Page 54 of Dead Boys Club

He pulls back, staring at Parker blankly.

“What?” Zach asks. “What?”

Parker leans back on his arms, his shoulders rounding against his jaw. He grins sheepishly, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. Which, Zach notices, are perfectly straight. He’d never thought that he would spend time admiring another boy’s teeth. But Parker’s teeth are suddenly another reason that Zach wants to kiss him again.

“You tried to, like, beat me up in eighth grade,” Zach says. “Like, for real, beat me up.”

“Yeah,” Parker agrees, chewing on his bottom lip. He leans forward again, sliding his hands against Zach’s knees. They’re big, Parker’s hands, and warm, and Zach covers them with his own. He skips his thumb over Parker’s knuckles. “Sorry. Sorry. I was thirteen and gay and really mad about my sister getting asked out by the cute redhead in our class.”

Cute redhead. Zach has never considered himself cute, or handsome, or what have you. At most, he’s pretty sure he’s just not ugly, which isn’t a very high bar to reach.

But the only thing that Zach can say is: “What?”

“You were such a loser, and I just…” Parker shrugs, squeezing Zach’s knees.

Zach winces. He knows Parker enough now to know it’s not supposed to be an insult, but he can’t help the way his shoulders tense up. “And me being a loser made you want to kiss me?”

“I’m a loser,” Parker says emphatically. “I like losers.”

Zach laughs, ducking his chin a little. An immense weight lifts off him. Suddenly, Zach is entirely free of heart attack symptoms. He turns Parker’s hands over in his lap, smoothing his thumb against his palms. When he brings Parker’s hand to his mouth to kiss the back of it, his fingers smell like cigarettes and weed. It’s gross. Zach loves it.

“Sorry you had to wait so long,” Zach says, after a moment, letting their hands rest together on his lap. Parker leans in and kisses him again, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. When he pulls back Zach almost follows him for another kiss. He leans his shoulder into Parker’s, squeezing his hand.

“So,” Zach says slowly, after a few beats of silence. He has to ask the hard question. All of this feels too good to be true. “No more Dead Boys Club? For good?” The question feels enormously heavy, even as it leaves his mouth. Parker is quiet, his thumb moving restlessly back and forth over Zach’s knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. He looks up at Zach, their eyes meeting in the dim lamp light. “Fuck… I never really wanted you to… It wasn’t like that. You felt the same way I did, and I was so fucking lonely. I didn’t know how to…”

“I know,” Zach says quickly. “I know. I think I went along with it because I didn’t want to be alone either. And… it was nice having someone know what I was feeling.” He lets out a quick, mirthless laugh. “The only person who wanted to talk to me wanted us to kill ourselves.”

Parker squeezes Zach’s hand tighter. He pulls their hands to his mouth this time, pressing his cool, chapped lips against Zach’s knuckles.

“Okay, well, that’s so off the table now,” he says firmly. “We can be not-alone and alive at the same time. Seriously, I want to talk to you about literally anything else.”

The idea makes Zach want to cry but in a good way for once. “Okay,” he says, voice wobbly.

They stay upstairs in Parker’s room long enough that Zach is sure that people downstairs are starting to miss them. But he can’t even bring himself to care.

He’s alive, and Parker is alive, and everything is good.

Chapter Twenty

“I knew it!”

“Oh my god. Finally.”

“Oh, Zach, this is wonderful!”

Zach stands nervously in front of Bea, Paige, and Isaac as they sit squished together on his couch. Parker is standing beside him, even though he’d insisted there was no reason to stand, and that there was definitely no reason for Zach to have notecards. Zach holds his notes in front of him anyway, gripping the cardstock, his thumb smudging the ink. It’d been easier to get the words out because he’d had them prepared: There’s something we want to tell you. We hope it does not change the dynamic of our group. You’re our friends, and we care about you very much. Because of this, we want to announce that we are currently dating.

Winter break started just after the play closed, so they’ve been out of school for a week. Christmas is around the corner. Zach had been the one to insist they tell the others. Parker had contended that it was “none of their fucking business,” but now that it’s out, he looks pleased with himself.

Dating. Zach is dating Parker Reid. It’s almost beyond his comprehension that he’s dating anyone. The fact that it’s Parker is as unprecedented as it is exciting.

So far, dating Parker Reid mostly involves driving around in his Subaru and finding places to park so they can kiss over the center console. It’s awesome. Sometimes they go to a movie and sit in the back of the theater. There’s a lot of kissing involved. Zach feels like he’s making up for his entire teenage years of having never kissed anyone.

“I knew it; I knew it,” Isaac says again, throwing his hands up. “I knew you two were up to some gay shit.”

Parker points at him sharply. “Watch it, Brackenborough,” he warns.