Chapter Eight
Heath
When I get up to fetch the ice cream toward the end of the movie, I return to find Atzi curled into one corner of the couch, covered in the blanket she’s claimed as her own. The glow of her phone screen illuminates her face. Even with her dark hair pulled into a bun and no makeup, she’s beautiful. When she notices me hovering in the doorway, she turns away from her phone and tilts her head.
“Why are you staring at me?” She narrows her gaze at me suspiciously. Then, she wipes her chin. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No.” I unfreeze myself and shrug my shoulders as casually as I can manage. I sit next to her on the couch and hand her one of the two spoons I retrieved before setting the huge tub of ice cream she brought with her between us.
“Are you feeling okay? I mean, you’re letting me eat outside the kitchen.” She hums in delight and shimmies her shoulders as I lift the lid off. “This is the second Thursday in a row.”
Not sure why I’m breaking the rules for her. Probably because this is one of the last times we will be spending a Thursday evening together.
“You gonna press play or just eat ice cream and complain?” I ask her after she leaves the TV on the pause screen in favor of taking a huge scoop of ice cream.
“You press play,” she mumbles around a mouthful.
I tsk at her. “You make me do everything around here.”
“I’m the guest. If you came to my place, I would be treating you like a king.” She twirls her spoon back into the thick vein of caramel running through the ice cream.
“Really? I’d get the royal treatment, huh?”
“Yep. You shouldn’t make any guests, including me, do anything. Plus, I made this ice cream especially for you. It has extra mini marshmallows like you asked.”
“Ha, like I believe that’s special and you made it just for me,” I grumble at her, but all while reaching for where she abandoned the remote on the coffee table.
I press play on the movie before taking up my spoon and fighting Atzi head-on for some of the caramel in my first bite. She usually mines the entire carton for the caramel and leaves me with just vanilla and the occasional crunchy bit of popped rice.
I guess having a friend who can make desserts comes in handy. Every time I suggest we should add something, she creates it and brings it home. If we love it, she makes more and sells it at the shop. If not, we grab the vanilla cartons in my freezer to wash down the bad taste.
There’s only been a couple of times she’s failed. Gummy bears, sea salt, and ice cream don’t go together. Never.
“I think the main guy is gonna die,” Atzi says as the character in question runs along the top of a skyscraper and leaps onto the back of a dragon, hanging on to some of the scales. I squint at the screen as the man improbably hauls himself closer and closer to the dragon’s head as the dragon itself continues to soar through the city. “He’s gonna sacrifice himself or something.”
“Eh, bet they don’t have the guts to actually kill him. Remember Maverick? I still can’t believe they didn’t kill Tom Cruise. They should’ve done it,” I try not to sound upset, but I’m still mad at that movie.
Some filmmakers should learn that killing their darlings is okay in the name of art.
“I bet they’ll make you think he died, and then he’ll make a miraculous, unexplained recovery for the final scene,” I add. “We should watch something else.”
Atzi chuckles. “You’re just bitter. Remember Jon Snow? He was dead. If Game of Thrones brought someone to life, every other show and movie can.”
“It shouldn’t happen,” I argue.
She huffs, probably because she knows I’ll never let that go. Then slashes at my spoon so she can reach the ice cream before me. I let her knock my hand to the side with an eye roll. The movie unfolds exactly as I predicted it would, and Atzi is making a face by the end of it that tells me she didn’t like it.
“So, you hated it?”
“I just think they could have done a lot more with the literal fucking dragons than, like… kill them indiscriminately.”
I nod along. “Dragon adoption is always an option, I agree.”
She makes a show of carefully moving the ice cream to the coffee table before grabbing a throw pillow and smacking me with it. I grab it from her and throw it back at her face. It isn’t long before it’s an all-out war with Atzi lobbing all sorts of projectiles at me.
I duck to dodge a particularly solid sphere pillow and then tackle her around the waist, bringing us both back to the couch, and I must be losing my mind because two seconds later, I realize my mistake when I find myself sprawled on top of Atzi, looking down at her flushed face and twinkling eyes.
I’m frozen in the moment while my brain tries to come back online. She’s still smiling by the time I manage to scramble off of her with an awkward laugh of my own. Of course, the moment must have barely registered as strange for her—I know she’s never looked at me romantically.
As if to reinforce that, she stays laid out on the couch with her arms thrown dramatically above her head. Her chest is heaving. It’s incredible and also absolutely not something I should be committing to memory, but I absolutely am with only the tiniest twinge of guilt.
“Heeeeath,” she groans, dragging out my name in a completely unhelpful way. I swallow, close my eyes, and turn away to make myself busy with tidying up a few dishes that hadn’t made it to the rolling cart yet. “I’m tired, can I stay over?”
“You know the guest room is always yours,” I say.
“What if I ask you not to leave me?”
She could ask for anything and everything, and I would do it in a heartbeat. But I’m trying to learn to stop myself from wanting to please her and loving her. That’s exactly why I have to go. Nothing will change my mind.
Nothing.
“Please never ask me that, okay? I need to leave.”
“Okay,” she whispers, and I feel like shit, knowing I’m hurting her. But this is how it has to be.
Chapter Nine
Heath
Atzi: Good luck!
“I don’t need luck, I need patience,” I mumble as I climb down from my car.
Heath: I wish you could join us.
Atzi: So she can add cyanide to my food? No, thank you.
Heath: She’s not capable of harming a fly.
Atzi: I have my doubts.
Heath: What are you up to today?
Atzi: I’ll be working on the piece for the premiere. I have to drive it to LA next Monday.
Heath: Are you coming with me to Santa Cruz tomorrow?
Atzi: Of course. I made some special candy for the twins.
Heath: Stop bribing them with sweets.
Atzi: I won’t rest until I’m their favorite person—aside from their parents. It worked with Soleil.