A Measure of Happiness (17 page)

“Oh,” Katherine said, and swallowed down a tremor. “That's great!” she told Zach, willing the claim to inspire the feeling.

“I would've said yes if you'd asked me first,” Zach said, his tone soothing and conciliatory. The tilt of his head hinted at regret.

Ridiculous, but Katherine wondered whether a newborn Zach would've similarly agreed to be her son had she not first decided to give him away.

Celeste helped Zach fasten his seat belt.

“So, see you tomorrow,” Celeste said, and she went around to the driver's side.

Katherine bent to Zach, the desire to hug him swelling inside her. “Guess I should've acted faster.” She patted his shoulder, as though she were Nurse Lois, a middle-aged woman, charmed by a young man she barely knew. Then she shut the car door and stepped out of the way. Through the window, Zach met her gaze and gave her a left-handed thumbs-up. The car fired to life. Celeste backed from the space and slowly pulled from the hospital parking lot. Katherine stared after them into the darkness.

A soul-sucking emptiness pressed at the back of her throat, teasing her gag reflex.

Katherine should've
decided
faster. She still didn't think Celeste and Zach were a good idea—Zach with his wandering ways and his broken wrist, and Celeste with her broken spirit. But what did Katherine know, really? What did she know of love?

All she'd ever done was chase love away.

 

Running away was Zach's way of dealing with conflict, his modus operandi, his signature move. At twenty-three, he was a little old for his first-ever kick-ass epiphany, yet there it was.

And he resented the shit out of it.

Maybe it was the shock from his injury wearing off. At first, his wrist hadn't hurt, at least not in the way a broken-bone virgin might imagine a broken bone. But now, after a round of x-rays, when Nurse Lois had “adjusted” his hand's position, and after the realignment or reduction or whatever the heck the sadomasochistic doctor had done “for his own good,” his nerve endings had fired to life.

Celeste slowed and glided toward a stop sign, its white lettering glowing before Old Yeller's headlights. Then Old Yeller clipped a frost heave or a speed bump or some other sort of torture device, and Zach's wrist cussed like a—like Celeste.

A noise echoed in the car, a combo of an exhalation and a grunt.

“You okay?” Celeste asked.

Zach considered telling Celeste he'd burped. Instead, he got real. “Got any ibuprofen or acetaminophen at your place?”

“Yeah.”

“Think I might need a few of each.”

“That's cool.” Celeste yanked off her kerchief thing, tossed it into the backseat, and eased onto the road. Her face glowed, pale and pretty, like something ripe. Like something he wanted to hold in his hands. And, at the same time, like something too precious to touch. Too delicate.

Maybe Celeste had caused the epiphany. He knew she expected him to leave. She knew he knew it. Why should he live up, or down, to her expectations? Unless that was the right thing to do for everyone, including Katherine.

Maybe Katherine had caused Zach's epiphany.

Right when Zach had been sure she'd wanted him to up and leave, she'd up and invited him to stay. Not just in Hidden Harbor but with her.

But he could still leave Hidden Harbor. He could even tell himself breaking his wrist had been a sign, some kind of karmic crap letting him know it was okay to down a handful of pills, get in Matilda, and drive back to Massachusetts.

Decades of living in a town where you couldn't go a block without tripping over a health food store or a yoga studio or a granola factory must've infected his DNA.

He could tell his mother he'd found her—his birth mother. He wiggled his fingers, shooting sparks of pain through his hand, up his wrist, and to his elbow. He could drive one-handed, saving his right hand for emergency purposes only. He could choose to see the fracture as a mere complication to his plan. A test to see how badly he wanted to follow through with his intention to run.

Or he could choose to see the fracture as a stop sign, a warning to slow down, look both ways, and, for once, follow through with his original plan.

He could choose.

A muscle twinge tightened the right side of his neck. He shifted in his seat and turned his head until his gaze fell on the rear view.

“You sure you're okay to drive Matilda back to my place?” Celeste asked. “We could figure something out tomorrow.”

“Nah, let's get it done.”

“Cool,” Celeste said. “Because we're almost home. I mean, back at Lamontagne's.”

“Sweet.” Home, Zach reminded himself, was wherever you hung your hat, your hoodie, or your fluffy yellow blanket. Celeste had offered him a spot on her couch, not a starring role in her life. But the word hung in the air, evoking a Cape with a shingle roof, a white picket fence, and a freshly tarred driveway. An SUV and—now he knew he was losing his mind—a couple of rug rats of his own.

He'd never before imagined himself as someone's dad.

Celeste pulled up to Lamontagne's and into the space beside Matilda. She killed the engine. “And we're back.”

He'd never met anyone like Celeste before.

“Yup.” Zach went for the seat buckle.

“Wait.” Celeste took hold of the shoulder strap. “Okay, go ahead.” When he depressed the button, Celeste leaned over him and guided the shoulder strap around his arm.

“Thanks,” he told her hair.

“You're welcome,” she said, her voice sweet and hushed and inches from him.

Zach wanted to brush her hair from her eyes, to search for hidden meaning, as though she were a Jumbles riddle he needed to decode. He'd never before wanted to get inside a girl this badly. A chuckle jostled his belly and tugged the corners of his lips.

He meant he'd never before wanted to get inside a girl's
mind
this badly.

Celeste helped him into Matilda, guiding the seat belt around him and tucking him in behind the wheel. Ten minutes later, they parked Matilda and Old Yeller at Ledgewood, and Celeste reversed the seat belt process.

Zach got his duffel bag and Celeste's blanket from Matilda.

“Want me to carry the blanket?” Celeste asked.

He tossed the blanket over his shoulder, lowered his nose. “I'm fine, Celeste.”

“Did you sniff my blanket?”

“Uh, maybe.”

“Ew,” she said. “You're a sick man.”

Then she led the sick man to her apartment door, turned the key, and opened the door.

“I've been meaning to ask you about this furniture,” Zach said.

“You don't like it?” Celeste paused with her pocketbook in the crook of her arm. She tilted her head, widened her eyes, and gave him a half smile. Was she joking or truly peeved?

If this furniture was her style, then she was someone other than who he thought she was. The notion unsettled him, a milder version of the way he'd felt after his parents' big this-isn't-your-life reveal. “I thought—imagined—it doesn't really look like you.”

Celeste laughed and tossed her pocketbook on the floor. “I'm not a five-foot-tall testosterone monkey.”

“A what?”

“A short, brawny dude. The furniture came with the apartment.”

“Thought so.” Celeste was one of the coolest girls he'd ever met, but masculine she was not.

“Make yourself comfortable. I'll go get you some drugs,” she said, and she went into the bathroom.

Zach peeked around the corner and then unzipped his jeans. He tugged them down with his left hand, unzipped his duffel, and grabbed his sweats from the top. Now what? The water ran in the bathroom. His heart raced, like some sicko about to be caught with his pants down.

He tossed the sweatpants on the floor, stepped into the legs, and pulled them up, one at a time. When the bathroom door clicked open, Zach arranged himself on the couch, his hand sticking to the black vinyl. He set his feet atop the glass coffee table. He crossed his legs at the ankles.

Celeste wore gray sweatpants and a shapeless gray hoodie. She'd braided her hair—a shiny, loose rope flopped over one shoulder. So that's what she did with her hair at night.

She set a Dixie cup of water and the pills he'd requested on the table. “Look at you, following my directions and making yourself comfortable. You
can
listen.”

Zach lifted the chalky tablets to his lips. “Don't let it get around,” he said, and tossed down the pills in one gulp.

“Wow.”

“That's not how you do it?”

“Nope, but that's okay. We're all different. Do you want something to eat?”

“Beer?” Zach asked.

“Probably not a good idea. Plus, I don't have any. Eggs?”

“If you're making some for yourself.”

“Eggs it is.”

Zach took his feet off the coffee table and started to get up.

“I'm good. You stay right where you are.” Celeste eyed the loaner blanket Zach had tossed on the end of the couch. She pulled the blanket over his lap, slipped the TV remote into his left hand, and left the room.

A guy could get used to this treatment, except for the whole pain issue.

Zach turned on the TV. A World War II documentary.
Flip.
A romantic comedy. He could tell because the girl was a cheerful blonde and the setting was New York City.
Flip. Cops.

Zach had gotten caught up in the show when Celeste came into the room. “I hope you like your eggs dry because—”

Zach switched off the TV.

Celeste held two plates of scrambled eggs and a wary smile. She notched her head to the side. “What were you watching?”

Zach's heart pounded in his mouth, and his cheeks heated. “Nothin'.”

“Nothin' looked a lot like something, and that something looked exactly like
Cops.
” Celeste set a plate of eggs on Zach's lap.

The plate heated Zach's thighs. The aroma of eggs and butter watered his mouth. “Surely you can't be serious.”

Celeste sat down, balanced her ankle on her knee and a plate on her lap. Celeste's hands, Zach had noticed a lot. Feminine, but with short, bare nails. Her toenails were a whole different species. Blue and glittery. They looked like candy. Like something he should put in his mouth. Like something that might taste like a raspberry Pixy stick.

“I am serious,” Celeste said, “and don't call me Shirley.”

Zach raised his gaze. “
Airplane,
” he said. Celeste didn't seem overly eager to dig into her eggs, so he got started. He picked up the fork with his left hand and scooped a heaping forkful of eggs. Slowly, he raised the eggs to his mouth. The girl was covered up from neck to ankle, and her toes got him going?

“That is correct,” Celeste said. “And yet it still doesn't explain your fascination with trash TV.”

Zach chewed.

Celeste nibbled her eggs.

Zach swallowed. “
Cops
isn't trash TV.”

“Aha! So you admit it. You were watching
Cops
. I recognized the wifebeater T-shirt and the chick with the meth addict skin.”

Zach shrugged, and a buzz ran through him. The kind of buzz that tingled whenever he tried to explain himself to his parents. “All I saw was a scared woman and a guy in uniform trying to help.”

Celeste's fork hovered over her eggs. “Wow. Now I feel like an ass.”

“You're not an ass.” Now he felt even more like an ass. He wasn't one of those people—he or she of strong opinions who needed to shove his or her strong opinions down the throat of anyone within shouting distance. “I've just, I don't know . . .”

“What?” Celeste asked.

“Did you ever go to an underage party the cops busted up, and then everyone's all trash-talking the police?”

“I'm twenty-two,” Celeste said. “I'm hardly underage.”

“I mean years ago,” Zach said.

Celeste worked her way clockwise around her plate. “Sure. How do you think my brothers taught me how to drink without getting drunk?”

“I never trash-talked the police. Maybe because my parents taught me to respect them? I always kind of saw them as superheroes, zooming in to save the good citizens.”

“Of Gotham City?”

Zach shrugged.

“That explains why you tried to leap a tall bakery shelf in a single bound.”

Again he shrugged, even though he didn't consider himself a shrugging sort of guy. But Celeste brought out the little-boy shyness in him. Were they flirting? Just friends? Friends who flirted?

“What did you say you went to school for?”

“Criminal justice and psych, but I wasn't heading to any police academy. I wasn't going for a job in law enforcement.” He'd figured out junior year in high school that color blindness disqualified him from police work. Research had given him that bit of bad news, but no plan B that interested him.

His body's betrayal energized his right hand, trapped in the cast. When he curled his fingers into a fist, an ache thrummed all the way to his shoulder, and he sank deeper into the couch. “What were you doing it for?”

Of this Zach was certain. “Law school. My father's a public defender,” Zach said, by way of explanation.

Celeste frowned. “Isn't that similar to what the police do? Defend the public?”