Nora

When I wake, it’s light outside. I scramble in the first few seconds, forgetting exactly where I am, what’s happened and what’s going on. When I remember I’m at Zack's and yesterdays events flood my brain. I lay in bed for a long moment, running through the words my parents said, the things they did.

I need to talk to Zack.

I get out of bed and make my way through the hall and down the stairs. I come to a halt when I see Zack sleeping on the couch. He lays on his stomach, his left leg dangles off the side of the couch and the blanket is was using is halfway in the floor, revealing his naked back. He snores quietly with an open mouth.

I don’t want to wake him, so I silently turn and head back up the stairs. One of my suitcases sits in Zack's bedroom, so I decide to take a quick shower since I fell asleep so early last night.

Zack's personal bathroom is huge. There are His and Her’s sinks – since Gena is gone, the “Her’s” sink is bare. There is a whirlpool bathtub in once corner, and close by it there’s a stand-up shower. I open a closet and pull out one of the fluffiest towel’s I’ve ever touched. I bring it to my face, enjoying the softness before hanging it on the hook near the shower.

I begin to peel off my clothes. Although I look clean on the outside, I feel filthy. I feel like I should be covered in mud, dirt should be caked under my nails and there should be enough grease in my hair to fry potatoes, but as I look at my naked frame in Zack's mirror, look at my manicured nails, there’s no dirt; there’s no mud or grease. The only thing on my face that shouldn’t be are the remnants of bruises from Liam’s fists.

The water pressure was amazing. I let the hot water pound my muscles and bones. I roll my neck from one shoulder to the other, massaging it in a way. I use Zack's shampoo, conditioner, and soap, wishing I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste from downstairs in my other suitcases.

I don’t spend much time in the shower because I don’t want to use all of Zack's hot water. I wrap the towel around my chest and then step into view of the mirror. I had to do something about these bruises. Tiptoeing, I head back into Zack's room, grabbing my make up bag out of my suitcase and some clothes. Downstairs is still silent, and I suspect Zack is still fast asleep; I head back into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

I emerge sometime later, the bruises on my face and neck hidden behind a few layers of makeup. My stomach rumbles – the first time I’ve been hungry since the altercation with Liam – so I head downstairs. Zack is still asleep on the couch; now he’s turned slightly, and his leg no longer hangs off the couch. I walk past him and enter his kitchen. I search his refrigerator and cabinets for breakfast food and eventually gather eggs, bacon and some strawberries.

I check my phone while the bacon cooks. I have several unread texts, mostly from Vivian and Liam. Liam’s texts were what they always were: variations of apologies. The texts from Vivian were concerned though. “Are you okay?” and “Is there still a wedding happening or what?” were a couple of them. I sighed, setting my phone down. I forgot there is a wedding I need to cancel. I flip the bacon and start the eggs before texting Vivian back real quick. I’m with Zack. Left Liam for good. Please cancel the wedding, I’ll call you later. I reply.

When I look up from my phone, Zack is sitting up on the couch, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He turns and looks behind him before slowly getting up.

“Hey,” I smile, tending to the eggs in the skillet. “Are you hungry?”

“Um,” Zack runs a hand through his hair, sitting on a barstool in front of the island. “Yeah, actually.”

I grin and place a few strawberries on a cutting board before grabbing a knife. I cut them into quarters before putting them on a plate. “Do you want toast?”

Zack nods and I feel him watch as I put a piece in the toaster for him. He doesn’t say anything else as I tend to the eggs and put the bacon on a plate. Zack gets up from his stool and walks to the refrigerator. I put his eggs on the plate with the strawberries and then turn to grab the freshly popped up toast from the toaster. Zack moves behind me, reaching into a counter as he pulls out two glasses. His free hand rests on the small of my back; I didn’t realize how cold I was until I felt the heat from his fingertips.

Zack walks away, and I watch him as he fills both glasses up with orange juice. I spread butter and jelly on his piece of toast before tossing a couple of pieces of bacon onto the plate and handing it to him.

“Thank you,” he tells me. “You really didn’t have to do all this.”

I shrug, cracking an egg into the frying pan. “It’s the least I can do. How did you sleep last night? You could have taken the bed with me…I mean, it is your bed after all.”

Zack brings his orange juice to his lips. “That’s alright,” he replies. “I used to sleep on the couch all the time when Gena would get pissed off at me.”

I begin to cut up my strawberries. “Don’t you have a guest room?

Zack nods. “Yeah. The couch is more comfortable.”

I nod and finish my eggs. Zack doesn’t say anything else until I sit down across from him and take a few bites.

“I do have a question about everything that we found out yesterday,” he tells me without looking at me.

“Okay,” I tell him.

He sets down his fork and knife. “I guess I just don’t understand why you believed your parents when they told you I took the money and ran.”

“Oh,” I say, also setting down my silverware. “Um, I don’t know. I guess it was partly because of all the letters I wrote you and never got a reply.”

“Yeah but…there are so many things that could have happened – you just jumped to the worst conclusion without asking any questions,” Zack tells me. When he looks at me, pain and anger are etched on his face.

“Zack,” I say, softly. “I’m sorry. I was young and stupid.”

“And – and you didn’t even come home afterward. You didn’t even face me – you just said I took the money and left it at that. You didn’t yell or anything,” he tells me.

“I did yell. I yelled at friends and family because you weren’t there. I spent my nights crying myself to sleep. Zack, I didn’t come searching for you because I was too busy wondering why I wasn’t good enough.”

“It’s just frustrating. It’s frustrating to know all of this could have been avoided if you would have just come looking for me,” Zack says.

I scoff. “Well, you didn’t come looking for me either. You just trusted that I wanted you to leave me alone?”

“It was in your handwriting, Nora!” Zack exclaims. “I had proof! You just took the word of your fucking parents.”

“I’m sorry!” I yell back. “I wish I could take it back, I really do.”

Zack stares at me for a long time before looking back down at his plate. I watch him as he pops a piece of strawberry in his mouth. “How are your bruises?” He asks. His voice is calmer, sweeter.

“Still there, still huge,” I reply. “Yours are healing.”

Zack nods. “Yeah but…I used to walk around with a black eye all the time. I thought it looked punk rock.”

I laugh, taking a bite of bacon. “I hate that I missed that.”

“What were you off doing all these years, anyway? Besides getting engaged to a dickhead?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Planning parties that served hors d’oeuvre’s, interviews for local magazines and impressed the men Liam worked with, using my smile and, well, tits. As long as I looked pretty and smiled, I was doing my job.”

“So…you were a socialite,” Zack says and I nod. “That sucks,” he laughs.

“Shut up,” I laugh.

“Hey, so,” Zack says, getting off his seat and putting his plate in the dishwasher. “I was thinking we could go hang out with the guys today. I know they’ll be happy to see you.”

I think about it for a moment. On one hand, I would love to see all of my old friends. On the other, I wasn’t ready for that step yet. I haven’t been Nora Saint-Clair in a long, long time. I wasn’t even sure who that girl was anymore.

“Can we hang out here today?” I ask him. “Just me and you? I kind of feel like hiding out for a little while longer.”

“Okay,” he agrees. “I’m going to take a quick shower. Then we can do whatever you want to do.”

“Okay,” I grin up at him and then watch as he jogs up the stairs and disappears.

I finish my breakfast before I even hear the water start to run. After cleaning up the mess I made in the kitchen and starting the dishwasher I decided to give Vivian a quick call. The phone rings twice before she answers.

“Stella, what the hell? Are you okay?” She asks, concerned.

I nod though she can’t see me. “Yes. Didn’t you get my text?”

“No,” she replies. “Your phone call woke me up. What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you in the last couple of days.”

“I’m fine. I’m with Zack – I left Liam for good. He uh, he put me in the hospital again and beat the shit out of me and Zack. Zack went to jail and so did Liam.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Vivian says. “Start over, a little more detail, please.”

So, I do. I explain everything that happened the last few days everything from Liam’s attempted murder up until this morning. I didn’t leave a single detail out. Vivian’s entire dialogue throughout the conversation is a series of gasps, oh my God’s, and variations of are you kidding me’s.

“So you’re there right now? And he knows who you are?” She asks.

“Yeah,” I reply. “He’s upstairs taking a shower and then we’re going to hang out for the day.”

“So, are you two like…going to get back together?”

I shake my head. “No! I mean…it’s been like 24 hours. We haven’t really talked about now-us. We’ve talked about past-us and all the drama surrounding us but…I don’t know.”

“Well, do you want to get back together with him?” She asks.

Again, I shake my head. “I don’t know. I don’t really know him anymore. He doesn’t know me anymore. I’m sure the fame has changed him.” I look over to a shelf the houses multiple awards.

“Oh, bullshit,” she says. “Look, I have to go and cancel your wedding. So, just keep me updated, okay?”

“Okay,” I tell her. “Bye.”

“Bye. Try to figure out how you feel about Zack.”

After I hang up the phone, I sit there in silence for a long moment, listening to the shower run upstairs. Zack’s house isn’t huge and not something you’d expect a rockstar to be living in. Back in the day when MTV’s Cribs would play on television Vivian would sneak it on the television in Etiquette school. She would always get caught and reprimanded, but before they turned it off I saw the craziest homes of celebrities on there. Rockstars with bloodred walls and whips and chains scattered about their room. Some had exotic animals and others had a 50-car garage. Mariah Carey’s home was, like, seventeen floors high – she’s no rockstar but, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting Zack to have some sort of crazy floorplan as well.

I venture outside into his backyard. His house is so close to the ocean, I could probably hear the waves if it wasn’t for the highway. His backyard is huge. There’s a deck with furniture and tables. A grill sits off in its own little nook, next its own outdoor kitchen. There’s a pool further into his yard. The way that it’s built it looks like a natural swimming hole you’d find while hiking. There are trees on the backside of it, delivering shade and privacy from the neighbors – although the entire backyard is cased into a white picket fence. There are large stones around the pool and a pump that acts as a man-made waterfall. To the side of the pool, there’s a hot tub and it calls out to me and my aching bones.

I’m just sliding the glass door shut when Zack walks downstairs. He’s wearing a pair of shorts and pulling a white shirt over his head as he walks down the stairs. His back is still wet and the shirt clings to him like a lost lover. I get a funny feeling in my chest I haven’t felt in years.

“So, what did you decide on doing?” he asks me.

Suddenly, I don’t want to be alone with him anymore. Not because of anything he did or said, not because he made me feel unsafe like Liam did; no, it was because my throat clenched shut when he spoke to me, the minuscule droplets that dripped from his hair onto face made my hands shake and the cage of butterflies that someone released within me.

“Um,” I say, realizing he has yet received an answer. “Actually, I changed my mind. We should go see the rest of –” I’m not sure what to call them “– your friends.”

Zack looks slightly surprised. “Okay,” he shrugs. “What changed your mind?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. I mean…well, I’ve kept my identity secret long enough with you and, although I am so, so happy that you forgave me for lying to you, I can’t really count on them to. It’s best to tell them sooner rather than later.”

Although it isn’t the real reason I changed my mind so quickly, it’s not exactly a lie either.

Zack nods. “Okay. I’ll call them and get a plan going.”

I grin and feel warm when he returns it. “I’m, uh, going to go get…ready,” I tell him before disappearing upstairs.

I’ve always loved Zack, even when I hated him. I loved him even when I thought he chose money over me. Even when I saw him the night of Gena’s party, my heart recognized him, and it cried out for him as I ran away. I was always able to push back the feeling, come up with excuses and reasons to cover up the yearning for him, the love I felt for him. But now? Now that we’ve both been stripped of everything that was true and faced with the real truth, faced with the fact that we were ripped apart from each other…there was no way in hell I was going to be able to push the feelings down again. They have shot up from the grave I’ve been burying them in for the last ten years – and they’re not going to go away. Not only was that thought terrifying, but there was another terrifying thought that lingered – what if, after all this time, Zack doesn’t feel the same?

Notes

Thank you so much for reading!

Title credit: Between the Trees “Fairweather”