Home for Christmas

They practiced a little while longer, forcing Zane to sing a few more songs with them. Jared hugged her before he left, telling her he'd see her later. Tomo waved from the doorway, saying he hoped he'd see her too. As the door closed behind them, she became acutely aware of the fact that she was alone with Shannon.

"Go on a real date with me, Freckles," he said. Her back was still to him and she hesitated a moment before turning around.

"I can't, Shannon," she said, looking him in the eye.

"Why?"

"Because."

"That's not an answer."

"I know, but it's all you're going to get right now. I'm sorry," she said quickly, knowing she was being awful to him. Without another word, she turned and walked out of the house as quickly as she could.

He followed her closely, and she turned when she got outside.

"Why are you following me?" she asked, and he scoffed.

"You don't have a car," he said, motioning to a black car that must've been his and the otherwise empty driveway.

"Shit," she mumbled, causing him to scoff again.

"I'll give you a ride."

"You don't have to. I'll call a cab or an Uber."

"Yeah, and it'll cost you $400. Get in the car," he told her, pulling a set of keys out of his shorts pocket and clicking the doors unlocked. He opened the passenger door for her and she slipped in. He plopped into the driver's seat beside her and pulled a shirt from the backseat and slipped it over his head. 

They rode most of the way to her parents' house in silence, until finally it seemed Shannon couldn't take it anymore.

"Why won't you go on a date with me?" he asked her, and it took everything she had not to giggle at him. It wasn't that what he was actually asking her was funny, mostly just the way he'd said it. His tone had made him sound like a little boy and it had been adorable.

"I... I'm not in a place where I can do that right now," she told him, and a sideways glance at him told her he rolled his eyes at her.

"You're not in a place where you can go on a date with someone who was mean to you a long time ago but is very sorry and very interested in you now?" he asked, and she looked at him again. "There's something between us, Zane. You can't deny it."

"I can and I will," she said, and she could tell he was getting frustrated.

"Fine. Pretend to be blind. I'm not going to give up, though," he told her as he pulled into her parents' driveway. Her mom was on the porch watering her plants and watching them intently.

"Thanks for the ride," she mumbled, getting out of the car and hurrying to the house.

"Was that Shannon Leto?" her mom asked as she climbed the porch steps.

"I so don't want to talk about it," Zane said, pushing through the front door and hurrying upstairs.

In all seriousness, she wasn't actually sure why she couldn't let herself give him a chance. He was a completely different person than he'd been in high school. That was obvious. As she sat in her childhood room, she really had to wonder if maybe she was the one that hadn't changed.



Later that day, Zane made her way down the stairs towards the front door, bag in hand.

"Just where do you think you're going?" her mom asked, coming out of the kitchen to meet her.

"A hotel. I can't stay in that room anymore," Zane told her, and her mom shook her head.

"You could stay in the guest room," her mom said, and it was Zane's turn to shake her head.

"I can't. I'll stop by every day, I promise. I just need to be on my own for a while," Zane said, trying her best to avoid her mom's hurt look.

As she got into her rental car and threw her bag in the backseat, she did everything she could not to look back at her mom standing in the doorway of her childhood home. She already felt awful for leaving. She knew it had to be breaking her mom's heart. The reality of it, though, was that earlier in the day when she'd been thinking about Shannon, she'd ended up thinking about herself and realizing that she was absolutely the one that was stuck in the past.

In fact, she had no idea why she still had such negative feelings toward everything that had happened to her in high school. She knew none of it mattered anymore. She was afraid. Afraid that she'd held onto those memories so hard because of how uneventful her adult life had actually been, afraid that she'd been so uncomfortable with her new-found feelings for Shannon because he represented change in her life. Afraid of change in general. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she'd always been afraid of change. Sure, she'd moved all over the country, but she'd been doing the same job since graduating college. No matter where she went, she worked the same job, lived in the same apartment, and lived the same boring uneventful life. She didn't know what the real solution was, but she knew she wasn't going to find it staying in her childhood bedroom.