“Well, it’s not reallyfakeanymore, is it, Honeycomb? You are my family. You just haven’t stopped fighting me long enough to let yourself admit it.”
“I am not your—”
“I know.” He says it simply, cutting underneath the argument before it can build. “You've mentioned it. Several times. What exactly is your concern here, Honeycomb? That I'm missing some voluntary workouts, or that you don't know what to do with the fact that I'm here?”
“Both,” I say, because he deserves the honesty even when it costs me. “But mostly the first one.”
He stares at me for a second. Then he exhales through his nose, something almost like a laugh. “At least you're consistent.”
“Zach.” I push forward before he can make it easy again. “You are the first overall pick. Your coach is looking for you. Your agent is panicking. You have a playbook to learn and a team that drafted you to lead them, and you are on a boat—”
“Ship.”
“—in the Bahamas, and none of this is going to matter if you show up to preseason three steps behind everyone else because you spent two weeks chasing someone who doesn't—” I stop.
The room goes quiet.
He watches me finish the sentence in my head, and I watch him watch me, waiting for me to say the words I don’t want to.
“Someone who doesn't what?” he asks quietly.
I don’t answer immediately. I don’t know how to.
He nods slowly and looks at the floor, then back up at me, sadness deep in his eyes.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re wasting your time on a cruise when you should be out building a life in Rome—”
“What life?” he says, louder now. “The life I want to build,” he continues, steadier, “is with you.”
“That's not fair,” I say, trying to sound calm when my heart is anything but. It’s beating so fast I can barely hear myself think.
“No,” he agrees. “It's not.”
He says it so simply that it stops me. I was ready for him to push, to charm his way around it the way he usually does, and instead he's just standing there in his sweatpants looking at me like the unfairness of it is something he made his peace with a long time ago.
“You can't put your entire career on hold and then make that my problem,” I say.
“I'm not making it your problem. I'm telling you the truth.” He tilts his head. “You're the one who came and knocked on my door, Honeycomb.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right. He was trying to give me space, but I couldn’t let this lie.
“What do you want from me, Zach?” I finally ask. “Honestly.”
“Honestly?” He looks almost surprised that I asked. “I just want you to stop running long enough to notice you haven’t gone anywhere.”
You haven’t gone anywhere.
My knees buckle, and I open my mouth to talk, but I can’t.
How dare he.
How dare he have the courage to point that out?
“Do you think I don’t lie awake thinking about that? That I don’t know exactly how pathetic it is that six months after leaving St. Michael’s, after all this effort, I’m still—” I break off, furious tears stinging behind my eyes.
I hate crying. I especially hate crying in front of him.
“I came on this trip because I needed to figure out who I am without you,” I say, louder now. “Because somewhere alongthe way, I stopped knowing where I ended and you began, and everyone acts like that’s romantic, but it’s terrifying, Zach.”
