He didn’t want to clear out Mom’s room, but he knew he had to do it. He hated how casual Irene had made the task sound, but she wasn’t wrong. And with that task looming, Zach started thinking about how much the whole house could benefit from some KonMari-level purging.
This was yet another reason he missed traveling — being out of the loop on trends. Fucking Netflix.
He figured he’d start at the attic and work his way down. Eventually he’d get around to the dreaded primary bedroom. Maybe after clearing out some of the less loaded junk, he’d be desensitized.
He queued up a comedy podcast on his earbuds and started at the far corner of the room. The first few boxes were full of clothes that had never made it to the donation center. Then there were the old family photos with his father — he was shocked his mother hadn’t burned them, because he had seen her burn a few boxes of them — plus his old soccer cleats, and Irene’s baby clothes neatly folded. Another box had the few pieces of wedding china that had survived the fallout after his mom discovered the nude Polaroids of his dad’s (of-age but still very young) intern. Zach still had the tiniest scar on the ball of his right foot from stepping on a shard, as well as a lifelong visceral disgust at the word “beaver.”
He was 14 at the time.
The trash pile was dwarfing the donate and keep piles.
In the next box, Zach found a stack of high school textbooks and yearbooks. He sat cross-legged on the floor and flipped through his senior yearbook. He turned to the W’s. There was Seth, with thick glasses and a brilliant smile.
He turned the pages back to the H’s. He hadn’t changed much since then, physically. Yes, he’d filled out, become more sinewy than gangly. But there was something disturbing about seeing a picture of yourself from years ago, knowing all the heartaches that would befall you that were unknown to you, then. He felt sad for that teenager, but also envious. Yes, he’d turned down more invites than he’d cared to because he had to stay home and babysit, or help his mom at the shop.
Or roll her over to make sure she didn’t choke on her tongue when she’d passed out on the couch after downing two bottles of the expensive chardonnay.
But that kid also snuck out to campfire parties in the middle of the night to do shrooms. He’d briefly been the guitarist of a terrible band, then the drummer of another terrible band. He sat at the most crowded table at lunch with a mismatched crew of jocks and band geeks, the class clown with an artsy streak with tons of friends but only two or three he was close to.
Had it ever been that easy? He felt a pit in his stomach, because it had but it hadn’t.
A masochist to the core, he turned to S.
Emily Stone. She was easy to spot. Not that he couldn’t press a few buttons on his phone and find more recent pictures on social media — they were, after all, still “friends” — but he felt a sting in his chest seeing her how she had been back then. Her strawberry blonde hair was in a long French braid draped over one shoulder, and she smiled with her lips pressed together despite having a white, straight grin that brought out her dimples. She was a violinist, and she played lacrosse, so her nose and cheeks were always dotted with freckles from long practices in the sun.
Next to her in the yearbook was her brother, Chase. They’d grown up together. Chase was Zach’s best friend.
That was an understatement. Zach worshiped Chase. He was the varsity quarterback, and had the stereotypical all-American Abercrombie good looks to go with that. A jawline that was obscene, bright blue eyes that seemed unreal, shoulders as wide as a door.
But Chase didn’t fit any teen movie stereotypes. He was genuine, kind, good at school, nice to his family. He was Aaron Fucking Samuels. And he was the only person Zach could call on short notice when he needed to get the hell out of his house. He also required zero dumb excuses.
Chase and Zach carpooled to school often, and Zach and sometimes Irene had dinner at Chase’s house more often than at their own. The couch in the Hoult basement had a Chase-shaped dent from their epic Mario Kart throwdowns.
Emily was 10 months younger than Chase. Even though they were in the same class because she’d skipped a grade, she was always “Chase’s little sister.”
Until Emily’s birthday party senior year, when she’d cornered Zach on his way out of the bathroom and, emboldened by wine coolers, confessed she’d had a crush on him since middle school. And that was that.
Chase reacted. Poorly. He went from sensitive jock to aggro douchebag faster than a rollercoaster went to 60. It took weeks before he’d started being civil to Zach again.
It hurt, but even with Chase furious at him, Zach was besotted by Emily. Things moved fast with them. And then, just as fast, Emily broke it off. They fought a lot. Even then, he’d developed a habit of shutting down. She wanted to know why he never let her come over or meet his mom. He’d respond by shutting down and ignoring her calls, then trying to pretend it had never happened the next time he saw her.
Once he’d pushed away his first love, he turned to the only person he’d ever really opened up to — his best friend.
Chase wasn’t in the mood to hear the gory details of Zach’s relationship with his sister. Zach wasn’t in the mood to give them.
Instead he’d started coming over again to reclaim his spot on the couch, where he proceeded to destroy Zach at Mario Kart.
“Ruuuuuuusty! Eat my ass, Hoult!” Chase jumped on the couch.
“Fuck you, man,” Zach said, pulling at Chase’s ankle.
Chase fell backward and grabbed onto the back of the couch to break his fall. He lunged for Zach’s shirt. Zach tried to scurry away, but Chase was stronger and pinned him down.
“Uncle! Uncle!” Zach gasped out, pretending to choke.
Chase let him go, red from laughter. In that moment, Zach thought about how comforting that laugh had always been. He noticed, not for the first time, but for the first time he’d admit it to himself, how soft Chase’s lips looked. And before he could stop to think about the consequences, he kissed him.
And the most shocking part wasn’t that he’d kissed his best friend who was also his ex-girlfriend’s brother. The shocking part was the intensity with which he was being kissed back.
* * *
Cleaning out the attic took Zach the rest of the day. He lost hours to sentimentality, his bursts of ruthless purging interrupted by stretches of nostalgia when he’d find an old photo, or a mix CD that he remembered making.
Camila had sent him TikTok after TikTok — from howling huskies and their long-suffering golden retriever siblings, to self-insert sketches from a Black comedian parodying decade-old movies. He meant to go back to Camila’s page and watch some of her newest videos. He’d save them for when he was done as motivation to finish organizing.
He’d gathered up the important things in a box, the items he couldn’t bear to part with even if they hurt to look at. Like the matching mugs he and Mom had painted when he was a kid, and she took him to one of those pottery painting studios in the mall. He loved finding the photos of Irene from her first birthday. That day was imprinted in his memory, to the point that he could order the series of photos without looking at the time stamps. Irene was wearing this poufy black dress, with a lacy white bib and a wide-brim hat, like a toddler Kentucky Derby hat. She was laughing in one photo. Happily sitting in Yiayia’s lap in another.
And then the guests arrived. Mom had invited every family in the neighborhood with a kid between the ages of 1 and 10. The house was packed.
Irene wasn’t having it. Her mood degraded as guests arrived, until she threw herself on the ground and threw a screaming tantrum as everyone tried to sing happy birthday. Zach threw himself on the ground next to her and said soothing words over and over again until she calmed down.
It was a great party.
In the mix of photos from that party were a couple of Zach and Chase. It was odd to think how long they’d been in each other’s lives, until they weren’t.
There was so much good there. He tried to hold onto that instead of thinking of everything he’d do differently.
Needing to get out of his nostalgia funk, Zach picked a candid of him playing guitar, took a picture with his phone, and sent it to Camila.
Zach
Camila
A few minutes later, Camila had sent him a screenshot, the social media website’s header visible, along with Camila’s phone battery meter at a troubling 6%.
In the photo, Camila was wearing an Atreyu t-shirt that had been ripped at the sleeves and above the navel. It was over a mesh bodysuit, and she wore jeans so tight they might as well have been pantyhose. Her hair was pin straight and black, and she had blunt bangs. It looked like it had been taken at a bar.
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach