A/N: Sorry about not updating for a while! Life suddenly got hectic for a few weeks. These things happen, and tend to be out of my control, but... well, at least the new chapter is up now!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Mina turned out to be all right after all, after the whole debacle with the locker room graffiti. Her phone was turned off for the day, ditto the land line at her house, but after that things gradually went back to normal. The experience seemed to bring her and Kevin closer, however, and while Zach didn't particularly want to think about that, he made himself accept that she was happy with Big Bad NYC, and the latter seemed to care about her.
On the 4th of July, though there were no swim classes at the pool, it was still kept open for all the town's residents who were out in the park that day. Amy and Matt, another of the lifeguards, were assigned to work that day, and Zach maneuvered to switch his schedule around so that he worked instead of Matt. They lingered in the park for a while after the pool was closed, joining Lita Green's family's barbecue, and did full justice to the elaborate picnic spread that the girl had prepared.
Afterwards, they sat together on the grass and watched the fireworks, and Zach wondered a bit at why it was that ever since the graffiti debacle, Amy seemed to look at him a bit differently, why her eyes seemed to shine brighter and she seemed nervous and yet exultant at once. After the fireworks display, they went back to the locker rooms to pick their things up before going home. At the door, he pressed his chin on her shoulder.
"What are the thoughts going through your cute little head these days?"
"Hmm?" She turned slightly to look at him. "What do you mean?"
"You seem to be thinking about something that has nothing to do with those roast beef sandwiches we just had, or for that matter the pretty lights and loud noises in the sky," he remarked. "Everything all right?"
"Oh, yes." She glanced at him, then glanced away, and picked up one of his hands. "I've been wondering about whether something I heard was the truth or not."
"Oh? Do tell." He linked his fingers with hers. "If it's whether Mina and Kevin are... er... you know, I believe so. But I don't want to think about it."
She laughed and even in the darkness, he could see her blushing. "No, no. Not that. That's none of my business. It's about us."
That didn't sound so good, and try as he might, he couldn't quite keep the alarm out of his eyes. "What about us?"
She paused for a few torturous seconds before she spoke. "You were cussing out Dan Burright after the whole incident in the locker rooms."
"Not an action I regret by any means, and if I could have a do-over, I'd kick his ass before it even got to that point, or more accurately, before he got up in your face on Valentine's Day," Zach said with conviction. "But you know that."
She took a deep breath and turned fully so that those wide blue eyes were locked with his. "You said something about him deserving to die because that was twice he hurt someone you loved."
Confusion turned to comprehension in the space of less than a minute, and suddenly everything made sense. He glanced down at her hand, still clasped in his, and then up at her face. "I wasn't lying. You don't have to do anything about it, of course."
"So you mean it?" Her voice was soft, not quite as calm as it usually was.
He nodded. She deserved the truth after all, and hoped that she wouldn't break his heart over it.
A sniffle broke through his thoughts, and that caught his attention. She was smiling and crying at the same time, but he barely had a moment to be dismayed before she jumped into his arms, laughing through her tears. "It would be like you to tell me such a thing without thinking about it, while cussing someone else out," her voice was muffled against his neck.
"So... you're okay with it?" he asked cautiously even as his arms locked around her waist.
"I love you too. And I thought about it before saying it. Of course I'm okay."
She didn't give him a chance to respond and pulled his head down for a kiss, and before he knew what he was doing, he pulled her into the darkness of the locker room and had her up against a wall of lockers, drinking from her lips and holding her like he'd never let her go. She moaned, and he'd never heard anything so sexy in his life.
His fingers had her shirt halfway up before he became aware of what he was doing, and then he forced himself to pull away, blinking a few times to clear the haze. She was breathing deeply and her lips were swollen and her eyes glittered with some confusion.
"I'm not going to do things this way," he managed to say after a few moments. "Not here, not with you, like this. You deserve better."
Time slowed to a crawl and he forced himself to settle, his heartbeat to even out, and then he watched as she nodded.
"You're right." She had that look on her face that indicated any number of thoughts racing through her brain, and he couldn't do anything but hope for the best. "Take me home. It's late."
It was unusual for Zach to be up early in the morning during summer vacation on a day that he didn't have to work, but he had spent the last two sleepless nights tossing and turning in bed thinking about the conversation that he had with Amy on Fourth of July. It would be best to talk to someone about things before he became a chronic insomniac.
He entered the kitchen to find his mother doing the newspaper crossword as she finished her cup of coffee, already dressed to go to the school, and smiled at her. For as long as he could remember, she'd always done so in the mornings, her blue eyes narrowed in concentration, a spot of calm in the often-chaotic household. Those eyes were steely whenever he was up to no good, but he also remembered the day when he finally surpassed her in height about two years back, and her eyes had been damp with sentimental tears.
"Susannah's at the Harmons'. Paula is taking her, Mina and Louise to the mall later," his mother remarked. "You might actually have the house to yourself today... at least until I get back from the summer school crowd."
Zach walked over and kissed the top of his mother's head. Her hair was soft and smelled like Pantene Pro-V. "Cool."
The tone of his voice alerted her to the fact that there was something on his mind, and she looked up, blue eyes serene and full of warmth. "You want to talk about something?"
"I know the story," Zach murmured. "You meeting dad in a pub in County Galway where he was playing fiddle for his drinks, and he wouldn't leave you alone."
Humour and remembrance entered her face and she chuckled. "No, he certainly didn't. I'm thankful for it every day."
"How did you deal with it when you realized that, er, you didn't mind him annoying the hell out of you?"
Kathleen O'Connor got out of her chair and rinsed out her empty coffee mug at the sink. Turning around, she surveyed her son, took in his appearance and expression. "This is about Amy, right?"
Zach raked a hand through his hair and tossed an apple from the fruit basket on the table up into the air again and again. "I haven't even been dating her that long, not really. I mean, okay, it's been about five months since I told her I liked her and stuff, and then we didn't officially date until she was back from New York and seriously, we're like HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. We're supposed to be with someone new every month or so, it's like a rule, but..." He brought the apple to his lips and took a bite, and had trouble swallowing it past the lump in his throat. "But it's not like that with Amy. And... I know what I feel, and I even told her. Even though it was kind of blurted out and I'd prefer a do-over so I'm not such a dumbass about it. And... she says she feels the same. It just kind of makes me nervous."
"You love her," As always, Kathleen was able to see through all the babble to the core of the matter, and much like when he has grown taller than her, sentimental tears filled her eyes for a moment, to be blinked away. She cupped his cheek with her hand, like she'd always done when he was a little boy and scared about something or another. "That's bound to make someone nervous."
"You... uh, you're okay with that? And you believe me?" This surprised Zach a little bit. He was usually of the opinion that the older generation deemed his age group incapable of deeper thoughts and emotions.
"Silly. You have your father's eyes. Both of you can lie with the best of them with your tongues, but your eyes betray you. She's a lovely girl, your Amy. I knew there was something different about her when you invited her over the first time."
"I'm afraid of mucking things up," Zach confessed. "It was always easy to deal with girls before. But this isn't the same. She says she loves me too. I just..."
"Go with your instinct," His mother told him. "It's scary, yes, and you're bound to make a few mistakes along the way, and so is she. But if you really love someone, it will be worth it."
"So, uh, you're saying just go with it and see how it turns out?"
She nodded, and smiled. "Of course, don't do anything reckless or foolish. It's not good to take actions where you wouldn't be able to accept the consequences. But I have faith in you, and in her." She glanced at her watch. "I'd best get going, though. Are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah, thanks." The rest of the apple went down easier, and he stood up, bending down to kiss her cheek. "Love you, mom."
"Love you too. Don't spend your whole day playing video games and doing nothing else." With this last admonishment, she slipped into her sensible flat-heeled pumps and left the house.
Zach was in the middle of a heist on Grand Theft Auto when the doorbell rang. Pausing the game, he went to open the door, and was somewhat surprised to see Amy standing there. "Hey," he greeted her. "What's up?"
"Michelle was kind enough to drop me off," she told him, her calm voice belying the hint of nerves in her eyes as he opened the door wider to let her in. "I was thinking."
"Yeah?"
"I appreciate that you held back... the other day. In the locker room," she said slowly. "It wasn't the right place."
"Er, yeah." He raked his fingers through his hair in embarrassment. "A locker room. Bad. I mean... not that I don't want to... with you. God, I just... okay, I'm going to shut up now."
That got a short, soft laugh out of her before she resumed her serious expression. Determination and all the signs of a made-up mind written over her features, she deliberately shut the door and locked it, then stepped forward until they were almost toe to toe. She was wearing a crisp white shirt and denim shorts that showed off lithe, flawless legs, and she had one hand in her pocket. He watched as she took a deep, steadying breath, close enough to feel the warmth of her body against his.
"Is this a better place?" she asked quietly.
He didn't have time to respond before she was kissing him, emotion pouring through it like water through a broken dam, and her hands tugged the tails of his shirt out of his jeans.
