A Measure of Happiness (18 page)

“The police get to interact with the public and solve crimes. A public defender mostly interacts with papers and a desk. My father loves it. I'd go crazy.”

“Don't fence you in, right? You need to be free to roam and feel the breeze in your hair. Wash high-rise windows and ski double black diamond slopes.”

During one of their first conversations, he'd rattled off his list of odd jobs, full of pride and wanting to impress a pretty girl. He felt like going back to the Wednesday Zach and giving him a kick in the pants. He'd sounded like a teenager. Exactly what his mother had told him right before she'd kicked him out the door.

Shown him the door and strongly suggested he exit.

“I don't
need
to roam,” Zach said, although he wasn't sure that was true, either. Wasn't that part of his MO, too? He ran and he roamed. The two went together like peanut butter and jelly.

“So you're not like your father,” Celeste said. “No big deal.”

Actually, it kind of was a big deal.

After Zach's parents had dropped the adoption bomb on him, they'd attempted cleanup, swearing they loved him as much as his brothers, stopping by his room every night before bed to see whether he had any questions. Letting him know their bedroom door was always open if he needed them, day or night.

But Zach hadn't believed their claims and he'd never shared his questions. Why had they waited so long to tell him the truth? Why had they eventually told? One question would've led to another and another, a maze he hadn't been willing to navigate. The easiest decision had been to do nothing, sit tight, and keep his mouth shut.

Zach's parents had called his behavior giving them the silent treatment. Zach had called it survival.

His broken wrist throbbed, tiny blood vessels growing in his fracture. He thought of the examining room conversation he'd had with Nurse Lois. He remembered the way her voice had sounded reassuring and yet matter-of-fact when she'd explained how a broken bone healed itself.

Celeste pushed her food around her plate. Her left leg jiggled. Her right food bounced. Her candy-blue toes shimmered and blurred. And just like at night, when he was alone in the back of Matilda, the air shifted and he heard the ocean. The crash of surf, the tug of undercurrent.

Tonight, Zach was pretty sure the ambient sound was happening between his ears. “Celeste?”

“Yeah?”

“I was adopted.”

Celeste's leg stopped jiggling; her candy toes stilled. “That's cool.”

“That's why I'm not like my dad. You know, because I was adopted.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. So, yeah,” Zach said, attempting and failing to pull off a casual tone. “My parents didn't tell me till I was thirteen. It kind of”—as in really—“effed me up. That's why I've been traveling around. To, you know, figure stuff out.” Even to Zach, his reasoning sounded shaky, a close cousin to the excuse he'd given Katherine about seeing more of the U.S. and trying his hand at vocations. Only this time he was admitting to a different sort of search. One where he was looking for himself, as though different parts of him were scattered across the country.

Years of living in Arlington had seeped into his psyche. Soon he'd be sitting in lotus, chanting,
Om,
and actually thinking before he reacted, like a good Buddhist.

His mother's bad perm hadn't been her only questionable phase.

“What sort of stuff are you trying to figure out?” Celeste asked.

Zach hadn't expected a question. He'd expected Celeste to take his statement at face value. He'd expected her to react like every other girl he'd warned away from him. He cleared his throat. “Could I have a glass of water, please?”

“Sure.” Celeste dashed from the room, the water ran in the kitchen, and Zach chased the last bite of egg around his plate.

Celeste returned and handed him a glass of ice water, but she wouldn't drop her stare. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”
Ah.
The cold opened his throat.

Celeste plopped down on the cushion beside him. “What sort of stuff?”

Zach coughed and set down the glass. “Hmm. Nothing major. Just, you know, what we were talking about. Where I want to work?”

“You don't need to travel all over to figure that out,” Celeste said.

“True.”

“So in what way are you fucked up?” Celeste asked.

Zach grinned, even though Celeste hadn't meant the translation from
effed
to
fucked
as a joke. He'd told other girls he was effed up and they'd smiled and nodded, never bothering to call him out or ask him to explain himself. Celeste had surprised him with her brutally honest question. She deserved a brutally honest answer.

Problem was, he'd never bothered to fully answer that question for himself. His unrest was more of a feeling. A sick, empty hunger he'd never been able to fill. “When my folks told me I was adopted, they took away my family history,” he said.

“Like where your grandparents were born?” Celeste asked.

Zach glanced to the ceiling, looking up to hold down that feeling he got whenever he heard “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The urge to run and hide and defend shaky boundaries. He met her gaze. “Like for thirteen years I thought I knew who I was, and then all of a sudden I didn't. Like everything I thought about myself was a lie. Like I didn't know who I was anymore. I still don't. That kind of fucked up.”

“I don't believe you.”

Zach laughed, loud enough that she should've inched away from him.

Instead, Celeste leaned closer. “You found a punk climbing around Katherine's stockroom—”

“He's just a kid,” Zach said.

“—and your first instinct was to dash in front of Katherine and rip the kid off the shelf.”

“Maybe I should've trusted a second instinct.”

“And the first thing you wanted to know, after you got out of the hospital, was whether the punk was okay.”

“He's just a kid,” Zach repeated.

Celeste nodded. “You know exactly who you are.”

“Who am I?” For a second Zach imagined Celeste held the answer and that the answer was like his St. Anthony pocket token, something solid she could press into the palm of his hand.

“You're Zachary Fitzgerald, defender of bakery owners and skinny-assed punks.” The first time Celeste had caught his eye, he'd felt like she was shaking him down to see where his character settled. Tonight, he only wished his character lived up to her opinion.

“He's just—”

Celeste brushed his hair from his eyes. But when he lifted his head, instead of taking her hand away, like he expected, she held steady. “Zach?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up,” Celeste said. Then she angled her head and pressed her lips against his until he smiled and shifted in his seat.

“You can listen,” she whispered against his lips.

“Mmm,” he said, and he went back for more. She smelled a little like buttercream frosting. She tasted a lot like a sweet and tangy cherry. His fractured wrist throbbed dully inside the cast. Inside his sweats, he was grateful for the extra room.

He raised a hand to her cheek. She was smiling, so he ran his good hand up the loose fabric of her sweatshirt arm and to the back of her bare neck.When she sighed into his mouth, he leaned in and pulled her face closer.

Sparklers flared beneath his lids. Crazy, happy thoughts fired, too fast for him to hold them back. He wanted to stay here forever. In this apartment. On this fugly couch. Kissing the only girl who'd ever dared to kiss him first. The only girl who'd dared him to tell the truth.

He wanted to stay with Celeste.

She made a sound, a half whimper, a maybe moan. Her breathing changed, shortening instead of deepening. Bursts of air, as though she were suffocating—
What the—

Zach pulled away first.

C
HAPTER
11

C
eleste thought she was going to die.

She gasped. The sound—raspy and raw—made her lungs seize harder, ramping up her adrenaline, like a blender shifting from
shred
to
liquefy.

For a second, Zach mirrored her likely expression. His eyes big, as though someone had jumped him from the ceiling. Then his expression went all mellow, like some kind of woo-woo Zen master. “Breathe, Celeste.”

“I . . . am . . . breathing.”

No big surprise, the thought made the situation worse.

“Breathe deeper.” Zach's hand hovered above her shoulder, as though he meant to comfort her, and then he set it back by his side. “A deep breath into your belly, not your chest and shoulders.” Zach demonstrated with an exaggerated inhalation. “Out through your mouth,” he said on an exhalation.

“Breathing lesson?” she croaked.

“Shut up, Celeste.”

Celeste looked Zach in the eye. When he nodded and grinned, her chin trembled and the corners of her eyes watered. “Zach,” she said, and his name sounded like a plea for help.

Zach pressed a finger to his lips. “In.”

She inhaled into her belly.

“And out.”

After three more breaths, the band around her chest loosened, the fire in her lungs subsided.

You're okay,
Zach mouthed. And she repeated the process.

Knowing the statement wasn't helpful didn't stop her from repeating it.

Celeste focused her attention on Zach's eyes, the sharp blue of his irises. His prominent forehead, thick, dark eyebrows. His mouth, with the slight indent in the bottom lip. Moments ago, that mouth had been gently kissing her senseless. Now that same mouth was attempting to coax her back to her senses.

The sound of Zach's voice, warm and reassuring, soothed her lungs. Her breathing relaxed.

“Excuse me for a sec? I need a glass of water.” Celeste stole into the kitchen, her adrenaline's blender speed lowered to a steady, humming
mince.
She ran the water, contemplated hiding in there all night. She could use a few dish towels as a pillow. Zach could stay up all night and watch
Cops
uninterrupted. They could pretend they hadn't kissed. They could pretend she hadn't freaked out on him.

Zach came around the corner.

They couldn't pretend.

She avoided his gaze and took a glass down from the sink, ran the water. Her reflection in the faucet handle stared back at her, her head small and misshapen as a deflated balloon. “Hey, injured person, you're supposed to be resting.”

“You're supposed to be getting a glass of water.” He reached around her, took the empty glass from her hand, held it under the water, and handed it back to her. “You okay?”

“Your breathing lesson took,” Celeste said. “Otherwise?” She took a sip, wiped her mouth with the back of her trembling hand. “That's never happened to me before. Honestly? I have no clue what's wrong with me.” The white lie banded her chest. Wasn't a white lie something you told for someone else's own good? She couldn't imagine Zach would want to hear about another guy she'd recently more than kissed. She
could
imagine where the panic came from and why kissing Zach had inspired the freak show.

“You had a panic attack,” Zach said. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Easy for him to say.

Zach nodded. “First time I saw someone having a panic attack, I was giving a private ski lesson. This ten-year-old boy was so certain he was ready to try a black diamond, until we got to the top and he took a good look down.”

“Then you gave him a breathing lesson.”

“That I did. By the end of the day, he was racing me down that same slope.”

Zach gave her a scrunched smile and a nod. “How about I go sleep in my car for the night?”

“No! That would make everything worse.”

“Not a big deal. Matilda's very comfortable. And I'm kind of sticking to your couch anyway. I don't mind—”

“Hell, no. Get your ass back on that sticky couch.”

“My ass will be fine. I shouldn't have kissed you.”

“Excuse me?
I
kissed
you.
”

“I shouldn't have kissed you back.”

“Because you have a crush on Katherine?”

Zach laughed. The strangled, frustrated sound filled Celeste's tiny hole of a kitchen, but his gaze zoomed in on hers. “Because,” he said, “I have a crush on you.” And then the flirty, seemingly self-assured guy in her tiny hole of a kitchen blushed and left the room.

She'd told Zach she was clueless.

To her relief, she found him back in the appropriate position—resting on her sticky couch, with his feet up on her glass coffee table, crossed at the ankles. “You can listen.”

Zach raised his brows. “Yup.”

He'd trusted her with his truest, realest, stripped-down self. He'd trusted her. Could she trust him? “That stuff you told me about being adopted? All the stuff about how you don't know who you are? Thank you for sharing that with me. Thank you for sharing the specifics of your fucked-up-ness.”

Zach laughed. Not a frustrated sound this time, but one with the joy of being found. That eased her adrenaline down the rest of the way. “What can I say?” Zach asked. “You bring the specifics out of me. You'd make a good detective.”

Celeste sat her butt down on the sticky couch and her sweaty glass of water on the coffee table. Her body thrummed with aftershock exhaustion. If she closed her eyes, she'd fall asleep sitting up. She pulled her fuzzy yellow blanket across both their laps and wound Zach's left arm around her shoulder. She checked his face. He was smiling, slightly shy and hugely psyched. She snuggled into him and focused on the red-and-black abstract painting on the far wall, held the picture of Zach's smiling face in her mind's eye.

“Remember how you asked me specifically why I quit culinary school?”

“Sure.”

“And I answered, nonspecifically, that stuff happened.”

“Kind of.”

“Specifically,” Celeste said, “stuff happened with a guy.”

“A boyfriend?” Zach asked.

“No. A guy friend. A classmate. I wasn't interested in dating anyone while I was in school. But even if I had been looking for a boyfriend”—or a hookup—“I wouldn't have been interested in him.” Celeste took a loud breath, and the abstract painting blurred. The red and black blended into each other. “We were at a party, and I guess I had too much to drink.”

“You guess?”

“I had a couple of screwdrivers.” Celeste remembered the taste. More sour orange than bitter vodka. She'd barely tasted the vodka. The first glass had been filled to the lip with ice—clinking and melting. She'd complained that the drink was too watered down. She'd needed a release valve. She'd wanted a good buzz.

She hadn't wanted sex.

“Two drinks isn't a lot,” Zach said.

She remembered kissing Matt, his face suddenly close to hers. She still couldn't remember why she'd kissed him. Then, out of nowhere, her mind released the specifics.

Matt had driven her back from Drake's, with the radio off, and he'd parked his Corvette behind the dorms. Her ears hummed with the quiet, her head buzzy and disconnected. “I betcha,” Matt had said, “if I turn on the radio, Billy Joel will be singing ‘Honesty.'”

“Right,” she'd said. “Whatever, Matt.” The clock on the dashboard had read 1:34, the numbers fuzzing and swimming before her eyes. She'd turned to Matt, and he seemed to swivel, as though his car were a merry-go-round and Matt was taking her for a spin.

“I bet it will. In fact”—he rubbed his hands together—“I'm willing to make it interesting.”

“Five bucks?” she'd asked.

“A kiss,” he'd said.

She'd laughed, but he'd held a steady smile. He hadn't backed down. “Go for it,” she'd said, and he'd turned on the radio, blasting “Honesty” through the car, a warning she hadn't recognized.

Of course, he'd set her up. Matt never wagered unless the outcome was a sure thing.

Zach squeezed her shoulder.

“Anyway,” Celeste said. “We were drinking—”

“You and the guy friend who wasn't your boyfriend?” Zach asked.

“Yeah, me and Matt.” Saying his name made her heart kick into gear and her throat narrow. She took a slow breath into her belly, inhaling the fragrance of her shampoo from Zach's hair, the cottony smell of Zach's T-shirt, and the scent of Zach himself. “I must've had too much to drink because, the next thing I knew, I woke up in Matt's bed.”

Zach's breathing changed—one of those shoulder breathing jobbies he'd cautioned her against.

“Still with me?” she asked.

“Right here.”

“Seems Matt didn't share my memory issue. He had no trouble bragging about his little conquest to his buddies. He had no trouble with specifics.” She remembered the way Matt had described her birthmark—more identifying than dental records. The fact that he'd detailed the birthmark meant they'd messed around a lot and with the lights on.

How could she have forgotten something so personal?

Another shoulder breath from Zach. She shivered, as though she were still in Matt's bed, naked and disoriented. As if she were still in the hallway outside the Barnstead Hall practice kitchen. As if Matt's words were still stripping her bare. The red-and-black painting's abstract brushstrokes swirled like a lava lamp and settled into a face. Matt's face.

“What an asshole,” Zach said.

“Guys have been assholes to me before. The boy I loved in high school,” Celeste said, although she hadn't intended to expand the specifics to include Justin. “After we broke up, he trashed my reputation pretty badly. It was, like, his favorite hobby. And he was good at it. That's why I think I freaked out. This kind of shit is cumulative. It makes you wonder about half the human race.”

“It made you wonder about me,” Zach said.

Celeste searched her mind, comparing Justin to Matt and coming up with a few similarities. Both of them were overconfident about their abilities; both refused to rectify whatever they'd done wrong. And, of course, both of them had trashed her and simultaneously bolstered their reputations.

Neither of them resembled Zach.

She turned to Zach. Sweet, sexy, defender of bakery owners and skinny-assed punks. Defender of Celeste.

“When I overheard Matt, it made me wonder about me. What had I done wrong? We were friends. Why did he turn on me? Was I that bad a judge of character?”

Zach gave her braid a tug—something Abby would do—to pull her out of the doldrums. He aimed a sympathetic smile her way.

“Justin and I were friends before we went out. He used to be good friends with one of my brothers—”

“One of your two dozen brothers.”

‘That's right.” She grinned; she couldn't help herself. Did Zach remember everything she said to him?

“The boy you loved in high school,” Zach said.

“The only guy,” she blurted out, the tone hushed, as though the words were a revelation. She'd been in lust a few times since with guys she'd never considered long-term options. She'd even been in intense like.

But not love. Not couldn't-live-without-him, spark-plug-to-the-internal-organs love.

That kind of intensity would mean she had too much to lose.

“I guess you could say I'm kind of effed up, too,” Celeste said.

Zach slipped his arm from around her shoulder and angled sideways on the couch so she had to look at him. “You said you only had a couple of drinks, right?” Zach asked.

“Screwdrivers.”

“And you never get drunk because your two dozen brothers taught you how to drink.”

“Maybe I was exaggerating. I mean, seriously, everyone gets faced sooner or later. There's a first time for everything.” At least she thought everyone got faced. Somewhere between waking up in Matt's dorm room and climbing the stairs in Barnstead Hall, she'd even imagined that Matt had gotten faced, too. She'd thought he was as regretful, as horrified, as she'd been. Why else would he have sat by his bed, waiting for her to wake up?

“Celeste . . .” Zach worried the ends of her braid the way she'd seen him nervously brushing his own flop of hair from his eyes.

“What? What is it?”

“The story's not gelling for me. It doesn't make sense.”

“Sounds pretty simple to me. I got drunk, I blacked out, I woke up next to a giant sphincter muscle. End of story.”

“Have you ever blacked out before?”

“I didn't have anything to eat, Zach, even though I know that's a big no-no. I was saving my calories. I basically drank my dinner. I can admit when something's my fault. Okay? I got myself drunk. I trusted the wrong guy.”

“And you don't remember anything, in between drinking and waking up?”

She thought about telling Zach she'd kissed Matt. That tonight she'd remembered a bit more about the game that had inspired the kiss. But how could she admit she'd kissed Matt on a bet? How could she admit to playing with someone's affection without leading Zach to wonder whether she was playing with his?

She covered her mouth, shook her head. When she met Zach's gaze, her eyes moistened.