Lend Me Your Heart

Five

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The next few weeks went by slowly. Zach hadn’t spoken to me since our argument, which bothered me. A lot. He saves me from being Connor’s play toy at the party and then ignores me? None of it made sense to me. I was only certain of two things.

One, Zach was known for being an intimidating a*s hole who basically had no friends after some sort of “incident”, as Joey called it, that happened last year. Two, he had a sweet side that I’d seen multiple times, but he didn’t show it often and when he did, it was around me…for some reason I’m not sure of.

I barely knew anything about Zach, but the fact that he had secrets buried deep inside his heart that he wouldn’t share with anyone just made me want to work harder to figure out whatever it was hiding. He was all I could think about since the party. I wish I remembered all the details, but I didn’t.

It was the fourth Friday since school started and October had already rolled in. Sarah came into my room later that night because she told me earlier that she wanted to tell me something important. I wondered what she could possibly want to tell me, since not much had happened in the past few weeks. She opened my door around eight o’clock without knocking. I usually left it open for my friends since I didn’t have a roommate.

“Hey,” she greeted quietly, sitting next to me on the floor while I tried to figure out a Geometry problem. “I need to tell you something.”

“Mhmm,” I said, still focused on the math problem.

“That would require you to actually listen to what I’m about to tell you,” she said, raising her eyebrows. I sighed, putting down my pencil and giving her my undivided attention.

“I’m all ears,” I said.

“Well, I just wanted to talk to you about Zach,” she said, softening her voice and looking around, like she was expecting him to pop out of my closet.

“So, everyone at school knows he’s an emotional wreck…well, besides maybe you,” she continued, “And I just wanted you to be careful around him, Laynie. You’re one of my closet friends here and I would hate to see a jerk like him break your heart, because trust me, he will. He’s a player and an ass hole and he’s conceited and he’s changed so much-”

“Sarah,” I interrupted, “I’m starting to think this isn’t just about Zach. Did you two…have a thing?” I asked hesitantly.

She sighed and shook her head. “He made out with me last year and tried pressuring me into doing stuff I didn’t want to do, so then he just left me alone in the middle of a party. He sleeps around a lot,” she said, her bottom lip quivering. “Oh, Layne. Who am I kidding? He’s terrible.”

I bit my lip, not wanting to hurt Sarah’s feelings if I told her he actually wasn’t that bad. Her story didn’t sound like the Zach I knew at all…well, at least the nice Zach I knew. For some reason, I felt like defending him.

“He’s really not as bad as everybody thinks he is,” I shrugged, blushing in embarrassment seeing as I was not only defending someone the whole school had a certain hatred for, but I was also defending someone who made me cry. Twice. But still, just because someone sleeps around doesn’t mean they’re “terrible”…well, not all the time at least.

“See,” she said, “I honestly don’t know where you get that idea from because ever since Aiden died he’s been a total douche to everyone he talks to.”

I froze, wondering whom Aiden was and what he had to do with Zach’s miserable behavior. Oh God, I hoped Zach didn’t loose a brother or anyone close to him. Then again, if someone’s death affected a teenaged boy this much, Aiden must’ve been someone close to Zach. Maybe this is was Joey was talking about before the party a few weeks ago when he said something about an “incident”.