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“I thought maybe you could go. Do a few runs, hang with the kid for a day.”
“But he doesn’t want to hang with me. He wants to hang with you.”
“Whatever,” I scoff. “What snowboarding fan doesn’t want to meet Z Michaels?”
“This one, obviously, or that girl would have come knocking on my door instead of yours.” He reaches for his beer, drains it in one long gulp, almost like he’s gearing up for something. And since I’m pretty sure I know what that something is, my whole body tenses.
I want to get off the couch, want to walk away. Want to be anywhere but right here, having this conversation. But it’s like I’m frozen, my body refusing to heed the frantic orders my brain is sending to it.
“It’s just one day of boarding, Ash.”
Fuck. Looks like I can move, after all. I scramble off the couch. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“I know that. I do.” He pauses, thrusts a hand through his hair. “I just don’t know why.”
“Fuck you, Z. You know exactly why.”
“The accident. Yeah, I get that you feel guilty. You have nothing to feel guilty about, but believe me. I get that.”
The thing is, I know he does. Hell, with the shit in his past, I figured he’d be the last one to push me on this.
“Still, you’re throwing your whole life away, Ash. For what? Feeling guilty won’t bring your parents back. Believe me, I know.”
“Jesus Christ, you think it’s that easy? You think this is just about guilt?”
He stands then, too, though he makes sure not to crowd me. Which is good, considering I feel lik
e I’m about to shatter into a million tiny pieces.
“What’s it about, then?”
“Logan. It’s about Logan.” Everything is about him now. It has to be.
“I know that. But I still don’t get it. You spend as many hours away from him when you’re at work as you would snowboarding. So what’s the deal?”
Is he really that dense? “Logan loved snowboarding. He fucking loved it. He was never happier than when he was tearing up the pipe or shredding the mountain.”
“You think I don’t know that? I was right there with you, teaching him how to board all those years ago. Right there, watching him, in all those youth competitions.” His voice breaks and for the first time, I see how much this whole thing is tearing Z up, too. It’s just another hit, just another weight pressing down on me.
But, at least maybe he’ll understand now. Understand why I can’t board. Understand why I can’t go meet this Timmy kid when I have a badly injured kid of my own to deal with.
“So, you get why I can’t board, right? He loved it so much and now he’s paralyzed, because of me. How the fuck can I get on a board, knowing that? How the fuck can I go out and do what he loves when he’ll never be able to do it again? It’d be like rubbing his nose in it and I won’t do that. I can’t.”
Z doesn’t answer for long seconds, maybe even minutes, and when he does his face is carefully blank, his eyes revealing nothing. I hate that look. He wore it for too many years before Ophelia, and as I look at it now, I realize it’s been months since I’ve seen it. Months since he’s felt the need to hide his feelings behind a mask. It makes me wary, makes me wonder what he really thinks about this whole fucking mess.
“I get why you think you can’t board.”
I freeze. “That’s not the same thing as actually getting it.”
“No. It’s not.” He blows out a long breath, runs an agitated hand through his hair. “Man, I get where you are. I do. Fuck, I lived where you are for years. But you were the first one to tell me I had to keep going, that I couldn’t let what happened to my sister rule my whole fucking life.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Oh, yeah? You’re drowning in guilt, drowning in the fact that you’re healthy and your brother isn’t, right? That you can do things he’ll never be able to do again. How is that not exactly the same thing I was feeling?”
Because Lily’s dead. She died and what you did couldn’t hurt her anymore. The words are right there on the tip of my tongue, and I want to lash out with them. Want to use them to push him so far away that he’ll never fucking try to talk about this shit again.
But in the end, I can’t do it. Not now, when Z is trying so hard to get his shit—get his life—together. Not now, when he has Ophelia and he’s finally in therapy and he’s doing everything right. Not now, when he’s vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen him before.
