Page 28 of Blackout

‘What are you doing here?’ Zach asked me as he came to a stop beside me. There was worry in his voice, a genuine concern about my wellbeing.

When I found my voice, I rambled like I often did in Zach’s presence. ‘Abby and I went for a walk, and we ended up here. I was curious about your neighbour, this house is abandoned, then all these thoughts about my life passed through my head.’

All of a sudden, a memory from ten years ago rushed through my mind and I was right back there in the car as it spun around. I was still spinning even though the car wasn’t moving. Back then, my vision had blurred as the impact shook my body, and I’d willed for the screams to stop. But everything had gone black.

My face was now wet with tears. That night my whole life had changed from carefree and happy to just moving through the motions. Would I always struggle with my emotions and racing heart? Would I ever get a handle on the sentimental mess that I was? Then I felt Zach pull me closer to him. ‘I got you, I got you,’ Zach said softly on repeat.

I had heard these words before, long before today and Zach’s party. His hands cupped my shoulders, and my hands fisted Zach’s tee-shirt when he lightly caressed my neck with his thumbs. I closed my eyes and let his touch distract me, my heartrate had slowed, and the rest of my body was almost calm as I tried to reach for the first time I had heard those words.

‘You’ve said those words to me before.’

‘Yeah, babe, I’ve said them to you before.’ Zach embraced me a little tighter. I felt relief wash over me and relaxed into Zach’s arms. ‘At my party.’

I wasn’t talking about his party. ‘I got you, I got you,’ played on a loop in my head. Those words were familiar to me. But a haziness surrounded some of the finer details of my memories. I had heard them somewhere before but I couldn’t place where.

Zach kissed my forehead, then moved his arms under my legs and picked me up. He carried me down a path that wasn’t beside the river but led back towards his house, with Abby right by his side. It was only when she saw the veranda that she took off to her favourite spot in the sun. Zach, though, didn’t let me go. When we reached his backyard, he walked up the steps of his veranda through the glass doors into the kitchen. Only when we reached his king bed did he let me go and lay me down. I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. I felt the bed dip beside me, and Zach’s hand brushed the hair from my face.

‘I’m going to run you a bath while I get dinner ready,’ Zach told me as he stroked my cheekbone with his thumb.

‘But I already made…’ I only got to say some of the words I needed to say.

‘Harley,’ Zach interrupted, and the movement of his hand on my shoulder forced me to roll over and look at him. ‘I know you made more than dinner, my house smells delicious, but I need to cook the pasta and heat up the sauce.’ Zach then kissed my forehead before he left to run my bath while I rolled back over to my side.

It wasn’t long before Zach was back to pick me up from the bed and carry me towards his bath. He stood over the bathtub with me in his arms and lowered me down fully clothed until I was entirely submerged in water, and it wasn’t warm and bubbly like I thought this bath would be. The water was cold. Cold like the river water I was dumped into, but this water wasn’t straight from the river, and it wasn’t about to warm up.

‘Zach,’ I yelped and splashed water everywhere as I tried like hell to get out of the bath, but Zach kept me down with his hand on my chest. ‘What the hell?’ I screeched, then I shivered, the water had seeped through my clothes to my skin. I was cold and started to feel my body shut down, the shakes were bad, and my heartrate was too slow. It never beat this slowly.

‘Trust me, Harley, it’s for your own good,’ Zach told me, and I was in half a mind to believe he was right.

I laid back, rested my head on the back of the bath and breathed. In through my nose and out through my mouth. And I did it again. And again. My body still shook from the cold water, then turned numb, but my mind was completely calm, and it felt good, like I should always feel this good. I never knew calm could feel so good.

Zach’s eyes never left me, and now that my body had gone limp, he reached down to pull the plug. I watched as the water rushed out the drain and away from my body. Out the corner of my eye I could see Zach reach for the towels. All I wanted to do was peel out of these wet clothes and into something dry.

‘So cold,’ I managed to stammer through chattering teeth.

‘I know.’ Zach threw a towel over my legs. ‘Can you lean forward?’

I looked up at him and shrugged.

‘I need to wrap the towel around you.’ He held the towel in his hands ready to wrap it around me.

I reached out, my hand landing on his forearm, and I pulled myself forward enough for the towel to land on my shoulders and fall down my back. Then Zach picked me up and carried me back to his bedroom and into his ensuite.

‘You need to get out of these wet clothes, babe.’ Zach placed me on the closed lidded toilet. ‘I’ll find you some clothes to wear.’

I peeled out of the wet tee-shirt and singlet, placed them on top of the towels. I stripped off my leggings and waited for Zach. He stood in the doorway with everything I needed in his hands. As he stared at me, there was something in his eyes that said he didn’t see a cold naked mess, but rather something else. Zach dropped clothes into my lap, and I noticed they weren’t my clothes.

‘Zach?’ His lips kissed my forehead and his hands landed on my biceps.

‘Harley,’ Zach whispered as he lifted my chin up so our eyes could meet.

‘What the hell?’ I wanted to be more than angry at Zach for his bath stunt, as normal people didn’t have cold baths. But I couldn’t be angry when I felt this calm. The calmest I’d felt in a long time.

I believed that Zach was only trying to help with whatever was going on with me, and I wondered where he would get an idea to use cold water as a calming mechanism. No one had ever helped me before with the many things I didn’t know how to handle. Had Zach seen something no one in my family had picked up on?

‘Come on, let’s get you fed.’ Zach tucked me under his underarm and we moved into the kitchen.

I sat on the stool at his breakfast bar, and he draped a blanket over my shoulders. I glanced into the kitchen and saw that my bread was sliced, my sauce was on to be heated up, the pasta was cooked, and I smiled to myself when I noticed a muffin was gone.