Zac

Years ago, puberty slammed into me full force after I moved to Queens, and, almost overnight, everyone started to view me in a whole new light.

Especially the opposite sex.

At first, the attention felt awkward and overwhelming since, for most of my life, I'd been accustomed to being invisible on good days and utterly repellent on bad days in the eyes of the female population.

This shift in power gave me whiplash. Their feelings toward me flip-flopped like night and day. Haters suddenly became my best friends. The level of superficiality pissed me off even while I basked in the glory of finally becoming one of the chosen ones. Take it from a guy who has existed on both ends of the popularity spectrum: Appearances shouldn't be the end-all and be-all, but it was way easier to survive high school when you're hot and fuckable.

Across the span of only a few short weeks, girls started to like everything about me—my height, my looks, my tats, my piercings—even though I still felt like the same anxious, insecure shithead on the inside.

In the beginning, my nerdy ass tried to approach girls much in the same way I taught myself how to read and write lines of code. For every specific input, there was a desired output. I collected data. Experimented. Learned the system through trial and error.

By the end of my research, I became slightly more adept at reading girls. I didn't become an expert by any means—still a virgin, for fuck's sake—but, little by little, I figured out that it was entirely possible to readjust my input to influence their output. I learned to decipher the hidden moods behind their smiling faces. It was kind of unsettling how these bitches could be plotting someone's murder while smiling like an angel to their face. I filled in the meanings to what they often left unspoken. Apparently, a short clipped everything's fine often meant that everything was far from fine and that I was about to get my ass handed to me.

Despite my growing understanding of what made girls tick, however, it was still a struggle to pinpoint what they actually wanted from me. Some girls were looking for ride-or-die commitment. Others just wanted to fuck around. Most of them, however, didn't know what they the hell wanted and left everyone feeling frustrated and confused.

I was still trying to gain more XP. Level up. Girls like Ashlynn and Carli and Monique helped me figure out a thing or two about how to play the game. I'm becoming better at flirting. At dating. At making out with girls and getting them all hot and bothered. I knew when to compliment them, when to tease them, and when to ignore them, especially when I wanted to leave them wanting more.

That being said, all of my hard-won lessons about the fairer sex flew out the window the moment Cate Donati slid into my DM's. I should've left her messages on Delivered for, at least, a few more minutes before opening it. I should've left everything on Read for, at least, ten or twenty more minutes before taking any action. I should've played harder to get, but I didn't.

Not at all.

I did the very opposite, in fact, because I wasn't in any position to make Cate Donati work for it. I already scared the shit out of her back at the hospital in Wellesley. I was the one who needed to work my ass off to charm her, woo her, and convince her that I wasn't a crazy motherfucking asshole.

I responded to each of her messages immediately. I asked about her day. I complimented her at every opportunity. I teased. I flirted. Never once did I ignore her. As much as I was able to within the limitations of the Iris-Cowan Center, I made myself available to her beck and call.

To my surprise, Cate kept messaging me back as well.

That first day, we texted nonstop during my thirty minutes of phone time. I got the sense that, not only was this girl super concerned about my progress at the center, but she was also deeply invested in helping me reach every future milestone, such as getting my knee brace removed, walking on my own without crutches, and recovering some of my memories.

Cate grilled me over everything under the sun: My meds. The therapies I was undergoing every day. Even my fucking schoolwork.

I didn't tell her about the cutting, though.

At times, I wondered if she suspected something, but I always answered as vaguely as possible. I didn't want her to know about the fucked-up shit I'd been dealing with since my dad went to prison. Cate probably already believed that I was not quite right in the head. There was nothing to gain from telling her that I was once depressed and suicidal.

But Cate didn't give up.

She kept asking: Hey, I noticed that there were some injuries on your right arm. Did you get those from the car accident?

I texted back: yeah

She kept pressing me: Really? Because it's totally okay if you got them from something else. You can tell me anything, you know? I just want to know that you're okay.

I replied: they're from the accident

If she had been any other girl, her questions would be lowkey annoying and definitely off-putting. But this wasn't any other girl. This was Cate. Now that I had been stalking her IG for the past few weeks, I knew she was busy as fuck with school and shit. The fact she was willing to set aside this much time in her schedule to get all up in my business spoke volumes.

I mattered to her.

At least, this was what I kept telling myself. I so badly wanted to believe that Cate was flirting with me. I mean, I saw some of the telltale signs. She was using an exorbitant amount of winky emojis and kissy faces in her texts. In my experience, girls only did that shit with guys they wanted to act cute around. I felt almost certain that she was into me.

Kinda?

Sorta?

Maybe?

My newfound sense of confidence emboldened me to take our conversation a step further. The memory of our kiss back at the hospital often hovered in the back of my mind. I was dying to know why the hell she did it. Girls rarely kissed guys who they weren't interested in.

Right?

Fearlessly, I messaged her: so... ive been meaning to ask you... why did you kiss me that day i woke up?

My heart pounded like a drum shortly after I sent it. I waited and waited and waited for a response.

Regret filled me to the brim when Cate left me on Read for sixty-three minutes straight.

Yeah, I had been counting, eyeing my phone like a hawk.

It was nerve-wracking.

It was embarrassing.

It was fucking awful.

Cate's prolonged silence sucked even more because she had responded to all my other messages within seconds.

Was she doing this on purpose?

I didn't fucking know!

That night, I begged the nurse on duty, Blake, to let me hold onto my phone a little longer. I lied. I cried. Told him that my grandpa was in the ICU, and that I wanted to stay updated on his condition. Blake believed me. Nice guy.

As the minutes dragged on, however, Cate still didn't respond. I told myself not to care. I told myself to treat her like other girls. She wasn't that special. If she didn't want to talk to me, it was fine. Totally fine. Two could play this game. I sure as hell didn't need to lower myself to—

Ding!

A notification finally flashed on my screen. I dove for my phone. I could barely tap open the text fast enough to read Cate's reply: Yeah. About that. I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have done it. I got carried away in the moment. I was so excited to see you wake up. It was a celebratory kiss. Nothing more.

My expression scrunched up with dismay. Her answer was an absolute boner killer.

Frowning, I typed out slowly: i see

Then, I rallied: maybe we should celebrate together more often??? ;)

Thank God she messaged back right away: Haha. Maybe after I survive my finals. But I'm going to be pretty busy over the next few weeks. If you don't hear from me right away, please know that it's nothing personal. I hope you'll keep updating me on your recovery progress. I care about you as a friend, Zac. I really do. :)

I tapped out another text: friendzoned already? :(

She responded: For now, yes. ;)

My eyebrows rose as I scanned her short response, focusing closely on the first two words. She had typed "for now," which sounded a little to me like girl-speak for keep trying, buddy, and we'll see how this goes.

With a faint smile on my face, I decided to do just that. Keep trying.

I wrote back: for now, u say? I guess not all hope is lost ;)

For the next few months, Cate and I kept talking. I continued to push the boundaries of our friendship. I refused to stay in the friend zone. I knew I wanted more from her, and I felt like she wanted more from me, too, but something was holding her back.

I swore I wasn't being a delusional creep.

I could feel how much she cared about me. Through her questions. Through all the research she kept doing about my condition. And through her sky-high level of engagement in every single one of our conversations. Cate always found time for me. The only moments she ignored me was when I brought up questions about my impromptu return to Ashton Wellesley or how the two of us reconnected back on campus...

In time, I learned that, whenever I brought up these touchy subjects, Cate would leave me on Read for a few days before bouncing back with a brand-new conversation starter. I was beginning to feel like Pavlov's dog. It was like she was conditioning me to stop asking these questions, and I didn't know how I felt about it.

On some days, especially the darker, depressing ones, I found myself missing Cate for no particular reason. The feeling was overwhelming. I chalked it up to the loneliness I felt while being cooped up in a closed off facility like the Iris-Cowan Center.

I started to ask Cate for selfies, and she always obliged. She never sent nudes or naughty pics, but there were some cute ones. I saved them all in a special folder on my phone and pulled that shit out every fucking day so I could swipe through Cate's photos with a big stupid smile on my face.

Sometimes, I'd try to call Cate or get her on FaceTime during my thirty minutes of cell phone time. But she never picked up. She always had something going on. Club meetings. Orchestra concerts. Like I mentioned before, the girl was busy trying to take over her new school in DC.

Our relationship became really fucking weird.

I felt like I could chat with Cate about almost anything. Like a best friend. But, also, I really, really, really wanted to see her naked. And make her laugh. Make her happy. I wanted her to be my girlfriend. Yet, she didn't seem ready to take the next step even though she was fully committed to our friendship.

My six months in the Iris-Cowan Center passed by in a slow, sluggish daze. By the time they discharged me, the fractures in my knees were fully healed. I could walk without crutches. But my memories from the past year were still missing.

My mom and Jared came to pick me up from the center and take me home. Once we got back to Manhattan, I tried to call Cate, but she didn't pick up. She messaged me instead. We texted back and forth for a while. That made me happy.

Over the next few days, I met up with Wes and some of my other friends. I was planning to go back to Briarley Prep for fall semester. I slowly settled back into my old life. Everything seemed fine, normal, comfortable, on the surface, but something kept feeling a bit off to me. It was the same feeling that had me reaching for dead air when I first woke up in the hospital.

I didn't know what it was until, one day, I was rummaging through the master bedroom, looking to borrow one of Jared's blazers for a school event. As I sifted through my mom and stepdad's walk-in closet, I accidentally knocked over a stack of shoe boxes. As my mom's Louboutins came tumbling down, some small, black, and rectangular fell on my head and landed on the floor with a loud thud. I glanced down. My eyes grew round when I realized that what had hit me wasn't a stiletto. It was my old phone. The same one my mom claimed that the hospital had lost.

An uncomfortable tingle coiled down my spine.

Why did my mom lie to me?

Whatever her reasons might be, I knew something felt off, and I couldn't believe it had been hiding right under my nose this whole time. Without hesitation, I charged up the little fucker and spent the next few days pouring over old pics, texts, and messages from the mysterious year that had been wiped from my mind.

Unfortunately, I didn't find much.

Someone had removed the memory card, so a big chunk of my old data was missing. When I tried find my old laptops to search for more answers, they were nowhere to be found. I suspected my mom probably had something to do with their disappearance. After buying a new laptop, I started scouring all of the past messages and posts from my social media accounts like some two-bit detective. From there, I was able to piece together a semi-cohesive story despite all of the missing pieces.

It appeared I had gone back to Ashton Wellesley to seek justice for my dad. I was targeting Walter Sinclair's daughter, Lily. Somehow Cate, got sucked into my drama. She and I not only became good friends, we started dating.

I think we might have even been in love?

Fuck.

My mind clouded with confusion. A painful pressure began to build at my temples. I didn't know what to do with these chaotic developments. Question after question flooded my senses. I texted Cate.

It was time to get the answers that I deserved.