Broken Fairytales (31 page)

“Misery loves company,” he deadpanned.

“I’m sorry a
bout whatever’s bothering you.
I wish I could help,” I said, genuinely meaning it.
I knew his issues were so much greater than mine, and I suddenly felt guilty for even thinking I had it rough.
I j
ust knew
Zack was dealing with
something big
, and it had been affecting him for a while
.

He shrugged.
“I’ll be okay.”

“I wish I believed you,” I said, hopi
ng I wasn’t over-
stepping my bounds.

“Yeah, me
too,” he said, getting that far-
off look in his eyes again.

I wished he would open up
and tell me what was going on.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever
seen someone
in so
much pain before.
I inadverten
tly took his hand, not thinking about it, just acting on instinct
.

H
e looked down at my hand in his
and then back up at me.
“Are you sure that’s somethi
ng you want to do? I mean, you have a
boyfriend and all.”

I nodded, realizing that it
was
definitely
something I wanted to do.
For some unknown reason, I wanted nothing more than to sit
there on that
secluded, hidden beach with a guy I barely
k
new who seemed to be barely holding himself together and give him my hand to hold, as if it might help to have something solid to
grip
when you were falling apart
.

Zack leaned over then and kissed me, taking me by surprise
.
I leaned into
it
, becoming a full-on participant
, knowing th
ere was nothing that could have kept me from kissing him in that moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said,
laughing lightly
when he pulled back.
“I shouldn’t have do
ne that.”

He didn’t seem sorry
,
and his lack of remorse and boundaries should have been a red flag to me, but it sort of made me want to see how far I would let myself go with him. He was a bad boy, and I’d always dated good boys. Maybe it was time I take a ride on the dark side and see what happened. Of course, I knew Zack wasn’t all bad.
He was like
bad boy light.

With h
is dark hair, piercing eyes and
serious looks, he had a way about him that screamed danger, but then he would smile and say something sweet, and I’d totally change my mind about him.
T
hen there was the way he touched me that set my body on fire
that just told me he could get me in a lot of trouble
. He knew I had a boyfriend, but he didn’
t care, and frankly, in that moment, neither did I.

I shook my head.  “Don’t be
sorry
,” I said, and leaned in to kiss him again.
“Just go with your gut.”

“Touché,” he said against my lips
. H
is tongue working its way into my mouth as I leaned further into him, getting completely lost in the kiss
.

When I finally pulled away, he leaned his head back agains
t the rock and closed his eyes.
I watched him closely, noticing how broken he looked again.
It
amazed me how he could go from
flirty and
happy to sad
and remorseful in the blink of an eye
.
His moods wer
e up and down, and I couldn’t tell
when that switch would flip and he would
suddenly
change before my eyes.

“You’re going to regret that tomorrow,” he said.

I shook my head.
“I don’t think I will.”

“Oh, princess, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into with me,” he said, not opening his eyes.

“I know enough
,” I said, l
eaning over to kiss his cheek
, my lips lingering for a few beats before I kissed the spot right below his ear, making him shiver
.
“Now tell me, what’s wrong?”

He hesitated for a moment
, and then to my surprise, he opened up to me
.

“My mom’s sick,
”
he
finally
said, rushing the words, as if he didn’t want to say them
, but couldn’t stop them from coming out of his mouth
.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing he was talking about something much more than a cold or the flu.
I was half-
holding my breath
, knowing how hard it must
be for him to talk about it.

He opened his eyes and
looked at me. “She has
cancer
, and sh
e’s dying.”

He said it so flatly, like he didn’t have any emoti
on left to expel on the topic.
I watched as he fingered the rubber bracelet
on
the wrist attached to
the hand I was still holding.
I realized it was a breast cancer awa
reness bracelet
.
He looked at me, almost as if to gauge my reaction, but I di
dn’t say anything
.
I
truthfully
wasn’t sure
what to say.

In my silence, Zack continued talking. 
“
She was diag
n
osed
with breast cancer
a little over
three
year
s
ago.
She had a lumpectomy and they
did radiation.
She did everything
she should have
,
and she went
int
o remission for
a year
.
Then s
he found out
about a year and a half ago
that it
was back and
had spread to her lymph nodes
and her lungs
.
She fought it fo
r a
while
, but it didn’t work. When she found out a few weeks
ago
that it had spread to her pancreas
, she decided to stop the chemo
.
She doesn’t have much tim
e left – maybe a month or two.
She’s
basically
giving up.”
 

His voice cracked on the last few syllables
, and he
over
up at me as
I watched the tears pool in his eyes.
I suddenly realized why he’d
seemed like a different guy wh
en I’d met him
at the coffeehouse.
Back then
he’d been light-hearted and free of the dark shadows that now haunted his eyes
,
because
he still thought his mom had a fighting chance
.
She’d beaten cancer once before, so he was hopeful, optimistic, that she could do it again. But now that she’d stopped fighting, there wasn’t another outcome, and he knew she would die.

“I’m
so sorry,
Zack,” I said, knowing
it would never be enough.

He nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
He wiped his free hand across his
face, pushing the tears away. “I’m a fucking mess,” he said
, all traces of the bad boy from a few minutes earlier gone
.
“I’m crying in front of a girl that I actually like and am probably succeeding in scaring her off.”

I
tightened my grip on his hand. “No,” I said firmly.
“You’re not.”

“Y
ou don’t understand.
I
’m pretty much a
train wreck. I’d walk away if I were you.”

I shook my head.
“I’m not going anywhere.”

For some reason
that
I couldn’t
explain, I was drawn to him like no one else. The thought of walking away wasn’t even an option.
He breathed in deeply and leaned his head back against the rock
s
again.
I remained silent, letting him take his time.

“It’s why I was upset on the other night,” he said finally.

“Your mom,” I said, understanding completely why he’d been so angry.

“It wa
s these assholes at the party.
Some story came on the
TV about some celebrity
having a mastectomy, and t
hey were laughing about it,” he said, shaking his head. 

“That sucks.
That’s not funny at all.”

“You know, I get it.
Hell, a
few
year
s
ago, I might have laughed about it with them, but
things are different now. My mom
didn’t have one of those, but she considered it.
It just got to me, you know
, that they could be so callous about something they know nothing about
.”

I nodded.
I could
see
how that would have made him upset.

He leaned his head back against the rock
s
, looking
up at the
nearly
full moon overhead.
He put his arm around me and pulled me cl
ose to him.
I leaned my head on his chest and listened to the sound o
f his
heart beating steadily and his breath going in and out
.
It was like it was a str
uggle for him just to breathe.
I desperately wanted to take his pain, ball it u
p and throw it into the ocean.
He was too young t
o be dealing with so
much.

I
t
hit me then that I’
d been incredibly near-sighted
.
I’d been consumed in rebelling and fighting my parents and proving to everyone that I
was a different person.
I was happy that I was doing something that would disappoint
them
, and here was a guy who wanted nothing more than to do everything he could to hel
p his mother, and he couldn’t.
It hit me then
how
precarious life wa
s
, and the last thing I should
have
be
en doing wa
s trying to piss off the people who cared about m
e.
I should be embracing the fact that they were in my life, especially since you never knew when they no longer would be.

Zack was
barely an adult and was facing
losing his mother.
I thought about what that
would f
eel like if it was my mom and
my
chest tighten
ed
.
I suddenly wanted to run home and apologize for all the hateful things I’d thought about her and the nasty things I’d said to her in the past few weeks, as I tried to dist
ance myself from who I’d been.
I c
ouldn’t believe I’d stooped so
low to do that to my mother who’d al
ways been there to support me.
Sure, she buried her head in the sand and refused to s
ee certain things
,
and
she had elevated expectations of me, but when it came down to it, I knew that she loved me and would do anything for me. 

Maybe if I’d just talked to her about what I was going through, instead of shutting her out and making her feel like it was her
fault, then I wouldn’t have
had
so much
guilt cour
sing through me
in that moment
.
I made the decision to talk to her the next day, explain everything and above all else, apologize.

“
You know what I really want?” Zack
asked
after a few minutes of silence
, pulling me back to
reality
.

“What?” I asked
, thinking he’d say something deep about his mother or their r
elati
onship or at least something enlightening
.

“Ice cream,” he said,
as he
smiled a small smile
and surprised me again.
He
didn’t want to go get drunk to forget his pain
like a normal person,
most likely because he knew it wouldn’t help.
He’d been there before he’d said, and I wondered if that was how he’d initially dealt with her diagnosis.