I'll Never Let Go, Chapter 5I'll Never Let Go, Chapter 5
Zac took his pants out of the dryer and folded them, putting them on top of the pile of his clean clothes. It had been a week since the night of the formal, six days from when Isaac found out about Tay's girlfriend. Surprisingly, Ike had't told.
The week had gone normally enough, Zac had only been asked to two parties, which he declined, asked to join one band, which he also declined, and he had only been asked out twice. Yup, it had been a pretty normal week.
Ike's twenty-first birthday was in a day, and Ike was planning to use his newly-earned adulthood sitting at home with his girlfriend, Kathryn, and blowing out the candles on the cake that Jessie was busy making in the kitchen.
Zac's mom was coming home today. It would be a happy reunion, and Zac knew that his father might actually stop working, since he had become a workaholic ever since Diana had been diagnosed. At the moment, she was in remission, but she had already been in and out of remission twice.
Cory was coming over in a few minutes to watch Titanic, yet again. It seemed whenever both of them were bored, the ritual was to pull out the movie, which they both loved to death, and watch it at either one of their houses. It was Zac's turn today, and he was hurrying with the wash this afternoon because he had to go set it up in his room, where the only available TV was set up.
Zac closed the door to the dryer and pressed the button for it to start. At the same moment, Mack ran past him, holding his Lazer Tag gun up and hiding behind a corner. Mack's friend Lane followed, looking around and swinging his gun around as if he were a secret agent.
The two found eachother and began shooting and ducking. Eventually, Mack was down on the ground, pretending to die as his chest-target thing went screaming off a siren to signal that he was dead.
Zac stood there, snickering at his little brother's sick attempts at acting dead.
Lane looked down at Mack, who was lying at his feet, and shouted,"Ha, ha! I win!"
"No, two out of three!" Mack said, becoming un-dead and sitting up.
"Fine." Lane grinned and ran up the stairs. Mack followed.
Zac smiled after his little bro and picked up the piles of everyone else's clothes and dropped them off on his way upstairs. When he got to his room, he checked the mess for any unsuitable stuff that he didn't want Cory to see. He took a pile and shoved it under his bed, realizing that he had forgotten the movie downstairs.
When Zac reached the kitchen, he heard the doorbell ring.
"Time out!" called Mack, through the house, as he opened the door.
Zac turned to see Jessie sitting at the table watching TV.
"Hey." he said.
"Hi. What's up?" she asked.
"Well me and Cory are going to watch Titanic. Want to see it with us?" he asked, hoping that she would refuse.
"No, thanks anyways. I don't think that I could bare leaving that movie to tend to Ike's cake." she admitted.
"Yeah. Good point." he said. He went and retrieved the movie.
As he approached the entry way, he heard Mack and Cory talking.
"My gosh, Mack, you would not even believe how much you resemble your brother when he was eight or nine!" Cory gasped.
"Which one?" Mack said, playing around.
"You know very well which one!" Zac said as he came into the room. He and Mack looked so much alike, if you looked at pictures of them both from when Zac was eight and when Mack was eight, they looked almost like twins. It was uncanny.
"I know. It's just that yopu would not believe how many people tell me that on a daily basis. I mean, sometimes mom ar dad will call me Zac on accident!" he said, sounding somewhat annoyed.
"Hey if I were you, I'd take it as a compliment" Zac said, running his fingers through his mushroom-cut hair.
"You are just so full of it!" Cory told him. Then to Mack,"Don't listen to him, Mack,"
"I never do." Mack said, running off and yelling to Lane, "Time in."
"God, he is getting so big!" Cory exclaimed.
"Yeah, I know. It's kind of weird looking at himand seeing myself when I was little." Zac told her.
"Well, you got the movie?" Cory asked.
"Of course. Shall we go upstairs?" he asked.
"Okay. Where shaould I out my coat?" she asked, taking off her coat, reveiling a sweater vest and long sleeved collar shirt.
"Um, here, I'll put it in the coat closet." he said, taking it and putting it in the closet along the entry way wall.
"Oh, yeah, how's Ave? I forgot to ask." Cory asked. Avery had broken her ankle a few weeks before and was walking around on crutches complaining to everyone.
"Well, I think that she just wants attention." Zac said.
"Yeah, Amber did that when she broke her collar bone. God, it was annoying." she said.
"Should we go watch the movie now?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm ready for three hours and fifteen minutes of Leo." she said, laughing.
"Okay, lets go!" he said, running up the stairs, hearing Cory's footsteps right behind him.
When they got to his room, Zac put the movie in his VCR. He turned to find Cory sprawled out on his bed, patting the space next to her for him to lay down on.
He did, and they watched the movie that never-got-boring-even- if-you-had-seen-it-a-million-times-before, Titanic. *~*Authors Note- If you haven't seen the movie, then you may not understand some of the parts I am describing*~*
Cory got shivers every time she saw the looming ship about a mile and a half down in the water, overgrown with plants and rusted. Her goosebumps appeared on her arms and she shivered, like always.
Zac glanced over at her and stifled a smirk yet again, hoping she wouldn't notice that he had noticed.
She did, and gently slapping him, she said," Hey, that's not funny!"
"Yeah it is. You get goosebumps every time!" he said.
"So, the movie has that effect on you." she told him.
"Whatever. Look, want some popcorn or a soda or something?" he asked.
"Yeah sure, whatever you are having." she said, focussing again on the movie.
Zac went downstairs, popping a bag of popcorn and grabbing two Pepsi's. When the popcorn was done, he brought it back upstairs to find Cory asleep on his bed. He put the stuff down on his desk and layed down next to her and began watching more of the movie.
At the part in the movie when Rose and Jack were making out in the automobile, Cory stirred and woke up, with a big yawn.
Zac looked over and found her awake, staring at him.
"What?" he asked her.
"Oh, I just love watching your facial expressions during the movie. They change so quickly." she said.
"Okay." he said, as if saying, 'I don't want to know'.
"What?" she said, "It's true. You should try it sometime."
"Shhhh. I'm watching the movie!" he hushed her.
Later in the movie, when Jack died, Zac and Cory both started crying. Zac couldn't help it if he was sensitive, and that he had cried three times in the past week.
"Oh," Cory sobbed, "that is just so sad!" She buried her head in his chest and sobbed.
Zac got a cleanex and wiped his eyes. Even if he had seen it a million times, it still got to him. It hadn't bugged him as much when he was twelve, when the movie first came out, but it suddenly did, like he finally understood how much love should be valued.
Cory looked up at him and pressed her forehead against his. "We are an odd pair! We can't even go through Titanic without a box of cleanex!" she laughed, sitting up.
Zac hadn't really noticed until recently, how pretty Cory really was. He couldn't help the fact that he found himself thinking about her more, and wishing that their relationship was somewhat different.
Cory wasn't thinking that, he knew. She had just told him the other day how much she valued his friendship, and then she had gone on to ask Zac to help her get Micheal, one of his friends, to go out with her. Tough luck, Zac had always had it easy with girls, but he welcomed the challenge of making Cory fall for him just as he had fallen for her.
Cory brought him out of his thoughts by stopping the tape and rewinding it calling out,"Zac? Zac, hello? Earth to Zac, come in Zac!"
"What?" he asked.
"What I was just saying before I figured you were Lost In Space was that I had better leave. I'll see you later!" she said, beginning to walk out.
"Wait, I'll come with you, I have to go downstairs anyways." he said.
"Okay, but hurry up!" she said.
They walked downstairs to find everyone but Ike and Zoe gone. Zac showed Cory out, and went into the Living Room, where Ike and Zoe were watching TV. Ike and Zoe were obviously very close, like how Taylor and Ike had used to be. Zac thought that it was actually pretty funny since Zoe was young enough to be Ike's daughter, not his sister.
Zac hadn't really talked to Ike about what he had overheard, and he planned to do so before tomorrow's big birthday dinner, when Tay and Lauren were going to announce their pregnancy. He didn't want Ike wrecking it and blowing the secret at the wrong time.
"Hey Zac." Ike said, as Zac entered the room.
"Hi. Do you think that I could borrow you for a few minutes? I have to talk to you really bad." Zac said.
Ike got up, leaving Zoe to her coloring book.
When they got to Zac's room upstairs, Zac closed the door and turned to see Ike staring at him. "This is about Tay and Lauren, huh?" he asked.
"Yup. I know that you know about her being pregnant, and I hope that you are happy now, since Tay is even more nervous about you spilling it than he is about telling them himself." Zac said.
"Well, it's not my fault he chose to knock up his girlfriend right when mom was going into remission." Ike said, getting defensive.
"I know, I know. But I mean, they are handling it the best they can. They can't just go back and undo what they did." Zac said, standing up for Tay.
"Yeah, but they should've been smart enough to prevent it from the beginning." Ike said, matter-of-factly.
"You know what Ike? Tay was right about you. You really were raised in a sheltered life." Zac said, getting mad," You have no idea that in the real world, things break, or whatever. Nothing is entirly safe. Look, I know that you think that this could never happen to you, but it can. I have friends who are pregnant or got someone pregnant. They wish all of the time that they had known what I am telling you now.
"But you have to put yourself in Tay's shoes. He's probably scared to death of what is going to happen, but the worst thing for you to do is to make matters worse by being mean, and passing it off as something that he was stupid enough to do. You are about to become an Uncle, and all you have to say is 'They should have been smarter'. I am so sick of you two always at it. Can't you remember when we were younger?" Zac said, yelling.
"God, Zac! You know what?" Ike asked.
"What?" Zac answered.
"I guess that you are right. But you have to understand that Tay has given me nothing but greif. He always treats me like I wouldn't understand, and runs to you because 'you know what the real world's all about'. I just think that he thinks that he is too good for me now, and I hate him for it!" Ike said." But I guess that I should try to help him. Hating never got anybody anywhere."
"Good, so you won't tell mom and dad about them tomorrow at your dinner?" Zac asked.
