Hold Fast, page 13
Damn.
* * *
He opened on Friday and was on time leaving. Zack suspected some kind of conspiracy at work, but from the second Isaiah walked in—greeting Milo with a kiss on the cheek, and Zack with a kiss on the lips, making him blush horribly—Zack had been restless to leave.
And Milo had almost kicked them out the door.
“It’s six, you’re off, go home. Or go somewhere that’s not home. In fact, that’s even better.” He planted his hands on Zack’s shoulders and pushed. “Go to Isaiah’s, make him cook for you.”
“I already have,” Isaiah said, way more amused than mortified, which must have been nice.
“Ooooooh. Did you hear that, Stacy?”
Stacy grinned and patted Zack’s shoulder. “It’s okay, hon. You’ve just never dated where we could tease you before. You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t see anyone teasing you.”
Milo laughed. “Uh, hi, remember BeardedSkaterDude?”
“That’s enough out of you, mister.” Stacy detached Milo and shoved him back toward the floor. “You two have a good night!”
“I might die of embarrassment.” They walked out into…twilight. Actually, it was spectacularly beautiful out. “Oh my god, look at the sky.”
Isaiah squeezed his shoulder for a moment, a welcome pressure gone far too fast. “I know. I figured we’d pick up Indian food down the street since we have all night. And most of tomorrow. And you’re still welcome to come to dinner with me at my dad’s place.”
“I don’t want to, you know, intrude. And I should get something done for my next meeting with Professor Yang.”
“I hear that. Homework makes sense. But just so you know, you wouldn’t be intruding. My dad still texts Milo on his birthday. He’s pretty chill.”
Zack laughed. “God, my dad is anything but chill. Like, if you ever meet him, he will ask you how you feel about Black Lives Matter. And it won’t be a black thing—he asks everyone how they feel about Black Lives Matter. When that guy was killing people last year he’d turn around in line at the grocery store and ask the person behind him if they realized that a serial killer was targeting the LGBTQ community.”
“He does not say it like that.”
“Oh, he does.”
Isaiah had that amused thing going again. “That’s kinda cute. Your dad’s a crusader.”
“It’s definitely not cute.” A pang of guilt hit and Zack shook his head. “I’m not really being fair. My dad is the white guy you want on your team. He’s been schooled by enough people over the years to not be a mansplaining, whitesplaining, straightsplaining asshole. He just feels like his role as a person of extreme cultural privilege is to basically not let anyone to get away with ignorance.”
“But he’s straight? I thought you said he kind of…wasn’t.”
“Yeah, well, he never let anything stand in the way of him getting laid, but he’s probably heteroromantic. Actually, I should tell him he’s pansexual but heteroromantic. He’d love that.” Zack filed it away for the next time his dad launched into a lecture. Explaining modern classifications for romantic and sexual behavior would be fun as long as he could keep them the hell away from Kinsey.
“Shit,” Isaiah muttered as they approached the restaurant. “Guess I should have gotten a reservation.”
At least two groups of people were standing outside, and that was only because the small waiting area inside was packed. “Let’s see what the wait time to be seated is.”
They politely muscled their way inside and asked a frazzled server, who apologetically told them it would be forty-five minutes before they were likely to get a table.
They managed to get back out again, which disturbingly reminded Zack of a phase his mom had gone through where she’d held therapeutic reenactments of the journey down the birth canal.
“I failed us.” Isaiah shook his head. “I don’t usually come downtown this early on a Friday. I didn’t know it’d be so busy.”
“It’s okay. I mean, we have all night, right?” Though he was hungry. Actually, now that he was thinking about it, Zack didn’t think he’d taken a lunch. “Or we can raid the grocery store like a couple of stoned teenagers. I’m starving.”
Isaiah laughed. “Yeah, that sounds good. Where’re we going?”
“Grocery Outlet up the block. You never know what you’re gonna find there. It’s an adventure.” He grinned, knowing it was a silly thing to say, but not caring.
“I will grocery adventure with you any day, Zack. Show me the way.”
They didn’t hold hands, or anything so public-displays-of-affectiony. But Zack liked to think the way they walked beside each other more than communicated their status of trial dating. Twenty minutes of roaming the aisles later in search of snack gold found them with a new reusable grocery bag full of picnic foods. Crackers, cheese, pre-cut salami, strawberries, raspberries, and a variety of drinks they’d found in the fancy aisle, none of which Zack had ever heard of, all of which seemed to be variations on coconut water.
La Vista’s downtown beatification scheme had been causing traffic jams for years, but this was the first time he’d ever actually stopped to sit in one of the little roadside parks. Well. Park was a little grandiose; it was two trees and a bench, nestled between a bodega and an empty store front he was pretty sure had at one point been an adult theater. They sat on the bench with the bag in between them.
“I have a totally not-sanitary Swiss Army knife,” Isaiah offered. “We probably should have gotten soft cheese.”
“Goat cheese, maybe.”
“I didn’t see any brie.”
Zack kept a straight face. “Plus, you should really let brie heat before you eat it.”
“You’re right. Only a poor excuse for a man taking you to dinner would insist you attempt to spread cold brie.”
They looked at each other and broke out into grins.
Zack shook his head. “I’ve had brie exactly once in my entire life. But it was warm. I have no idea if that’s normal or not.”
“Hey, don’t ask me. I’ve eaten it, but never been in charge of it.” Isaiah offered the knife, unfolded. “You want to do the honors?”
“Okay. Unless you’ve gutted fish with this or something.”
“I so want to say yes just to watch your face. But no. Mostly I use it for slicing open packing tape. I used to have a paring knife that I used for that, but then I’d be trying to cut garlic and it’d be sticking to the little remnants of glue.” He smirked down at the crackers he was opening. “Milo got the pocket knife after watching me fight with garlic skin. Is that what you call it? The skin?”
For a second, Zack couldn’t answer. That conspiratorial glance up, not so different from the way Isaiah looked at him when they were naked, asking him what he wanted, made him hesitate.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, of course. Sure. And uh, I think so, probably. Garlic skin sounds like something I’ve heard people say before. I can’t think what else you’d call it. Plus, that’s what it is when it’s onions, and they’re kind of the same.” Keep babbling. It’s so attractive.
“Onion skin, yeah. Exactly.”
Zack focused on cutting slices of the cheese, an English white cheese. Or maybe it was Irish. Or maybe he was getting a little over-invested in the origin of the cheese for no particular reason.
They offered their respective goods to one another, combining cheese and crackers, balancing all of it on the box the crackers came in, a very rinky dink platter.
Isaiah pulled out the four varieties of coconut water they’d bought and lined them up. “I really need a spreadsheet for this. So I can record my impressions of each brand and compare it against the others.”
“See, you’re joking, but…” Zack dug into his bag and pulled out the black WoJo. He flipped to a blank page and wrote Coconut Water Comparison at the top in stylized block letters. Then he listed each type on the left side of the page and drew lines across. “Okay, what are we evaluating for?”
“Oh man. You sexy bastard. So I think mouthfeel, flavor, aftertaste… I don’t know what else.”
Zack nodded, writing each in a column, leaving a big enough space so he could record both of their impressions in the same box. “How would we analyze…I’m not sure how to describe it. Likelihood of taking another sip?”
“Maybe just a ranking? One, two, three, four.”
He added another column. “Got it. For everything else I propose we judge on a scale of 1-10, 10 being most desirable. You agree?”
“I agree.”
He added a simple key to that effect. “Anything else?”
“Not yet. You ready for this?”
“Yep.” Zack tilted the notebook in Isaiah’s direction. “Let’s do it in order.”
“Hell yes.” But before opening the first bottle, Isaiah kissed him. “You know, we’re going to do all this and we may never see these brands again. Because it’s Grocery Outlet.”
“Yeah, but it’s fun anyway. Don’t you think?” And with anyone else he wouldn’t have asked. With anyone else, he wouldn’t have pulled out his notebook in the first place, let alone drawn up a chart.
“Fuck yeah, let’s do this. You’re not gonna color code our scores?”
Zack bit his lip and dug in to his bag for the slim pencil box where he kept the four colors he could never be without: blue, black, purple, red. He pulled out purple and red, offering them to Isaiah.
“I’m definitely purple. Plus, I like you in red.” Isaiah reached out to flick his tie. “Do you climb in this? Because I’m gonna need Milo to document that for me on film.”
“Shut up. And no, of course not. I have, you know, a shirt on under this. And I keep track pants in my office. Um.” He had no idea why he was blushing. “Anyway, let’s drink.”
“Yeah, Zack. Let’s drink.”
“Stop smirking.”
“Who, me?”
Zack readied his purple pen and prepared questions about mouthfeel. Oh, god. MOUTHFEEL. Who even came up with that word?
They’d just finished the coconut water experiment when Zack’s phone rang. He was smiling as he answered. “Hey, Randi. What’s going on?”
“Did you know Val hasn’t had a day off in seventeen days?”
“He what?” Zack took a few steady breaths.
“He’s worked straight through the last seventeen days, and dude, I didn’t notice. Did you?”
“No, I…are you sure?”
“Stacy got it out of him. Zack, he’s gonna implode. I mean, I love him, but no one can work like this without burning out.” Randi didn’t waste worry on anything. Her entire response to Amanda being fired was to say, I just finished the schedule, too. That’s annoying.
Zack leaned over his knees, neatly avoiding Isaiah’s gaze. “Is he on tomorrow?”
“Opening. And he’s supposed to be off Tuesday, but he’s written himself in for four hours in the morning.”
He winced. That was to cover his meeting with Yang. “Shit. Okay. Well, I can’t do anything about those four hours, but I can open tomorrow.”
“Honey, you don’t have to do that. He’s a grown man. I just thought you should be aware that he’s also a damn fool.”
Which was true. Randi would never demand or even passive aggressively guilt trip him into giving up his day off. But since Val was giving up his so Zack could go to his meeting… “Seriously, I can open. It’s no big deal.”
“If that’s true, why’s Milo jumping up and down in front of me shaking his head?”
From the background: “Don’t tell him!”
“It’s…” nothing was clearly the wrong answer. “I had a date. But it’s all right. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“A Saturday daytime date? Huh. Well, as long as it’s not that serious. Though part of me really thinks if Val wants to run himself into the ground, there’s no harm in letting him.”
“You mean, except then we’d have no one to run the gym and also we really like him?”
Randi snorted. “I don’t even have the patience for this kind of nonsense. I’m not gonna be Valentín’s mother.”
“I feel like this is more us being his friends.” Zack ran his hands through his hair, and almost jumped when he felt Isaiah’s palm on his back. The weight of it calmed him. This was the right thing to do, and he knew it, but that didn’t make it feel any better. “Call Val. Or if you can’t do it without yelling at him, have Milo or Rod call. Tell him if he comes anywhere near Crux tomorrow I’m gonna have Bear take him out.”
She laughed. “Oh, right. Like that’s a threat.”
“Okay, I’ll have you take him out. Whatever. Just make sure he knows the shift is covered and we’ll call him if we need anything, even though we won’t.”
“Got it. You sure about this? I mean, with the dry spell you just had—”
“Goodbye, Miranda.” He hit End before she could shout about how much she hated her given name.
“Bummer,” Isaiah said.
“Yeah. So much for our dreams of lying in bed drinking coffee.” Zack flushed. “Uh…sorry, not that you…I mean that’s just something I…” He rammed his head into his hands a few times. “God, never mind. I’m not talking. I can’t be trusted.”
Isaiah’s hand rubbed up and down, sort of like it had when they were doing yoga, and Zack felt the same yearning to push into it as he’d successfully resisted before.
This time he didn’t resist. This time he let himself accept the comfort Isaiah was clearly offering, and was rewarded with a kiss to the back of his neck. “I’m so sorry. This sucks.”
“It’s work. I understand. If you gotta go in, you gotta go in. Not that I’m not disappointed.”
“Me too. And it’s Val. I know he’s trying to keep us running, but it’s not sustainable.” He inhaled slowly, letting his back press against Isaiah’s hand, hoping he felt it. “Sometimes I don’t know if it’s worth it. If Terence wants to get rid of Crux, he will. I halfway think we’ll show up one day and the doors will be padlocked, and that’s it. No warning, no notice, nothing.”
“I think…” Isaiah paused, his hand still roaming over Zack’s shirt. “I think the only way you’ll be able to accept whatever happens with the gym is if you do everything you can right now to save it.”
“Man, I’m trying.”
“I know. I know you are.”
Zack finally looked over. “Sorry. I was really looking forward to this.”
“We still have this. And I’m definitely taking you back to my place. Gotta hear some more of that dirty talk you’ve been holding back on.”
He flushed. “I’d like that. I probably shouldn’t spend the night, though.”
“Yeah, it’s okay. Saves me making you breakfast.”
And ow, the loss of that brief fantasy, of drinking coffee in bed together, almost physically hurt. They smiled at each other, with no particular happiness.
Isaiah squeezed his neck. “I’m not going to be sad. We had a picnic, we tested coconut waters against each other, and we’re gonna have a good time tonight. Stuff like this happens.”
As they packed up their picnic and by silent mutual agreement only kept one of the coconut waters (who knew most coconut water had such a nasty aftertaste?), Zack kept hearing the echo of that: Stuff like this happens.
Two weeks, that’s all. Trial dating. If stuff could happen a little less for the next two weeks, that’d be great. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of an objective trial then, but Zack realized he almost regretted proposing it.
It was rational to test things before committing. But rational didn’t exactly warm his bed at night the way he really wanted Isaiah to.
* * *
Weekends had a different flow than week days. Zack definitely would have preferred to be with Isaiah, but with everyone less frazzled, less intense, working a Saturday shift wasn’t a terrible thing. She-Ra had spent most of the morning curled up on the extra chair in his office, alternately purring in her sleep and shooting him somewhat dubious looks from half-open eyes.
Obviously, she was a cat, and couldn’t tell he was completely distracted. He was just projecting. Probably. Though they do say animals sense things.
He wasn’t at all prepared for Milo to sidle up to him and say, “So. You and Isaiah. How’s that going?”
“Uh.” Right, Uh probably wasn’t really an answer. “Good.”
Milo laughed. “Oh my god, okay, like first, if you’re worried about me being weird, don’t be. I love Isaiah, but I’m not in love with Isaiah. Not anymore, anyway.”
Zack’s eyebrows shot up without his permission. Was he doing that more now that he was hanging out with a man whose eloquent eyebrow raises never failed to capture his attention?
“Ha ha ha, don’t look at me like that. Can you blame me for falling for him? Also, at the time I had this whole, like, internalized blah blah blah going on where I didn’t think anyone would ever love me for who I was, whatever, and Isaiah was the sweetest guy. For real. He’s the sweetest.”
That didn’t sound like a challenge, but Zack agreed in any case. “I can see that.”
“Yeah. But you and him, that’s different.” Milo paused and obviously Zack knew what his role was here.
He dutifully asked, “Is it?”
Milo flashed him a grin. “Well, yeah. Isaiah likes a project. I was a project. He wouldn’t say it that way, but I can see looking back that’s what was going on. But you’re not a project, Zack. So I think that means…”
Not that he planned to take relationship advice from Milo, but hell, the guy started a sentence, he should freaking end the sentence.
“What? It means what?”
The grin widened. “It means you and him, that’s real. Awww.”
Zack sighed. “Don’t you have work to do or something?”
“Isaiah and Zack, sitting in a tree…” Milo walked away whistling.
“Longest. Shift. Ever.”
The steadier traffic meant the bouldering wall was swamped for most of his shift. He had a scale design somewhere that Val had done, showing a way to increase bouldering space as well as top rope wall with a minimum of remodeling, but that was back before they realized just how much Terence disliked the gym.
