Page 119 of If This Gets Out

I hold that image in my mind even after I finish. Then a strange feeling washes over me. A draining sensation, like everything’s slipping away from me, sand in an hourglass.

We have tomorrow. But I don’t know what lies beyond that.

And I don’t know if I’m quite ready to find out, yet.

I pull Zach into me roughly the moment his driver is out of sight. I feel ridiculous, given we’ve barely been apart for two whole weeks, but I’ve missed him with a ferocity that’s stunned and, to be honest, frightened me.

Thankfully, my parents are both at work, so we don’t need to worry about forced pleasantries.

“I forgot how fancy your house is,” he says as we traipse upstairs to dump his stuff in my room. He’s practically bouncing. I try to match his mood, but I’m still laden down with the feeling of dread from last night. If anything, it’s been growing today. “It makes me want to get my mom aT-shirt,” Zach goes on. “‘My son’s an international pop star and all he bought me is this apartment.’”

“Penthouseapartment,” I remind him. “She’s not exactly hard done by. How are things with her, anyway?”

His smile is immediate, enough to dispel any lingering worries I’ve had about his reassurances over the phone these past two weeks. “Good. They’re really good, now.”

Thank god.

“I’m glad,” I say. “At least one of us has had a good time at home, then.”

“Are you moving out anytime soon?”

I lean against my bedroom doorframe. “Why? You have a better offer for me?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m just curious.”

The most honest answer is that I haven’t made plans for the future, because I’m not sure what the future is, yet. The more I think about what’s to come, the more certain I am that I can’t rely on everything working out for the best. “Probably. I was planning on looking after the tour, but it’s on hold for a sec while we figure out what the next steps are.”

“LA still?”

“Yeah. Maybe Santa Monica.”

Zach looks a little disappointed. “Oh.”

“It’s only a short flight away, remember,” I say, but I realize as I say it that being a two-hour flight away from Zach has already been way too hard. I don’t want to think of a life where he’s not by my side.

“I’m not married to the idea,” I add.

“I like Santa Monica,” he says at the same time, totally casual.

I study him, my chest warming with affection. For a moment, I let myself pretend that this could be our future. Bothof us in the band, both of us together, both of us free to live without secrecy. By the beach, under the sun. Happy. “Me, too.”

We hover in the bedroom for a beat. Suddenly, his message from last night replays in my brain, and my heart starts to race. What does this pause mean?

The silence feels heavy, and significant. So, naturally, I panic and fill it. “So, we can watch a movie or something,” I say, kicking off the doorframe as I step into the room. “Unless you’re hungry? I guess you would be, huh? We have some leftover tortilla but it’s probably pushing it to reheat it again. Have you ever had Spanish food? Tortilla’s great, it’s kind of like potatoes, and eggs, and onions, all fried up together. Or we can do takeout?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Cool. Well, then, movies are fine. I guess I already suggested that. Or we could go for a walk? It’s, you know. It’s, um, pretty?”

Zach blinks. “We could?”

“Only if you want to,” I add.

Zach steps toward me. His expression saysdon’t.It saysstay.It says… Jesus, it sayskiss me.“Do you?”

I swallow thickly. “No, not really.”

Having him up this close, smiling a funny half-smile, is agony. Because all I want is for this moment to last forever, and I feel like it’s already over, somehow, even though it’s barely begun. It’s a paradox, becausewe’rea paradox. We’re Schrödinger’s boyfriends. We both have a future together, and we’re about to crash and burn, and until Chorus decides once and for all whether to remove our chains, we can’t know which reality is the truth.

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