The Undiscovered Country
Whitley and I parted ways soon after that, after she tired of berating me about my relationships with both Donovan and Zac. If only she knew the whole size of it — but of course I wasn’t prepared to tell anyone. Justine knew, but I trusted her with my life. She was the only one who helped me keep a grip on my sanity sometimes and I couldn’t keep a damn thing from her.
I hurried on to the coffee shop, hoping that Zac would still be there waiting for me. He was going to try broaching the subject with Taylor, and had promised to meet me outside when I was done with rehearsal so that we could discuss things. I almost felt like a spy, being so plotting and devious about the entire thing. Particularly when we didn’t even know if there was really anything bad going on. I crossed my fingers that he would still be there waiting for me and as I approached, I was pleased to see his figure standing outside the front door of the Starbucks.
“Zac, I’m so sorry! Rehearsal ran late,” I called out to him.
He turned around and I could see his face flash from frustration to relief upon seeing me. He gave me a small smile and said, “Well, maybe you’ve had better luck than me.”
“Couldn’t get anything out of him, huh?” I said, lowering my voice as I closed the distance between us.
Zac shook his head and looked down at his shoes. “Nope. And he seemed really pissed at me for even trying to talk to him. I’m ready to drop the whole thing and just leave him alone until he pulls the stick out of his ass.”
“I guess I did have better luck, but it isn’t good news,” I said, “Whitley thinks he’s trying to break things off with her. Being all evasive and flaky and stuff.”
“And it started Friday, right?”
“Yup, at the party. It sounds like he probably saw someone there that he didn’t want to see,” I replied.
Zac cocked his head to the side and nibbled on his bottom lip. He really needed to rid himself of that habit; it was going to be my undoing. Finally, he replied, “I think you’re probably right. I just don’t know what or who could upset him that much. I don’t know of any ex-girlfriends he cares about that much.”
I shrugged. “Well, I have no idea. You know him way better than I do.”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you? I’ve only known him for almost 19 years,” Zac replied. “We should probably go back inside so we don’t seem super suspicious. Like we’re plotting his death or something.”
Nodding, I replied, “You’re right. Let’s go in. Can I still get a drink or is it too close to closing time?”
“Taylor and Joseph should be closing up now, but you can probably get a soda or something. And maybe some leftover cookies and stuff.”
“I’ll be lucky if you leave me any of those,” I said, laughing.
“Damn right,” he replied, pulling the door open and motioning for me to enter.
The room was completely empty when we walked in, and half the lights had been turned off. The smell of coffee was subtle, a sure sign that the espresso machines and coffee brewers had been shut off for the day. The only sound was the steady drip drip drip of the faucet. Taylor and Joseph were nowhere in sight.
Zac looked around and frowned. “Maybe Tay’s in the back, cleaning up back there. Let’s go check.”
I nodded and followed behind him as he pushed past the swinging half-door at the end of the counter. He walked on through the door to the back room of the coffee shop, not bothering to call out anything to announce his presence. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake. I collided full force into his back as he ground to a sudden halt in front of me, right in the doorway. I glanced around his side to see what had made him stop and I thought my jaw might actually hit the floor.
Taylor stood pressed up against one of the large refrigerators, caught in an embrace with Joseph, their lips pressed together and their arms wrapped around each other. Zac coughed loudly, making both boys jump. Taylor looked over at Zac in fright and stammered.
“Zac, I… we were… I umm…”
Joseph’s face betrayed little emotion, but Taylor looked absolutely frightened. I felt sorry for him. My mind began fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together and it suddenly made a lot more sense, while also making no sense at all. I put my hand on Zac’s back, willing him to say anything at all. Anything was better than the silence.
“Taylor…” Zac began, the name coming out almost like a curse. Then, under his breath so that I only I heard it, he added, “Why couldn’t you just…”
He didn’t finish the thought. Knocking me backward against the door, he turned and walked back out of the coffee shop. That left me standing alone, staring awkwardly at Taylor and Joseph. I didn’t know Joseph well, only from the few occasions I had seen in him the coffee shop, but he certainly hadn’t set of my gaydar. And I know that’s a horrible cliché, but I’d had my fair share of gay friends through my years in theatre and Joseph hadn’t seemed like any of them. Neither had Taylor, though perhaps the scarves and strange fashion sense might have given the slightest hint of something out of the ordinary. Still, I’d seen his tongue do the same things to Whitley that they had done to Joseph before Zac and I so rudely interrupted.
Rudely interrupted? No, they knew we were there. Didn’t they? My head was all swirly and dizzy and mixed up. I could do nothing but stare at them and shake my head, unable to say a word. Joseph looked calm and collected, but his cheeks were slowly turning pinkish as the seconds of awkward silence slipped by. And Taylor was shaking. I felt terrible for him. Zac and I had intruded, even if Taylor and Joseph were doing something they shouldn’t have done, in a place where they would inevitably have gotten caught.
“I’m sorry, Taylor,” I said, my voice sounding smaller and weaker than I could ever remember it sounding in my life. “I’ll go find Zac. He should… well, I’ll find him. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want to put words into Zac’s mouth. He should apologize, but I felt there was more to what he was thinking than his angry exit had revealed. But I didn’t know what would happen when I found him. I did, however, know exactly where I could find him. With a last nod to Taylor and Joseph, and an apologetic smile, I walked out of the room, through the shop and into the cold night air.
I stomped across campus, the heels of my shoes clacking against the sidewalk in a staccato rhythm. I couldn’t focus on anything else but that sound and how I shuffled just a little on my left foot. Finally, I reached the arts building and, thankfully, found the doors still unlocked. I focused on remembering the way, reciting Zac’s directions under my breath – up three sets of stairs, to the left, four doors down the hall. I could hear the muffled drum beats before I could see the door I wanted; even the soundproofing didn’t totally block the sound out.
On my tiptoes, I looked in the small window. Zac sat with his back to the door, headphones on and pounding away at one of the practice drumsets. He didn’t see or hear me, of course. Not even when I pushed open the door he had neglected to lock. That didn’t surprise me at all – the carelessness of not locking the door, or how he was so absorbed in his own world that he didn’t know he was no longer alone. Both were absolutely, positively Zac.
I cleared my throat. “Zacky, honey.”
He continued drumming away.
Again, louder. “Zac.”
Finally, he stopped, almost falling off the throne when my voice hit his ears. He looked up at me, eyes wide. “What? How long have you been there?”
It sounded like an accusation, but I tried to ignore that aspect of it. I sat down on the piano bench that had been left in the room without it’s piano, and said, “I couldn’t just let you run out. I haven’t been here long, though. Just walked in.”
“And you knew I would be here?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.
I shrugged, setting my handbag down on the floor between my feet. “I didn’t know for sure, but I figured if you wanted to vent or blow off steam or whatever, this is where you would go. My next guess was going to be the art studios, but that’s a farther walk so I checked here first.”
“Good guess. Nothing like pounding away on the drums to make me feel better,” Zac replied, punctuating his sentence with a loud cymbal crash.
I winched at the sound, drawing my hands up over my ears. When the sound and its echo had faded away, I spoke again. “Did you really need to beat something? Were you angry with Tay?”
Zac shook his head, but it wasn’t convincing. His head sank into his hands and he growled into his palms. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I was mad at him, but not for what you think.”
“What do I think? Can you read my mind?”
He looked up at me. “What anyone would think. That I’m a homophobe. That I’m angry at my brother for being gay.”
“You don’t know that he’s gay, Zac…”
He sneered. “Right, Joseph just happened to fall and Taylor caught him with his lips.”
I glared at him, wishing I could kill a man with my stare alone. Okay, maybe not kill. But maim might have been nice. “That’s not what I meant. He could just be bisexual, or just experimenting, figuring things out. Maybe that’s why he’s been so tense, you know? Confused about all this stuff.”
“I know you’re right. You’re always right, you bitch,” Zac said, and only his half-smile kept me from throttling him. “And I’m not mad at him for being gay. I’m mad at him for probably leading Whitley on. And for not thinking he could tell me.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. You don’t know how close we are, even though we fight all the time and evidently keep gigantic secrets from each other. He’s my brother, and I love him. You wouldn’t get it, being an only child. But I want him to be happy. That’s why I’ve been so worried for the past few days,” Zac said, the words seeming to take all of his energy to say.
“And you just wanted the truth from him, no matter what it was,” I added.
He nodded. “Yes. Exactly. There have been very, very few times when he has hidden things from me. And I’ve never liked it. But this is a big one and I really, really don’t like it.”
“So just talk to him, for god’s sake. Just talk to him,” I replied.
Zac sighed and tossed his drumsticks down. “Stop being right all the time. It’s really annoying.”
“Don’t lie, you love it,” I said, smiling. “It saves you the trouble of thinking and risking hurting your pretty little head.”
“Like that could ever happen. You know I don’t ever even try to think.” He picked his drumsticks off the floor and waved them in my face, then began drumming on the top of my head. “At least my pretty little head isn’t completely hollow like yours.”
“Hey, oww! That hurts!” I cried, although it really didn’t. He was being rather gentle, all things considered.
Laughing, he tossed the sticks down again and stood up. Holding a hand out to me, he said, “Aright, alright. Let’s go. Can I stay with you tonight? I don’t really feel like being alone and I’m pretty sure Evan won’t cuddle with me.”
“I dunno… you’ve been drumming away, you’ll be all sweaty,” I said, accepting his hand and standing up.
He pulled me into a big bear hug. “Me? Sweaty? You know you like it.”
“Ahhhh! Dirty, man sweat all over me!” I squealed, giggling. My arms were pinned to my sides and I couldn’t escape his grasp even if I tried. It wasn’t all that bad, though.
Still laughing, he finally released me from his hug. Wrapping one arm loosely around my shoulder, he walked me out of the room. “So, should we tell Whitley about all this?”
I shook my head vigorously “No. No. Absolutely 100% no way. You really don’t ever think, do you? That’s a terrible idea. Have I made my point yet?”
“Yeah, yeah. Point made and taken,” he said, letting go of his grip on my shoulder as we turned to walk down the stairs. “But I just feel like we should do something.”
“No, you should do something.”
“And what’s that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh God, I don’t know. Maybe apologize to your brother? You know, the one you ran out on and left looking like a dear in the headlights.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied, looking and sounding sheepish.
“I’m definitely right. Again. Be there for your brother, and when he’s ready to face up to what’s going on, he will. Especially if you are there for him, alright?” I said.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything, instead just scratched his head and pouted a little.
I continued, “And as for me, I’ll try to help ease Whitley through it. But I’m not gonna tell her anything that she hasn’t heard from Taylor first. It’s not my place to push him out of the closet when he isn’t ready.”
“He looked pretty ready to me,” Zac said.
I shook my head and chuckled. “No, he looked like he was kissing a dude. Not quite the same thing, really.”
I didn’t realize it, but we had already reached the dorm. It seemed like time spent with Zac seemed to alternate between speeding by and lasting forever. Both were fantastic, if you asked me. At this particular moment, time seemed to be in fast forward. Or I was just too caught up in him to notice the passage of it. Either way, there we were and Zac was pushing open the door to our dorm, ushering me in front of him.
Either because we had run out of things to say or out of respect for Taylor’s privacy, we became unusually quiet as we entered the building. When the elevator reached my floor and called out its ding, my cell phone also rang out. I looked down at the screen and saw the name “Donovan” and felt sick to my stomach.
Zac raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. I held the phone out for him to see and he looked disgusted.
“Should I?”
“Hell no.”
Those two words were all the encouragement I needed. I knew I would regret it in the morning, but for the time being I would put it out of my mind completely. I shoved the phone back in my pocket and fished the keys out of my purse. With the door unlocked, I lead Zac in and tossed my bag aside. I picked up a long oversized shirt, at least four sizes too big, and hurried into my bed. Zac turned his back as I ducked onto the bunk to change into my comfy shirt.
When I turned to face him again, he was walking toward the bed, having shed his hoodie and one of the shirts he had layered under it. He started to reach for the button of his jeans, then paused and looked up at me. His face was almost pleading, but mostly embarrassed. “Umm, do you mind? I’ll be more comfy this way… I have boxers on.”
I bit my lip. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, and either way I would be lying just a little. Finally I replied, “No, it’s fine. I’m not wearing pants, so you don’t have to either.”
He laughed, then shed his pants, tripping over them as he tried to pull his feet out of the legs. I could tell he was nervous, and I wished he didn’t have to be. But this was all kinds of wrong and awkward, made only that much worse by the fact that I had ignored Donovan’s phone call. And that tiny issue of Zac’s girlfriend, or whatever she was, which I still hadn’t found the nerve to discuss with him.
I lifted up the covers to allow him to lay next to me and he slid into the bed hesitantly. I pulled the covers tight around us, then slipped my arm under them to wrap around his waist, hoping that would make him feel more at ease, wishing there were something I could do to make myself feel at ease as well.
As Zac curled up against me, I did feel my resolve softly shattering and a calm coming over me. I curled up against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. The steady sound of it lulled me to sleep in his arms and all my concerns of the day melted away into the soft, warm comfort of being with Zac.