Zack and Tennessee’s door was the last one on the right, and for whatever reason, I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous as we made our way towards it. It wasn’t that I’d never been in any of Zack’s rooms before—by this point in the tour, everyone had been in everyone’s rooms—but the only room I’d ever actually spent time in, aside from my own, was Matt and Val’s.

I’d certainly never been invited over to anyone else’s room to do anything; it would have seemed strange, since we usually hung out as a group. I told myself that I was being dumb, that we were just going to watch a kids’ movie, but that logic wasn’t doing anything to change the fluttery feeling in my stomach.

When Zack pushed the door open and we went in, I saw that the inside looked almost exactly like my own room. There were two smaller beds in place of the one larger one I was used to, but aside from that, everything was identical. The cleaning crew must have already been through today, as both beds were immaculately made; which only made the random clothes strewn across the floor more noticeable.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Zack said, seeming to notice them at the same time I did. He quickly bent down to pick up a pair of his jeans and a few other items off the floor, shoving them into his suitcase. When he turned back around, scratching the back of his head, he looked a bit embarrassed.

The whole thing actually made me feel more at ease, and I laughed. “It’s fine, Zack. I’m not worried about it.” Boys never really grew up, did they?

Zack sent me an appreciative look, and went to pick up the remote from in front of the television. He turned it on and found the pay-per-view channel. “Okay, Tennessee, what did you want to watch?”

Tennessee clambered up onto the bed nearest the door, which I assumed was his, and turned his attention to the screen. He eventually chose one of the newer Disney movies, not one that I’d seen before, and Zack set it up to play. I’d been hovering in front of the door up to this point, not sure where I was supposed to be sitting, and Zack seemed to notice my uncertainty. “Oh, you can sit on my bed if you want, Christa.” He inclined his head towards the bed closer to the window. “Tennessee probably wants me to sit with him.” He shifted his gaze to his son, who nodded in confirmation. “Yeah!”

“Thanks, Zack,” I said, crossing over to the far side of the room as he settled in next to Tennessee on the first bed. I slipped off my shoes, not wanting to put them on his bed, and arranged the pillows with more care than was probably necessary. By the time we were all situated, the opening credits of the movie were finished, and the first scene was starting. Tennessee shushed us loudly, though no one had been talking, and Zack and I both laughed.

The movie was cute and funny, if a little bit simple, and I enjoyed watching it with the two of them. Mostly, though, I just liked to watch Zack and Tennessee interact with each other whenever I could get away with stealing glances. Tennessee was so lively and excited by everything that happened in the movie, and Zack was so glad to join in his son’s happiness that I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. Who would’ve thought that the pierced, tattooed, eye-makeup-loving, bad boy guitarist from 2005 would turn out to be the perfect dad?

On the flip side, would I have been mildly disappointed if someone had told my 20-year-old self that this is what I’d be doing when I finally made it to Zacky Vengeance’s bed? Probably. But right now, I didn’t feel anything other than perfectly content.

The movie ended after about an hour and a half, and I stretched my arms above my head as the end credits started to roll. “Is there a second one?” Tennessee asked, turning to look up at his dad with wide eyes. Zack laughed, ruffling his hair. “Not yet, Ten, but they’ll probably make a new one soon.”

I giggled quietly as I got off the bed, not wanting to overstay my welcome. Besides, it was probably about time for me to get to work. “Thanks for inviting me to watch the movie with you guys. This was a lot of fun,” I said to them, interrupting Tennessee’s queries of when exactly the next movie was going to come out. Two pairs of eyes turned to look at me.

“Sure thing, Christa,” Zack said after a second, noticing that I was heading for the door. “Do you have to go back to being a lawyer now?”

I smiled at him a bit sadly, stopping next to the bed they were seated on. “Yeah, there’s a few people that I should probably be getting back to today. Duty calls, I guess.”

Zack nodded, looking disappointed for a second, before his expression returned to normal. “Well, good luck getting everything done. And thanks for coming over.” Tennessee waved to me, and I laughed, waving back at him.

“Thanks, guys. See ya later!”

With that, I made my exit, opening the door and letting it swing shut behind me. There was one overriding thought in my brain as I walked back to my own room: Why had Zack looked disappointed when I said I was leaving?

My helpful brain provided the answer a few seconds later: He wanted your help telling Tennessee that the movie’s sequel might not come out for another five years. Duh.

I nodded to myself. Yeah. That made sense. No one wants to deal with an upset kid alone, right? Right. Zack wouldn’t have looked disappointed for any other reason…

Right?

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I slid the card key back into my room’s lock and went in. We hadn’t done anything other than hang out, and I was happy with that. Reading into small interactions like this was enough to drive a person crazy, and I didn’t need to start it now.

Back in my own room, I sat down to be responsible and get some work done for the first time that day. I returned a few phone calls from clients in earlier time zones on the west coast, and sent off several emails trying to gain more information about other recent lawsuits in the music industry. When I decided to be done for the day, it was just after 8 o’clock. Seeing as no one had texted me or mentioned any dinner plans, I picked up the room service menu from my nightstand to find something to eat.

When I was done with my meal, I changed into my pajamas and sat back down on the bed, fully intending to waste time on the internet for the rest of the night. However, just as I was opening up a browser window on my laptop to find something to watch, I heard a knock at the door.

I frowned slightly as I turned to face the source of the noise. Who would be coming to see me at this time of night? I swung my legs over the side of the bed and walked over to the door quietly, standing on my toes to look through the peephole and make sure it wasn’t a random murderer come to kill me. Thankfully, the person on the other side looked less like Charles Manson and more like Valary Sanders.

I pulled the door open and started to say hello, but she beat me to it and zipped past me into the room. “Hey, Christa!” she said energetically. She plopped down on my bed with a bounce, crossing her ankles and resting her chin on her hands, looking at me expectantly.

I paused for a moment, taking in the sudden scene of her in my room. “Hey, Val… everything okay?” I asked, one eyebrow raised. We were friends of course, and I was glad to see her, but we didn’t usually just bound into each other’s rooms like this. And she seemed almost… hyper? That was definitely new.

“Oh yeah, everything’s good,” she said, waving a hand dismissively and looking around my room like she was trying to find something. Her eyes ran over the bed, the floors, and the walls. Not seeming to find what she was looking for, she shook her head slightly and returned her gaze to me, instead. “So, Christa… how’d you spend your afternoon today?” She looked like she was trying to hold in a grin.

I let my shoulders slump as I realized what this was about. I looked at her with my best deadpan expression, and explained. “After we split up from you guys, I watched a Disney movie with Tennessee and Zack in their room. I’m not sure what it is about that that you’d find so interesting.” The words came out a bit harsher than I’d intended, but they were true, nonetheless.

Val furrowed her brow a bit in response, pursing her lips. “Is that really all?” She paused for a moment, contemplating my words, then sighed. “Matt said that Zack told him you guys had watched a movie together. I guess I was hoping for different details,” she said, laughing a bit as her determined expression started to fade. “And here I thought you’d taken my advice and decided to go after Zack!”

I groaned, and walking over to sit next to her on the bed. “I’m not going to ‘go after Zack’, Val.” I said firmly. “I care about both him and Tennessee, and I have a lot of respect for him, but I’m not trying to date anyone here.” I tried my best to beat back the voice in my head that was screaming WHY NOT?!, with only limited success.

“Oh come on, Christa!” she said, shoving me in the arm playfully. “I already know you have a crush on him. And it’s about time that he found someone, too! You two were adorable with Tennessee in the mall earlier today,” she gushed.

I chuckled at her comments, but my tone sounded tired when I spoke. “Thank you, Val. But I already told you, I’m happy with the way things are, and I think it would be completely unprofessional of me to try to pursue anything more. I already feel so lucky just to get to travel with you guys, and I don’t want to jeopardize anything,” I said truthfully.

Val thought on that for a moment, cocking her head to the side. “I do believe you, Christa. That you’re happy and all. But don’t you think you might be more happy if you were dating a certain guitarist?” The mischievous expression had snuck back onto her face again, and now it was my turn to shove her arm.

“Hey, no need to be so forceful!” she said, laughing. “Oh, and by the way,” she added, rubbing her absolutely-not-injured arm, “I didn’t say anything, I swear, but Matt’s onto you.”

My eyes must have doubled in size. “What do you mean he’s ‘onto me’?” I asked her, suddenly feeling slightly panicked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “It was when he saw you guys in the mall, I think. He must have thought you looked like a family, too. And Matt knows you pretty well by this point… he saw the way you turned back to look at me, and I think the pieces just fell into place for him after that. He mentioned it to me earlier tonight.”

I groaned again, more loudly this time, and dropped my face into my hands. This was just fan-fucking-tasic. No one had done anything wrong, not really, but I felt like the whole “Christa has a crush on Zack” thing was starting to turn into something like a middle school rumor. It was only a matter of time before everyone knew.

“What’d you tell him?” I asked her after a minute, not looking up. I heard Val sigh, and she placed a comforting hand on my back. “I told him I thought you might like Zack, too, but not that I’d confirmed anything with you. He brought up the idea of setting you guys up all on his own,” she said.

I lifted my face out of my hands to look at her incredulously. “You’re serious?” I asked. Would Matt really do that to one of his own bandmates? Try to set him up with their lawyer?

She nodded, looking at me sincerely now. “Yeah. He’d never try to push anything too far, if he thought either of you wouldn’t like it, but Zack’s his best friend. He just wants him to be happy, and you, too. He thinks you could be good for each other.”

I let out a sigh, looking away from Val to stare into space in the room in front of me. This whole thing was weird. And considering that I’d never intended for anyone to find out, I’d say that it had definitely gotten out of hand. But knowing that Matt didn’t think Zack and I being together was a completely terrible idea somehow shifted things in my mind. Val was right; the two of them were best friends, and Matt should know Zack pretty well after around 20 years of friendship, right? He’d also never want anything to happen that could hurt the band, and if he thought the two of us being together could be okay, then that meant…

I snapped out of my thoughts and back to the present when I noticed Val’s hand waving in front of my face. I turned to look at her, to see that her expression had shifted to a gentle one. “What’s on your mind?”

I shook my head, not sure how to answer the question. “I don’t know, Val. I appreciate your help and advice and everything, but I think I just… need some time to think things over for myself, y’know?” She nodded, and I continued. “And I know you can’t control Matt, but could you maybe ask him not to mention this to any of the other guys for now?”

She nodded again. “I’ll tell him, Christa. I don’t think he’d ever mention to anyone else that he thought you had a crush on Zack, anyways, but I’ll say something about it to him. Just to be sure.”

“Thanks, Val.” I said. Not wanting to be overdramatic for any longer than I already had, I shook my head slightly and put a smile on my face. “So, what did you guys get up to this afternoon?”

We chatted for a little while longer, moving onto lighter topics, before Val left for the evening. She gave me a quick hug on the way out, reassuring me that everything was going to be fine, and that I could keep being their lawyer no matter what. I laughed and thanked her again, and when the door closed behind her, I was alone for the night.

I tried to go to sleep pretty much immediately after that, but I lay awake in bed for a long time, tossing and turning under the covers. It was weird, and kind of dumb, but I sort of felt like I had Matt’s blessing now. If he and Val both thought that Zack and I weren’t a completely absurd match, maybe there was some truth to it. Neither of them would ever want to risk hurting the band, so maybe this could actually be okay.

But still—Zack was a rock star. I was a lawyer. He was, and had always been, handsome as hell. I was, at least in my own opinion, just kind of alright-looking. He had an exciting life, and travelled the world, and could have his pick among several thousand girls any night they played a show if he wanted. I had a normal life, and spent most of my days in an office, and had never been particularly popular with guys.

Most important of all, though, the fact remained that Zack didn’t seem to think of me as any more than their lawyer and a friend to his son. And no amount of Val’s scheming or Matt’s trying to set us up would change that.

But what was that look on his face earlier?

I rolled over in bed, not having a good answer for myself, and tried to organize my thoughts. It was still unlikely, but there was a very slim chance that Zack might possibly think of me in a non-platonic way. Maybe we weren’t a completely ridiculous match, and maybe us being together wouldn’t mess anything up with my job. I still didn’t plan on actively pursuing him, and I’d deny it up and down if any of the guys tried to ask if I had a thing for him. But…

Hell, maybe if things with Zack somehow just fell together on their own, I wouldn’t try to fight it.

With that final, unusually-optimistic thought, a small smile snuck its way onto my face in the dark. There. I was giving myself a chance. It was a long shot, but a shot, nonetheless. With the issue settled in my mind, at least for the moment, I finally managed to fall asleep.

Notes