I Treated You So Wrong

Chapter Twenty-One

The air was slightly warm, but there was a breeze that made everything just a little bit cooler. I got to the beach at ten forty-five. I have fifteen minutes from the time that Zacky specified.

The stars were out. If you watched carefully, you could see one streak across the sky and disappear into the horizon. I made a lot of wishes…
The waves gently washed up on the shore, wetting the sand and leaving a glow from the moon and twinkling stars. It was peaceful out here. No wonder I snuck out all those times…it’s too beautiful to pass up. You have to be a crazy person to not want to see this view. The on-going horizon, crystal blue water, soft brown sand, the sweet smell of the sea…the breeze in your hair.

I sat against a log, the one Zacky and I would lay next to almost every night. I had my knees pulled as close as they could go, which wasn’t far. Emily keeps getting in the way, but the thought of it just makes me smile. How she’s so tiny…warm and safe. Not a day goes by now that I wish I could take back what I had almost done to her. She didn’t deserve that. I was thinking about only myself and not her. I didn’t want her be another two eyes that couldn’t see, hands that would never feel, or legs to kick around in the water of the California coast.

I was here by myself. There was no one else here, no matter which direction you looked.

“Rae…?”

I creased my eyebrows and turned around. Standing in the sand with his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. His eyes looked a little puffy and tired, even though it was dark.

“Zack…” I turned back around and sighed.

I heard his step through the sand sit next to me with a slight grunt. From the corner of my eye, I watched as he looked out ahead of him at the water. He looked as if he’d been crying…

“Listen, Zacky-”

“I’m sorry,” he cut in abruptly.

I wrapped my arms around my legs and kept my gazed towards the ocean.

“I didn’t mean any of it…” he mumbled with a sad tone.

“Don’t tell me something I already know…” I mumbled back.

I heard him sigh and shift his position in the sand, “it wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

He must be thinking out loud. He’s the one who made things the way they were now.

“Rae…what happened to us?” He asked suddenly.

I was kind of at a loss for words. I didn’t expect this question. I…kind of expected the same old Zacky…

“We used to be-”

“Close,” I cut in, “but when you left the first time, you’re entire outlook changed.”

Zacky swallowed, hard. I could see his Adam’s apple rise and fall, “you had to put up your rock star persona, go out on stage and shred the shit, drink like a fish…”

“I know…but I never meant for any of it to stay that way…I had you waiting for me here while you were in school…waiting to see what we’d accomplished…”

“Instead I got the Zacky who turned my life upside down. I thought you changed that night, Zacky…” I looked straight at him.
“I did change…”

“Yeah, you did. You changed into someone I didn’t even know, Zack. You were a total stranger two weeks later. You turned into a monster.”

Zacky rubbed his hands over his face and sighed sadly, “I’m so sorry Rae…please…”

My eyes slowly began to tear up, I missed this Zacky. I missed the Zacky who was always there for someone, to be their rock or their shoulder to cry on, just like the old days.

“Please what?” I asked in a quiet voice.

He looked at me. When he spotted my watering eyes, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into his chest, just like he used to do.

“Please forgive me…” he breathed into my hair.

I stayed quiet and it scared him because I hadn’t given him an answer.

“Zack…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know what her full name is?” I turned my body slightly to look up at the dark blue sky littered with silver stars.

He bit onto his bottom, pierced lip and nodded, “Emily Lynn…Sanders…”

Zacky paused for a long amount of time before he even breathed a syllable of the last name.

He wrapped one arm tighter around my collar bone and the other around my waist so his arm was resting gently on my stomach, “I don’t want her to be Sanders, Rae…”

I looked up into his green eyes, just waiting for him to finish, but he never did.

“What…do you want her name to be?” I asked, confused.

“Matt showed the ultrasound picture…she…she looks like a Emily Lynn…Baker…”

Turning my head to look back at the water, a tear slid from my left eye and dripped onto his tattoo covered right arm.

“Then…she’ll be Emily Lynn Baker…” I said quietly, grabbing his right hand with my own right hand over the top and laced our fingers together.