“Thanks, but they weren’t asking for my number if that’s what you think. They just wanted to talk football. One of them was a big Raptors fan.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I think it’s different now. The girls at St. Michael’s, well...” I trail off since she knows exactly what it was like. “I just wish I knew how to handle myself better while we were there. Then maybe you would’ve—” I stop. There’s no point rehashing things that have already happened. “Doesn’t matter.”
She doesn’t answer. In fact, she sits there so quietly, I almost think she’s gone inside.
When she clears her throat, I know that she’s going to come out with some half-assed apology and I don’t want her apologizing for doing what’s right for her.
So I quickly start.
“I get it now, though.”
“Get what?” she asks, somewhat surprised.
“You weren’t running away from me,” I say. “You were trying to get somewhere. I just kept planting myself in the middle of the road thinking I was helping.”
I sit up a little more in my seat.
“Every time you tried to take a step forward, there I was with another grand gesture, giving you another reason to look at me instead of where you were going.” I exhale. “I thought if I just showed up enough times, you’d eventually stop leaving. Didn’t occur to me that showing up was the reason you kept having to.”
“Zach—”
“I’m not looking for you to make me feel better about it. I’m just saying I get it. Finally. Embarrassingly late, but I get it.”
Her beautiful, carefree smile from yesterday comes to mind after the zip line, and I smile sadly to myself.
“You’re going to be amazing at whatever you decide to do, Honey.” My breath is shaky because I’m doing it. I’m finally admitting everything out loud. “If you decide you want to write, you’re going to be an amazing writer.”
“You don’t know that,” she says dismissively.
“I do, because the way you talk about things. You don’t just say them, Honey...you make them stay with people. You’re going to write something that floors everyone, and it’ll prove every asshole who didn’t believe in you wrong. You’ve always been worth more than they ever saw.”
“Zach—”
“Let me finish.” I take a deep breath. “I want that for you more than anything, Honey. I want you to be happy because I love you more than anything.” I keep picking at my chair. “That’s what I needed eighteen months to figure out. That loving you doesn’tmean keeping you. It means making sure you’ve got enough room to become whoever you’re supposed to be.”
The silence stretches.
I should leave it there. That was a good line. Mature. Evolved. The kind of thing the new, improved Zach Evans is supposed to say and then shut the hell up.
Instead, I hear myself add, “Just do me one favor.”
“What?”
“Try not to find yourself with Chris fucking Harper.”
There it is. The part of me I'll never fully grow out of. I can practically hear her roll her eyes through the partition.
“Zach.”
“I'm serious. Anyone else. Literally anyone. I'd take you running off and eloping with Jamie before Harper.”
“Zach.”
The shift in her voice straightens my spine.
“Yeah.”
