Page 77 of Delay of Game

“Come home with me?” Nate asked. “I, uh, I think maybe we need to talk about some things.” Even after the shower, his hands were so fucking sweaty, and he felt like his heart was going to jump right out of his throat. He had no idea what he would do if Zach said no.

Zach looked at him, soft brown eyes a little wary, a little fond. “Okay,” he said, finally.

Nate exhaled. “Okay.”

Zach wasn’t sure what to expect on the ride back to Nate’s house. They’d made the same drive together so many other times before, but they hadn’t had the same history in between them, and they didn’t have the same baggage there was now.

He wanted to say something:was this ever anything to you? Did this mean the same thing to you that it did to me?But he couldn’t. Part of him couldn’t bear to be wrong about what he had suspected it meant to Nate, and part of him hoped so much it hurt, like someone had wrapped cold fingers around his heart and squeezed.

He didn’t press Nate any further, even though he desperately wanted to. There was no rushing Nate if he was worrying about something. Zach’s head buzzed with thoughts, that he was glad he’d asked his dog sitter to take Hank and Dolly, that he couldn’t believe that this was happening after he’d resigned himself to being miserable in Philly for the rest of his contract.

Inside, the house seemed especially quiet, like the room itself was waiting for them to figure it out. It looked exactly the way he had left it. If he had been expecting to see signs of inner turmoil, that wasn’t the way Nate dealt with things. Everything was still in its place, squeaky clean. He wondered if Nate had been using cleaning and organizing as a distraction and felt, once again, that overwhelming, awful fondness.

For a few long seconds they stood in the doorway awkwardly. Zach didn’t know what to say and he assumed Nate didn’t either.

Nate ran a hand through his hair and said, “Will you sit down?”

Zach sat on the couch and waited. It wasn’t a very comfortable couch, all things considered. The pillows werewaytoo stiff. The armrests were too low to actually comfortably rest your arm, let alone your head, if you were lying down. Rachel had picked it out, Zach knew.

Nate sat down on the other end of the couch, his hands clenched into fists, white-knuckled over his thighs. Just a few months ago, Zach would have gone over there and unclenched them, run his own fingers over Nate’s knuckles until he relaxed. Now he pressed them flat on his own thighs, so he wouldn’t do something stupid before he figured out what the hell was going on.

“Look, I...” Nate started. He was chewing on his lip. “I just don’t know what happened, with us. I don’t know why things suddenly ended the way they did, I don’t know what I did, but after everything with Gags and actually doing team stuff together again and... I wanted to say that I’msorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Zach, and I just, I don’t want to go on like this anymore. I miss you so much. I missusso much. You’re like the most important person in my life and it’s killing me not to—”

“Youdon’tknow what you did?” Zach blinked. He felt weirdly hollowed out, like someone had scooped out all of his insides with one of those melon ballers. “Do you, uh, not remember saying that it wasn’t like we were dating? Because I heard that loud and clear. And I can get the idea. I know I’m not the kind of guy you date, but... Whatever you heard about me. I kind of still have my pride.”

Nate stared at him. Zach stared back.

“Oh my god,” Nate said, finally. “Oh,fuck.”

“Nate, what...?”

“You thought I meant that I didn’t feel...?”

“Uh, yeah...?”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Zach. That’s not how I meant it at all.”

Zach felt light-headed, like this was all happening in some kind of alternate reality. “It seemed pretty clear to me.”

“It’s just...you know how I get about stuff. Right? Uh, you know how I worry and...?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I was just thinking this whole time that I was too lucky for getting to have you as my friend, and then when everything changed, I didn’t think you could, you know. Feel the same way about me, even if we were fucking around.”

He’d rarely seen Nate look like that, so downcast, so quiet and despairing. The last time had probably been after they’d been knocked out of the playoffs by Pittsburgh.

“Because I’m not... I’m justme. And you’re you. You’re so out of my league, you have to know it, right? And then Mom thought we were dating, and I was so up in my own head about it, worrying about when shit was going to come crashing down on me, when you were going to realize that you could do better, when everything was going to end...and then it did. I was waiting for it to happen, and it happened. And that seemed like the right thing to have happened. The thing thatshouldhave happened.”

Zach stared at him. “Nate, you fuckingidiot.”

“What?”

“I know you get anxious, we’ve been friends for how long now, of course I know that, but Nate, it’sme. You don’t have to be anxious aboutme. You’re the most important person in the world to me too. I thought that was obvious? I thought you knew?”

Nate looked up at him. His eyes were so fucking sad. Red-rimmed. Dark circles under them. He had been suffering just as much as Zach had been suffering, but somehow worse, because he’d known that he was the one who had done it. “But that’s the thing about the way my brain works. It doesn’t matter. Like, I know. But I don’tknow.”

Zach shifted forward on the couch, sliding his hand over Nate’s knee. “So youdidthink we were dating?”

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