Missing You Again

Is it Such a Sin?

"So, it's time we talked."

This was not a conversation I wanted to have but reality was creeping in to our bubble. It had been over a week and Zacky was still holed up with me in my San Francisco hotel suite. This was becoming less lost weekend and more like week long black out.

I'd made an appearance or two at our offices for meetings and my desk in the suite had received quite a work out. I'd be lying if I tried to pretend that only reports and contracts had been laid out across that desk. Let's just say there were a couple of times I had concerns that there may have been a butt print on a couple of documents I had delivered to the office.

We'd been living in our little cocoon of coupledom. Watching movies, sharing meals and our bodies and then curling up together at night to sleep, limbs entwined as we lived the fantasy of being something more than the friends we'd always been. Soon though Zacky was going to have to head home and face the reality that was his life. It was looking increasingly likely that the band was going to have to cancel their entire tour and he had a divorce and custody agreement to thrash out.

We were lurking in the far back corner of a fantastic little Italian place in North Beach. I'd been utterly clueless about where to go for dinner and understandably Zacky wanted to avoid anywhere overly public. After all they'd cancelled a bunch of shows and he hadn't even shared his marriage break up with his best friends. Being spotted out and about with a random blonde in San Francisco wouldn't exactly be the best PR. The concierge at the hotel had steered us in the right direction. I'd asked for a recommendation for somewhere private and he'd taken one look at me and Zacky and suggested what turned out to be a cozy, family run place with the most amazing pasta I'd ever tasted. "I'm sure you and Mr Baker will enjoy it Ms Cooper," the concierge had said after he'd called through a reservation for us. We'd never mentioned Zacky's name to him and there must have been some kind of look of shock or panic on Zacky and my faces because he'd immediately continued with a reassuring smile, "Should anyone ask I'm unfamiliar with Zacky Vengeance and the work of Avenged Sevenfold." We'd accepted his reassurance with forced smiles as his words reminded us of just how limited our time was.

"I know...but...god do we really have to?" Zacky dropped his forehead into his hand.

I forked another mound of lasagne into my mouth. Lasagne was my favourite but I rarely ate it because my sister Caitlin made the best lasagne in the known universe and what was served up in restaurants was rarely able to compete. This was one of the rare occasions where I wasn't bitterly disappointed.

"Zack, we really do," I sighed, "We could pretend that nothing ever happened but I'm pretty sure that option will end in grief for both of us."

"I get that we need to make this clear but why the fuck do we have to talk about it?" Zacky crunched into a breadstick and swallowed it down with a gulp of red wine. "I'm going to sound like the king of the assholes when I say this but we both know that this is a random one off event, it's not going got happen again."

Damn it I knew that. I did. I was so on the same page as he was but fuck me there was a tiny stab of pain in my chest. I forced out a smirk. "Well one off isn't quite accurate..."

Zacky blinked at me over his wine glass for a moment before a smirk to match mine lifted the corner of his mouth. "Smartass, you know what I mean."

"Thanks Zacky, you make a girl feel so wanted," I had to force the sarcasm into my statement because there was just the tiniest bite of truth in my words.

Zacky looked stricken and a wave of guilt washed over me as he said, "Kelly. Kell..."

"I'm fucking with you Zacky. I agree. I know what you're saying," I interrupted quickly because this, the awkwardness, was exactly what I'd been afraid of that first morning after we'd slept together.