why don’t you?” I shot back, hating how slurred my words were.
Taylor chuckled as he lowered the cup from his lips. “What do you need to get so drunk for anyway?”
I narrowed my eyes, or at least I tried to. “Like you don’t know.”
Taylor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. I was tired of looking at him and listening to him. I grabbed my cup from his hand and turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said. “Look, I shouldn’t know. I wish I didn’t, and I’m really trying to stay ignorant just to save my own ass. Anyway, I’m not unsympathetic, but what did you expect? This was going to happen.”
“I’m not dumb. I just… I don’t need the reminder. I don’t need his marriage and his happy little family thrown in my face.”
Taylor’s face hardened. “Get used to it. It sucks, but you knew his baggage.”
“Yeah. I did,” I replied, then downed the rest of my cider. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“I know,” Taylor replied. His lips were pursed like he was contemplating saying something else, but he didn’t.
Instead he bought the next round, and we drank together in silence. I wasn’t happy with it, but it seemed we had come to some sort of understanding.
In St. Louis, everything was different. The biggest difference, right away, was Zac’s absence. Now that we were back on the road, I felt the loss of his presence even more acutely, and I hated it. More than that, I hated that I both missed him and wished he would stay gone.
Of course, he couldn’t stay gone, no matter how long his wife was in labor. Everyone was on edge, worried that he wouldn’t see things that way and wouldn’t come back for the concert. Isaac and Taylor were adamant every time they spoke to him on the phone that they weren’t going to cancel the show, but the hours still ticked by with no Zac in sight.
My paranoid side wondered if Kate was somehow doing this on purpose. Of course she wasn’t in control of when she went into labor, but I knew from the phone calls I’d shamelessly eavesdropped on that she was insisting upon a natural birth. The baby would be born when it was born, even if it meant Zac had to rush to make it to the concert on time. I didn’t think that was especially fair; she should have known he had certain commitments that she had to work around, not him. That was just part of being his wife, wasn’t it?
What would she have to gain from keeping him there with her, though? I didn’t think she knew about me, but I did know she was the jealous type. She would most certainly want to do whatever she could to monopolize his time if she had even the slightest suspicion that he was doing something he shouldn’t when she wasn’t around.
But maybe I was just being too paranoid. Of course I thought the worst of her, because nothing Zac had told me about her was good. He had barely even looked happy when he left early for Tulsa. How could I assume anything good about his wife when Zac hardly even seemed excited about joining her for the birth of their third child?
Still, I felt horrible for all the thoughts I was having. No matter what, they wouldn’t go away. The fact that Zac was gone all day didn’t help. It just gave me more and more time to dwell on my awful thoughts while everyone else was nearing panic mode over his absence. It was a bad day for all of us, but I selfishly thought it was the worst for me.
When he did finally arrive, I wasn’t even aware of it. All afternoon and evening, we had been repeatedly told to continue the normal schedule; if we had to delay, we would do that when it became necessary. Until I saw Walker wandering around during the opening act, I had no clue at all that he and Zac had arrived. It hurt that no one had told me, but why would they? No one but Taylor knew what Zac’s presence meant to me. I wasn’t even sure that Zac himself knew.
There was a different energy to Zac’s performance that night. It was a seismic shift in my world and his, and I wondered if the audience could feel it, too. I knew without a doubt what it meant. Zac and I were over. A day and a half in Tulsa had reminded him what he was jeopardizing by being with me. Even if his marriage wasn’t perfect, of course he would choose her and their now three children over me. I was a fool to ever think otherwise.
Although I knew it was probably in my best interests to just avoid Zac entirely, I also knew that I couldn’t. It would have been nearly impossible on the tour bus, and just because I should didn’t mean that I wanted to. Still, I didn’t get to see him until after the concert. As I loaded out for the night, I tried to ignore him sitting on the bus couch with his cell phone glued to his ear, but it was impossible. The ring around his neck and the hospital bracelet on his wrist seemed to be taunting me, and it was all made even worse by the snippets of conversation that I caught.
I knew I was being childish, and I knew I had no right to be jealous. But jealous didn’t really describe how I felt. Seeing Zac turn on a dime and so quickly and easily give his wife all of himself again made me feel sick. I felt betrayed, not just by him, but my own heart that had convinced me there was something real between the two of us.
I felt sick because I knew I had no right to wish I was the one he was talking to so sweetly. That would never be me. I would never have his love, his family, his life. I wouldn’t have anything of him but a few sordid memories, and even that was more than I should have had.
I did my best to ignore him and focus on my job, but I could tell by the look on his face when I finally finished and settled into the bus for the night that he knew I’d been listening. The look he gave me then… it was like he was a completely different person. He’d seemed so happy on stage, but when he looked at me, all of that was gone. It was worse than the angry glares he’d given me at first. I’d come to understand—or believe, at least—that those were a manifestation of his anger at himself for being attracted to me. Now, though, it just seemed like he wished I would go away. He looked at me like I was an annoying little insect that he wanted to squash. He looked at me like I was nothing to him.
I supposed I was nothing to him. I supposed that was all I’d ever been—at most, just a distraction and a way to quench a certain desire. But even that had been about my body, not me.
We didn’t speak to each other at all. I had nothing to say to him. Thankfully, other people started filtering onto the bus soon and filling up our awkward silence. Once others were around, though, Zac changed again. His face lit up and he was shoving his phone in their face to show them photos of his new son. He didn’t try to show me. He didn’t even acknowledge me.
While everyone else was crowded around Zac, I slipped down the hallway and into my bunk, where I cried myself to sleep like a stupid heartbroken teenager.