Lend Me Your Heart

Five

I woke up, startled to be in my own bedroom. At first, I had no recollection of anything that had happened the night before. But after a few seconds, it all started to flood back into my mind: walking there with Joey, making eye contact with Zach, drinking and dancing with Connor, his lips sucking on my neck at the bottom of the staircase, when he carried me upstairs and stripped off my clothing, Zach barging in and telling me I’d be okay. That was all I could remember. I figured Connor must’ve drugged my drink and I was stupid enough to accept it. It just stopped right there, to the moment where Zach called me buddy and told me he was taking me home. I couldn’t have been more grateful, and I needed to thank Zach the second I saw him.

I groaned, regretting ever going to that party in the first place, and went to the bathrooms to take a shower. I was still in my tank top and skirt from last night, but there was no sign of my jean jacket, necklace, or shoes. After my shower, I put on jean shorts, a green tank top, and a pair of desert boots, leaving my hair down since it was still wet. I walked to Zach’s room and quietly knocked on his door, just incase he was still sleeping, which he wasn’t.  He opened the door a few seconds after I knocked, but I could tell I woke him up. His back hair was soft and messy and he didn’t have a shirt on.

“Morning,” he said in one of the deepest, sexiest tones I’ve ever heard, making my heart race.

“Hi,” I breathed.

“Come in,” he said, opening the door for me.

“I-I, uh, wanted to thank you for everything you did for me, you know, last night. I don’t remember all the details or anything but-”

“Anytime,” he interrupted. “Is that all you came here for?”

I looked at him, confused and humiliated. So what, then? He was just going to be a jerk to me again? He does one heroic thing for you and suddenly pretends like nothing happened?

“Well, it just meant a lot to me and I wanted you to know that,” I said shyly.

“That’s pretty chill. Bye,” he said, playing with a rubrics cube.

That’s pretty chill? Bye? My jaw clenched in frustration. We both knew I’d seen the real side of Zachary O’Connor, but for some reason he always seemed to randomly hide his emotions from me and shut me out of his life.

“I don’t understand you,” I told him, my voice cracking my eyes started to water. He looked up at me and I swear I saw his face soften for a moment, but then it went back to emotionless.

“That’s the whole point, Layne. Look,” he said, “I think you’re cute. You’re really fucking cute and I like you, but I can’t let you see my real self. I can’t let anybody see it, and if I get too close to you God knows what will happen and we’ll both be ruined. So I pried Connor’s scrawny hands off of you. Big whoop. Get over it.”

Anger boiled up inside of my and I grabbed a pillow off of his bed and threw it as his stupid head, missing completely and letting it hit the wall. Zach looked up at me from his rubric’s cube and smirked.

“Are you done yet?” he asked.

“You’re impossible,” I sneered, so angry I felt like I could punch a hole through the wooden floor panels.

“Well, aren’t you just a sweetheart?” he said, shooting me a sarcastic grin.

I bit my lip, holding back tears as I stormed out of his bedroom and into my own. When I shut the door, I started crying, throwing myself onto my head and letting all of my emotions out and into my pillow. This was the second time he’d made me cry in two weeks and I was sick of it. I never cried this much back home. I liked the sweet side of Zach, but for some reason he didn’t like showing it to anyone but me (only occasionally) and I wanted to know why because I cared about him and I didn’t even know why. If he wanted to shut me out of his life, fine. That doesn’t mean I’d make it easy for him.