“You’re not going to fuck anything up,” I told him as calmly as I possibly could.
“My last coach said I could fuck up a done deal if somebody left it alone with me long enough,” he said with a deceptively casual shrug. “I don’t wanna screw any of this up. I wanna do well. I always have, but it’s just different now. Now it feels like this could be it. Most of my life, Peewee, I’ve felt like I was missin’ somethin’—just this little somethin’ I can’t shake off no matter what.... Maybe it’s just me needin’ to really live up to what other people used to think of me, what they expected. I don’t wanna be a disappointment, to me or to anybody else.”
“You’re not a disappointment, Zac. You’re amazing. You’re tremendous. Some people are just assholes, and you shouldn’t listen to them. You know that. You’ve got this.”
“But what if I don’t?” he asked softly, still looking down at his food and breaking my heart. “What if I’ve lost it? What if I’m broken, like they said?”
I didn’t know who the hell they were, but I was going to light them on fire if I ever found out. It took every single thing in me to keep my voice calm, my face neutral. “You’re not, but if we have to, Snack Pack, we’ll go buy a lot of super glue then. Just to reinforce everything. Make sure you’re better than ever.”
His eyelashes lifted, and he settled those milky light blue irises on me. Zac didn’t say anything or even sigh, which I’d consider to be a good thing. He just… looked at me. Calmly. Totally. His eyes roamed my face for so long and so intensely, I couldn’t do anything but smile at him.
It was like… he was looking at me for the first time and something had caught him off guard.
After a moment, with his gaze still locked on me and with his eyebrows knitted together, he just said, “All right, kiddo. That’s a plan then.”
And it was my turn to wink at him.
We finished eating our food pretty quickly with Zac changing the subject and telling me about a conversation he’d just had the night before with Paw-Paw in a tone slightly more restrained than usual. He gathered our trash and went to dump it while I washed my hands. We had just made it to the door to leave when the fucking cashier called out, “The White Oaks suck,” just as Zac started to push open the door.
He paused for a second, and I saw something ripple across his face.
And I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like it at all, especially not after the conversation we had just had.
And this fierce protectiveness I felt for Zac, one I had always felt for him, surged up inside of me, and I turned around to frown at the guy standing there with a surly expression on his dumb face.
“Your face sucks. Have a nice day,” I called out to him right back, even giving him a sarcastic wave as I gestured super over the top for Zac to keep moving.
He blinked, and it took maybe three seconds, but his smile went wide before he walked out and I followed after him.
“What a dick. I’m sorry, Snack Pack.”
My friend stopped right on the edge of the curb and turned to me with an expression that wasn’t anywhere near being devastated like it had been before. He looked... amused. But more than that. And he was still looking at me differently. “You tell him his face sucks?”
“I should’ve said his attitude sucks too, but it was all I came up with in the moment. Next time.”
That big palm of his went to the top of my head and squeezed it. Those blue eyes glittering. Those white teeth out and flashing at me in a smile so sweet, I sucked it up like it was made of gold.
I winked at him again. “You have to be nice, but that doesn’t mean I need to.”
“You’re the best, kiddo.”
I shrugged a shoulder at him. “I’m all right.”
“You’re better than all right,” he said, still watching me closely. “It ain’t even a competition.”
And my heart… my heart did some shit it had no business doing. It thumped. Again. With recognition. With a love so deep I knew it would crush me if I let it.