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“I just feel like maybe I’m just not meant to be happy, or like—“
Alex trails off as he finishes telling Zach the story of a whirlwind fling—his first one with a boy—and how his first truly good thing in a long time was ruined by Clay Jensen, by secrets, by Gordon Fucking Lightfoot and a whole list of other things they should’ve never had to deal with as teenagers. Alex recounts the details to Zach with resigned detachment. Zach’s pissed though. They were cute together, Winston and Alex. He had thought so ever since he overheard them by the lockers on Valentine’s Day. This only fuels his exasperation with the world—with its vicious cycle of cruelty that always seems to level its aim at Alex and the people he loves.
“Listen man, happiness, it just makes us unhappy.”
“Yeah. I thought for a minute maybe I had found something kinda close but... I was just wrong.” The way he says it—just for a moment—Zach thinks he could be talking about the rooftop, the night they kissed. When suddenly everything was too close. Close to happiness. Cheap bourbon replaces another unnamed flavor on his tongue.
“Shit,” Zach grits through the burn in his throat. “You know it’s like we chase shit that we think is gonna make us happy, but it doesn’t. It just ends sad.” Zach remembers how it feels, every time, when inevitably the storm comes in to wash away the calm. When months spent testifying and fighting for justice on behalf of every woman Bryce Walker ever assaulted end in only 3 months probation. When the rain really starts coming down and shatters your lower leg along with your future, just as a finishing touch. And the crowd goes wild. So it goes. Things just end sad in Evergreen California. “Every fuckin’ time. Every fuckin’ time,” he repeats with a dry, hysterical laugh.
Between various catastrophes, he’s thought a lot about being free. Him and Alex being free together. Free from their cycle of day-to-day turmoil. Free from everything. If life were a daydream, they’d take their little rowboat all the way down to where the lake meets the river, travel it down and never look back. But jaded from experience, Zach has come to realize that freedom means cutting your connections with people, not just with places. And running away with Alex, no matter how far they went, it could never make either of them completely free. They have this habit of getting into trouble on each other’s behalf—a comfortable, longstanding exchange which makes it a whole lot harder for Zach to force himself to let go of the boy on the other end of the canoe. “That’s why you gotta be okay with not being happy, 'cause that’s what sets you free. That’s what makes us free. The fact that you can just like let go of everything and just say fuck it, you know? Just fuck it all.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck it all.” He weighs the phrase on his tongue. Bitter like the bourbon but with more conviction. Maybe even a twisted sense of hope. “Fuck it all!”
'Yeah, no kidding,’ Alex thinks to himself. Fuck Ani outing him to Clay. Fuck the way things ended with Winston. Fuck feeling afraid anymore. Before he knows it, he’s reaching for the bottle in Zach’s hand and raising it to his own lips. “Fuck it all.”
“Woah!” Zach can’t stop himself from exclaiming as he chuckles in disbelief. After thinking for so long that the only way to protect himself was through isolation, one move from Alex Standall and he’s suddenly rekindling hope that maybe they won’t have to be alone forever. That maybe they still have a chance to watch the world together as it all falls down around them. “Fuck it all,” he answers back at Alex.
“You know what?” His blue eyes inquire in Zach’s direction, “Fuck it all.”
And though Alex has never been one for performative gestures, something about the adrenaline and the safety he feels around Zach has him on his feet, making vague promises to the sky and to the boy across the canoe. They came to know each other under fucked up circumstances. Somehow, in some fucked up way, they’ll make it out—together and still okay. “Fuck it all!”
The slight rasp that enters Alex’s voice on that last proclamation. The way he’s all legs and golden hair outlined in sun. The way it’s an honor, Zach thinks, to know him. It’s happiness. The thing he just got finished swearing off, here again despite Zach’s best efforts. “Ohhh okay,” he remarks through an awestruck grin as he meets happiness where it stands.
Face-to-face with Alex, his next “fuck it all” starts much more confidently than it ends—because it only takes Zach a moment to realize how close their faces are... and how small of a misstep it would take to do something incredibly reckless... and how “fuck it all” means he can’t be afraid anymore the way he was that night on the rooftop.
Zach exhales unevenly, suddenly nervous despite the liquid courage and all the bravado from before. “Fuck it all,” he whispers like it's a secret and a promise, just loud enough for Alex to catch it.
This time Zach kisses him. And somehow it feels both like safety and reckless abandon.