After a year and a half of trying to move on from the what-ifs, the tides have pulled Alexandra Rivera and Zachariah Kim back together again.
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In the h...
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Anthony sent five texts in ten minutes to confirm our dinner plans tomorrow night were still on. If it hadn't been a month since the last time I saw him, I might have been irritated, but I couldn't blame him.
A week of staying at Zachariah's house had turned into a few more weeks until three months had gone by. Other than that, there had been a few nights when I'd stayed over at Emmie's house, which was gratifying because it offered us a chance to connect without Zachariah around.
Zachariah and I orbited each other like it was a routine we'd spent our lives perfecting into a gentle art. He'd wake up earlier than me and cook us both breakfast, and once I'd finished eating, I'd rinse off our dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Not to mention the cup of coffee that waited for me as soon as I'd wake up, placed there a couple of minutes before like clockwork. He'd put the dirty clothes from the bathroom into the washer, and I'd take the laundry out of the dryer. Whoever got off work first would pick up groceries written on the to-buy list clipped on the fridge, while the other would grab any items the first inevitably forgot.
At night, I'd tell him he needed to take his bed back because sleeping on the living room couch every night couldn't be good for his back, but every time I'd come out of the shower, he'd already been occupying it. Evidently, his roommates didn't mind, which he probably knew since they were scarce for the most part.
Tonight's menu called for bulgogi he got at Costco the other day, and he somehow convinced me to pick up beer, though we had an extensive argument about how I thought soju would have been the far superior choice. It ended in me calling him a fake Korean and accusing him of letting his haole side take over. He told me I wasn't a real Hawaiian since I didn't like poi. When our bickering came to an impasse, he told me he'd ask his mom for the recipe of those tea cookies I loved and I agreed to pick up the beer as a sign of good faith.
Jem once told me she believed emotions vacated our bodies like particles floating into the air. When any of them landed on someone else, we could feel everything that passed through that person.
It seemed silly until I realized how much lighter my heart felt since staying with Zachariah. Being in that house affected me more than I thought, and it took leaving it for me to recognize that.
As soon as I walked through the front door that evening, I knew something was off. Instead of the stark frost of simmering anger, it was a stifling chill of deliberate isolation. I wasn't sure why I was so nervous walking through the house in search of him, but I felt something prickling along my arms as the suspense built up.
Zachariah sat on the floor of the kitchen with his knees pulled up, his arms resting on top of them and his head tilted back against the cupboard with his eyes closed. He didn't flinch when I stepped inside the room.
"I'm sure there are much more comfortable places to sit than on the floor," I remarked, letting my bag slip gently off my shoulder.
His reply came so quickly, suddenly, that I couldn't form a proper reaction to it right away. He said it like he was ripping off a bandaid.
