“I’m sorry, okay? I want you to know now that I’m sorry for… being dumb and young and for letting it happen, okay?”
I loved him more than ever when he nodded without hesitation.
“When I was seventeen,” I started, “you were in your second season in Dallas… Boogie and I went to go visit you. We went to see a game. We went out to eat with two of your teammates, and you had brought Jessica along. I’d already met her before. I sat next to you, I guess. I don’t know, maybe I had been talking to you too much instead of letting you talk with everyone else… and Jessica came up to me in the bathroom and said… she said… stuff. About me being an inconvenience. About you not having time for me. And she said some other things. I had to go sit in Boogie’s car afterward. You guys thought I was upset about Mamá Lupe.”
I’m telling you this to make you feel better. You’re young, but it’s not going anywhere. He doesn’t like you like that, okay? You’re a baby.
Fortunately, I didn’t tell him more than that. I didn’t have to, and I didn’t really want to.
Mostly because, with each word out of my mouth, that normally placid and easygoing face melted into one so serious, one so… so… thunderous… there were thunderstorms brewing behind his eyes and thunder bubbling beneath his cheekbones… and I forced myself to rush ahead.
“I believed her, Zac. Maybe not at that moment, but then you stopped answering my texts like two weeks later. You went to my graduation and everything was fine; then you came home again and she was with you, and then it seemed real. That’s when I stopped getting your messages, and it broke my heart… and I just... I tried after that, you know, texting you. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t a big deal and that I’d give you time to not bother you, but I still never heard back from you, and it broke my heart even more. Then I got embarrassed and started telling Boogie I was busy when he’d invite me to go see you… I moved… and the next thing I knew, it had been years. But I never stopped following your career or anything; I always kept up with everything. I was still… maybe not your number one fan but at least in the top five. I’m sorry, Snack Pack. I’m sorry I believed her, and I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, but I was ashamed—”
He was there.
His “kiddo” was sighed into my hair the moment his arms wrapped around my shoulders, his cheek settling against my head.
Zac hugged me tightly, so fucking tightly I wouldn’t be able to take a deep breath, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care, I didn’t care, I didn’t care. And my own cheek was against his chest as regret and pain and disappointment in myself and in Jessica, and even a little bit in Zac, filled my lungs.
Disappointment for all the things I could have had for years but hadn’t. But what else was there to do or say? Nothing. Because it was in the past, and all I could do now was be here and present like I could have and should have been all those years ago.
“I’m sorry,” I told him again. “My feelings were hurt, and I didn’t want to bother you any more, even though I knew you cared about me, but it was just easier to not try than to have it get thrown into my face.”
His arms tightened even more, pulling me in so close there was no escaping his presence or the light mix of cologne and that natural Zac smell that filled my nostrils at being so close to him. “You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry about, you hear me? Nothin’, Peewee. I’m sorry.” I was pretty sure his nose pressed against my head, because his voice got even quieter, like his mouth was muffled in my hair. “I’m sorry I spent time with somebody capable of that in the first place. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder or bother Boog more. I’m sorry I got so busy I guess I thought you didn’t want me around either and I let the years go by. I haven’t been a good friend, and I’m so damn sorry about that too. But none of that was