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“Zac…”
“Stevie, I’m falling in love with you. No, I’m already in love with you. If you feel that way about me, then why wouldn’t you want me to know?”
I leaned my head back on my seat and took a deep breath. What I didn’t want to happen had just happened anyway and things were about to change between Zac and me.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where are you now?”
“Sitting in my car in the D.A.’s office parking lot.”
“Stevie, I had to tell you how I feel. Ineededto tell you because my heart is on fire for you and I cannot contain it any longer. It is you and only you who has ever made me feel this way. I wanted to tell you that I love you in person but couldn’t wait any longer and thought the song would be a good way for me to lead into telling you now.”
I paused again and this time, so did Zac. Then I began again.
“When you and I started this affair, we agreed that we owed each other nothing. There were no obligations between us, butfalling in… Going there, and also voicing it, automatically and naturally presents an obligation that we can’t fulfill. Well, I can, but you can’t. I can give all of myself and all of my time to you, but that’s not true for you. I don’t fault you for it, either. I understand. I’m still never gonna ask any more of you than what you’re already giving to me of yourself and your time.”
“By saying ‘still’, I hear you admitting to falling in love with me. At least I think I do.”
“Zac, I…”
“If I’m wrong then tell me. Please. I don’t wanna love you in vain, Stevie.”
Feeling the sting in my eyes once again, I closed them. Then I confirmed what Zac already knew.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Yes?”
“Yes, I’m in love with you. I didn’t plan on it and it’s taken me by total surprise, but you—dammit,you! It is impossible for me not to love you.”
“Same here. You are everything that I’ve ever wanted. I put you on my wish list a long time ago but just didn’t know your name. Now, I do.”
I took a moment to breathe deeply because my heart was pounding, my head was spinning and my tears were falling again. After halfway collecting myself, I asked Zac what we were supposed to do now.
“We keep moving forward into tomorrow and the next day and the next, doing what we’ve already been doing. The only thing that’s changed is we confessed to loving each other,” he said.
“But Zac—this is all gonna end one day and we both know it. Just like the lyrics in ‘Code Blue’ say: there’s no forever, baby. Not in a situation like ours.”
“I can’t even consider that.”
“You’re gonna have to, because it is our reality.”
“I’m gonna tell you something that Bash reminded me of while I was talking to him about you yesterday. He said life can turn on a dime and become something good when we least expect it. I’ve heard that saying so many times before but stopped believing in it because I’ve been burned so much by life since marrying Avery. I lost my faith in life ever turning in my favor, but it finally did—on the day that I met you. Now with all of that said, I wanna tell you one more thing.”
“Okay,” I sniffled.
“The pathway that you and I are now journeying down together may seem doomed to split one day and send us flying off into two different directions, but I don’t believe it is. I can’t explain why I feel so strongly about that other than I just do.”
“Well, I feel strongly that it is gonna split. Because of the differences between your life and mine, it has to, and that’s just how it is when it comes to having an affair. Besides, do you really see the two of us continuing on in secret like this for a year, two years, or even longer?”
“Stevie, I have no timeline for you and me in my head. All I see is you, though, and all I’m asking is for you to keep walking beside me down this pathway because I feel in my heart there’s gonna be a door open for you and me to be together as a couple—and not in secret. Don’t you know I want that?”
“Yes, just like I do. But I don’t see a door opening until Malcolm is grown. That’s fourteen years from now. And please don’t mistake what I just said. I’m not asking you to change your situation at home for the sake of us. I’d never want you in that way. I couldn’t live with the guilt of being the cause of you divorcing, but I really couldn’t live with the guilt of you having to be a part-time father to Malcolm if the courts ruled in Avery’s favor.”
“I know that’s not what you’re asking of me because that’s not the kind of person you are. As far as you not seeing an open door for us to be together until fourteen years from now—well, I really do believe it’s gonna appear much sooner. I don’t know how or when it’s gonna happen but I sense it coming. I sense life turning on a dime for you and me and giving us a forever. Stevie, are you willing to wait for it with me? I need to know.”
