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When Shaun wakes up, he automatically reaches for Chris before he even opens his eyes. When he feels only air, his stomach sinks as the whole mess comes crashing back. How long before I stop doing this? he wonders.
He opens his eyes, pushes himself up on his elbows, and is really confused for a moment as he tries to figure out why he is sleeping on his parents' patio. More things come crashing back and he realizes that someone is missing from the bed next to him. He has no idea what time it is, and the silence coming from the house indicates that Zach is long gone.
He drops back onto the pillows and stares up at the sky. He can hear the waves crashing against the sand with just enough irregularity that they don't completely become white noise.
He's not sure if he has completely messed up by kissing Zach last night. In the moment, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Like not kissing him would have been the aberration. But as he turns it over in his mind now, he can't believe how out-of-left field it must have seemed to Zach, who has no idea how long Shaun had been lusting after him.
It had been every single bit as good as he thought it would be. Zach's chest under his hand, dragging his fingers across Zach's neck, Zach's mouth under his, kissing him back. When he lay down next to Zach and closed his eyes, the room spun. He was flying.
So maybe he didn't come completely out of nowhere. He had been flirting, if subtly, and Zach did kiss him back. He wasn't pushed away and Zach didn't run. At least not while Shaun was awake.
Still, Shaun knows, in the pit of his stomach, that this isn't going to be as easy as he'd like it to be.
After a cup of coffee, he gets ready to call Zach. He's slightly disgusted with himself as he writes out something to say in case he gets voice mail. He's completely disgusted when he actually uses it. He sounds stilted and awkward as he reads, but off-the-cuff has never been a strong point of his either. He's pretty sure if he just spoke, he would say more than enough to scare Zach off for good. Even if he can't have Zach, he still wants Zach in his life.
He sits on the patio while he waits for Zach call back. As he stares out at the waves rolling in he keeps imagining all the ways this soap opera he's created could end.
His favorite, by far, starts very simply with Zach calling him back. Then he imagines Zach spending the night, though he tries not to get too carried away while sitting in full view of neighbors. It ends with him taking Zach away from San Pedro, Jeannie, and his father, all the people and places that are keeping Zach from living his life the way he deserves.
Every so often a scenario slips in that includes Zach saying he's disgusted by Shaun and doesn't want anything to do with him ever again. As much as Shaun doubts Zach would actually say those things, the end result seems all too probable. The thought makes Shaun feel slightly sick so he tries to put it out of his mind.
When he doesn't hear from Zach after a couple of hours he calls again, and again, and again. Voice mail each time.
His heart sinks as he realizes Zach is ignoring his calls. He may be a little bit in love with Zach now. He imagines that Zach is sitting somewhere, confused or mad. He hopes it's confused, but it kills him that he's caused Zach to feel unhappy in any way. It kills him that Zach doesn't seem want him back.
He grabs his board and heads to the private beach he showed Zach, intending to calm down, clear his head. It's not until he gets to the beach and sees that Zach isn't there that he realizes he was trying to run into Zach.
Despite that disappointment, surfing does clear he head a bit and he's able to convince himself that all is not lost. Zach clearly liked it when Shaun was kissing him; he probably just needs a little encouragement. He'll call Zach one more time, giving him the benefit of the doubt in case he's been working all day. But if he doesn't answer this time? Shaun's going to find him.
Zach, unsurprisingly, doesn't answer so Shaun heads to San Pedro. As he's driving, he sees Zach sitting in the back of his car, parked just off the road by a public beach. He pulls into the parking lot. He's still in his wetsuit, so he grabs his surfboard as a sorry excuse for being there and jogs over to Zach's car.
He's brushed off again, and then again, in the space of minutes. He's been treated like this before. College was full of closet cases, and too many of them found their way to his dorm room; this was inevitably the way he was treated the next time their path's crossed on campus. He knows that pushing won't help, so he decides to focus on Zach's art as a way in.
He wants Zach, yes, but even more than that he wants Zach to be happy, to be his own person, to do something with his life and his talent. He pushes his feelings aside and tries to get through to Zach that he's worth more than what Jeannie makes him.
When he touches Zach's shoulder on the beach he feels it in his stomach like he's thirteen again. It makes it hurt all the more when Zach turns his back and walks away. He can't get that sight out of his mind.
He certainly tries, though. He starts by taking his laptop out to the patio to write. He quickly realizes that he's not going to get very far when he can still smell Zach on the pillows. He drops his laptop on the kitchen counter, ditches his shoes in the doorway, and walks up and down the beach doing his very best to think about absolutely nothing.
He stops just before he gets back to the house and stands, staring out at the ocean. He curls his toes into the sand and digs in his heels creating perfect imprints of his feet. Perfect and transient, lasting only as long as the next tide. It seems that nothing good in his life is lasting.
He's clearly failed in his think-of-nothing mission so he gives in and wonders how his life ended up going so wrong.
He's thirty-two and he's supposed to be living in a house he owns, building the family he never had when he was growing up. Instead he's staying at his parents' house while he's temporarily homeless after the messiest breakup he's ever witnessed in real life. The silver lining in the whole situation had been Zach, who is now avoiding him.
He sighs. He needs a drink. Beer's not going to cut it, but he's pretty sure he saw a bottle of vodka shoved in the back of the freezer. He heads back to the house and unearths the vodka and a shot glass. He tucks his laptop under one arm and decides the best place to get drunk is in bed, that way he won't have to find it afterward.
He tosses his laptop aside on the table in the corner; he knows anything he writes tonight will be maudlin, emo, and any of a dozen other words that translate as total crap.
He pours a shot and toasts the air. "Fuck you, Chris," he speaks aloud and pounds back the shot. He half smiles as he feels warmth spread throughout his body. This is almost the way he felt when he was kissing Zach, tingly all over. He pours another shot, but as he's contemplating how to toast to Zach, he hears thump, thump, thump come from downstairs. He gets off the bed and sets the bottle and the shot aside. The thumping continues, becoming more urgent, as he makes his way downstairs.
He's shocked when he opens the door and sees Zach standing in front of him, but nothing compares to how he feels when Zach grabs him and kisses him. He stops thinking, and just does.
When Shaun wakes up, he doesn't need to reach out because he already has his arm around Chris. But it feels wrong, somehow, to be lying next to someone. He opens his eyes and sees Zach lying next to him and it all comes crashing back. He smiles.