7. Seven

Seven

You’d think Zack had been gone for about a year if you saw us together at the airport. He scooped me up into his arms and pressed his soft lips all over my face before planting one long, intense kiss onto my lips.

“Longest week ever,” he said as he stroked my cheek. He picked my hand up and smiled at my bejeweled finger. “Glad to see it’s still on.”

I slapped the top of his arm. “Of course it’s still on, cheeky.” He wrapped his arms around me.

“Can I drag you home now because I have needs and you left me all alone, Zachary. All alone with nothing to think about but houses and weddings and things that get me all excited about you. Plus, I baked you a chocolate fudge cake…”

Zack grinned. One of the hands that was wrapped around me slid slowly down and squeezed my bottom. “Car. Now.”

A couple of hours later, we dragged ourselves from the sanctuary of our bed, reunited in every sense of the word. Despite the cold weather outside, the house felt toasty warm as heat surged from the radiators. We snuggled on the couch with our favourite wine, Zack just in shorts and me in one of his t-shirts. I ran my fingers through Zack’s thick, dark hair as we talked, trying to get it back into his usual style. I may have been a little overzealous with my treatment of it while we were in bed.

“Did you miss me or my hair?”

“I missed all of you. Felt like a long week, but it sounds like you loved it. So excited for you that the job’s going well.”

“Not just mine. You looking forward to being on this case you told me about?”

I nodded as I placed my wine glass down and snuggled my head against the warm, smooth skin of his chest. “It sounds great. Definitely more stimulating than office plans and dictation. I wish Anna wasn’t on the case too, but apart from that, yeah, I’m eager to learn more.”

“Don’t let her put you off, she’s more interested in herself than anyone else. Was surprised you were out with her, to be honest.”

“Ha! Me too. She caught me at a weak moment. She was going on about what a womaniser you used to be and how I made you dull.” My tone was light-hearted, but I secretly hoped for information. Was Zack the type of guy who had a different girl every week before me? I couldn’t imagine it; all he’d ever wanted was to settle down since the day we’d met.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I wouldn’t worry. She’s only happy when she’s admiring herself or gossiping,” he said.

“Hmm, I suppose. I booked us three house appointments for tomorrow, you want to see where?”

“No, I trust you to have picked the good ones.” He placed a kiss to the top of my head. “You think about wedding stuff at all?”

“A little. I spent quite a bit of time with your mum, and Hannah nipped in too.”

He squeezed me tighter. “Makes me happy that you guys all spend time together.”

“What do you think about wedding plans?” I asked.

“I’d go with any plan as long as you were there. I can’t wait.”

“I wanted to talk about something, though.” Zack’s body went rigid for a moment.

“Lily, please don’t say this is something awful again. ”

“What? No,” I laughed and kissed around Zack’s neck. “You know the problems Cassie is having?”

Zack nodded as he squeezed my waist and held me tight against him.

“Well, she asked me about egg donation.”

“OK, I don’t understand the whole situation, but I guess that could work for them?”

“Specifically, my eggs.”

He drew in a breath. “Well… Yours are spoken for, aren’t they? I assume you told her that?”

“No, I told her we’d talk about it; it’s a fairly simple procedure.”

“Why would she want your eggs? I don’t get that, it’s weird.”

A small sigh flew from me before I continued. “I felt the same, initially, but she doesn’t want a random person doing it for money or whatever. And she likes my DNA.”

“Again, we have plans for your DNA, my darling.” Zack snuggled up close and pulled my thigh over his own. “As soon as possible, I think.”

“There’s no reason I couldn’t do both,” I suggested.

Zack looked at me, a sudden tension in the air. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “She’s heartbroken, Zack. If you could fix that for your best friend, you would.”

“That depends. She’d have your baby? It would be running around with all your genes and stuff. You’d be ok with that?”

“For a start, babies don’t run…”

“You know what I mean. It’d be yours and Guy’s baby. That’s not going to be normal, is it?”

“It would be Guy and Cassies baby,” I said.

“But we’d all know. You’d end up distant, I’m sure. She can get an egg donor, it’s not up to you to fix this. She’s already got two kids anyway.”

“I know it’s not, but she’s my best friend, and if I can find a solution to something for her—” I began to say.

“Do you not think we’ve had enough best friend trauma?” Zack’s eyebrows bundled up together above stormy eyes.

“Zack… Please don’t.” I sat up and grabbed my drink from the table. “It’s not a bad thing to want to help her.”

He sat and wrapped his arms around me as he pressed his face to my hair. “I know. You just want to be lovely. But I thought we said we were going to focus on us?”

“I do want to focus on us.” My voice shook as I spoke, emotions barely held in check.

“I want us to move into our new house, get married, have babies, be happy ever after. Wasn’t planning on a half-sibling running around.”

“It wouldn’t be like that… ”

He stroked his hands down my arms. “Come on, first night back together, let’s not spend it talking about this. We’ve got plans to make.”

I leaned back against his warm chest as he slid his hands inside my t-shirt, his fingers tracing over the curve of my hips. He obviously felt like working the tension off.

“So, I know we said house first,” Zack began. “But what kind of wedding do you want?”

I twisted around and placed a gentle kiss on his chest. “I don’t know. I guess girls are meant to plan it out from the age of seven or whatever, but I never did.”

“Let’s start with the basics then. Church?”

“Hmm, I’d rather not,” I said.

“Here or abroad?”

“Here, or else we couldn’t invite everyone.”

“A big wedding then?” Zack asked.

“Yeah, how could we not?” I grinned with pure excitement, but my mind was still on Cassie. “Maybe not as big as that castle, but there’s a lot of people to invite.”

“We’ll have to make a list.”

“It doesn’t seem fair to Cassie, though,” I sighed again as I returned to the previous conversation, unable to stop myself.

Zack pulled his arms away from me and pinched at the bridge of his nose .

“You know, sometimes it feels like you just don’t want us to move forwards. There’s always an excuse.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m doing everything I can to try and build our future here, and at the point I’m thinking it would be right to try for a baby, you want to put that at risk by going through a procedure you don’t need to make someone else happy. Even though she has other ways to solve it.”

“Zack, that’s horrible.” I clambered off him, furious.

“No, it’s just true,” he muttered as he took a drink. “Maybe I should’ve stayed at work…”

“What the… I can’t speak to you when you’re like this.”

He shrugged, giving off petulant vibes as he reached for the remote and flicked between channels. “It’s a decision we should make together. I wouldn’t go and be a sperm donor without checking with you.”

“Cassie is heartbroken about this. If it was donating blood, or something like that, you wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s a bit different, Lily, you know that.”

I slouched out of the room and headed up to bed, wondering if he’d stop me – he didn’t.

I sat on the bed and got my phone out to message Cassie, then realised I couldn’t. How could I tell her we’d fallen out about this. I scrolled through my contacts- apart from family and work colleagues, it was, sadly, bare. A friend to talk this through with would be lovely. A friend, who, if he was in this position with me, would put other people first before his own desires.

“I miss you so much.” I whispered the words into the air around me, as if by chance a breeze might catch them and carry them to him.

I straightened the sheets that were strewn all over the bed from earlier and pictured Luke as I did so. His beautiful face, his vivid blue eyes, that blond hair that suited him whether tidy for work, or messy at weekends. His body - I’d never before touched a body so fit, so muscular. Zack wasn’t exactly a slob, but Luke was in a different league, and I knew from experience the yoga positions he could stretch into. I realised I spent too much time forcing myself not to think of him. I needed to stop that before I couldn’t conjure these images anymore. I was aghast at the idea of not being able to picture him.

I watched myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth and imagined Luke stood next to me brushing his as we’d done so many times. I changed into pyjamas and slid under the covers. The television downstairs was noisy, but I blanked it out. Wrapping my arms around my pillow, I cuddled it close. Pressing my face into it, I imagined I was pressed against Luke as my tears soaked into the soft material.

I knew I couldn’t be with him but just to have him back as my friend would be enough. This hole in me wasn’t healing, no matter how much time passed, and that thought terrified me.