9.11 - 62. Chapter 62

October 26, 2001

Claremont, Ohio

The plane landed gently and taxied over to the fixed base operator. I sat in the chair next to my father, acting pretty calmly, and to be honest, I actually was pretty relaxed. There were only two things about this trip that made me nervous, and I’d resolved not to let either one of them bother me. The first was obvious: Wally and Clara Hayes. I figured that if they wanted to give me shit for getting Zach a car, they could, but I was only going to put up with so much crap from them. I humored myself by telling myself that no matter how much I was willing to listen to them bitch; it would be more than JJ would put up with. He’d be absolutely stunned that he was expected to listen to any kind of diatribe from a garbage man. But I wasn’t as big of a snob as he was, so I’d try to be a little more respectful.

The other thing that worried me was this weekend with Zach. He’d been awesome. I had a lot of fun with him on the phone, and just thinking about it was enough to make me blush. But I couldn’t help but compare this trip to the trip I’d taken to see Tony this summer. Then I’d gone out to see Tony, this guy who was supposed to be in love with me, but was playing it straight with his friends, and we were supposed to put on the straight buds act and hang with those same friends and have a great time. Only it had turned into a disaster. So here I was, going out to see another closet case, and probably hang out with his friends, pretending to be cousins, which was a real loose interpretation of that link. More than anything, I was worried that he would treat me like shit, just like Tony did. Only this summer, I’d been tough and resilient, ready to handle anything that was thrown at me. Now I felt fragile, and if anything, the grief had been getting worse, not better.

I glanced over at my father and my concern got even more pronounced. He was trying to act like things were fine, but they weren’t, and if I was doing worse, so was he, but he’d started out at a much lower point than I did. I’d have to try and prop him up this weekend as best I could, especially since Oradel was really close to New York City. The skyline was probably visible from there, or so I guessed. It didn’t matter if we couldn’t see New York; it would be there, hanging over us like a black cloud. Then again, he’d been out to Connecticut, and it was pretty close to New York as well. “So what are you going to do while we’re here?” I asked him.

“Probably going to relax,” he said. “I’ve got some work to do, and it’s probably peaceful enough that I can get things done.”

“You didn’t have to go with me,” I said.

“It’s a little late for that now, don’t you think?” he asked acidly. “I want to see Zach play too.”

The plane stopped and the engines wound down. I looked out and saw Wally and Clara waiting to board, with their battered suitcases and their shabby clothes, and that made me feel sorry for them. We really had pulled them, and their entire family, into a whole new world. The door opened and the pilot went down to help load their suitcases, while they ascended the stairs and entered the plane. “Hello,” Clara said, being friendly.

“Hello there,” Dad said, just as courteously. We both stood up and greeted them, and then they sat across from us.

“Are you alright riding backward?” I asked politely. “I’d be happy to swap places with you if you are.”

Wally wasn’t as friendly as Clara, and he seemed annoyed with me, which I ignored. “I think we’ll be just fine,” Clara said.

“Well if that changes let me know. I’ll probably go back and rest in a bit anyway,” I explained. That set up my escape plan, so I didn’t have to hang out with them for the entire flight.

“We’re ready to go,” the pilot said, as he shut the door. Dad just nodded at him, while Wally and Clara fastened their seatbelts, looking mildly terrified at traveling in this small pressurized metal tube. We just chatted, trying to ease their tension, as we taxied down to the end of the runway, and then took off. They hid their fear pretty well, I thought.

“Zachary is picking us up in the car you bought him,” Wally growled at me.

“Cool,” I said, even though I knew that. “I got us all rooms at the Doubletree Hotel near Ramsey.” That was where his school was, and where his host family lived.

“Thank you,” Clara said. “How are we getting to the game?”

“I set up a car to pick us up and take us,” I told her. “Zach said his host family had volunteered to shuttle us there, but I figured we probably didn’t want to burden them.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” Clara said. “I’m looking forward to meeting them, and seeing where he lives.”

“He’s happy there,” Wally said, and then glared at me. “So don’t go buying him an apartment or anything like that.” I sat there and just looked at him, not saying a thing.

“Wally!” Clara said, admonishing him.

“Well don’t you think it was pretty rude of him to go buy Zach a car even when he knew we didn’t want him to,” he said.

“Zach seemed to appreciate it,” I said.

“I’m sure he did, but that’s not the point,” Wally said, now on a roll.

“If you don’t want him to have a car, take it away from him,” I challenged. I was losing my patience with him pretty quickly.

“Then I end up looking like the bad guy,” he said.

“You already were, since you were the one who didn’t want him to get one anyway,” I responded. He glared at me, clearly unused to kids who would actually argue with him. It was stunning that he hadn’t killed Gathan when he was growing up.

“You knew that, and you bought it anyway,” he said.

“I did,” I said. “Zach didn’t think that you guys were giving him any credit for what he does, for having good grades and for doing so well in football. He was here, in a strange city, with a nice family that he didn’t know, totally reliant on them for everything. He was trapped, like an animal in a cage. And you wanted him to stay there, in a virtual prison. That’s just wrong.”

“He had issues in Claremont, and we didn’t want him to have problems here,” Clara said.

“He had issues in Claremont and he didn’t have a car, so now he’ll have issues in New Jersey when he does?” This was the same argument I’d had with my father, who sat there saying nothing.

“I think I know my own son better than you do,” Wally said with a sneer.

“I don’t think you know your son at all,” I said. His eyes bulged. “That’s probably because you don’t listen to him, you just hand out orders.”

“That’s not fair, Will,” Dad said, because Wally was really getting mad.

“No?” I asked, and then turned on Wally. “What’s his hardest class? Which one is easiest? Who’s his favorite blocker? Where does he like to eat? Who does he like better, his host mother or his host father?”

Wally said nothing, because he didn’t know any of those answers. “We just think it would have been nice if you’d have at least talked to us about it,” Clara said.

“Let me ask you this,” I said to her, much more pleasantly than I’d talked to Wally. “If I would have, would it have made any difference at all?”

“I’m still not convinced him having a car is a good idea,” Wally said to Clara. “Maybe we’ll just take it and drive it home.”

“If you think that’s best, then go right ahead,” I said. They looked at me, wondering what I was planning. My father was much more tuned in. He knew that if they took Zach’s car, I could just get him another one, and leave it in my name.

“I guess we’ll have to see how things work out,” Wally said snidely.

“I guess we will,” I said, in just as snarky a way. “But I didn’t know that by stopping to pick you two up that I was going to be bitched at for the entire flight to New Jersey. Next time, I’ll come by myself, and the rest of you can get yourselves there.”

“I’ve said my piece,” Wally stated. “I wanted you to know that I was mad that you did that.”

I stared at him firmly. “All this crap you’ve given Zach about the car isn’t really about the car at all. What you’ve told him is that you have no confidence in him at all, no faith in him. It makes him wonder if you even love him.”

“How do you know that?” Wally demanded.

“Because he told me. Did he tell you that?” He said nothing. “You need to learn to listen. That’s where you close your mouth, open your ears, and open your mind.” I almost spat those last words out; I was so pissed at him.

I got up and went to the back of the plane and snagged a bedroom. I lay there on my back, with my arms behind my head, breathing heavily, trying to dissipate my anger. Sometimes it was so hard. If Robbie were here, he’d know how to handle Wally. He’d have gotten involved, and everything would have gone so smoothly. Zach would have gotten his car, Wally and Clara would have seen reason, and maybe Zach would have thought they actually believed in him. And then the tears flowed, as I realized yet again how much I missed him. And then the tears stopped, and I felt resolved and recharged. This is why we were involved, why Robbie had set things up like this. He’d set them up so we’d make sure those guys had what they needed, and they didn’t have to put up with idiotic crap from Wally and Clara about whether they should work instead of doing a study abroad, or things like that. He’d put Dad squarely in the middle of the Hayes family and their drama. I wasn’t sure if that was really a very nice thing to do or not to Dad, but it would probably open up a world of opportunities for those guys.

Arguing with Wally, worrying about visiting Zach, and dealing with living without Robbie just sapped my energy, so I decided to just take a nap. I was jolted out of my slumber when I felt the wheels hit the runway, and that was mildly annoying. If one of them were napping, I’d have had the common courtesy to wake them up when we were landing. I got up and went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and tried to get my hair to look good, then went out to hang out with them just as the plane stopped taxiing. “Thanks for waking me up,” I said to Dad acidly.

“I said my piece, you said yours, and now there’s an end to it,” Wally said, holding his hand out to shake, as if this were a truce. I went to shake his hand, but then I remembered when I’d done that to Robbie, when we’d been fighting, and how he’d totally ignored me. We’d had so little time with Robbie, and that reminded me how much we’d wasted arguing. Even as I shook Wally’s hand, I felt the tears start to flow.

“I’m sorry,” I said hastily, grabbing my hand back, as I rushed back to the bathroom to get myself under control. I heard Dad talking to them, explaining things to them, and that just made things worse. I heard some commotion, and then there was a knock on the door. I opened it up and found Zach standing there looking so fucking handsome it was scary.

“Welcome to New Jersey,” he said with a smile, then got concerned. “You OK?”

“I just had one of my fucking attacks,” I said, all pissed off.

“Is it over now?” he asked playfully.

“It’s over now,” I said, smiling. He gave me a big hug, and I sank into his body, so tight and honed from football, but still so soft and welcoming. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Come see the awesome ride you bought me,” he said. I followed him out of the plane to where Dad, Wally, and Clara stood, supervising the loading of our bags into Zach’s car. It wasn’t exactly a car; it was an SUV, a new Dodge Durango. When I’d bought it, I’d actually talked to the dealer and upgraded him to a nicer model, with leather and shit. He’d wanted a blue one, but they didn’t have it in the cheap model, but they did in the upscale trim, so I went with it. I’d like to say that I did that to be nice, and that was partly true, but I also did it to annoy Wally, and to really piss Gathan off. It bothered me that Gathan was driving around in a tricked out Chevy, courtesy of my family, and Zach was forced to basically beg for transportation at all; so I wanted his SUV to be just as nice as Gathan’s, and it was.

“Nice car,” Wally growled.

“I think it’s almost as nice as Gathan’s,” I said, driving that point home, and really pissing them all off, all except Zach, who winked at me. A small victory for him over the older brother, who he considered to be his nemesis.

“Since you paid for it, you can sit up front with me,” Zach said, scowling at the rest of them for a multitude of reasons.

“That’s OK,” I said, then turned to Wally. “You sit up front.”

“Thanks,” he said grudgingly, and took the front passenger seat.

Zach drove out of the airport, and then told us what the plan was for our trip. “I figured we’d take you to the hotel and let you get settled in, then have some dinner. Then you’ll probably want to crash. I can stay with Will, and then in the morning, you can meet my host family. Then we have the game.”

“Sounds good,” Dad said.

“Saturday night, there’s a party I want to take Will to. I can stay at the hotel with him again, then we can have breakfast and I’ll take you to the airport.”

“You’re very organized,” I said with a smile.

“It’s pretty exciting to have visitors,” he said, making everyone feel guilty for not getting out to see him until now. Couldn’t Wally and Clara have taken some of the money Robbie had left them and flown out before now?

“Show us a good time, and maybe we’ll come back,” I said, almost flirting.

“Ella said she’ll try to come to the game tomorrow,” Clara said. I glanced at my father and saw him get as tense as I did.

“Cool,” Zach said. He pointed out various shit on the way to Ramsey, but my eyes kept flitting toward New York City, trying to see the skyline, yet not wanting to at the same time. I fought the memories that tried to return, the memories of being in that fucking stairwell with Darius and Maddy, saying goodbye to Robbie. The memory of the smoke, and how it damn near choked us all to death. I managed to keep myself together, through some miracle, until we got to the hotel and I was forced to spring into action.

It was pretty funny that here I was, the youngest person in the group, but I had made all the reservations, and so I was the one who went to the front desk and got us all organized. I got suites for my father and me, and a regular room for Wally and Clara, because I was annoyed with them, and because I thought that something too fancy would overwhelm them. I kept a key to my dad’s suite, just in case, then walked over and handed the others their keys. Since this was the Doubletree, we all got complimentary warm chocolate chip cookies, so I handed those out as well.

“Well isn’t that just the nicest thing,” Clara observed, holding the warm cookie in her hand nervously. Both she and Wally looked completely lost in this relatively nice hotel.

Zach picked up on that. “I’m going to help my parents get settled in, and then I’ll meet you in your room,” he said.

“Cool,” I said, and we all headed to the elevators. Dad and I had our rooms on a higher floor, so after they got out, we were alone.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I’m dealing. You?”

“Same,” he said. “It’s weird to be so close.” He was referring to New York City.

“Aren’t you just as close when you’re in Connecticut?”

He shook his head. “Maybe, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel that way. Connecticut feels like a different world. This feels like its part of New York.”

“If you need me, call me,” I said to him earnestly.

“You’ll be busy,” he said. “Of all the Hayes boys, I think Zach is the sexiest one ever.”

“I think so too,” I said with a smile. “And for the record, you can’t sleep with him.”

“Right,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m worried that you’ll get hurt.”

I could have gotten really pissed off at that, but I understood where he was coming from. “It’s weird, but I almost instinctively understand Zach, what he’s thinking, what he needs, and what drives him. And he seems to have the same sense with me.”

“That probably makes him a good friend, but man, that would also make for some hellish fights,” he noted. I hadn’t thought about that, but it made sense.

“Well, fighting with him isn’t on my agenda. I feel like I’m rebuilding my life, and he’s become a really important friend. Between him and Austin, in addition to my family, I feel like I have a good support network.” I noted that I’d been spending so much time with shrinks, I was starting to fucking sound like them, and that was pretty irritating.

“Go get ready for dinner,” he said, and tousled my hair in an affectionate way. I went down to my room, and started unpacking my shit, putting it away and getting all organized. I was doing just what Wade would do, and that made me chuckle.

The door all but flew open, and Zach came in, grinning from ear to ear. “Dude, I am so fucking glad to see you!” he said. He gave me a big hug, then a major kiss. I thought back to how he’d avoided doing that when we first hooked up, but like I’d told my dad, he seemed to get what I needed. It was unspoken, but he knew that I needed a lot of affection when we were alone, and I was fine with being just buds in public, which is what he needed.

“We’re supposed to meet for dinner,” I said breathlessly, as I ended our kiss.

“Let’s hope everyone eats fast,” he said, winking at me. We went down to the hotel restaurant, which was pretty nice, and had a good dinner. Wally and Clara were slow eaters, and Dad mimicked their pace, which was agonizing. By the time the main course arrived, I was done with them and their company. Zach and I wolfed our food down so fast it was pretty rude.

“I’m kind of tired. I think I’m going to go ahead and head up to my room,” I said.

“No dessert?” Dad asked. I wanted to tell him that was what was waiting in my room, but that would break the unspoken rule with Zach. I couldn’t out him, not to his parents, not to anyone. Not even to himself.

“If I get hungry later, there’s room service,” I said.

“I’ll go with you,” Zach said. “I need to get some sleep for the game tomorrow.” Like he’d sleep at all.

We got up to the room and the next thing I know, he’s tackling me, knocking me onto the bed. He was on top of me, trying to wrestle me down, but even though he was like one sinewy muscle, I was pretty hard to hold down, so I made him struggle. It was tough to stay out of his grips, because I was laughing so hard. And that wasn’t the only thing that was hard, and that part of my body soon took over. He had me pinned on my back, lying on top of me, when I stopped resisting. “You win,” I said.

“I usually do,” he said, raising his eyebrow in a sexy way. Then his lips were on mine, and as aggressively as he’d tackled me, now he ripped my clothes off, almost tearing them, until I was lying there naked, and he was still clothed. He knelt above me and pulled off his shirt, stretching his amazing body as he did. Then he got up to take off his shoes, socks, pants, and underwear. He was such a work of art, I just stared at him at first, and then I got my act together and pulled out a condom and slid it over my dick, then slathered it with lube.

He knelt over me and paused to let me work some lube into his hole. I tried to loosen him up, but he was too eager. He sat down on my cock, cringing as it stretched him open, but he didn’t flinch, he just kept going, taking the whole thing in one long, slow movement. His dick got a little deflated, and he grimaced as he sat there for just a bit, then he started to slowly undulate up and down, his ass working my cock like it was a throbbing glove. And then he was into it, in what appeared to be sheer heaven, as he really began to fuck me, his hard cock flopping up and down in front of me, as if begging me to grab it, which I did. My hands, still slick with lube, slid up and down his shaft as he rode up and down on me. He leaned back like he was a cowboy riding a bronco, thrusting his dick even more in front of me. There was no way I could last long with the feel of his ass squeezing my cock, the sight of his magnificent body writhing in ecstasy, and his throbbing cock pulsing in my hand.

“Gonna cum!” he shouted first, but I was right there with him. I aimed his dick at my mouth, even as my eyes locked on his, and heard him howl as he blasted his first shot into my eye, which made me laugh and moan at the same time, as my cock exploded right behind him. And we just rocketed on together, in what was like this blissful eternity, until it ended.

“Fuck!” I said, as I exhaled.

“I’ve been looking forward to that for so fucking long,” he said. He took some of his cum into his hand, held it up to his mouth, then got a mischievous look on his face, and smeared it in my hair instead.

“Asshole,” I said, but I was joking, which he figured out since I was laughing as I tried to grab globs of his cum off my body and smear it on him. “Shower.”

We went into the shower, which was just a bathtub with a curtain, but it had a hand-held shower head, so he took that and sprayed me with it, being a dick at first, then he got progressively more romantic, until he was washing my hair and my body, using the soap and the shower head to clean off every part of my body. When he was done, he handed me the shower wand and the soap, and raised his eyebrows in the sexiest way. “My turn.” And I was in heaven, exploring his amazing body. It was all muscle, but it was kind of soft too, like Robbie’s body had been, but Zach was harder underneath, maybe because he was younger, or maybe because he was more muscular. And his skin was so soft, not as soft as Austin’s, but almost.

But all that time in the shower had made us horny again, so we went back out to the bed and he lay on top of me, and started working his fingers into my ass. I looked at him, surprised. He didn’t like to top. “My turn,” he said. And then he took me on another ride, only this time he was inside me, and it was just as good as it was when I was fucking him. I’d never been with a dude who was as much fun to top as he was to bottom.

“You rocked my world,” I said to him affectionately when we were done.

“Seemed like you enjoyed yourself,” he said, being cocky.

“You didn’t?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that,” he teased.

“So you promised me a surprise,” I said.

“And you promised me room service,” he responded. I’d worked up an appetite too, so we got out the menu and ordered four desserts, and then threw on boxers so we didn’t look like we’d just fucked when the room service dude got there. “How was the flight?”

I shrugged. “Pretty much what I expected,” I said. “I got a ration of crap from your father.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, and got pissed off.

“Dude, it’s just fine. I can handle him. Shit, if I can handle my father when he’s pissed off, I can handle your father.”

“When’s the most pissed off you’ve seen your dad?” he asked. I really didn’t have to think about that for long.

“I’d filed for emancipation, but I’d planned to have him served the papers on Monday. I flew up to Paly on Friday, and went to see Wade and Matt play hockey. They served him on Friday by mistake, so I didn’t get a chance to say anything about it first. He was so fucking mad, there was almost steam coming out of his head. He and Robbie flew up to Palo Alto, and I’ll never forget the look on his face when he walked into the ice rink. His eyes locked onto mine, and they were so intense it was scary. He was absolutely determined to bend me to his will.”

He nodded. “How’d you get out of it?”

“My family rallied around me, especially my aunt, Stef, Grand, and Grandmaman,” I said, smiling as I remembered how they’d backed me up. “What about you?”

“When I was eleven, I took Gathan’s bike and I ended up running into a fence,” he said. “Fucked the bike up, and split my head open.” He pointed at his head, and I ran my fingers over the spot and I could still feel a slight irregularity in the skin where the scar hadn’t completely gone away. “Gathan made a big deal about it, and told my dad I did it on purpose just to fuck up his bike. I mean, I took his bike, but I didn’t fuck it up on purpose.”

“Why’d you take his bike?”

“He’d always made such a big deal about how he had the coolest bike of any of us, only he wasn’t really using it then, so it just sat there, and I figured that someone ought to get some use out of it.” I just nodded. “That was the last time my dad hit me. He smacked my ass until it was red as a fire engine. Calling me a liar for telling him I hadn’t stolen it, and calling me a thief for taking it in the first place.” His eyes had gotten watery as he’d talked about this. “Then when I was done getting my butt whipped, and I went down to the basement to hang out, Gathan fucking laughed at me. He’d convinced my dad that I was a thief and a liar, and then he laughed in my face.”

“Your dad thinks you’re pretty awesome now,” I said.

“Sure he does,” he said skeptically. “My mom thinks I’m awesome, he thinks I’m a thief and a liar. Still thinks that. He never talks to me; he just tells me how things are.”

“That’s pretty much what I called him on in the plane,” I said, and told him all about my conversation with his parents.

“It’s pretty weird to be here, all by myself, with no family to back me up. But you know what? I like it. Fuck them. I can do this; I can make it on my own. I don’t need their shit,” he said. I recognized that resolve so well, since he could have been me talking a year ago.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t work.” He looked at me, ready to challenge me. “Because you’re really not alone, now are you?”

“Who’s there for me?” he asked, flirting.

“They say Ella may come to the game tomorrow,” I teased.

He snorted in disdain. “She’ll come to see me to suck up to my parents, to convince them she’s not a total bitch for the way she dumped Darius.”

“It makes it hard to be nice to her,” I said. “Darius really put himself out there for her.”

“She got what she wanted from him, and then he couldn’t take her to the next level, so she was gone,” he said simply.

“Where couldn’t he have taken her?”

“She’s out here, doing the modeling-fashion thing, and her new boyfriend is 29 years old and some designer. He’s not as rich as Darius, but he’s all flashy and dresses like he just walked off the runway. Gets into all the chic clubs, and takes her with him.”

“You know, there’s nothing wrong with having goals and working your ass off to get there. And you know, there are people in my life that I haven’t liked, and I have no problem stepping on them and treating them like crap if that’s what it takes. But I don’t get how you can do that to someone you love,” I said.

“Will, that’s how most of the world works,” he said. “Only when they start stepping on that person, they don’t love them anymore, just like Ella did.”

“Whatever,” I said, because I wasn’t willing to believe the world was that fucked up, and I really didn’t want to think about him doing that, especially not to me.

“You know how many real friends I’ve had?”

“How many?” I asked.

“Not friends,” he said emphatically. “Real friends. People who had my back, who had confidence in me, and propped me up even when other people were trying to drag me down. True friends. You know what I’m talking about?”

I nodded. Jeff had done that for me, and so had Ryan. Austin probably would do that for me, and Erik Delgado would probably be in my corner if I needed him. Alistair would back me up too. And that didn’t even tap into my family. John, Marie, Darius, and even JJ would do that for me. And shit, Wade was the guy that I knew I could always count on. “I know what you’re talking about. I’ve had lots of people like that in my life.”

“I’ve had one. One true friend who would go to bat for me.” He looked at me squarely, his eyes locked onto mine. “You.”