Clumsy Little Heart

“You have got to be kidding.”

John is angry, hands tightly gripping his plastic Dunkin Donuts cup in front of him and his shoulders are hunched and eyebrows furrowed, facial features clearly signifying that he is currently looking at something particularly unpleasant. Zack moves to turn around, to see for himself what his best friend is so upset about, but John kicks him hard in the shin and pain shoots up his leg, causing him to gasp aloud. His hands instantly reach down to grab his leg but in the process, they knock his own coffee cup over and what’s left of it spills out all over the table. The only plus side to this situation is that it didn’t spill onto his clothes.

Zack now has to ignore the pain in his leg, instead glaring at John and pulling some napkins out of the metal holder on their table. “You fucking asshole,” he mutters, carefully cleaning up the mess of coffee in front of him. “You’re buying me a new one.”

“Sorry,” John says quietly, pointedly avoiding looking past Zack, “But I did you a favor. Whatever you do, don’t turn around or they’ll see you.”

He could be talking about anybody, Zack acknowledges. There are plenty of people who aren’t exactly on their ‘people I want to run into at Dunkin Donuts’ list, and this person that John wants to avoid could be anyone from their high school principal to John’s mom.

They’re currently sitting towards the back of the store, right next to a window and Zack has his back to the door and the counter. It’s not exactly crowded, so whoever they’re avoiding could probably very easily spot them if they were to glance around. “Who is it?” Zack finds himself asking, the desire to turn around and see for himself only growing.

“The douche bag,” John tells him simply, “I don’t think he’s seen us. And I don’t think he’s going to sit down and stay. But still, just don’t move to be on the safe side.”

And suddenly, Zack’s not very eager to turn around. There’s really only one guy that John uses that term to describe and that’s Gabe Saporta – Zack’s ex-boyfriend. The eagerness turns quickly to anxiety and apprehension and he finds himself praying that Gabe just gets his large vanilla iced coffee with skim milk and just leaves. Because conversing with Gabe? Totally not something that Zack is very interested in. Not even three full months after their breakup.

“He looks fatter,” John offers timidly, his lips turned up into a small, unsure smile.

Despite the fact that Zack knows he’s lying to make him feel better (because Gabe would never let himself go and stop going to the gym every single day), it still helps. There’s the sound of the small bell above the door of the store, signaling that somebody has just left and when John relaxes, Zack knows that he can too. John stands up and pulls out his wallet, mumbling something about replacing the coffee he made Zack spill over and he reaches out to playfully ruffle Zack’s hair before walking towards the counter.

John’s a great friend, Zack concludes to himself. He sighs and pulls out his cell phone, heart sinking at the new email he finds from Pace University, expressing the college’s excitement to have him in just a few short months. Needless to say, the excitement is not exactly mutual. But John will be there too. And Zack will finally be away from his parent’s overprotective tendencies. There’s always plus sides to things; you just have to look and reason hard enough. It’s easy for Zack – he’s spent almost his whole life trying to figure out what they all are.

- - -

Graduation was ten days ago. It’s June 21st. It’s eighty two degrees outside and Zack is stuck in the back seat of John’s car, squished between Matt Flyzik and Alex Gaskarth. The AC is on full blast but because they’re stuck so close together, it’s really not doing much. Alex is practically in Zack’s lap, forgetting the whole ‘people need personal space’ thing that he’s constantly being reminded of and Matt is staring out the window, a bored expression on his face. John is driving and Matt’s girlfriend Sierra Kusterbeck is in the passenger seat. She claims it’s her privilege as a girl to sit in the front and not get stuck in the back and nobody was brave enough to argue.

“And see this right here?” Alex asks loudly, leaning even closer to Zack and smacking Matt in the arm to get his attention. Once he has it, he holds out his cell phone, displaying a name and number that’s not familiar to Zack, and clearly it isn’t familiar to Matt, either.

“Who the fuck is Anna?” he asks with an eye roll tacked onto the end. Matt is easily frustrated, especially when cramped in a car for twenty minutes in the middle of June. Zack has learned from experience. Five years of it.

“The girl I was just talking about!” Alex exclaims, “Don’t you listen to me!?”

John raises the volume of the stereo to drown him out, and Sierra laughs and Matt just turns back to the window, leaving Zack the only one to give Alex the time of day. So he sighs deeply, prays to God that they get to the animal shelter within the next five minutes, and offers himself as a sacrifice and lets Alex tell him every single detail of the party he was at the night before where he hooked up with some girl named Anna. It’s not that he doesn’t care exactly. It’s just that Alex tends to give too much detail when talking about these sorts of things.

“We’re here!” Sierra announces, her seat belt being thrown off and the door being opened before John has even stopped the car completely in a parking spot. She’s out and bouncing on her toes, anxiously waiting to go inside. She’s been waiting for this moment all week – the moment she’ll finally be able to adopt the cat that Matt promised her for her birthday last December.

“Can you be careful for two seconds of your life?” Matt whines, getting out of the car as soon as it’s stopped, and Zack finds himself able to breathe properly again now that he has extra room.

“Why the fuck are we even friends with them,” he overhears John mumbling and he can’t help but wonder the same thing sometimes.

“I’m just so excited!” Sierra gushes, leaning into Matt’s side and grinning widely.

And okay, it’s sort of understandable for her to be this excited to adopt a kitten. Matt told her he’d get her one for her birthday, but Sierra’s parents told her she wasn’t allowed to have it until summer. So she’s had to wait a little over six months to finally get her birthday gift. Excessive excitement is understandable.

If he’s honest with himself, Sierra and Matt’s relationship is kind of adorable. Sure it gets a little nauseating sometimes when they get overly cute and sweet but when they’re normal and just hanging out, that’s when you can really see how much they love each other. They got together when Matt was a sophomore and Sierra was a freshman, and now three years later, they’re going to have to try the whole ‘long-distance thing’ while Matt is at the University of Pennsylvania and she’s finishing her senior year of high school. If anyone can do it, Zack thinks it’s them.

“Dude, you sure you’re going to be alright?” John asks Zack as they walk up the pathway to the North Shore Animal League. He wraps one arm around Zack’s shoulders and shakes him playfully, laughing as he says, “Wouldn’t want you to die because of a few cats.”

Zack rolls his eyes. Just because he has a minor cat allergy doesn’t mean he’s going to die. “I’ll be perfectly fine. Possible sneezing fit, yes, but other than that, fine.”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll see how that goes. Remember the first time you came over my house?”

Okay yes that was bad. They were in fifth grade and John had a cat that climbed all over Zack and Zack’s eyes got all red and puffy and John’s mom had to give him Benadryl and it was just all around embarrassing. But he’s not going to actually touch any cats in the animal shelter so really, he should be perfectly fine. Really.

It doesn’t take long for Alex and Sierra to get separated from them and go off in their own direction towards the room with the kittens. Zack finds himself with John and Matt, walking through the rows of cages that house the older dogs, all of them barking loudly and jumping up against the cages. Zack feels bad for most of them, knowing not all of them are going to find a home anytime soon. People tend to go right for the puppies and skip over the older dogs. Zack thinks if he were ever looking into pet adoption, he’d go for an older dog.

“I would totally get this guy,” John says when they reach the end of the last row, staring at a golden retriever sitting at the front of the cage and wagging its tail at John. “He looks friendly.”

“Too bad you’re going to college and are going to be living in a tiny dorm with no room for a dog. Let’s keep walking and find my girlfriend and Alex before they knock something over or set a cat loose.”

“You’re so grumpy.”

“Fuck you. Come on.”

So maybe his friends aren’t exactly the most easy-going people on the planet, Zack acknowledges, following the two of them into another room, this one housing puppies under the age of one. That’s where they find Sierra and Alex, passing a small black puppy back and forth and cooing over it. And that’s also where Zack sees him.

He’s standing across the room, wearing a blue t-shirt with North Shore Animal League written on the back, meaning he’s a volunteer. He’s layering the bottom of a cage with newspaper and he’s tall - not as tall as John but definitely taller than Zack and Matt – with dark brown hair and tight black skinny jeans and everything about him makes Zack have to remind himself to breathe. It probably wouldn't be a very good idea to go passing out around hot strangers who volunteer at animal shelters.

"Guys - look out. I think I've found Zack's next boyfriend," Alex announces to the others, smirking as he nods towards the boy across the room. Zack blushes. It was stupid of him to get caught staring. Especially by Alex.

"He looks familiar," John says, furrowing his eyebrows. "Did he graduate from our school a few years ago?"

Nobody else seems to recognize him, but thanks to them all staring, the guy has now noticed them and Zack is almost positive he just smirked at him. He closes up the cage he had been cleaning and walks over to where a hand sanitized dispenser has been placed on the wall, pressing the button and rubbing the soap into his hands before coming over to the small group of friends. Zack finds himself trying to slip between Sierra and Matt but neither of them will budge, leaving him to be the one to stand right in front.

"You guys need any help with anything?" the boy asks the group, but his eyes are set on Zack. "In case you didn't know already, we're actually having a sale today on adoption prices. Half price if you adopt a dog or cat that's three years or older."

"We're here to adopt a kitten," Sierra says quickly, handing the puppy in her arms over to John. She grabs Matt's hand and starts pulling him in the direction on the next door, eyes meeting Zack's and giving him that look that he takes to mean 'hit on him or else'. She tends to forget that Zack isn't exactly very good at flirting with people. Getting Gabe to date him was a fluke. Zack still has no idea how he managed that one.

Alex follows along behind them and John mumbles something about putting the puppy he has in his arm away and in typical John fashion, he leaves Zack alone. Sometimes, Zack really wonders why he keeps John around.

"So are you interested in adopting today or are you just here to offer your friend moral support in choosing the right kitten?" the guy asks, and from this close, Zack can see how blue his eyes are.

Ignoring the butterflies that seem to have suddenly taken over his stomach, Zack shrugs his shoulders in an uncaring way and responds, "I guess I'm just sort of along for the ride. I don't know very much about cats."

"Well they aren't too complicated," he laughs as he holds his hand out for Zack to shake. "I'm Martin, by the way."

"I'm Zack."

Martin's grip is strong and his smile widens as they shake hands, and Zack feels like his heart is going to burst out of his chest. Not only is he shaking hands with and talking to a really, really attractive guy, but he kind of also has the feeling that maybe Martin is sort of interested in him as well. He’s not walking away or making up excuses to go into the next room, so he’ll take that as a good sign. This never happens. Not even in Zack's dreams.

“You know, even if you’re not interested in adopting, you can still take them out and play with them if you wanted to. A lot of people come here just to do that.”

Zack frowns, “Isn’t that kind of…mean? To the animals, I mean.”

“I agree, but I’m supposed to offer anyway in hopes that a family will come with the intention of just looking and change their minds the second they hold a dog. That’s what my boss says, anyway,” Martin says, reciting it as though he’s been told to memorize it. He probably has, Zack realizes. “Anyway. You should probably catch up to your friends and I should probably do my job and assist them in picking out a kitten. I didn’t exactly volunteer just for the chance to talk to a cute guy.”

Martin grins and Zack feels his cheeks heating up and he’s suddenly praying that his blush isn’t too stupidly obvious.

“Although,” Martin adds with a shrug of his shoulders and a smirk, “it’s a definite plus.”

And now Zack knows for certain that his blush is definitely more than obvious. He finds himself laughing and glancing down at the floor in a typical girly fashion and he’s glad that John is not standing next to him because he’d never let him live this down. “I – I should probably catch up to them – Alex has probably let one of the cats escaped or something by now and Sierra’s probably egging him on and if I don’t get back to them they’ll-”

“You’re even cuter when you start rambling,” Martin laughs, and he pushes Zack gently towards the door. “Let’s go sell your friend a cat.”

*

“Its eyes are weird…I feel like it’s staring into my soul.”

“Pretty sure you don’t have a soul for it to stare into.”

“When I say things like that, Matthew, it’s always hypothetical. You should know this.”

Martin’s only half listening to Alex and Matt’s conversation. They’re sitting right across from him in the waiting room of the Animal League, waiting for Sierra to finish filling out the paperwork for her kitten adoption. John is flipping through a magazine about horses and Zack is…well he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t staring at the boy he met earlier who called him cute. He totally is – but he’s trying to be subtle about it. Apparently, it isn’t working.

“You’re staring at his ass and I really hope you’re prepared to explain to him why you’re doing that when he turns around and catches you,” John says, just loud enough for Zack to hear, without looking up from his magazine. “I don’t think I’ll be able to bail you out of that. What the hell did you two talk about that has you acting like a fifteen year old girl?”

Zack hesitates, unsure if he wants John knowing exactly how embarrassing the whole thing was. But, John's his best friend, and he'll probably just find out anyway. "Uh…well…he was nice...."

"And? Did he like, compliment your ass or something and that's why you're blushing like crazy?'

"No...He just. He called me cute."

John slams the magazine down, staring in disbelief. "Are you kidding? He calls you cute and he has you acting like a preteen?"

"Well...yes..."

"You seriously need to get laid soon. Clearly four months is too long for you to not be in a relationship-"

"Shut up, I just think he's nice!" Zack protests, crossing his arms and turning away from John. He doesn't need to be reminded of just how long he and Gabe have been over. He gets that enough every time he logs into his Facebook and sees new pictures of Gabe and his boy of the week.

John sighs and wraps his arm comfortingly around Zack's shoulders. "Listen, I'm just saying - don't fall into that pattern again. You remember how fast you fell for Gabe and the asshole screwed you over."

"I can look out for myself," Zack tells him, but even he knows that’s kind of not very true. He sort of has a habit of getting himself into situations that he doesn’t know what to do with. “It’s not like I’m going to get down on one knee and ask him to marry me, or something.”

“As your wingman, I will give you this advice,” John leans forward, looking past Zack so he can get a better look at Martin, who’s standing behind the desk helping someone fill out a paper. “If he’s into you, he’ll give you his number before we leave. If he doesn’t, then clearly it isn’t mean to be. Okay?”

“But what if I see him somewhere else? Like, at the store or something? Would I say hi?”

“Don’t worry about that yet; if he told you that you were cute and he seemed interested – he did seem interested, right?”

Zack nods, but now he’s kind of second guessing it – did Martin really seem interested? Or was he just being flirty and that’s just the way he is?

“Okay well then he’s probably interested and he’ll probably give you his number. But just chill, okay? And stop staring. You’re creeping me out.”

For the next half an hour, while Sierra finishes filling out the papers and waits for them to call the reference she put down to make sure she’ll be a ‘smart and responsible pet owner’, Zack does his best to look anywhere but at Martin. It’s not too hard – Martin disappears for fifteen minutes and when he comes back, it’s with a young girl and her mom who are clearly also about to start the adoption process. Zack finds himself doing some more second guessing. Martin hasn’t looked over at him or made any eye contact with him at all since he helped Sierra pick out her cat. He can’t help but feel like he took Martin’s comments the wrong way.

It’s nearly two hours after they first arrived at the adoption center by the time Martin comes back to tell Sierra her adoption request went through. He smiles as she shrieks with excitement and gushes about how awesome it is to finally have the cat she’s been waiting for and how awesome of a boyfriend Matt is for getting it for her and there’s a whole lot of ‘awesome’ thrown around but Zack just kind of ignores it. He’s far too used to it by now to even think twice about it. He watches Sierra take the small cat carrier from Martin’s hands and she and Alex are instantly talking to the kitten through the cage door and Matt is rolling his eyes and John pushes on Zack’s back and Zack takes that to mean talk to him. It all kind of happens too fast but Zack figures talking to Martin isn’t a terrible idea.

“Um. So thanks for your help,” he says to Martin, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. “My friends are kind of overwhelming.”

“It’s no problem,” Martin responds, still smiling. He never seems to stop. “Trust me; I deal with much worse some days. Besides, I got to talk to you, so that made it much easier.”

Thankful that he’s not blushing again, Zack feels a sudden bit of confidence come out of nowhere, and he takes advantage of it. “Good thing I came along, then. Otherwise you would have just been stuck with them.”

Martin laughs, “Lucky me, huh? So I guess I’ll see you around, then?”

“Sure,” Zack nods, biting his lip. He hears John sigh from behind him and he knows to just take this and go. Clearly, Martin’s not giving him his number. “See you around.”

*

Two in the morning comes and brings Zack nothing but regret. Why did he just leave there without getting Martin’s number? Or even giving Martin his number? What was the worst that could happen? Him saying no? A lot worse has definitely happened to Zack before and a rejection from a guy he barely even knew would not have been so bad. He just would have to avoid that animal shelter for a while. Possibly forever. But even then – not really so bad. Now he’s never going to know if Martin was into him or not, all because he didn’t have the guts to put his heart on the line to find out.

You could just go back tomorrow.

His brain is right but his heart is telling him that’s a terrible idea. What if Martin thinks that’s kind of creepy? What if he doesn’t want to see Zack? What if – he hadn’t thought of this until now – he has a boyfriend and is just naturally flirtatious? The chances of Zack getting rejected are a little too high to be comfortable. He should just leave it alone and maybe, if he’s really meant to get Martin’s number, he’ll get it another day, or something. Like, he’ll run into Martin at the store or on the street and everything will work out perfectly from there. Zack just has to leave it alone.

But of course, he won’t.