More Native To The Heart
Since Taylor had to work Tuesday evening, we decided to wait until Wednesday afternoon to leave. We would pick him up at his apartment after eating lunch in the food court before it closed for the holiday weekend. Dad said it was okay to let Zac drive my car, since it was bigger than Zac’s Cougar and Taylor’s Cavalier put together. I had never driven to Arlington before, although I had been to DC a few times with my family. I was terrified of driving there myself, but I knew my Jeep was in good hands with Zac.
When we pulled into Taylor’s parking lot, he was already outside, hauling an impossibly large suitcase out the door, with two more bags slung over his shoulder. It looked like he might actually crumple under the weight of all of it.
“He does know we’re just going to stay the weekend, right?” I asked, hurrying to open the back of my Jeep before Taylor reached it.
Zac laughed. “Oh, he knows. But you know how he is with clothes. I bet one of those bags is just for scarfs and boots.”
“I heard that,” Taylor huffed, somehow managing to hoist his industrial sized suitcase – seriously, he could have hauled a body in that thing – into the back of the car without any help.
“Yet you’re not denying it,” Zac replied, crossing behind the car to take the keys from me.
Taylor didn’t even bother dignifying that with a response, probably because he knew Zac was right. Instead, he stuffed his other bags in the car and took his seat in the back. I settled into the passenger seat, Zac into the drivers’, and within seconds we were on the road.
The drive only took about three hours, which wasn’t all that bad considering the traffic. I guess we missed the worst of it. Still, we sat in bumper to bumper traffic on the beltway long enough for Zac and Taylor to drill me on all their siblings’ names. I still wasn’t confident that I would remember all of them, but at least it helped to pass the time.
When Zac told me he lived in Arlington, I had expected something urban and sterile, or maybe an old fashioned building from the capital’s past. He hadn’t explained that while he did, technically, live in Arlington County, he actually lived in a suburb that wasn’t all that different from the ones I was used to at home. Maybe it was a little fancier. Okay, a lot fancier. As we drove through a maze of nearly identical houses, I couldn’t help wondering if politicians and important people lived in the same neighborhood.
We finally rolled to stop in front of an impressively large house – although I supposed I shouldn’t have been that impressed by the size, considering how large their family was. They would certainly need a lot of room for that many kids. Still, it kind of took my breath away. It wasn’t one of those ridiculous gated mansions or anything, but it was certainly fancier than even a chemistry professor’s salary could buy.
As we walked to the door, bags in hand (and, in Taylor’s case, dragging behind us), I turned to Zac and asked, “What did you say your dad did, again?”
“Something governmental,” Zac replied with a shrug. “He’s not a politician or anything, but it’s still a pretty cushy gig.”
“I’ll say it is,” I said, glancing up at the fairly imposing house in front of us.
Zac nudged the doorbell with his shoulder, given that he didn’t have a free hand to dig his keys out of his pocket. Within seconds, a smiling woman with long blonde hair swung the door open and wrapped Zac up into a tight hug. She pulled him into the house, murmuring something about how she was certain he had lost weight, then turned her attention to Taylor, who struggled to balance all his bags and hug her at the same time. From the obvious resemblance, and her actions, I had no doubt this was their mother.
After doting on her sons for a while, she finally turned to me. “And you’re Victoria, I suppose?”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Or Toria. I go by both.”
“Well, you can call me Diana, and it’s very good to meet you,” she replied, then turned back to Zac. “She’s even prettier than you said.”
Zac blushed bright red, and I was quite certain from the way my cheeks burned that I looked the same. I thought I heard a little snicker from Taylor, but he quickly covered it with a terribly fake cough. Diana – it felt a little strange to call her that, but who was I to argue? – escorted us through the house, pausing in the living room to rattle off the names of the other children who were milling about. With Taylor and Zac’s crash course on the way over, I thought I would manage to remember which of them was which. I might get the girls mixed up, but I felt fairly confident that I would remember that the boy planted behind the computer was Mackie.
Diana continued ushering us through the house, giving me a very quick version of the grand tour. The boys’ bedrooms were all on the second floor and I was utterly shocked that Taylor was able to drag his suitcase all the way up the stairs. Somehow, though, he made it. He and Zac headed straight for their bedroom, Zac grumbling all the way about how he did not like having to share again.
Directly across from their room was the one I would be staying in, Diana explained. They didn’t have a guest room, as such, but Isaac’s old bedroom mostly served that purpose, when he wasn’t visiting and using it. It was mostly devoid of any decorations that would give away the fact that it once belonged to a teenage boy, though. Diana assured me there was plenty of room in the drawers for my clothes, and left me to unpack with one last request that I come downstairs and find her if I needed anything. Once she was gone, I opened my small – especially compared to Taylor’s – suitcase and began sorting some clothes out to put in the empty dresser drawers.
“Getting settled in?” Zac asked from the doorway. I spun around to see him leaning casually against the door frame. “She’s kind of talkative. Sorry about that.”
I laughed. “Must be where you get it from.”
“Must be,” he replied with a grin, stepping into the room. “Mom’s gonna be busy making stuff for tomorrow all night, so we’re kind of on our own for dinner. Taylor was thinking about taking her car out and picking up pizza for everyone. You wanna go or just stay here? I’m good either way.”
“We can stay. I’m kinda tired of sitting in cars today,” I replied, shutting my suitcase even though it was still half full of clothes. Unpacking for just a few days seemed kind of pointless, anyway.
Zac grinned. “That’s what I was thinking, too. Wanna hang out in my room, though?”
“Sure,” I replied.
Zac turned and walked out of the room without me, although I was confident I could make it across the hall to his room without a guide. The door was wide open and he was already sprawled out on one of the beds when I walked in. The walls were dark blue, which matched the plaid blankets on each of the two twin beds on either side of the door. There were two matching desks on the far wall, framing the window. I didn’t have to ask to know that the one covered in paints and drawing pads was Zac’s. The room was far cleaner than I would have expected from teenage boys, but I figured their mom had cleaned it up before they came home to visit.
Zac patted an impossibly small spot on the bed next to him, and I eyed it suspiciously for a second before laying down, immediately cuddling up to his side – partially because it was my favorite place to be and partially because he hadn’t left me a lot of room. He picked up a remote from somewhere and began flipping through the channels on a tv that was perched on top of a chest on the opposite wall with the desks.
It wasn’t long before Zac abandoned the idea of watching television in favor of, well, me. His lips found their way to my neck first, his fingers tracing little patterns along my side. His voice low, he whispered in my ear, “I wish you could stay in here with me. Or I could stay over there with you. Whatever. As long as we were alone…”
I felt myself blushing again. “In your parents house, Zac? Really?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. But I guess it is kinda…”
“Disrespectful?” I offered.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Besides, they’re pretty conservative. If they knew what we’ve done, that I stay in your room like every night, or if they knew about Tay…”
The way he frowned and nibbled on his bottom lip let me know that he wished he hadn’t started that unfinished statement about Taylor. It hadn’t even occurred to me to think about what their parents might have said about Taylor; I had been so concerned with Zac’s reaction, with how Taylor himself was coping, and with Whitley, that I didn’t even think about all the other ramifications.
As if he had known we were talking about him, Taylor chose that moment to walk in with two large pizza boxes and three Dr. Peppers perched on top. I thought it was funny that even now, away from his job, Taylor was still waiting on us. But I wasn’t really in the mood for jokes, so I didn’t point it out.
The entire time we ate, Zac and Taylor were already discussing what they wanted to eat the next day. It sounded like Diana cooked a real feast for Thanksgiving, although I couldn’t help thinking any meal in that house would have to be a feast just to ensure that no one starved. It was still ridiculous to me that Zac and Tay could talk about their next meal while they were still eating the current one. Again, I didn’t remark. Something about Zac’s comments earlier – both about wanting to do that in his parents’ house and about Taylor – had unsettled me.
By the time we had eaten our fill and sat around chatting for a while, it had gotten pretty late. I bid the two of them goodnight and went back to my room to get ready for bed. My grand tour earlier had included the bathroom down the hall that all the boys shared, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as gross as an all boys bathroom sounded like it would be.
I showered as quickly as I could, just in case one of the boys wanted to use the bathroom, too. After nearly a full semester of college, I was getting pretty good at taking quick showers. It seemed almost unbelievable that I’d been in college for nearly an entire semester, I thought, as I hurried back to my room and began drying my hair. An entire semester. So much had changed, yet somehow it seemed like it was just yesterday that it had all begun.
I could still remember, so vividly, the first day I saw Zac in Starbucks. He hadn’t caught my eye in class, but from that day on, he had been a constant in my life. And now I was in his house, spending a holiday with his family. It was enough to make my head spin, but in a good way.
With my pajamas on and my hair dried, I settled into bed for the night. The mattress was far more comfortable than the one in my dorm room and the sheets smelled freshly washed. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long at all before I was drifting off to sleep.
Just as I felt sleep beginning to take me over, a soft, almost imperceptible knock came at the door. The door crept open a tiny bit and I rolled over to see who it was, even though I was certain I already knew.
“Toria?” Zac whispered, his body silhouetted by the hallway light. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” I replied, my own voice nearly a whisper too.
I saw him step into the room, but his actions became a mystery once he had shut the door and plunged us back into darkness. Seconds passed, and soon I felt the familiar feeling of the mattress sinking under his weight. He pulled back the covers and crawled underneath them with me, his arms finding their way around my waist easily.
“Couldn’t sleep without you,” he breathed out against my neck.
“What if we get in trouble?”
I could feel him shrug, even if I couldn’t see it. “I just want to sleep next to you, that’s all. We’ll be okay.”
That strange sixth sense I seemed to have sometimes, alerting me whenever something was about to go wrong, started to kick in. I didn’t know how badly his parents would react if they caught us in bed together, but surely it couldn’t be too bad. We were both adults, after all. Still, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was going to upset the balance of our little world soon.