Chapter 8
“SOMETHING wrong?” David asked as Zach caught up with him, panting. “You’re awful quiet today.”
Zach shook his head.
“Well, if you’re tired, blame the damn pants,” David said, referring to the tan fatigues Zach wore again today. “I don’t know why you just don’t wear shorts. If you don’t have any, I have some you can borrow.”
“I don’t wear shorts,” Zach panted.
David didn’t say anything, just ran in silence a while, then, “Psychological or physical?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t wear shorts because of a psychological reason or a physical reason? Cuz I can tell you now I don’t give a shit if you have scars or anything.”
Zach eyed David’s tanned, perfect legs. “Yeah. Whatever. I just don’t like shorts.”
“Then get some of those spandex bike leggings,” David instructed. “Or sweats. Or those dorky track suits. I know it’s not because your legs are fat or gross; I’ve seen you in tight jeans. So I figure you got some scars or something you’re embarrassed about. Which is fucking stupid, but hey, they’re your scars. But those pants increase wind resistance as well as friction and make it harder for you to run, so lose them, ’kay?”
“Up yours,” Zach panted.
David stopped in the middle of the path and waited for Zach to catch up. “Seriously, Zach, if you really want to get in some real running, you can’t do it in fatigues.”
“They do in the army,” Zach wheezed, bent over with his hands on his knees. “They have to run miles in full gear with full, eighty-pound packs, carrying ordnance.”
“This ain’t fucking basic training,” David said irritably. “And you’re having a hard enough time without making it more difficult. You need to build up your stamina, not give yourself a fucking heart attack. Okay. We walk for a while. We’re almost back to the house, so we’ll use this as a cool-down; then a few stretches when we get back there to work out knots so you’re not as stiff as you were when we started. I don’t want you pulling a muscle or getting leg cramps because you aren’t getting proper warm-ups and cool-downs.”
“Yes, Mother,” Zach said. Which was a mistake, because it reminded him of their conversation last night, which led into his other memory of last night.
“Whoa,” David said. “What just went on in your miniscule little mind?”
“What are you talking about?” Zach said defensively.
“The weirdest look just crossed your face and it shut down again. What’s going on in your head, Zach?”
“I just remembered something unpleasant. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Your call. Gonna talk about it with the shrink?”
“Hell, no,” Zach said.
“Cuz getting a weird look on your face after saying the word ‘mother’ is kind of creepy, you know.”
“Fuck off,” Zach snapped. “It’s got nothing to do with Jane. You know fucking well that Jane is a fucking saint.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to cast any aspersions against her.” David raised his hands in surrender. “I was ragging on you, not her.”
“Thanks.” Zach kept walking, not looking at David.
“Hey,” David said after a minute, “seriously. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just had a bad night.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Zach rolled his eyes. “What am I, a girl? No, I don’t wanna talk about it.”
David started to say something, but his cell phone buzzed. “Hold that thought,” he said to Zach, and unclipped his cell from the waistband of his running shorts. He stopped walking, frowned at the display, then said questioningly, “Jerry?”
Zach stopped too, and watched David’s face as his expression softened. “No, no, it’s fine. What’s up? …No, I haven’t found a place yet. I’m still staying with my mom…. No, it’s not an issue. It’s cool…. Most of it’s still in storage. I’m thinking of just having it shipped to Mom’s since I’m having trouble finding an apartment… Yeah. No, no, you were right, you really were…. Yeah, take it from me, it’s hell being wrong sometimes too.” David smiled, his expression gentle and sad. “Yeah. Yeah. I miss you, too, baby. Take care…. Thanks.” He closed the phone and clipped it back onto his waistband.
“Boyfriend?” Zach asked, a hard knot in his throat.
“Ex,” David said distantly.
“Sorry, but ‘I miss you, too, baby’ doesn’t sound very ex to me.”
“It’s ex. Trust me, there is nobody in the world more ex than me right now.”
“He dumped you?”
“Sort of. Doesn’t matter—he’s two thousand miles away.”
“Were you in love with him?”
David shrugged. “I thought I was. We lived together for about a year. Just broke up before I came back here, so it’s still kind of raw. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Look,” David said, “For every one factoid you tell me about when you were in Venezuela, I’ll give you one factoid about my personal life. Deal?”
Zach started walking. “It’s not the same thing.” He felt sick. He hadn’t known that David had had a boyfriend—a serious boyfriend, from all indications—and now, thinking about last night made his gut roil. He’d fantasized something between him and David, and all along David had been dreaming about this guy Jerry. Zach hated the unknown Jerry with a sudden, vitriolic passion. This faceless stranger had loved David, done everything with David that Zach wanted: held that sleek, golden body, kissed him, made love with him. He was probably beautiful, too, with soft, unscarred skin and no emotional baggage. The opposite of Zach; Zach was Samsonite, Incorporated, after a bad day with the luggage handlers. He kneaded his gut with a fist and kept walking, not looking at David when he caught up with him.
“Hey,” David said softly. “You okay?”
“I don’t feel good,” Zach prevaricated. “What do you want to know?”
“What?”
“What do you want to know about Venezuela?”
“Oh. Uh… I dunno. Anything. I don’t know much.”
“What do you know?”
They’d come up to the rear of the grounds, near the empty stables. Zach had always thought it was a pity that they had a ranch in Colorado but no horses; his mother was violently allergic to any kind of animal dander. They’d never even been able to have a dog, not even the hypoallergenic type. Not that Zach would ever have a dog now, anyway. He shuddered, but kept walking across the gravel stable yard to the stone wall edging the vegetable garden. He climbed over the low wall and sat on it, facing the garden.
David joined him. “I dunno. It was some paramilitary group working with drug traffickers. They killed the driver that was supposed to meet you at the airport. Your dad paid ten million dollars in ransom, but they never responded. You had your ribs broken at some point. You wore a dog collar that left a scar.” He shrugged. “That’s about it. That and they starved you and apparently did something that gave you scars on your legs you’re embarrassed about.”
“It was a wire cage,” Zach said dully. “The floor of a wire cage.”
David didn’t say anything for a moment, then said in disbelief, “Like a fucking dog crate?”
Echoing his words of the other night, Zach said, “Exactly like a fucking dog crate.”
“They kept you in a dog crate?”
“That’s where you keep dogs,” Zach said. He got up from the wall and dusted his butt off. “I gotta go. I have therapy this morning.”
David reached out and caught his arm. “No, wait a minute.”
Zach waited, his eyes on the ground.
“I thought I was in love with him,” David said abruptly. “I really thought he was the one, but he wasn’t. I loved him—he was a great guy. Still is. Smart, funny, loving, hot…. He called it quits because I’m ‘emotionally unavailable’, whatever the hell that means. I went from being ‘a good listener’ to ‘emotionally unavailable’.” At Zach’s puzzled look, he smiled faintly. “A factoid for a factoid. That was the deal, wasn’t it? Mine aren’t much. Yours? Jesus, Zach. I need to know more.”
“No, you don’t,” Zach said curtly. “You really don’t.”
They stood there in silence a moment, David’s hand still curled around Zach’s forearm. The fingers had turned gentle, not stopping him now, but holding him, connecting him with David like an extension cord to the heart. Zach closed his eyes a moment, feeling the connection, the warmth of David’s skin, the strength of his bones.
“I’m sorry,” David said unhappily. “I didn’t mean to remind you.”
“You didn’t,” Zach responded. He let his fingers brush David’s before pulling David’s hand away. “It’s not like it’s ever very far away. I really need to be getting over it, you know.” He squeezed David’s hand, then let him go.
“Zach, wait.”
“I have therapy,” Zach said over his shoulder as he walked toward the house.
“I just was wondering if you were busy this afternoon. I thought maybe….”
“I’m busy. I have a really full plate, Taff. I’m all kinds of busy.” Zach broke into a trot, but was pulled up short by David’s fist in his T-shirt.
“Will you stand still for one fucking minute?” David snapped. “I’m trying to talk to you, you microcephalic dweeb.”
“And I don’t feel like talking to you, Taffy,” Zach snapped.
“Son of a fucking bitch, Zach, what did I tell you about calling me Taffy?”
“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Taffy,” Zach sniped back. “I’m bigger than you are now… uphm!” He was suddenly on his stomach in the dirt, an arm and a leg twisted behind him and David pinning him to the ground.
“The bigger they are and all that,” David said in his ear. “I had wrestling in high school, dweeb. You didn’t. And I’ve had some martial arts classes since, so don’t even think you can get out of this. To remind you, I told you if you ever called me ‘Taffy’ again I was going to club you like a baby seal, and that still stands. Got it?”
“Get the fuck off me.”
“Not till you surrender. You remember the words, don’t you? Say ’em.”
“Fuck you.”
“Wrong!” David was laughing now. “Say the magic words, dweeb!”
“Get off me, David! I swear, I’ll kick your ass….”
“Doing a good job of it now,” David snorted. “I’m trembling in fear.”
Zach struggled, but not hard. David’s weight felt good along his back, his breath warm and soft on his neck. “Say the words,” David whispered, and his voice sent the hair on Zach’s neck quivering. Zach blurted out, “David Philip Evans is God.”
“And?”
“And I worship the ground he walks on!”
The weight and warmth was suddenly gone, and Zach clambered to his feet. “Prick,” he muttered, dusting off his shirt and fatigues.
David hooted in laughter, and despite himself, Zach grinned. It was so much like the way they were long ago, before he’d gotten so lost. “I’m so gonna kick your ass,” he said again, chuckling.
“Not if you can’t catch me, and you’ll never catch me in those damn fatigues. Come on. I know for a fact your therapy doesn’t start until ten, and it’s only eight-thirty. I’m hungry, and I’ll bet we can talk Mom into making omelets.”
“You go ahead,” Zach said. “I need a shower.”
“We could go for a swim,” David suggested.
Zach shook his head. “No thanks.”
David let that slide. “So, lemme ask again. You busy this afternoon?”
“Yeah. Today’s the day I have physical therapy, then the shrink again at four.”
Frowning, David asked, “What’s the physical therapy for? You look in pretty good shape to me.” He wriggled his eyebrows in an attempt to look like a dirty old man. The expression was so ludicrous on his golden surfer-boy face that Zach laughed.
“Right at this point, it’s for my wrist.”
“Ah. Carpal tunnel from jerking off,” David said wisely.
Zach threw a swing, which David ducked easily. “No, it was broken and didn’t heal right. Esteban—” He stopped, then went on. “It healed a bit crooked and I had to have surgery to fix it. Same with the ribs. But it’s only twice a week now, and it should be done with in a month or two. I had a lot of physical therapy when I got back. That was brutal.” He plucked at the fabric of the fatigues. “Running in these is nothing in comparison.”
“Blah, blah.” David waved his hand. “As your running instructor, I insist on something other than baggy old fatigues. How can I ogle your ass when I can’t see it?”
“You aren’t supposed to be ogling my ass.”
“You ogle mine.”
Zach stiffened. “I so do not.” He so did, but how did David know?
“Not stupid. I know the real reason you run slower than I do.”
“You are such a dick,” Zach said.
“Yep. Come on. There’s an omelet with my name on it.”
“You go ahead. I’m going to go home and shower.”
David folded his arms. “I thought we’d gone through all that.”
“Well, maybe I’m just not ready.”
“For an omelet?”
“No. To show up in Annie’s kitchen with you, okay? I’m still tryin’ to figure out why you even came over the other night after I saw you in the bar. I’m not ready to try and explain to Annie why I’m suddenly friends with you when I haven’t so much as mentioned your name in all the time I’ve been back here.”
“You did.”
“What?”
“You mentioned my name. You asked Mom if she ever heard from me.”
“Once. Okay, once in nearly a year.” Zach blew out his breath in frustration. “Not the point. The point is I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
David gazed at him, a shuttered expression in his eyes. Finally, he said, “Sure. Right. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. If you want.”
David shrugged. “I run every day. No big deal to swing by here. If you’re ready, you can come with me.”
“Thanks.”
Again the jerk of the shoulders. “See ya, then,” David said, and then jogged off toward the house.
Zach followed more slowly, turning off toward the garage and his apartment upstairs. By the time he’d climbed up, David had disappeared through the kitchen door. Annie would probably be delighted to feed him. To be honest, she would probably be delighted to feed Zach as well, but he wasn’t ready to make any changes in his relationship with her yet. He’d always adored Annie, but his problems with David had put a barrier up between them that Zach wasn’t ready to breach. Somehow he thought she would be less forgiving of his treatment of David than David was.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Better to let David be. He’d keep running with him in the morning and try to avoid personal conversation, and just stay out of his way the rest of the time. It shouldn’t be hard. Aside from their enjoyment of sports and physical activity, they really didn’t have much in common.
Zach pushed open the door to his apartment and went out onto the small veranda over the garage. It looked out over the house and gardens toward the mountains. A small tarp protected the weights rack from the elements; Zach sat down on the bench and picked up his five-pound hand weights, thinking. David’s demonstration had made it clear to him that it wasn’t enough to lift weights; he already knew he needed aerobic exercise, but it looked like he also needed some self-defense training if he wanted to feel safe. David was right; he hadn’t gotten to wrestling in gym since that wasn’t introduced until junior year, and he had no idea how to get out of holds or how to pin an attacker. Add that to his To Do List, along with reviving his long-dormant shooting skills; he hadn’t held a pistol since taking lessons with Dad when he was a teenager. Sometimes he thought it wouldn’t matter how much he worked on himself. He’d never really feel safe again.
But he felt safe when he was running. Safe with David.
It was funny—he was taller than David by a good two inches, and probably outweighed him by twenty pounds, but David had been able to drop him without even breaking a sweat. He knew it had more to do with skill and balance than brute strength, but it reinforced the feeling that when he was with David, he was okay. That David wouldn’t let anything hurt him. Stupid to feel that way—David wasn’t any more competent than his parents were, and the idea of a skinny little surfer boy being able to defend a big tough biker dude, or someone who was working on becoming a big tough biker dude, anyway, was kind of ludicrous. It was probably just a holdover from his childhood, always looking up to David. He’d probably imprinted on him like a baby bird when he was born or something.
Zach shook his head and put the weights back on the rack, covered it with the tarp, and went back through the glass doors into the kitchen, where he had a drink of milk before heading for the shower.