fic: The Fatherless, Set 4/5
Pairing: Zach Condon/Shia LaBeouf, RPS.
Wordcount: 5591
Notes: Installments ten, eleven and twelve of fifteen.
set I - set II - set III - set IV - set V
x. Coarse estimations at the dinner table
The beach by Zach’s hotel collects a lot of garbage, and Shia knows from experience that the water is a little too slimy, a little too slick. And at night there are a lot of dark huddled lumps: low conversations, beer cans and the quick orange flare of lighters showing intent faces. Really, it’s identical to every other beach from his childhood: the unknown is a little threatening, but also welcoming. Anonymous.
Shia and Zach migrate there by some kind of mutual unspoken agreement. Maybe because the night is absurdly warm for April and the wind off the ocean smells clean for once. Or maybe just to put off for a little longer the drawing of that solid line between have a good one and you want to come up?
Shia’s pretty good at guessing which it’s gonna be. Normally if you’re out, you’re out for a reason, right? You’re not just hanging around some guy hoping to score some weed and a free pass into the Lydian. Straight guys don’t do that, not straight guys as cheaply dressed as Zach, anyway.
But Zach is almost impossible to read. Shia is having a hard time putting together the signals: catching them, even. The kid is hesitant and asks for his Hefeweizen with a put-on German accent, but words like shithead and pissant come out of his mouth as soon as he’s got two of those snotty wheat ales in him. He always waits three seconds to answer anything, just long enough to make you wonder if you should repeat yourself. He gesticulates expressively, not just with his hands, but his arms; on down from the shoulder. And there’s something terrifyingly sincere about him.
Shia picks a spot on the beach exactly between the nearest three clusters of teenagers and hobos. He drops down into the sand and unwraps his swirl cone.
Zach hesitates, shifting his feet like a picky housecat, then does the same.
He has a bag of cheetos the size of his torso: they stopped at a corner store after the bar looking for more beer, but Shia had an attack of conscience (for his publicist, Mandy, who would either quit or die if he got caught drinking open alcohol in a public space after his latest run of trouble) and so they picked up some dinner, instead.
If dinner is what Zach Condon calls a five-pound bag of cheetos, then who is Shia to question? He cherishes his ice cream, eats it slowly, thinking about his protein diet. Twelve hundred weeks of that and three hours in the gym each day so that he doesn’t look puffy when he makes out with Megan again. He can’t help it: he puts the whole swirly top in his mouth and sucks.
Zach watches him. Says after a while, “Don’t choke yourself.”
Shia grins and snaps off the cone, sucking back the dribble of strawberry. “I can take it,” he says, or tries to say, around the ice cream.
Zach watches it melt, drip from chin to shirt. “You’re saying if they took a dozen pictures of you right now, that would be less embarrassing than drinking a beer?” He pauses. “You’re legal?”
Shia swallows, licks his mouth, wipes the general area with the hem of his t-shirt. He figures the rudeness of the gesture might be counteracted by the fact that he has the hardest abs he’s had in his entire life.
He gives an extra wipe for good measure, trying to catch Zach looking. “Yeah, barely. Not even a year.”
Zach shrugs what Shia interprets as an empathetic agreement.
“Really the bigger problem would be getting caught sitting around on Crack Dealer Beach with another dude.” It’s a calculated statement: painting an opportunity for either ha, ha, you’re a fag, no you are mockery, or else maybe the coy hint of a come-on. But god, wouldn’t he know if Zach Condon was a big homo? Isn’t that the kind of thing that gets around in the pitchfork reviews? Normally, he wouldn’t say something like that if he wasn’t sure. Like, eighty percent sure. With his thing for straight guys, he’s had a lot of practice. And he’s fucked it up before, got punched in the face when he was seventeen and damn lucky the guy didn’t watch the Disney Channel.
But Zach doesn’t say anything. He’s chewing, he’s got orange dust on his blue shirt, all over his hands. The shirt makes him look like a bus driver. Shia wonders where the indie cool went.
Zach offers the mouth of the cheeto bag to Shia, who declines, and he crinkles it up.
Shia gives him the eyeball and thinks that the kid probably wouldn’t be able to land a punch on him, anyway. They’re a similar height, but Shia has an extra couple of inches, and Zach just has those spindly white arms, those fine-boned hands that show hard tendons in the wrist.
“That’s pretty fucked up,” Zach says, finally. He has his legs tucked up and he wipes the orange goo off his fingers onto the hems of his jeans. Classy.
Shia feels better about the ice cream on his t-shirt.
He says, “What is?” because he doesn’t know what, exactly is pretty fucked up, and he has quite a bit riding on it. Several hours of dudely seduction, anyway. A hundred dollar bar tab, his career if someone decides to go to the press with Shia LaBeouf put his hands down my pants!. He keeps telling Mandy he should come out before that happens; she keeps hissing at him to keep it in his pants unless he wants to build a career in indie soft-core. The woman lacks tact.
Zach’s face in the darkness is pretty much just a blur, but he turns his head to make eye contact, and the yellow light off the city shows bemusement. Or amusement, it’s hard to tell. “It’s fucked up that people care what you do at some beach in the middle of the night, what you’re drinking, who you’re screwing.”
“You’ll be there too.” Shia says, feeling a little defensive. Care is the wrong word, prey on might be better. “You pretty much are already.”
Zach smiles at the water, “Nope, never.”
“No one cares who you screw.”
“My doctor asks every time I go for a physical.”
“I mean,” says Shia.
Zach says, “No one’s going to be hanging around snapping pictures when you walk out of my hotel in the morning. If that’s what you’re asking,”
He’s only half-joking. He means it, anyway. His eyes don’t skip down when Shia gives him the twice-over to be sure.
The way he said it, it’s like a promise: a permission slip. Shia has permission to go on this field trip, put his hands on this guy’s boner, go into this hotel and get some goddamn action after freaking eighteen months of jerking off to payperview because his friends don’t know and his fans don’t know and there are no anonymous celebrity gay bars. Or at least none billed as such. This is as good as it gets, for guys like Shia. Him, and the entire illustrious lineage of closeted sex-object downward-spiral actors-slash-faggots before him.
He remembers how horny he was to begin with, tonight when he left the house. He’s used to that being a hopeless feeling.
So he props a fist in the sand and leans over. Casual. Because the bird’s in hand: ninety percent sure. If there was a seat back, his arm would be on it.
Zach smirks at his obviousness and cocks his head, coquettish as a prom date.
But he doesn’t kiss like one. It’s open-mouthed and bold, and Zach puts his hand on the stretch of denim over Shia’s thigh and squeezes like he already knows what’s going on three inches over. His fingers run up the seam, down. He tastes like the goddamn cheetos.
Zach says, “You should probably be more careful who you put the moves on.”
Shia says, into his mouth, eyes half-closed, “I’m doing ok so far.”
There are snickers nearby, not venomous yet, but mocking. That’s alright: Shia agrees that makeout couples are universally obnoxious. He reaches and puts Zach’s hood up: he can be the girl, if it’s going to prevent an impromptu hate crime. His narrow little bird shoulders and skinny jeans are androgynous enough to get them past these jerks.
“So that hotel?” Shia prompts, standing. He offers a hand to help Zach scramble up.
Zach takes the hand, eyes him from under the hood. Waits a moment as Shia’s certainty percentage stutters back to eighty-seven, seventy-five, sixty, a greater drop with each silent second.
He wouldn’t blame the kid for saying no, for thinking better of casual sex with a stranger who he only knows from television. Television he probably never even watched to begin with. Shia doubts that Zach was a big Transformers fan.
But Zach is just toying with the weighty matters of creation: “Yeah,” he says, finally, sincere. He doesn’t let go of Shia’s hand, just runs fingers over each knuckle, turns it over to examine it as they start walking.
Shia stumbles along. “Great,” he agrees. He ticks the number off in his head, to be altered only if it turns out his condoms are expired or the kid is some kind of celebrity-boggled virgin: one hundred percent.
xi. The patriarch holds his own court
The day in November that his dad shows up, Shia is pressed cheek-to-cheek with Zach, hissing obscenities into his ear, straddling his hips on the futon in front of the xbox, wearing jeans on one leg only and a t-shirt jerked up to expose his nipples, which Zach was mouthing three seconds ago.
He has a spit-wet cock in each hand and he’s about three jerks away from coming, so he ignores the doorbell. His mother’s in Sacramento for the weekend, that’s all that occurs to him, screw whatever boyscout's standing there.
Plus, the door is like, halfway across the house. So instead, Shia streams four ropes of come up Zach’s belly - Zach who always manages to get all of his clothes off, nimble little shit - and uses the slick to make sure Zach comes too.
“Are you gonna get the door?” Zach asks, waving a hand toward the sound, still gasping hard. He’s barely even done. Like, red-lipped, pink-faced, hair plastered down and stuck up from Shia’s hands.
Shia can’t help it, he loves Zach’s hair. It’s all soft and pliable and awesome and he’d get twice as many roles if he had hair like that instead of the matrilineal jewfro.
“Uh, no,” says Shia, all cocky. Who doesn’t call, first? Who just shows up? Who has a key to the house?
Shia wipes himself off with a white pool towel from before, and tucks his junk back into his underwear, pulls his shirt down. Zach stays splayed on the chair, a closet nudist. Sometimes it’s like he initiates these little distractions just so that he has an excuse to take his clothes off and get into the pool or the bath or whatever, after. But not right away. He uses the corner of the same towel to wipe Shia’s jizz out of his belly button, but he’s not too vigorous about it, he lets the rest dry.
“Ew, man,” says Shia.
Zach settles in lower on the couch, considers the paused Rainbow Six campaign on the tv screen. Eventually he puts a hand in his hair and squints up at Shia: “Whatever, you eat it for breakfast three times a week.”
“Yeah, I eat fried eggs, too. Doesn’t mean I want to coat myself in butter and sit around buck-assed naked for half the day.”
Zach just smirks at him, doesn’t even have to say it.
Shia puts up his hands and shakes his head and goes to check the monitor to see what kind of boy scout was knocking on his door.
Then he stops.
His dad’s in the kitchen - down the hall and through the living room - poking around in the fridge. “Son,” he says, “What the hell did your mother do with my beer?”
Shia has to check: pants done up, shirt back down, hands still smell like jizz, but that’s - well - not visible. He says, loudly, “God, Dad, what the hell?”
“That’s what I just asked you.” Shia’s dad isn’t a tall man, but he’s lean and wiry and doesn’t do the facial hair grooming thing with any consistency. He doesn’t have like, a bushman’s beard right now, but it’s patchy. The moustache, anyway.
Shia says, louder, sit-com stagey: “Seriously, DAD. WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THE KITCHEN?”
His dad angles an irritated look, “She threw it out, didn’t she?”
Shia comes forward a little bit. He wants to wash his hands. A lot. “The stuff you were keeping in the cooler in the garage last January? I gave it to the poor.”
“You did not. You drank it.”
“I did not drink the beer you left in this house.” Shia says, and it’s true. He drank all three cans on the beach. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out, Dad. You know mom doesn’t like having alcohol around.” Or smokes, or, uh, heroin.
His dad closes the fridge and huffs. “Where is she?”
“She took Aunt Sara to Sacramento. She’ll be back on Tuesday.” Shia makes it to the sink, pours a palmful of dishsoap and starts scrubbing.
His dad grunts. Then he turns around and walks back to the front door - Shia notes he’s wearing his boots, still - and tosses a “Do you want anything?” over his shoulder.
“No, dad,” says Shia. Part of him wants to hand over his visa, say, Don’t worry, I got it but that is not the most helpful kind of charity. Part of him also wants to say, Yeah, get a couple of kegs and we’ll call the guys.
The door closes and Shia goes to the window to watch the pickup - a glossy black Chevy that he bought two years ago - back down the angled drive.
Zach says from the living room, “Where’s he going?”
“Not too far.” He looks over: Zach is dressed, finally, he even has his seven hundred dollar cardigan on, his hair less ruffled than normal.
Shia hopes he’s not going to try and make a good impression. Seeing as it’s pretty much impossible with Jeffrey.
Zach says, “Do you want me to go?” and Shia can hear that he sort of wants to, is kind of afraid of seeing this, trying to pass as an acquaintance rather than recently-fucked.
“I’d be really happy if you’d stay,” Shia asks. Well, he states it. But it’s a question, kind of a favor that needs begging.
Zach shrugs, wanders into the kitchen for water and reaches out to brush Shia’s hand with his own as he passes. Picks it up and drops it. Then smiles at him through the cup as he swallows.
Jeffrey comes back in half an hour with a 24 pack of beer, probably a gallon of whiskey, and a bag of ice for the cooler that’s still sitting in the garage. Which is good, because seriously there is no alcohol allowed in the kitchen fridge.
As soon as he’s secured the beer he turns to Shia all jovial and long-time-no-see, kid. He hugs Zach, too, even though his first reaction was a little annoyed, “I didn’t know I was shopping for three.”
But it’s fine. Sort of. Shia takes the first beer he’s offered because it would be rude - it’s rude enough that he’s not the one doing the offering - and Zach’s face sets a little bit, at least until the offer gets turned on him and he also realizes that he isn’t a judgmental prick who sits at tables watching a man drink by himself.
Jeffrey says, “Oh yeah, first couple of storms blew in mid-September, which is a little early for my altitude. I had the teepee all weatherproofed by then, I was warm as fat bear sitting in there. Except it gets wet if the snow melts, and after that first blizzard it was like spring up there in some parts, a lot of mud. So I pulled her all up and went across to my friend Foag’s house, and dried everything out there. Stayed with her a while, she has a deer license this fall, so I went out tracking. Didn’t bag anything, Foag likes talking more than shooting, and then when it started snowing up high again I decided it was time to move on down, come visit my boy in this hellhole he loves so much.”
“Dad doesn’t like LA,” Shia supplies.
Zach makes an interested sound.
“I still can’t believe I stayed all those years. It’s hard to believe there’s something better out there when you’re neck deep in it, I guess. But you boys better believe it: you come see my land next spring - no excuses - and it will change your mind about whatever girlfriends or crap cars are keeping you here. Nothing better than a sky you can see end to end.”
Shia knows to nod, to say, “Sure dad, I’d love to see it,” even though he’s put it off four times in two years already, fearing to see the conditions his dad lives in, the food he eats, in case it means he has to do something about it.
But Zach doesn’t know to fake a promise. He’s honest, “I grew up in New Mexico. I still like the city better.”
Jeffrey shakes his head. Imparts his wisdom even as Shia holds in a sigh: “That’s what they call Stockholm Syndrome, buddy. I thought I loved it here too, until I got stabbed.”
Shia remembers that - his dad got stabbed when he stole someone’s favorite watch off the dresser at a house party he wasn’t invited to, and he was fucking high at the time, and so was everyone else at that party - and the Montana thing started out as a suggestion from rehab. Break habits, cut ties, strengthen other ties, go to a dude ranch in Montana and commune with nature. His dad just liked it too much.
Zach, though, doesn’t bite. He says “Oh, no. Terrible,” and drains his glance.
Regardless, they all crack open another round - it’s 2pm, at least - and Jeffrey keeps going with the Montana stuff, and then the old times at the Ocean View motel when Shia was just a mean little dick thinking he was big stuff working for Disney. “We ate every night at the Denny’s down the street for eighteen months solid, and he still thought he was living the high life. Telling all the waitresses to catch him on tv.”
Three hours later, Jeffrey hasn’t run out of wisdom to impart, but they’ve run through all the beer and most of the bottle of Jack. Shia has to remind his dad where the washroom is.
When he looks across the table at Zach, who’s slumped and slit-eyed, he says, “We probably shouldn’t be this drunk.” But Zach just shrugs, ineloquent, and says, “I need another smoke.”
They go outside, and when they come in Jeffrey helps them finish off the bottle of whiskey. Shia takes the last shot and pulls himself together enough to say: “No, seriously, that’s it. We don’t keep booze in this house and that was it and we aren’t driving anywhere so let’s just watch a movie or something. Alright, pop? I got the Magnificent Seven collector’s edition.”
Jeffrey laughs and smacks him on the back and tells them to order some pizza. And then, when the guy comes Jeffrey bribes him to go get more booze.
Shia hands over the cash - he’s not going to make a scene, there’s no point in fighting the man - and regrets it as soon as his dad casts a casual glance at Zach and says, “In terms of volume, we would’ve been fine without the third wheel here.”
It’s a joke, probably, but Zach’s been getting more and more belligerent all afternoon. There’s not a lot to like about Shia’s dad if he’s not trying to be likable. “I’m not the third wheel.” Zach’s voice is stiff and cold, “I didn’t break into Shia’s kitchen to come beg for booze.”
Jeffrey shifts his stance as the pizza guy slips back down the stairs. “I didn’t ask for shit. That was my beer you just guzzled, kid.”
Shia puts a hand on Zach’s arm, feeling a little queasy and disastrous. He says, “Whatever, you guys are both dicks. No one’s a third wheel.”
He earns glares from both of them for that last bit. Zach says, not so low that Jeffrey can’t hear, “You’re not buying into his shit, are you?”
Shia just shakes his head, because what can he do? And Zach says, “I’m-” and looks like he’s torn between driving home his disapproval with a grand gesture, and doing what makes sense. “I’m going to bed.”
Shia says, “Yeah,” and knows he means their bed, the one they’ve been screwing on since March, intermittently, and thinks, oh god, don’t make me come out to him right now.
But when he turns to face his dad the man’s just scowling at the pizza and eating a piece out of the box.
When the pizza guy comes back, Shia doesn’t drink any of the whiskey his dad pretty much leaps on. He sits with him in the living room, and listens to his stories and his rambling and his increasingly incoherent declarations. But he doesn’t drink with him. It’s probably the first time he’s ever said no and meant it.
After midnight, he makes sure Jeffrey is comfortable in his sleeping bag on the cot in the garage, and walks back across the house. Zach looks like he’s already worked through his hangover, pasty-skinned and comatose on the futon in front of the xbox. Shia prods him back into the right bed, and then strips off his own shirt and jeans and crawls in with him.
It could be worse, really. Having two of the people he loves most in the same house is something to be grateful for. And Shia loves them both, he knows it. He knows what that word means, what it’s supposed to look like, how to fake it a little bit if it’s wheeling off its axis.
And he knows how to be grateful.
xii. The longest weekend in long-term memory
Zach introduces Shia to his family in gradual stages, stretching it out over several hours on Thanksgiving weekend. They get in off the highway just after one in the afternoon, and thank god at first it's only his oldest brother, Ryan, at the door to greet them.
He hugs Zach, who's maybe a little reluctant to get showy when Shia's standing right there, all stiff with shattered-home anxiety, and then shakes Shia's hand with a firm, "Fuck, Transformers, man. Welcome to Chez Condon." Ryan shakes his head and rolls his eyes and goes back inside because the snow is blowing in through the door.
They drag their bags in, and Zach scopes out the available beds. If everyone's coming home, it'll be tight. Pull-out couch and floor cushion tight, ever since Dad turned one of the bedrooms into a yoga studio. He finds Kevin downstairs in his pajamas, glassy-eyed in front of the xbox. The only brother out of five that’s younger than him.
"So you moved out yet?" Zach tries to recall the last time he talked to just Kevin. It’s been months. They don’t really have a lot in common. Of course, it’s been a while since he double-checked that, either.
"No.” And, five minutes later, after an alien locust or two has been cut down: “Carla just got her own place. So mostly I just hang there."
Zach doesn’t know who Carla is, but he can guess. He sits down.
It's a full twenty minutes before Shia comes down from making conversation with Ryan and joins them both in a Gears of War threeway. Which is what he calls it, out loud. Zach arrows a glare but Kevin doesn’t look any more mortified than he did initially. So far all he’s said to Shia is, “Megan Fox is totally in my top three, bro.”
After that, it's another couple of hours before Zach's dad comes home from work - another firm handshake and disbelieving shake of the head, because how did their self-absorbed, dropout son get to be so much of a big deal, anyway? - and mom shows up with armfuls of takeout. "Oh, Zach," she sighs into Zach's ear as they hug in the kitchen, even though he's never told her, not really.
Actually, the only one he’s said it to - flat-out - is Ryan, and that’s because Ryan was the one in Europe when he was sixteen and horny, he was the one who witnessed the drunken flirting and retreats to dark corners with older boys, the one who slept on the couch in the hostel common room, and made sure he had condoms in his pocket.
Ryan will always be his only brother, in Zach’s mind. No years have ever been worse than the ones when he was trapped in this house without him. The year immediately after Europe, when he was supposed to come back triumphant, but spent the summer scooping ice cream for tourists and getting drunk before he could even pick up an instrument.
So the rest of them, they all just remind Zach of his own failures.
Ryan comes back from picking up Luke and Matt at the airport. They’re both carrying shoulder bags, just back from UCLA for a few days before returning to an American Lit PhD and law school, respectively. Shia folds his hands in his lap and asks interested, if uninformed, questions about their studies. Matt not-so-secretly wants to go into entertainment law, the jerk-off. Zach just rolls his eyes and manhandles the conversation away from the questions Matt is three seconds and another sip of wine away from asking: so who handled your DUI? and how much did it cost you to get off?
They eat, and family dinner blows Shia's mind, Zach can tell. Everyone talks, but mostly Shia’s quiet, he sits with his paper napkin on his knees, and waits for his turn to dish out his chow mein. Everyone else just talks around and over him like he’s not even there. Except for the part where they are exceedingly polite and Matt keeps mentioning his sum laude and his famous professors, and Zach’s dad asks what Shia is planning on doing with his future.
Shia says, and considers his words for probably as long as Zach’s ever seen him, “Well, sir, I’m hoping to continue supporting my parents with what I’m doing now. I still have a lot I want to do in the movies.”
Zach’s mom lets out a sigh that mirrors Zach’s father’s expression. Too honest, Zach wants to tell him. You’re supposed to accomplish something greater at the end of all of it. Create a charity, or evangelize your politics. Even just organic salad dressing. He can practically hear his mother grating out, but don’t you believe in anything?
Zach keeps very quiet, not only the dropout son but the silent one, and he tries to detect a strained note that isn’t about Shia’s presence. But nothing’s changed. Zach still feels the need to roll his eyes whenever Matt opens his mouth, and Dad still throws in the occasional well-if-you-hadn’t-dropped-out of high school/College of Santa Fe/St. John’s just to get his point across.
Because two albums and three EPs, yeah, that’s just a pit stop on the way to a liberal arts degree, a yoga practice and a load of volunteer hours doing sound design for the community theatre. He’s always had hard time figuring out exactly what his parents want out of him.
After dinner Shia’s the first one at the dishwasher, and when he gets ousted by Zach’s mother, he takes out the trash, instead, giving Zach an incredulous look as he goes.
Ryan emerges from somewhere wearing a much nicer shirt and says, “So, uh, Tiny’s?” and Zach just nods and grabs his wallet and his houseguest as mom calls him.
Matt says loudly he doesn’t feel like going with them, but the curtains twitch as they’re pulling away and when Zach sighs Ryan says, “Well, at least you know that we all come by the pretentious douchebaggery honestly.”
They sit at a booth in the half-empty restaurant - there’s a mariachi band onstage that and a waitress serves them pints of local draft, and Ryan tries to list all five schools that Zach’s dropped out of (six if you count the time they said he was too immature for kindergarten), and the circumstances around each, age sixteen through twenty-one. Zach sits through it. Because ultimately with Ryan, unlike Dad or Matt, it’s admiration at bucking the system, not disappointment. And Shia, the sponge, is sitting there with shining eyes and ordering another round whenever the server stops by.
Zach catches her giving Shia the squinty-eyes in the dimness of the paper lanterns, and he smiles at her, a little sheepish. Santa Fe’s pretty dull in November. She breaks out a laugh and asks them if it’s ok if she takes a polaroid for the wall. “Normally we save it for like, local heroes or whatever, but I bet I could slip you guys in there.”
“Uh, sure,” Zach says, knowing that he’s not a local in any way that counts, anymore, and as she hops into the back he mutters to Shia, “Seriously, no thumbs up this time.”
Shia says, “C’mon, where do you want me to put them?” and then puts his palm on Zach’s thigh under the table right before the bulb flashes.
Ryan doesn’t ask questions. Zach can tell he wants to, and how long have you guys been sneaking around like this? is probably at the top, but instead they just talk about the apartment in Brooklyn - it’s Ryan’s, really, and Zach just sublets because Ryan is shacked up with his girlfriend up in Manhattan, a lot closer to work - and the second Mexico trip and Ryan’s job as a copywriter for a web development firm and how Zach totally cut him out of the creative process by making the EP that went out in September entirely instrumental.
“My lyrics,” Ryan says, “I mean, I’m probably better off. Now I get zero credit for zero work instead of zero credit for the best part of your album.”
Zach says, “But I offered, like eight thousand times-”
“Oh dude, you’re such a lazy shit.” Ryan turns to Shia, jabbing a finger for emphasis: “He has a mental block or something, mine aren’t any better than what he’d come up with if he’d just spend more than twenty seconds trying to do it. It’s such a cop out.”
Zach says, “Ugh,” and downs the rest of his beer.
And Shia says, “Twenty bucks says in two years he’s writing chamber music full-time. No vocalists there.”
“Fucking violins. I hate those, too.” Zach reaches for the pitcher.
“And that’s another thing you contract out, isn’t it?” says Ryan, voice rising with glee, “I do your lyrics, you get in that Final Fantasy dude for the violins, you’re running like, a regular little sweatshop here.”
By the time they leave they have to abandon mom’s Yaris in the parking lot and get Julianne, the server, to call them a cab.
They wait for forty-five minutes in the foyer, watching the snow fall in transparent sheets against the orange of the streetlights, and eventually Julianne just offers to give them a ride home, instead. “That’s really nice of you,” says Zach and Ryan goes, “We’d walk, but LA-born-and-bred here might die of exposure in his undergarments.” Shia just looks down at his hoodie and jeans like, what?.
In the morning, Zach wakes up alone, downstairs on the couch. One or the other of them had passed out on the floor, and in the middle of the night he remembers trying to fit both of their legs and shoulders on the narrow cushions. He also remembers a hard-on and some vague rubbing, probably aborted by passing out again. But now he’s alone with the Gears of War soundtrack playing low over the speakers, and upstairs he can hear dishes clinking, the floor creaking.
His dad is drinking matcha in his armchair, and his mom is hovering around in her bathrobe, making suggestions as Shia mixes batter and frozen blueberries with the hand blender. “Dude,” Shia says when he sees him, “Your mom owns a waffle iron.”
Zach smiles, inching out of the tiny kitchen and going to sit in the living room. Sun comes in, pouring out of the blue sky and reflected off the solid hard white coating everything: trees, electrical wires, cars.
“Good morning,” his dad says, shaking the newspaper out. Zach nods and smiles, and folds a leg under himself so he can sit in a chair and watch his old neighborhood and try to remember what it was that he was hoping for, all those years under this roof. Wonder if maybe he’s found it.
Wordcount: 5591
Notes: Installments ten, eleven and twelve of fifteen.
set I - set II - set III - set IV - set V
x. Coarse estimations at the dinner table
The beach by Zach’s hotel collects a lot of garbage, and Shia knows from experience that the water is a little too slimy, a little too slick. And at night there are a lot of dark huddled lumps: low conversations, beer cans and the quick orange flare of lighters showing intent faces. Really, it’s identical to every other beach from his childhood: the unknown is a little threatening, but also welcoming. Anonymous.
Shia and Zach migrate there by some kind of mutual unspoken agreement. Maybe because the night is absurdly warm for April and the wind off the ocean smells clean for once. Or maybe just to put off for a little longer the drawing of that solid line between have a good one and you want to come up?
Shia’s pretty good at guessing which it’s gonna be. Normally if you’re out, you’re out for a reason, right? You’re not just hanging around some guy hoping to score some weed and a free pass into the Lydian. Straight guys don’t do that, not straight guys as cheaply dressed as Zach, anyway.
But Zach is almost impossible to read. Shia is having a hard time putting together the signals: catching them, even. The kid is hesitant and asks for his Hefeweizen with a put-on German accent, but words like shithead and pissant come out of his mouth as soon as he’s got two of those snotty wheat ales in him. He always waits three seconds to answer anything, just long enough to make you wonder if you should repeat yourself. He gesticulates expressively, not just with his hands, but his arms; on down from the shoulder. And there’s something terrifyingly sincere about him.
Shia picks a spot on the beach exactly between the nearest three clusters of teenagers and hobos. He drops down into the sand and unwraps his swirl cone.
Zach hesitates, shifting his feet like a picky housecat, then does the same.
He has a bag of cheetos the size of his torso: they stopped at a corner store after the bar looking for more beer, but Shia had an attack of conscience (for his publicist, Mandy, who would either quit or die if he got caught drinking open alcohol in a public space after his latest run of trouble) and so they picked up some dinner, instead.
If dinner is what Zach Condon calls a five-pound bag of cheetos, then who is Shia to question? He cherishes his ice cream, eats it slowly, thinking about his protein diet. Twelve hundred weeks of that and three hours in the gym each day so that he doesn’t look puffy when he makes out with Megan again. He can’t help it: he puts the whole swirly top in his mouth and sucks.
Zach watches him. Says after a while, “Don’t choke yourself.”
Shia grins and snaps off the cone, sucking back the dribble of strawberry. “I can take it,” he says, or tries to say, around the ice cream.
Zach watches it melt, drip from chin to shirt. “You’re saying if they took a dozen pictures of you right now, that would be less embarrassing than drinking a beer?” He pauses. “You’re legal?”
Shia swallows, licks his mouth, wipes the general area with the hem of his t-shirt. He figures the rudeness of the gesture might be counteracted by the fact that he has the hardest abs he’s had in his entire life.
He gives an extra wipe for good measure, trying to catch Zach looking. “Yeah, barely. Not even a year.”
Zach shrugs what Shia interprets as an empathetic agreement.
“Really the bigger problem would be getting caught sitting around on Crack Dealer Beach with another dude.” It’s a calculated statement: painting an opportunity for either ha, ha, you’re a fag, no you are mockery, or else maybe the coy hint of a come-on. But god, wouldn’t he know if Zach Condon was a big homo? Isn’t that the kind of thing that gets around in the pitchfork reviews? Normally, he wouldn’t say something like that if he wasn’t sure. Like, eighty percent sure. With his thing for straight guys, he’s had a lot of practice. And he’s fucked it up before, got punched in the face when he was seventeen and damn lucky the guy didn’t watch the Disney Channel.
But Zach doesn’t say anything. He’s chewing, he’s got orange dust on his blue shirt, all over his hands. The shirt makes him look like a bus driver. Shia wonders where the indie cool went.
Zach offers the mouth of the cheeto bag to Shia, who declines, and he crinkles it up.
Shia gives him the eyeball and thinks that the kid probably wouldn’t be able to land a punch on him, anyway. They’re a similar height, but Shia has an extra couple of inches, and Zach just has those spindly white arms, those fine-boned hands that show hard tendons in the wrist.
“That’s pretty fucked up,” Zach says, finally. He has his legs tucked up and he wipes the orange goo off his fingers onto the hems of his jeans. Classy.
Shia feels better about the ice cream on his t-shirt.
He says, “What is?” because he doesn’t know what, exactly is pretty fucked up, and he has quite a bit riding on it. Several hours of dudely seduction, anyway. A hundred dollar bar tab, his career if someone decides to go to the press with Shia LaBeouf put his hands down my pants!. He keeps telling Mandy he should come out before that happens; she keeps hissing at him to keep it in his pants unless he wants to build a career in indie soft-core. The woman lacks tact.
Zach’s face in the darkness is pretty much just a blur, but he turns his head to make eye contact, and the yellow light off the city shows bemusement. Or amusement, it’s hard to tell. “It’s fucked up that people care what you do at some beach in the middle of the night, what you’re drinking, who you’re screwing.”
“You’ll be there too.” Shia says, feeling a little defensive. Care is the wrong word, prey on might be better. “You pretty much are already.”
Zach smiles at the water, “Nope, never.”
“No one cares who you screw.”
“My doctor asks every time I go for a physical.”
“I mean,” says Shia.
Zach says, “No one’s going to be hanging around snapping pictures when you walk out of my hotel in the morning. If that’s what you’re asking,”
He’s only half-joking. He means it, anyway. His eyes don’t skip down when Shia gives him the twice-over to be sure.
The way he said it, it’s like a promise: a permission slip. Shia has permission to go on this field trip, put his hands on this guy’s boner, go into this hotel and get some goddamn action after freaking eighteen months of jerking off to payperview because his friends don’t know and his fans don’t know and there are no anonymous celebrity gay bars. Or at least none billed as such. This is as good as it gets, for guys like Shia. Him, and the entire illustrious lineage of closeted sex-object downward-spiral actors-slash-faggots before him.
He remembers how horny he was to begin with, tonight when he left the house. He’s used to that being a hopeless feeling.
So he props a fist in the sand and leans over. Casual. Because the bird’s in hand: ninety percent sure. If there was a seat back, his arm would be on it.
Zach smirks at his obviousness and cocks his head, coquettish as a prom date.
But he doesn’t kiss like one. It’s open-mouthed and bold, and Zach puts his hand on the stretch of denim over Shia’s thigh and squeezes like he already knows what’s going on three inches over. His fingers run up the seam, down. He tastes like the goddamn cheetos.
Zach says, “You should probably be more careful who you put the moves on.”
Shia says, into his mouth, eyes half-closed, “I’m doing ok so far.”
There are snickers nearby, not venomous yet, but mocking. That’s alright: Shia agrees that makeout couples are universally obnoxious. He reaches and puts Zach’s hood up: he can be the girl, if it’s going to prevent an impromptu hate crime. His narrow little bird shoulders and skinny jeans are androgynous enough to get them past these jerks.
“So that hotel?” Shia prompts, standing. He offers a hand to help Zach scramble up.
Zach takes the hand, eyes him from under the hood. Waits a moment as Shia’s certainty percentage stutters back to eighty-seven, seventy-five, sixty, a greater drop with each silent second.
He wouldn’t blame the kid for saying no, for thinking better of casual sex with a stranger who he only knows from television. Television he probably never even watched to begin with. Shia doubts that Zach was a big Transformers fan.
But Zach is just toying with the weighty matters of creation: “Yeah,” he says, finally, sincere. He doesn’t let go of Shia’s hand, just runs fingers over each knuckle, turns it over to examine it as they start walking.
Shia stumbles along. “Great,” he agrees. He ticks the number off in his head, to be altered only if it turns out his condoms are expired or the kid is some kind of celebrity-boggled virgin: one hundred percent.
xi. The patriarch holds his own court
The day in November that his dad shows up, Shia is pressed cheek-to-cheek with Zach, hissing obscenities into his ear, straddling his hips on the futon in front of the xbox, wearing jeans on one leg only and a t-shirt jerked up to expose his nipples, which Zach was mouthing three seconds ago.
He has a spit-wet cock in each hand and he’s about three jerks away from coming, so he ignores the doorbell. His mother’s in Sacramento for the weekend, that’s all that occurs to him, screw whatever boyscout's standing there.
Plus, the door is like, halfway across the house. So instead, Shia streams four ropes of come up Zach’s belly - Zach who always manages to get all of his clothes off, nimble little shit - and uses the slick to make sure Zach comes too.
“Are you gonna get the door?” Zach asks, waving a hand toward the sound, still gasping hard. He’s barely even done. Like, red-lipped, pink-faced, hair plastered down and stuck up from Shia’s hands.
Shia can’t help it, he loves Zach’s hair. It’s all soft and pliable and awesome and he’d get twice as many roles if he had hair like that instead of the matrilineal jewfro.
“Uh, no,” says Shia, all cocky. Who doesn’t call, first? Who just shows up? Who has a key to the house?
Shia wipes himself off with a white pool towel from before, and tucks his junk back into his underwear, pulls his shirt down. Zach stays splayed on the chair, a closet nudist. Sometimes it’s like he initiates these little distractions just so that he has an excuse to take his clothes off and get into the pool or the bath or whatever, after. But not right away. He uses the corner of the same towel to wipe Shia’s jizz out of his belly button, but he’s not too vigorous about it, he lets the rest dry.
“Ew, man,” says Shia.
Zach settles in lower on the couch, considers the paused Rainbow Six campaign on the tv screen. Eventually he puts a hand in his hair and squints up at Shia: “Whatever, you eat it for breakfast three times a week.”
“Yeah, I eat fried eggs, too. Doesn’t mean I want to coat myself in butter and sit around buck-assed naked for half the day.”
Zach just smirks at him, doesn’t even have to say it.
Shia puts up his hands and shakes his head and goes to check the monitor to see what kind of boy scout was knocking on his door.
Then he stops.
His dad’s in the kitchen - down the hall and through the living room - poking around in the fridge. “Son,” he says, “What the hell did your mother do with my beer?”
Shia has to check: pants done up, shirt back down, hands still smell like jizz, but that’s - well - not visible. He says, loudly, “God, Dad, what the hell?”
“That’s what I just asked you.” Shia’s dad isn’t a tall man, but he’s lean and wiry and doesn’t do the facial hair grooming thing with any consistency. He doesn’t have like, a bushman’s beard right now, but it’s patchy. The moustache, anyway.
Shia says, louder, sit-com stagey: “Seriously, DAD. WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THE KITCHEN?”
His dad angles an irritated look, “She threw it out, didn’t she?”
Shia comes forward a little bit. He wants to wash his hands. A lot. “The stuff you were keeping in the cooler in the garage last January? I gave it to the poor.”
“You did not. You drank it.”
“I did not drink the beer you left in this house.” Shia says, and it’s true. He drank all three cans on the beach. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out, Dad. You know mom doesn’t like having alcohol around.” Or smokes, or, uh, heroin.
His dad closes the fridge and huffs. “Where is she?”
“She took Aunt Sara to Sacramento. She’ll be back on Tuesday.” Shia makes it to the sink, pours a palmful of dishsoap and starts scrubbing.
His dad grunts. Then he turns around and walks back to the front door - Shia notes he’s wearing his boots, still - and tosses a “Do you want anything?” over his shoulder.
“No, dad,” says Shia. Part of him wants to hand over his visa, say, Don’t worry, I got it but that is not the most helpful kind of charity. Part of him also wants to say, Yeah, get a couple of kegs and we’ll call the guys.
The door closes and Shia goes to the window to watch the pickup - a glossy black Chevy that he bought two years ago - back down the angled drive.
Zach says from the living room, “Where’s he going?”
“Not too far.” He looks over: Zach is dressed, finally, he even has his seven hundred dollar cardigan on, his hair less ruffled than normal.
Shia hopes he’s not going to try and make a good impression. Seeing as it’s pretty much impossible with Jeffrey.
Zach says, “Do you want me to go?” and Shia can hear that he sort of wants to, is kind of afraid of seeing this, trying to pass as an acquaintance rather than recently-fucked.
“I’d be really happy if you’d stay,” Shia asks. Well, he states it. But it’s a question, kind of a favor that needs begging.
Zach shrugs, wanders into the kitchen for water and reaches out to brush Shia’s hand with his own as he passes. Picks it up and drops it. Then smiles at him through the cup as he swallows.
Jeffrey comes back in half an hour with a 24 pack of beer, probably a gallon of whiskey, and a bag of ice for the cooler that’s still sitting in the garage. Which is good, because seriously there is no alcohol allowed in the kitchen fridge.
As soon as he’s secured the beer he turns to Shia all jovial and long-time-no-see, kid. He hugs Zach, too, even though his first reaction was a little annoyed, “I didn’t know I was shopping for three.”
But it’s fine. Sort of. Shia takes the first beer he’s offered because it would be rude - it’s rude enough that he’s not the one doing the offering - and Zach’s face sets a little bit, at least until the offer gets turned on him and he also realizes that he isn’t a judgmental prick who sits at tables watching a man drink by himself.
Jeffrey says, “Oh yeah, first couple of storms blew in mid-September, which is a little early for my altitude. I had the teepee all weatherproofed by then, I was warm as fat bear sitting in there. Except it gets wet if the snow melts, and after that first blizzard it was like spring up there in some parts, a lot of mud. So I pulled her all up and went across to my friend Foag’s house, and dried everything out there. Stayed with her a while, she has a deer license this fall, so I went out tracking. Didn’t bag anything, Foag likes talking more than shooting, and then when it started snowing up high again I decided it was time to move on down, come visit my boy in this hellhole he loves so much.”
“Dad doesn’t like LA,” Shia supplies.
Zach makes an interested sound.
“I still can’t believe I stayed all those years. It’s hard to believe there’s something better out there when you’re neck deep in it, I guess. But you boys better believe it: you come see my land next spring - no excuses - and it will change your mind about whatever girlfriends or crap cars are keeping you here. Nothing better than a sky you can see end to end.”
Shia knows to nod, to say, “Sure dad, I’d love to see it,” even though he’s put it off four times in two years already, fearing to see the conditions his dad lives in, the food he eats, in case it means he has to do something about it.
But Zach doesn’t know to fake a promise. He’s honest, “I grew up in New Mexico. I still like the city better.”
Jeffrey shakes his head. Imparts his wisdom even as Shia holds in a sigh: “That’s what they call Stockholm Syndrome, buddy. I thought I loved it here too, until I got stabbed.”
Shia remembers that - his dad got stabbed when he stole someone’s favorite watch off the dresser at a house party he wasn’t invited to, and he was fucking high at the time, and so was everyone else at that party - and the Montana thing started out as a suggestion from rehab. Break habits, cut ties, strengthen other ties, go to a dude ranch in Montana and commune with nature. His dad just liked it too much.
Zach, though, doesn’t bite. He says “Oh, no. Terrible,” and drains his glance.
Regardless, they all crack open another round - it’s 2pm, at least - and Jeffrey keeps going with the Montana stuff, and then the old times at the Ocean View motel when Shia was just a mean little dick thinking he was big stuff working for Disney. “We ate every night at the Denny’s down the street for eighteen months solid, and he still thought he was living the high life. Telling all the waitresses to catch him on tv.”
Three hours later, Jeffrey hasn’t run out of wisdom to impart, but they’ve run through all the beer and most of the bottle of Jack. Shia has to remind his dad where the washroom is.
When he looks across the table at Zach, who’s slumped and slit-eyed, he says, “We probably shouldn’t be this drunk.” But Zach just shrugs, ineloquent, and says, “I need another smoke.”
They go outside, and when they come in Jeffrey helps them finish off the bottle of whiskey. Shia takes the last shot and pulls himself together enough to say: “No, seriously, that’s it. We don’t keep booze in this house and that was it and we aren’t driving anywhere so let’s just watch a movie or something. Alright, pop? I got the Magnificent Seven collector’s edition.”
Jeffrey laughs and smacks him on the back and tells them to order some pizza. And then, when the guy comes Jeffrey bribes him to go get more booze.
Shia hands over the cash - he’s not going to make a scene, there’s no point in fighting the man - and regrets it as soon as his dad casts a casual glance at Zach and says, “In terms of volume, we would’ve been fine without the third wheel here.”
It’s a joke, probably, but Zach’s been getting more and more belligerent all afternoon. There’s not a lot to like about Shia’s dad if he’s not trying to be likable. “I’m not the third wheel.” Zach’s voice is stiff and cold, “I didn’t break into Shia’s kitchen to come beg for booze.”
Jeffrey shifts his stance as the pizza guy slips back down the stairs. “I didn’t ask for shit. That was my beer you just guzzled, kid.”
Shia puts a hand on Zach’s arm, feeling a little queasy and disastrous. He says, “Whatever, you guys are both dicks. No one’s a third wheel.”
He earns glares from both of them for that last bit. Zach says, not so low that Jeffrey can’t hear, “You’re not buying into his shit, are you?”
Shia just shakes his head, because what can he do? And Zach says, “I’m-” and looks like he’s torn between driving home his disapproval with a grand gesture, and doing what makes sense. “I’m going to bed.”
Shia says, “Yeah,” and knows he means their bed, the one they’ve been screwing on since March, intermittently, and thinks, oh god, don’t make me come out to him right now.
But when he turns to face his dad the man’s just scowling at the pizza and eating a piece out of the box.
When the pizza guy comes back, Shia doesn’t drink any of the whiskey his dad pretty much leaps on. He sits with him in the living room, and listens to his stories and his rambling and his increasingly incoherent declarations. But he doesn’t drink with him. It’s probably the first time he’s ever said no and meant it.
After midnight, he makes sure Jeffrey is comfortable in his sleeping bag on the cot in the garage, and walks back across the house. Zach looks like he’s already worked through his hangover, pasty-skinned and comatose on the futon in front of the xbox. Shia prods him back into the right bed, and then strips off his own shirt and jeans and crawls in with him.
It could be worse, really. Having two of the people he loves most in the same house is something to be grateful for. And Shia loves them both, he knows it. He knows what that word means, what it’s supposed to look like, how to fake it a little bit if it’s wheeling off its axis.
And he knows how to be grateful.
xii. The longest weekend in long-term memory
Zach introduces Shia to his family in gradual stages, stretching it out over several hours on Thanksgiving weekend. They get in off the highway just after one in the afternoon, and thank god at first it's only his oldest brother, Ryan, at the door to greet them.
He hugs Zach, who's maybe a little reluctant to get showy when Shia's standing right there, all stiff with shattered-home anxiety, and then shakes Shia's hand with a firm, "Fuck, Transformers, man. Welcome to Chez Condon." Ryan shakes his head and rolls his eyes and goes back inside because the snow is blowing in through the door.
They drag their bags in, and Zach scopes out the available beds. If everyone's coming home, it'll be tight. Pull-out couch and floor cushion tight, ever since Dad turned one of the bedrooms into a yoga studio. He finds Kevin downstairs in his pajamas, glassy-eyed in front of the xbox. The only brother out of five that’s younger than him.
"So you moved out yet?" Zach tries to recall the last time he talked to just Kevin. It’s been months. They don’t really have a lot in common. Of course, it’s been a while since he double-checked that, either.
"No.” And, five minutes later, after an alien locust or two has been cut down: “Carla just got her own place. So mostly I just hang there."
Zach doesn’t know who Carla is, but he can guess. He sits down.
It's a full twenty minutes before Shia comes down from making conversation with Ryan and joins them both in a Gears of War threeway. Which is what he calls it, out loud. Zach arrows a glare but Kevin doesn’t look any more mortified than he did initially. So far all he’s said to Shia is, “Megan Fox is totally in my top three, bro.”
After that, it's another couple of hours before Zach's dad comes home from work - another firm handshake and disbelieving shake of the head, because how did their self-absorbed, dropout son get to be so much of a big deal, anyway? - and mom shows up with armfuls of takeout. "Oh, Zach," she sighs into Zach's ear as they hug in the kitchen, even though he's never told her, not really.
Actually, the only one he’s said it to - flat-out - is Ryan, and that’s because Ryan was the one in Europe when he was sixteen and horny, he was the one who witnessed the drunken flirting and retreats to dark corners with older boys, the one who slept on the couch in the hostel common room, and made sure he had condoms in his pocket.
Ryan will always be his only brother, in Zach’s mind. No years have ever been worse than the ones when he was trapped in this house without him. The year immediately after Europe, when he was supposed to come back triumphant, but spent the summer scooping ice cream for tourists and getting drunk before he could even pick up an instrument.
So the rest of them, they all just remind Zach of his own failures.
Ryan comes back from picking up Luke and Matt at the airport. They’re both carrying shoulder bags, just back from UCLA for a few days before returning to an American Lit PhD and law school, respectively. Shia folds his hands in his lap and asks interested, if uninformed, questions about their studies. Matt not-so-secretly wants to go into entertainment law, the jerk-off. Zach just rolls his eyes and manhandles the conversation away from the questions Matt is three seconds and another sip of wine away from asking: so who handled your DUI? and how much did it cost you to get off?
They eat, and family dinner blows Shia's mind, Zach can tell. Everyone talks, but mostly Shia’s quiet, he sits with his paper napkin on his knees, and waits for his turn to dish out his chow mein. Everyone else just talks around and over him like he’s not even there. Except for the part where they are exceedingly polite and Matt keeps mentioning his sum laude and his famous professors, and Zach’s dad asks what Shia is planning on doing with his future.
Shia says, and considers his words for probably as long as Zach’s ever seen him, “Well, sir, I’m hoping to continue supporting my parents with what I’m doing now. I still have a lot I want to do in the movies.”
Zach’s mom lets out a sigh that mirrors Zach’s father’s expression. Too honest, Zach wants to tell him. You’re supposed to accomplish something greater at the end of all of it. Create a charity, or evangelize your politics. Even just organic salad dressing. He can practically hear his mother grating out, but don’t you believe in anything?
Zach keeps very quiet, not only the dropout son but the silent one, and he tries to detect a strained note that isn’t about Shia’s presence. But nothing’s changed. Zach still feels the need to roll his eyes whenever Matt opens his mouth, and Dad still throws in the occasional well-if-you-hadn’t-dropped-out of high school/College of Santa Fe/St. John’s just to get his point across.
Because two albums and three EPs, yeah, that’s just a pit stop on the way to a liberal arts degree, a yoga practice and a load of volunteer hours doing sound design for the community theatre. He’s always had hard time figuring out exactly what his parents want out of him.
After dinner Shia’s the first one at the dishwasher, and when he gets ousted by Zach’s mother, he takes out the trash, instead, giving Zach an incredulous look as he goes.
Ryan emerges from somewhere wearing a much nicer shirt and says, “So, uh, Tiny’s?” and Zach just nods and grabs his wallet and his houseguest as mom calls him.
Matt says loudly he doesn’t feel like going with them, but the curtains twitch as they’re pulling away and when Zach sighs Ryan says, “Well, at least you know that we all come by the pretentious douchebaggery honestly.”
They sit at a booth in the half-empty restaurant - there’s a mariachi band onstage that and a waitress serves them pints of local draft, and Ryan tries to list all five schools that Zach’s dropped out of (six if you count the time they said he was too immature for kindergarten), and the circumstances around each, age sixteen through twenty-one. Zach sits through it. Because ultimately with Ryan, unlike Dad or Matt, it’s admiration at bucking the system, not disappointment. And Shia, the sponge, is sitting there with shining eyes and ordering another round whenever the server stops by.
Zach catches her giving Shia the squinty-eyes in the dimness of the paper lanterns, and he smiles at her, a little sheepish. Santa Fe’s pretty dull in November. She breaks out a laugh and asks them if it’s ok if she takes a polaroid for the wall. “Normally we save it for like, local heroes or whatever, but I bet I could slip you guys in there.”
“Uh, sure,” Zach says, knowing that he’s not a local in any way that counts, anymore, and as she hops into the back he mutters to Shia, “Seriously, no thumbs up this time.”
Shia says, “C’mon, where do you want me to put them?” and then puts his palm on Zach’s thigh under the table right before the bulb flashes.
Ryan doesn’t ask questions. Zach can tell he wants to, and how long have you guys been sneaking around like this? is probably at the top, but instead they just talk about the apartment in Brooklyn - it’s Ryan’s, really, and Zach just sublets because Ryan is shacked up with his girlfriend up in Manhattan, a lot closer to work - and the second Mexico trip and Ryan’s job as a copywriter for a web development firm and how Zach totally cut him out of the creative process by making the EP that went out in September entirely instrumental.
“My lyrics,” Ryan says, “I mean, I’m probably better off. Now I get zero credit for zero work instead of zero credit for the best part of your album.”
Zach says, “But I offered, like eight thousand times-”
“Oh dude, you’re such a lazy shit.” Ryan turns to Shia, jabbing a finger for emphasis: “He has a mental block or something, mine aren’t any better than what he’d come up with if he’d just spend more than twenty seconds trying to do it. It’s such a cop out.”
Zach says, “Ugh,” and downs the rest of his beer.
And Shia says, “Twenty bucks says in two years he’s writing chamber music full-time. No vocalists there.”
“Fucking violins. I hate those, too.” Zach reaches for the pitcher.
“And that’s another thing you contract out, isn’t it?” says Ryan, voice rising with glee, “I do your lyrics, you get in that Final Fantasy dude for the violins, you’re running like, a regular little sweatshop here.”
By the time they leave they have to abandon mom’s Yaris in the parking lot and get Julianne, the server, to call them a cab.
They wait for forty-five minutes in the foyer, watching the snow fall in transparent sheets against the orange of the streetlights, and eventually Julianne just offers to give them a ride home, instead. “That’s really nice of you,” says Zach and Ryan goes, “We’d walk, but LA-born-and-bred here might die of exposure in his undergarments.” Shia just looks down at his hoodie and jeans like, what?.
In the morning, Zach wakes up alone, downstairs on the couch. One or the other of them had passed out on the floor, and in the middle of the night he remembers trying to fit both of their legs and shoulders on the narrow cushions. He also remembers a hard-on and some vague rubbing, probably aborted by passing out again. But now he’s alone with the Gears of War soundtrack playing low over the speakers, and upstairs he can hear dishes clinking, the floor creaking.
His dad is drinking matcha in his armchair, and his mom is hovering around in her bathrobe, making suggestions as Shia mixes batter and frozen blueberries with the hand blender. “Dude,” Shia says when he sees him, “Your mom owns a waffle iron.”
Zach smiles, inching out of the tiny kitchen and going to sit in the living room. Sun comes in, pouring out of the blue sky and reflected off the solid hard white coating everything: trees, electrical wires, cars.
“Good morning,” his dad says, shaking the newspaper out. Zach nods and smiles, and folds a leg under himself so he can sit in a chair and watch his old neighborhood and try to remember what it was that he was hoping for, all those years under this roof. Wonder if maybe he’s found it.