One of the Boys

Chapter 12

“Ally.  We’re here.” Zac whispers to me.  “You can stop the car now.”

I’m staring into space as I have been for this entire car ride, blindly driving home and parking the car, with quite a bit of help from Zac.  I guess the Jordan thing hasn’t quite sunk in yet.  Snapping out of it, I pull the key out of the ignition.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.  I’m fine.” I give him a shaky smile.

“How about we go inside?”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

Zac opens the door and sticks one leg out.  He stares at me for a second until I realise I should probably be opening my door too.

Finally we get into the house and I collapse onto the couch.  Home sweet home.

“You look tired.  How about going to sleep?” Zac says, concerned, sitting down next to me.

I look at him, then to the clock.  Surprisingly, it’s only 8:30.  “It’s too early.”

“No way.  Remember when we were ten?  We used to always fall asleep at 8pm without a fail.”

I give him a pointed look.  “We’re not ten.”

Zac sighs.  “I’m sorry.  I’m just a little concerned. Heartbreak takes a while to recover from.”

I scoff.  “As if you’d know.”

“Hey!  I’ve had my heart broken before.”

“Really?  When?”

Zac hesitates.  I knew it.  As if any girl would ever break his heart.  He does the heart breaking, not the other way round.  “The winter dance in middle school.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I asked if you would go with me, and you said you were already going with Greg Holtman, cutest guy in our year.” He puts quote marks around ‘cutest’.  “That made me feel pretty heartbroken.”

I roll my eyes.  “Please.  I ditched that boring guy with Justin Bieber hair to hang out with you anyway.  I want a real answer.”

“That was a real answer.” Zac says, looking me straight in the eye.

Wait, he couldn’t have… “You liked me in middle school?”

He laughs.  “Yes.  I can’t believe you didn’t know.” Yeah, me too.  “You clearly didn’t like me back though.”  Funny.  It went the other way round.

“Yeah.” I say, unable to think of anything better.  “So… how about we play some video games?”

“Sounds good.”

“Murder therapy is way better than retail therapy.”

“What’s retail therapy?”

“Another excuse Lindsey uses to go shopping.”

At the mention of Lindsey’s name, Zac’s face immediately darkens.  So they must really be fighting then.  I’m tempted to ask but I quickly bite my tongue.  I don’t want it to seem like I’m interested in Zac, which I’m obviously not.  I mean, I just broke up with Jordan!  Well, we haven’t quite broken up yet but we’re as good as over.  And I’m definitely getting some revenge.

Suddenly the doorbell rings, causing me to snap out of my thoughts, and Zac to look up from where he’s tampering with the xbox.

“I’ll get it.” I say, getting up.