Page 60 of Spring Awakening

Zach laughs lightly. “You’re allowed to ask your friend, just not some rando on the street.”

“My best friend,” she says, knocking into him with her shoulder. It’s cute, the way she frowns when he doesn’t move at all.

Zach wonders how true it is. He did want kids, but then it came to light that he would never get them, so he took it out of his life plan. He’s shoved it so far down that he doesn’t think about it every day. He’s not sure how fair it is that he misses something he never had.

“Are you going to bring your children here?” he asks, and her entire face lights up. He thought Mali wanted children, based on a few comments she’s made. His stomach tightens, and not in the good way. Not in the way it has all day. Zach never thought Mali would wanna be with him for real—beyond friends who chill in the front room together. Even if she did for some insane reason want to kiss him, he wouldn’t be able to give her what she wanted.

Mali nods. “Yeah, I hope so.” Her answer is more subdued than he thought it would be. He imagines her here, with tiny versions of her running around. Her partner is there too, and when Zach looks, he looks like him.

“How many do you want?”

Mali hums. “Uhm, three.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “Not at the same time, though.”

“Triplets would be wild,” he says, with a laugh. They’re walking slowly, and he almost thinks about sitting on the bench, but he decides against it. “I wanted children for a long time.”

“You did?” she asks. She looks at him with a hope he can’t place.

“Yeah. I just—I don’t know if I deserve to have them.”

Mali frowns. “Why not?”

“I dunno. I’ve never had a real relationship. No one wants to spend time with me. Why would I bring children into something like that?”

Mali stops walking and holds onto his wrist. She frowns. She looks like she might cry, and it hits him in the stomach.

“I want to spend time with you,” she whispers. “And just because you haven’t had a relationship yet doesn’t mean you won’t. You’re basically still a baby. Don’t count yourself out.”

“If you wanna have kids with me, just say so,” he says, with a laugh. It’s not a joke, though. The realisation he’d have children with her hits him so violently he almost falls over. She’s the only person in his life that cares enough about him to dig past his toughened exterior. Sure, it fell a bit easier for her because she has kind eyes and he’s always waiting for a time to please her, but still.

Mali rolls her eyes. “I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy. Have you ever thought about therapy?”Mali mentions it so casually that it almost shocks him. Therapy isn't controversial for everyone. She wouldn't think he was doing it for any reason that to be happier.

Zach pouts. “I do think about it.” He wonders if he did it, would he be able to let himself think about the future in a happy light? Would he be able to picture a life he genuinely wants? Would going through the trauma of his childhood mean he gets to spend any more time with her?

Mali smiles. “Okay. Cool. Let’s go home.”

Zach follows her to their home, taking a few sly photos as she walks. He smiles at the thought oftheirhome. It’s her house, but whenever he thinks about fixing things for her, he thinks of it as theirs.

“Zach,” she says, turning to look for him. He’s been caught. She smiles, throwing her head back. She’s so beautiful it makes him dizzy.

“Yeah?” he asks, jogging to catch up with her. He wants to know whatever she was going to say.

“You really are my best friend.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Google is useless. Zachtuts as the robot in his car starts spewing off facts about William Shakespeare. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, fifty-two when he died, yada yada yada. He turns the volume down as he signals to turn onto his road. (Zach, not William Shakespeare.) Zach is trying to figure out how to casually slip some Shakespearean lines into his vocabulary, and all it’s telling him is that he died years ago after writing a shitload of famous plays. Zach already knows that.

What he doesn’t know is how people start integrating the quotes into daily life. Last week, the quiz show he’s become attached to had a Shakespeare round, and since then, he’s been watching the clock for the moment it hit six thirty. (He doesn’t usually abide daytime tv, but Mali had leant her entire body forwards every time she was waiting to see if she got a question correct, and then she’d humph and steal sweets from the packet he had on his thigh when she was wrong, so now, he loves it.)

Sometimes when the adverts come on, she tells him things. Small things, like she’s looking at a green wig but she thinks she’d never wear it. Things like she prefers mint chocolate toorange chocolate. Things like it makes her happy when people say Shakespeare quotes in everyday life. (To be fair, that was in reference to the quiz show, but still, she told him.)And yes, ever since he found out, he’s read four sonnets and three plays. He’s not sure Romeo and Juliet is the romance everyone thinks it is, but he’ll watch the Baz Luhrmann version if she asks.

Often, she tells him bigger things, things she’s likely only told a handful of people, and it makes him feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Things like she always wants to be where her parents are. Like she wants to be married but she’s too scared to tell people that when she starts dating. Like physical touch is her love language. (She made him take a quiz, and apparently, he’s a words of affirmation guy, which makes him want to be sick, but then he imagines her telling him something and he thinks maybe the quiz was spot on.)

He tries to tell her things too, but he’s not good at it. Last week, he told her he hadn’t had a bath in years, and then spent the next ten minutes explaining what he meant while she tried not to laugh. Of course, she knows hebathes, it’s just that he hasn’t sat in a bath for a while. And then she told him she loves a bath, and he spent the next ten minutes trying not to get hard over the thought of her naked in the bath. Loser.

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