Zach is blushing hard when he says, “Addie, this is my brother Rob. Rob, Addie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Rob says. “I’d shake your hand, but”—he shows me his food-stained fingers—“Mrs. Gupta sent over a ton of Indian food and I got carried away.”
“That’s okay,” I say, smiling at him. “Nice to meet you. I’ve seen some of your, er, work in Zach’s films.”
He bursts out laughing then. Definitely not as wooden as on camera. “I like this Addie,” he says to Zach, who is still beet red and not showing a hint of a smile. I don’t have to wonder what he’s thinking for too long, because Rob says, “This is all very interesting. All this time when you were skipping trips to Caldwell, saying you had to work or whatever, I figured you were just moping around. Nursing that broken heart.”
I can tell from the glint in his eyes that he’s teasing Zach, but Zach does not look amused.
“I did have to work,” Zach says quietly. “Besides, if you didn’t let your phone go to voice mail so often, you might actually know some things.”
Rob laughs again. “Point taken,” he says. He glances at me, then back at Zach. “But still, you could have told me you had agirlfriend.”
I glance at Zach then, ready to ask why he didn’t tell his brother about me, but he’s already following Rob to the basement, where his parents, Kevin, and Raj are all assembled. In addition to the food, Raj has brought overDungeon World 2,and for hours everyone takes turns playing.
I’m always aware, when I visit, how different Zach’s family is from mine. There’s this sense of ease, a lightness that reminds me of how my family used to be before my dad left. They laugh often, and each of them genuinely cares about the others.
After a couple of hours of snacking and everyone screaming at the TV and each other, Zach and I stand to go upstairs.
“Ooh!” Kevin says as we take the first steps up from the basement. “Just so you know, the house is not soundproof, so we’ll hear if there is any screaming or headboards shaking!”
“Fuck off, Kevin,” Zach says quietly, but still loudly enough to be heard. I’ve never heard him genuinely mad at his brother, and I’ve certainly never heard his father use with him the warning tone everyone in their family usually reserves for Kevin.
“Zach,” his dad says.
Zach does not apologize, just keeps going up the stairs, never letting go of my hand. My face gets warm because now everyone downstairshasto be wondering what we’re doing in Zach’s bedroom, which obviously means we can’t do anything, even if we still wanted to.
“Are you okay?” I ask Zach after he shuts the door and sits on his bed. I’ve never seen Zach this weird before, this moody.
“Yeah. I just have to tell you something.” He doesn’t look up at me, doesn’t give me that stomach-flipping smile to reassure me that everything is okay. And for the very first time, I’m not so sure everythingisokay between us. We see each other less now than we ever have, and sometimes Zach forgets to call or text me back. But I figured that was all just busyness.
I lower myself into the rolling chair beside his desk.
“Lindsay’s been texting me,” Zach says grimly.
The air freezes all around us.
“Why?” I finally ask.
He looks up at me, meeting my eye for the first time since we’ve come upstairs, and says, “At first it was just to discuss our bio labs, but eventually she—”
“You’re lab partners?” I blink twice.
Zach’s turn to blink. “Technically. I mean, there’s a whole bench of us.”
“Why is Lindsay at your bench?” I ask, trying to sound cavalier but not exactly pulling it off.
“It’s notmybench,” Zach says, a hint of exasperation in his voice, as if I’m missing the point of this conversation. “Anyway, we’re bothLs. She’s Loach.”
“Loach,” I repeat.
What kind of bullshit school still uses alphabetized seating charts,I think, while also trying to calculate how close Loach would be to Laird.
“How long has she been texting you?”
Zach shrugs. “A couple of weeks. Addie, the—”
“A couple ofweeks?” I repeat. “What has she been saying?”
