Page 58 of Dead Boys Club

“Ugh,” Isaac grumbles, slumping into one of the stools at the kitchen island.

Cool George arrives about twenty minutes later, a plain black T-shirt tucked nicely into his dress pants. It’s exactly the sort of outfit a cool newspaper editor would wear to a fancy party. When Isaac sees him, he groans and tugs at the front of his gaudy sweater.

“Hey,” George says, grinning. He leans in and kisses Paige on the cheek as Zach politely looks away and Parker pretends to gag.

This is Zach’s first New Year’s Eve party. They hang out in the kitchen and talk, eating the rich-people finger food that Mrs. Reid had catered for her rich-people guests. Paige sneaks out into the dining room and pinches a glass of champagne that they all share among themselves. Even Zach takes a sip, the bubbles tickling his nose. He sits beside with Parker at the island, their knees bumping, elbows rubbing.

At five minutes to midnight, they shuffle into the dining room with everyone else. At least, Zach tries to, before Parker tugs him toward the staircase off of the kitchen.

“Come on,” he urges, a hand at Zach’s elbow.

“What—we’re going to miss it,” Zach says worriedly, glancing over his shoulder before he lets Parker lead him upstairs.

“We’ll go back down in a sec,” Parker promises.

They go to Parker’s bedroom. His door has its handle back. Cordelia is asleep on the bed, her smushed nose making her breath whistle softly on each inhale.

Downstairs, Zach can hear everyone start to count down from ten.

“We’re missing it,” Zach points out. Parker steps further into his space, crossing his wrists over Zach’s shoulders.

Nine! Eight! Seven!

“Yeah, but I wanted to, like… do the whole kiss-in-the-New-Year thing,” Parker says. Zach winds his arms around Parker’s waist. That doesn’t sound so bad.

Six! Five! Four!

“Oh,” Zach says. Parker fiddles with the hair at the nape of his neck. “We can do that.”

Things are good. Zach is a normal seventeen-year-old boy about to kiss his boyfriend at midnight, and everything is so ridiculously good.

Three! Two! One!

Parker pulls Zach in and kisses him. Below, the entire party bursts into cheers. Someone blows a noisemaker. Zach is overwhelmed by Parker’s soft hair and the smell of his shampoo and the feel of his mouth. He never thought he could have something like this in a million years. And now he does.

They emerge a few minutes after midnight, hurrying back downstairs as Parker tries to smooth out his hair and Zach redoes the first few buttons of his shirt. They greet their friends in the din of the celebration, and Zach accepts bone-crushing hugs from both Paige and Bea. Even Isaac, who is kind enough not to comment on his rumpled appearance, pulls him in for a brotherly, sideways embrace.

- - - - -

School starts up a few days after New Year’s, and Zach tries his best to ignore the fact that the end of his senior year is fast approaching. All Zach wants to focus on are nice things, like how Parker has more good days than bad ones, and when he has bad days he still looks to Zach for reassurance; like how Bea gets the first of her dream school acceptance letters, laying the big packet from Yale out on their lunch table; like how Paige has gotten their parents to agree to a gap-year, excitedly talking about planning a backpacking trip through Europe.

One night, Zach is cleaning up his old laptop for his mom when he stumbles over his email chain with Parker. Something compels him to open it. Maybe a desire to see how far they’ve come? He scrolls back through the emails, his heart racing a little. It’s not that he doesn’t still feel these things anymore. He’s pretty sure that if he sat alone for long enough, all the bad stuff would return like an incurable rash, itching at his brainstem.

Still, now when his intrusive thoughts whisper to him that everyone would be better off, your mom would be better off, no one would care, no one would notice, it would be so quick, so easy, Zach can think of Paige, and Bea, and Isaac—and Parker.

It doesn’t fix it. Zach is pretty sure nothing will ever really fix it. But it makes moving forward feel less impossible. Maybe one day he won’t feel so overwhelmed by all of his thoughts and feelings. And right now, one day actually seems achievable.

He doesn’t delete the emails right away. He should. He will, someday. Just… not right now.

After he closes his laptop, Zach gets ready for bed. As he crawls underneath his comforter, he imagines Parker sitting up in his room, probably still awake, maybe reading, or drawing, or sitting with Paige in one of their big, empty, ornate rooms.

The next day is so routine that it feels like it blows by. He meets his friends by his locker, just as he does every morning: Parker with his wrinkled brow and sleepy eyes, Bea going over the latest English assignment, Isaac chugging the last of an energy drink, Paige flipping through the printout of her latest newspaper article.

In study hall, Zach watches Parker draw on his homework instead of filling it out. He walks with Bea and Isaac to lunch, listens as Isaac monologues about the new video game he bought over the weekend. He eats with Parker, Bea, and Isaac, pressing his knee against Parker’s underneath the table.

He passes Paige in the hall between periods and she sticks her tongue out at him as she hurries to lunch. He takes diligent notes during Calculus and reminds himself to ask Bea to help him study. At the end of the day, Zach walks with Parker and Isaac to the senior parking lot while Bea catches a ride home with Paige.

Zach’s eagerly awaiting the heat from Parker’s seat warmers, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets. But when they walk out of the front of the school, he spots his mom’s car in the pickup lane.