But that wasn’t going to happen while Zach was around, was it? Jay would always fuck up, and always turn around and look to Zach to fix it. To help him clean up the mess before their folks got home, to write his English essays so he wouldn’t fail eleventh grade, to patch the dent in the fender before Mom got back from her business trip, to vouch for him at the table so he wouldn’t lose his patch.
To kill the men he’d gotten tangled with and who’d nearly killed him.
Jay was going to be Zach’s little brother, first and foremost, until Zach wasn’t around to shield him.
And Zach was going to have his little brother’s fuckups hanging on his neck until he put some road between them.
Suddenly, Zach was simply tired. He sighed and leaned back against the rusting metal railing. “It just would have been nice to have you stand up for me. Just once.”
Jay stood there and said nothing.
Zach finally walked away.
They needed some road between them.
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~oOo~
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Just after dawn onSaturday morning, as he was putting his bathroom kit and other daily essentials in his pack, Zach turned at the sound of soft rapping on the jamb of his open bedroom door. His mother stood there, in a baggy pair of gym shorts and a thin-strapped cotton top. Pajamas. Her short blonde hair was messy, and she wore her glasses instead of contacts. Everybody in the house was up, but nobody was happy about it. Even the pups seemed resentful of the early rising. But the Laughlin crew was intent on making these thousand miles in two days, so they were getting an early start. It was late August, and they’d be riding through the desert most of the way. Morning hours were better riding.
“Morning, Mom.”
She looked tired and sad, and he could tell she’d been crying. “Morning, firstborn.” There were two coffee mugs in her hands; she held one out to him.
Zach took the mug and kissed his mother’s cheek. Before he could lean back again, she set her hand on his face and held him there. After a moment, he put his arms around her, and she put hers around him, and they held each other, and their mugs. Just standing in the doorway.
He felt it happen—she grew tense, and then he could tell she’d stopped breathing. And then her body shook in his arms. She was crying.
Emotion tightened his own throat, but he didn’t let it go. Still holding her, he stretched an arm and set his mug on a shelf of his bookcase and folded his mother up in a real embrace. When he did, she cried harder, and Zach warred with and won out over his own emotions again.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry.”
He wanted this trip; he was chomping at the bit to get out on his own. But it hurt, too, to be hurting his family, to leave everything he knew behind, to be charting something unknown for the first time in his life. Hell, even what was going on with Lyra was something new and unfamiliar. He’d never really had an actual girlfriend before.
He was excited, but scared, too.
Mom shook her head against his chest. She sniffed and leaned back to smile wetly up at him. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, honey. I’m sad not to have you close, and I’m scared that ... I’m scared about a lot of shit, but this is your life. You have to live your life for you, not anybody else. Not even me.”
It was the first time she’d said anything about this that sounded like she understood at all—and she understood better than even he really had. That was why he needed to go. It wasn’t getting distance from his family, or at least that wasn’t the heart of it. He didn’t want any kind of emotional distance from Mom or Pop or even Jay. He just needed room to live his life for himself.
“You don’t have to be scared, Mom,” he said and kissed her messy blonde head. “You’re coming with me to Nevada because you’re in my heart.” It sounded cheesy to his ears, but it also sounded like the right thing.
Mom smiled, and he knew it was the right thing to say. “I love you, Zachary. You made your father and me a family. There is nothing you could ever do to make me love you a drop less. Do you understand?Nothing.Ever. You make your choices for yourself, and know that we are here for you always, when you need us, when you want us. You are always home here, even if you make another home somewhere else.”
There was more going on in her words than his leaving, he knew that. The problems with her own family shimmered there as well. It perplexed him that she’d never explained, and probably never would. But he guessed when you loved someone, you trusted them with their secrets.
“I know, Mom. You and Pop have never made me feel anything else.”