Where Do We Go From Here
It took me a few days to work up the courage to go back to the 3CG office. I had plenty of shifts to work at Sit and Spin, anyway, so it wasn’t like I was hurting for money. But if I had to act like I needed the cash and wasn’t just going back to see Zac again, I would.
Truthfully, I was a little scared to see him. I didn’t trust him and I didn’t trust myself around him. But most of all, I didn’t trust his wife and what she would do if she began to think she was really going to lose him to me. I didn’t pretend to understand her or her motivations. She was even more of a mystery to me than Zac, but the biggest difference was that she could ruin me. Zac wouldn’t ever intentionally hurt me… I hoped.
Of course I couldn’t stay away forever, though. I never could. A few days later, I headed back to the 3CG office. It was really getting into shape now and was practically bustling with new workers they’d brought in to get things running. The door now bore their logo, though the window was covered with a heavy white shade to keep their privacy. Inside, the smell of fresh paint was thick in the air and people were milling around, so busy that they hardly even noticed my arrival.
“Colby!” Except for Taylor, of course. “It’s about time you came back.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Where’s you-know-who? Is he here?”
“Yeah,” Taylor replied, nodding. “He’s in the studio, setting up his kit. You can head on back there; he won’t mind.”
I wasn’t sure that I believed him that Zac would be fine with my sudden appearance, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to go in and say hello to him. In general, though, I thought it might be best to keep a little distance. But a few minutes alone couldn’t ruin everything, could it?
I walked to the back of the office where their studio was located and nudged the door open fully. It hadn’t been shut or locked, so I knew Zac wasn’t recording or anything. He was sitting cross legged in the floor with his back to me, fiddling with the stand for one of his toms, and he didn’t notice my presence at all. Faking a cough to get his attention, I took a few steps closer.
“Hey,” he mumbled, then actually turned to look at me. “Oh, Colby. Hey! Nobody felt the need to tell me you were coming by today.”
“Last minute decision,” I said, taking a seat beside him. “Can I help?”
Zac shrugged and picked up a fancy, silver electronic cigarette that had been propped up on top of an empty drum box. I gave him a wary look and he shrugged again. “Ike was the one with the no vaping in the studio rule. And Ike’s not here.”
“Since when do you vape anyway?” I asked.
“Since somebody keeps getting onto my case for smoking actual cigarettes,” Zac replied, then took a long drag on the little piece of machinery. He puffed out a cloud of citrus scented smoke before speaking again. “Anyway, this stuff smells good, so she can’t complain. Much.”
I hadn’t wanted to talk about Kate, but now that Zac had mentioned her, I thought about what Taylor had said to me a few days prior. His words had stuck in my mind and I hadn’t been sure what to think about them or how to bring it up with Zac.
I supposed it was now or never.
“Zac,” I said softly. “Look, umm… Taylor said something the other day that got me thinking, and I was just… have you cheated before? Before me, I mean? Were there other women?”
He nodded softly, then took another puff. “It wasn’t like… something I just did for fun. We were fighting or broken up or something. I always gave myself an excuse, I guess. And it was never an ongoing affair. Just something discrete to… to get it out of my system, I guess. I’m not proud of it.”
“But you would define this as an ongoing affair?” I asked, and he nodded again. “Why now? Why me?”
“Why does anybody fall in love with anybody?” He shot back.
“If I knew the answer to that, I could have saved us a lot of trouble,” I replied.
Zac fell silent for a moment, then wrapped his arm around me and pulled me closer. “That tattoo on your back. Is that new?”
“Yeah,” I said, letting my head fall against his chest. “I got it at Thanksgiving.”
“Is that what you really think? Or do you just like the quote—it’s from Shakespeare, right?”
“Romeo and Juliet,” I replied. “And you ought to know; you wrote the song. I don’t know if it’s what I think. Maybe. I mean, we can act like admitting we’re in love changes everything, but you know it doesn’t. It doesn’t change a thing.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But what can I do?”
“You know I’ve got an answer for that. But you won’t like it.”
He nodded, then kissed the top of my head. “I know. But Colbs, I… I mean, what do you do when one person wants out and the other wants to save face and insists they can save the marriage?”
“You want out?” I echoed. “You really mean it?”
“I told her last night,” he nearly whispered. “She just ignored it. It’s not like I’ve ever said those exact words before, but they were certainly implied. But I said it and she ignored it. Who knows what she’ll do if I say it again.”
“Maybe she doesn’t think you mean it,” I suggested. “I mean, if you’ve cheated before… and you always go back to her… you think she’ll really believe it? It probably just sounds like an empty threat to her.”
“I guess it does,” Zac replied. “So again, I ask, where do I go from here?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be older and wiser? Why ask me?”
Zac chuckled and kissed the top of my head again. “Sometimes I forget you’re younger than me. Avery’s still my baby sister, you know, and you’re the same age as her. But you’re clearly both grown women, and you… I don’t know. I think you had to grow up too fast, probably. Not in the same way I did, but it makes me forget that you’re younger.”
“My last boyfriend—besides Asher, I mean—was older than you. Maybe it’s a pattern with me.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to admit that, but I did. That was really all Zac needed to know about my stupid affair with my college piano tutor; it hadn’t been that tawdry, but it had clearly been ill advised.
“I usually like older women, too,” Zac replied. With a smirk, he added, “I guess you’re the exception to a lot of my rules.”
“I’m not sure if I should be proud of that or not,” I said.
Zac chuckled, then nudged my chin upward for a kiss. I practically melted into him, happy to have our conversation end on a strangely pleasant note when it hadn’t been a pleasant conversation. But with his lips against mine and his tongue running along my bottom lip, I could forget about any unpleasant conversation in the world. I could forget everything.
He eased me backward, never breaking the kiss, until I was laying on the studio floor underneath him. I ran my hands through his hair then under his shirt. I didn’t know how far he planned to take this, in such a public place, but I wasn’t sure I could say no to whatever he had in mind. However, he broke the kiss only moments later, burying his head in my hair and heaving a sigh.
“You know, I told myself I’d give you a little space since your wife was back in town. So much for that,” I said.
Zac just chuckled into my hair.
“I should know by now that we can’t stay away from each other, huh?” I continued.
“That’s putting it mildly,” he mumbled.
Before either of us could say anything else, the studio door opened again. Taylor appeared in the doorway, frozen in mid-step, his eyes wide.
“Well, I can see a lot of work is getting done in here,” he said. His voice was monotone enough that I couldn’t tell at all how he felt about what he had witnessed.
“Tay, it’s not what—oh hell, just don’t tell Kate or your wife about it.” Zac groaned as he rolled off of me, once again acting so much younger than the nearly thirty year old man he actually was.
“Yeah, whatever,” Taylor mumbled, then walked back out of the room.
Somehow, I had a feeling I would be able to get to him better than Zac would, and so I stood up and scurried after him. I caught up with him just around the next corner toward their conference room. “Tay, hey—wait up.”
He spun around and raised an eyebrow at me, but didn’t speak.
“Look, I don’t really get why you would even care what you just saw. I mean, okay, we shouldn’t have been doing anything like that in the studio, but…”
“I don’t care,” he replied. “But the more I know about it, the more shit I’ll be in with my wife when this all blows up. And it will blow up. It already is blowing up, if that conversation at lunch the other day is anything to judge by.”
“What the hell was that about anyway?” I asked, figuring it was the only chance I’d have to possibly get answers about that strange encounter.
Taylor shrugged. “Maybe she really was trying to help. She’s honestly not that bad of a gossip, no matter how she seems. Or maybe she was just frustrated after hearing Kate talk about it so she needed to get it off her chest. I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it after you left, actually. I’m glad we didn’t, because I don’t know whose side I would have taken.”
“Why do you even have to take sides?” I asked.
“He’s my brother,” Taylor said. “And he married my wife’s best friend. And I happen to be kind of fond of you, hot mess that you are, too. So I’m being pulled in a lot of directions here and I’m just trying to make the best of it.”
That shut me up. I knew this affair was effecting everyone, but I only knew it in theory. I hadn’t actually stopped to think about what that really meant.
“Let’s get back to work, huh?” Taylor said, his voice going monotone again. “And I’ll pretend I didn’t see anything. It’s easier for all of us that way.”
I nodded mechanically as Taylor turned away. Once he was gone, I walked back to the studio where Zac was still sitting in the floor working on his drum set like nothing had happened at all. Only the furrowing on his brow suggested that anything at all was wrong, but even that could have just been a side effect of how hard he was working.
I shouldn’t have sat back down next to him. I should have kept my distance like I said I would. But I rarely did what I should.