Page 82 of Spring Awakening

“Maybe nothing,” he mutters, rubbing his face against her hand. She goes to drop her hand, but he catches her, pressing his lips to her palm.

“If I promise not to ask for anything, will you say yes to dinner?” she asks.

“I’d do anything you wanted,” he replies, and it warms her to her core how she trusts him completely.

“I’d do anything for you,” she says back. She hopes he has the same confidence in her words that she has in his. She wonders if when she says things like this, he believes it would be true, no matter what. That she’d do anything for him, even if they stayed friends for the rest of their lives. If he never touched her, never kissed her, never loved her. She’d be his anyway.

“Apart from getting into a bath that’s filled with enough chemicals to mess up your system?” he says.

Mali laughs. “Apart from that, but I was so close. I used to sit in the bathroom with my mum, and sometimes she let me use her salts. When I was younger, we used to share,” Mali says, smiling up at him. “Then one day I did it without her and I thought I was going to die.”

“Sorry,” he replies with a smile. “I used to share baths with De, but we didn’t have salts.”

“Were you close?”

“Kind of. I always wanted to be closer, but I think it’s an age thing. I thought he was so cool. I thought he was the best thing in the world, and all I wanted to do was follow him around,” he says, with a small smile. Mali imagines Zach as a tiny child, and her heart aches. “I don’t have any good memories with him. I’m worried if I ignore all the bad ones, he won’t exist to me anymore.”

Mali reaches for his hand, and he links their fingers together. “You don’t need memories all the time. You have Devon’s nose, and you sound like him. He’ll always exist as an extension of you.”

Zach smiles. “My kids are gonna be best friends for life, whether they wanna be or not.”

Mali’s heart quickens. “I thought you weren’t having them.”

“I didn’t think I would.”

“How come?”

He shrugs. “A relationship was never something I let myself think I wanted, because it had never been a thing anyone showed any interest in.” He traces a bubble, then looks up at her. “But I dunno. I think I might get lucky.”

There are butterflies in her toes, and her chest, and her fingertips. How weird would it be to tell him she wants his children? Pretty weird, but she could do it if she had any idea how to talk anymore. Zach wants children. Maybe he’s thinking about it with her, because who else is showing an interest inhim other than her? Mali isn’t a jealous person, but if there were another person, she might die on the spot or something.

“You’ll be such a good mum,” Zach says casually, like her entire body isn’t thumping. He shifts slightly in the bath, but Mali’s not nervous about seeing his dick anymore. She can’t take her eyes off his face. Can’t tear her gaze away from how his chest blushes when he talks about children. How his eyes light up when he’s clearly thinking about something he’s thought about in enough detail that it plays in his mind. “You’ll let them be whatever they want to be.”

“Like a rugby player,” Mali says.

“Yeah. Or a teacher, like your mum. Or whatever your dad says he does. Or they could be a dustbin man, I don’t mind. Happy and healthy, that’s all I care about.”

Mali smiles. She imagines a tiny Zach holding his hand, and her eyes well up. She wants Zach to be happy. She wants him to have whatever she wants. She desperately wants him to want that with her.

“Isn’t it crazy that when I think about kids, they have purple hair?” Zach says casually. Mali blinks. He thinks about his children having her hair. He continues like he can’t tell she’s not breathing. “No face, no gender, just purple-haired happy people, running around adding ‘literally’ into every sentence they can.”

Mali has thought about Zach romantically for the longest time. Then it turned into how her life looked in the future, and Zach was there, in every corner of her brain. She never thought he might think like that too.

“You hate my purple hair,” she whispers.

Zach rolls his eyes. “Before I met you, I didn’t have thoughts about what was pretty. Things were just attractive, you know? Nice. But I never thought about it more than that. I was never trying to ‘compare thee to a summer’s day.’”

Shakespeare again. She wonders if Zach has any idea how romantic he is. How he could have any person he set his sights on. How happy he could be if he let himself realise people don’t always want to be casual with him.

“But seeing you with purple hair that day shoved everything else down. Suddenly, I had a whole stack of words about how pretty things were, and none of them were good enough for you. I think it changed my biology. Every time I saw something nice, all I thought was, ‘not as pretty as Mali,’ and then I wanted to show it to you to see if you liked it too.”

Mali swallows. “I can’t believe you’re a smooth talker and the first time you spoke to me properly you stared at your phone the whole time.”

Zach laughs, reaching for her hand. “I had to google things to say to you.”

“What?” she replies. “Why?”

“You’re too beautiful. I couldn’t form a sentence when you looked at me.”

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