Seize the Day

Of course, there was plenty of chatter to keep the ride entertaining. Michelle, Gena, and Mike were all passed out asleep by the time we took off, leaving me and the boys to ourselves. Brian was telling the story about Johnny being so drunk he had to be “offloaded” from the plane. Zack and Matt were chiming in here and there adding dialogue and expressions, while Johnny just sat and pouted.

I reached over the back of my seat and patted Johnny’s knee. “I’m sorry, dude. That really sounds shitty!” He grinned at me, obviously happy that someone was sympathizing with him, rather than making fun of him. “But I’m not gonna lie,” I added with a chuckle. “It’s fuckin’ hilarious.” His grin turned down, back into a pout. Matt and Zack both nearly doubled over with laughter seeing this.

Zack changed the subject to something we could all enjoy – music. He mentioned The Misfits, and the cover song they’d played back at Buster’s. “You know, I’d always loved that song, but it wasn’t until Matt mentioned it that I actually bothered to look up the original version,” he said. “It’s pretty rad.”

I giggled. “I grew up listening to 50’s and 60’s ‘golden oldies’ music with my dad. In 7th and 8th grade, we had a sock hop as part of a huge 1950s and 1960s unit in one of the history classes. Alex and I both played ‘stump the teacher’ with his trivia questions, being that we both already knew the answers to all of them!”

“Like what kinds of questions?” Zacky asked, his interested piqued.

“My personal favorite is this: What were Elvis’ background singers called?” I looked around at their faces. Brian shrugged, his nose scrunched up in defeat already. Matt and Johnny looked thoughtful, but couldn’t come up with an answer. Zack on the other hand was seriously wracking his brain trying to get the right response.

“Oh, I know this!” he hissed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He stared up at the ceiling of the plane’s cabin. “Um, The J… Shit, it starts with a ‘J,’ I know it.” He threw his hands in the air. “Fuck it, who are they?” he asked.

“The Jordanaires!” I yowled.

“Yes!” he yelled back, as Brian and Matt laughed. “That’s it! I did know that, I swear.”

“Anyway, long story short, those tunes are what got me hooked on music. My dad used to play guitar, and he and my uncles would sit around campfires, drunk as all hell, and play and sing for hours.” I settled back in my seat, waves of nostalgia washing over me.

I noticed that Johnny was looking at me very intently. “What’s up, Short Shit?” I asked him.

“Well, I just realized how much we don’t actually know about you,” he answered quietly, almost shyly. “I mean, I know you’ve talked with Matt a lot, but the rest of us. There’s a lot we haven’t heard.”

Brian nodded his head. “The Gnome is right.” Matt just smiled and stroked my hair.

“It’s true,” I agreed. “Twenty questions?” This could be dangerous, but worth it, I’m sure. “Twenty between the three of you, so make ‘em good.”

It wasn’t as scary as I thought it could be. Their questions ranged from music and movie selections, with Zack, of course, freaking out when I named The Nightmare Before Christmas as my favorite movie, to childhood history. I gave them the shortened version of my tattoo stories, as well as a tiny bit of back story on my divorce, since they’d witnessed my ex’s assholery in person. Johnny fell asleep soon after we’d started on the impromptu interview, and Matt actually followed closely behind. Being that the plane wasn’t nearly full, and not wanting to wake the others, Brian, Zacky and I relocated to an empty row of seats in the very front of the cabin so we could talk freely.

The questions continued once we moved, but the tone took a turn for the more serious. Questions about Matt and me turned into a general relationship discussion. Brian talked about the weirdness of being married to Michelle while Valary and Matt were splitting up.

“It’s really weird sometimes, you know? Because she’ll come over to talk to Chelle, and I have to play nice because she’s always going to be my sister-in-law, but then to hear her talk about all the problems she thought her and Matt had is hard.” He rubbed his eyes in both exhaustion and frustration. “But now I see Matt with you, and it’s like totally different than what I saw with Val.” He took a minute to collect his thoughts.

Zack noticed he was having trouble coming up with what to say next, so he jumped in. “He’s right,” he said, bobbing his head toward Brian. “I always knew Matt loved Val, and she loved him, but there were some times that we all knew it just wasn’t what it was supposed to be. Of course, we couldn’t tell him that. He’s hard-headed as they come.” He chuckled lightly. “Good luck with that,” he added.

“I think you know me well enough at this point to know that he’s the one who needs the luck,” I said, smiling.

“Good point,” the guys both said at the same time.

“What about you, Zee?” I asked. “I don’t know much about you and Gena.”

It was Zacky’s turn to be quiet for a moment. He looked at Brian and then at me, as if he was holding a secret he didn’t know if he should tell.

“You know I love Gena,” he said, mostly to Brian, who nodded. “But there are some days where I just wonder if I’m not doing the same thing Matt and Valary did,” he finished quickly and very quietly. He kept looking over his shoulder, making sure Gena hadn’t woken up and come over to find him.

Brian and I exchanged glances. “Zack, what are you saying?” I asked. I can't believe he's telling me this right now, I sighed internally. There’s no way this is happening. I hope to everything he's not thinking any of this just because Matt and I found each other.

“Well, it’s no secret that Gena and I fight. I know every couple has their spats, but it just seems like sometimes we fight too often, and over things that are far too fucking insignificant. It’s almost like we fight just to fight. Like we don’t know how to talk otherwise.” He let out a very deep sigh. “Never mind, it’s nothing.”

“Hey,” I said. “It’s not nothing. You feel how you feel. You can’t help that. And if you’re feeling like maybe things aren’t right, maybe they aren’t. Have you mentioned any of this to Gena?”

He nodded, and looked back to Brian. “Remember a couple weeks ago when I was really pissy with everyone? And Gena asked Michelle to go shopping like every fucking day for a week?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Brian said, apparently remembering those times. And probably those credit card bills, I added mentally. He looked off in the distance for a moment. “Anyway, what about it?”

Zack sighed deeply, and looked over his shoulder again. Seeing Gena still asleep in her seat, he turned back to us. “We just kept fighting. Over little stuff, over nothing. I actually went and stayed with my sister for a couple of days, hoping just a little time apart would help things. It didn’t though.” He looked over at men and scratched his head. “Hey, sorry to unload all of this off on you. I don’t really even fuckin’ know you, and here I am, more comfortable spilling my deepest secrets to you than I am to my own girlfriend.”

“Dude, don’t think about it. I already consider you guys better friends than anyone I know, except maybe Sara.” I put my hand on his knee. “Anytime you need to talk about anything, I’m here, ok?” He nodded. “I mean it. Anytime. Ever.”

He cleared his throat quietly, and continued. “Well, anyway, ever since then, things are just weird. I mean we’re still together, obviously, but we’ve just gotten really good at pretending. If anyone else is around, we play it off really well. But as soon as we’re back home, or fuck, even as soon as we get in the car to go home, we’re at each other’s throats.” His head dropped. “Even this morning, I texted her to see where you girls were. When the other two came down to find you while I was packing up Gena’s stuff, she came up to the room pissed that I wasn’t there with them. I was trying to help her, so that she didn’t have to get her stuff together, and she freaked the fuck out. But then she was right back to happy-go-lucky Gee when we all got back downstairs with everyone else. It’s kind of ridiculous, actually.”

Brian looked over at me, pleading with his eyes. He had no idea what to say. I nodded at him and smiled. “Hey Zee,” I said softly. He looked up, his eyes glassy with emotion. “It’ll work itself out, I promise. Whether you stay with Gena, or you don’t, it’ll work out.” I leaned over and kissed his forehead. “You just need to remember what makes you happy. I know you love Gena. Or at the very least you did once. And there’s something about her that made you fall for her. It’s just remembering what that is, and finding out if it’s still in her. If it’s not, we find the person who has it.”

He brightened up just a bit, but his big emerald eyes still held the sadness. “You know, Matt’s right,” he said, catching me off guard. “You are pretty damned amazing, aren’t you?”

I chuckled. “No, just like I tell Matt, I’m not amazing. I’m just me. I’ve dealt with enough of this bullshit myself that I know what I wanted to hear and never did. So I just make sure that all of my friends hear it.”

He opened his arms and smiled. “C’mere, you.” I slid across the seat and into his arms for a huge hug. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome, dollface,” I said. “But that was the easy part. Now you got some thinkin’ to do.” I nodded toward Brian, who took my hint. I patted Zack on top of his head, kissed his cheek, and Brian and I left him to sit and think for a while.

Brian and I found a couple more seats that were isolated from everyone else, and continued our conversation. “How do you do that?” he asked me, looking confused.

“Do what?” I pulled out my phone and checked my email and Twitter accounts.

“You always know exactly what to say,” he replied simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I told you both back there, I’ve been in all those deep, dark places, and I know what I would have loved to have heard when that was happening.” He just stared. “Besides I’m a girl. I know these things.” I paused for a second and giggled lightly. “And I actually had to take a couple of classes in providing family therapy in college, so I could technically be a relationship counselor, if I ever decided to get licensed.”

“Gotcha,” he laughed. “I’ll have to remember that. Might save some money down the road.” He took a second and studied my face. “You really do love him, don’t you?” he asked, a cocky smile slathered on his lips.

“Yeah, I really do,” I said, rolling my eyes. When he laughed, I continued. “I really do. It’s crazy, considering how long I haven’t actually known him,” I said. “But I guess I can’t actually help that, can I?”

“No, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you have no control over that much.” He put his hand on top of mine for a second.

“So what about you? You and Michelle doing ok?” I asked, yawning. “Everyone else seems to be having some issue or another.”

“Actually, we’re doing great. We had a pretty rough spell about a year ago, but we managed to work through it.” He grinned. “Like you said, we just had to remember what we loved about each other, and find it again. Once we did that, the other shit was just that. A bunch of bullshit that didn’t even matter.”

“Ok, I’ve had enough talking about this serious crap.” I checked the clock on my phone. “We still have 3 hours of flight time, maybe we should try to sleep like everyone else.” I settled in my seat, and leaned my head on his shoulder.

He patted my head and chuckled. “Sure thing, princess,” he said, laying his head on mine.

When I awoke as the flight attendants started coming around to tell us to put our seat belts back on, Matt was standing in the aisle next to Brian and me, arms crossed over his chest. “Care to explain this, Gates?” he hissed. Brian jumped in his seat, having still been asleep. He wiped absent-mindedly at his mouth.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, putting my hands in the air, not giving Brian time to respond. “You and the girls were asleep. Zack and Brian and I came up to the front of the cabin to talk. Then Zack decided he needed to think some things out, so Brian and I moved back here a couple rows to give him some privacy. We were talking and fell asleep.” I stood up and wrapped my arms around him. “Nothing, I swear, baby.” I kissed him gently, then nuzzled my face into the crook of his neck.

He quickly softened his posture. “I woke up and couldn’t find you. Then when I do, you’re all cuddly with Brian,” he said, almost pouting.

“Dude, you know me better than that. We were just talking.” He pointed at me, smiling yet again. “You’ve got yourself quite a girl there, Shads.”

“What are you talking about?” Matt was certainly very grumbly when he woke up. Now he was glaring at Brian.

“Vengeance was having a little internal crisis, we talked about it,” he explained. “She talked him right out of a nervous breakdown, I think. A kiss on the cheek, a couple of well-thought out words, and all is right with the world again.”

I looked at my feet, as Matt’s grip tightened around me. “Oh. Got it,” he mumbled and kissed the top of my head. “And yeah, I think she’s a keeper.”

I felt myself blushing, even though I knew there was no reason to. Brian chuckled.

“Um, is he gonna be ok, you think?” Matt asked, looking in Zack’s direction.

“Yeah. I think he will,” I said quietly. “I just think he’s got a decision to make is all.”

-----------------------------------------

A week later, I sat on my sofa watching Matt, Zack, and Brian play some Call of Duty game or another, each of them cursing into their headsets at the opposing players online.

“Damnit!” Zack yelled, throwing his Xbox controller on the floor.

“Hey, fuckwad, don’t throw my shit, ok?” I shot an evil glare his way.

He ducked his head. “Sorry.”

“I don’t care what you do with yours or Matt’s controllers, but I’ll be pissed if I have to go out and buy another set because you morons keep breaking them!” I was trying to be stern, but had busted into laughter by the end of my rant. Brian and Matt were stifling laughs from their spots next to me on the sofa.

“Hey, thanks again for letting me stay here, Vivienne,” Zack said.

“Dude, I swear to Batman, if you say that one more time, I will,” I started.

“Wait. You ’swear to Batman’?” Brian choked out through peals of laughter, cutting me off mid-sentence.

“Yeah, I don’t really believe in a god, so swearing to him or her doesn’t do much for me. I’ve decided that it’s just as logical to me to believe in Batman as my savior as some invisible dude.” My explanation seemed to make sense to him, so I continued. “Anyway, I swear to Batman, I will punch you in your teeth if you thank me again, Zeeves. You know you’re more than welcome to stay here anytime.” He beamed a smile at me in response. “So, BriBri, what’s Chelle up to today?”

“Well, I think she’s actually shopping with Val and Gena today,” he said. “They’ve decided that just because Gee and Zack aren’t a thing anymore doesn’t mean they can’t stay friends.”

“Thank Batman,” I said, laughing at my own words. “I was really hoping Michelle wasn’t going to try to turn me into her shopping buddy!” I faked a shudder as if it was the worst thing I could think of. “I can’t do that.”

Matt threw his arm over my shoulder. “Nope, you’d rather stay here and chill with the guys.”

“That I would,” I answered, slugging down the rest of my beer. I picked up Zack’s discarded controller and starting another game. "Besides, it's my house, of course I want to stay here and make sure you assholes don't break all my shit!" I punctuated my statement with a belch.

“She’s such a dude!” Brian laughed. “But what does that say about you, man?” he asked Matt.

Matt looked over at me and smiled. “That says that I have the coolest fucking girlfriend in the world, that’s what.”