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ZACH
BACK AT THE hotel, Olly calls his friend Zach from our room phone. Half an hour later
he’s at our door.
Zach has dark umber skin and enormous dreadlocks and a smile that’s almost too big
for his face. He immediately begins playing air guitar and singing a song that I don’t
know. Olly grins from ear to ear. Zach thrashes his head dramatically while he “plays” and
his hair keeps time with the “music.”
“Zach!” Olly says, and pulls him into a hug. They slap each other’s backs loudly.
“It’s Zachariah now.”
“Since when?” asks Olly.
“Since I decided to become a rock god. It’s Zachariah like—”
“Messiah,” I pipe in, getting his joke.
“Exactly! Your girlfriend is smarter than you are.”
I blush and look over to see Olly blushing, too.
“Well that was cute,” Zach says, laughing and strumming air-guitar strings. His laugh
reminds me of Carla’s—unself-conscious, a little too loud, and full of mirth. In that
moment I miss her desperately.
Olly turns to me. “Maddy, this is Zach.”
“Zachariah.”
“Dude, I’m not calling you that. Zach, this is Maddy.”
Zach takes my hand and gives it a quick kiss. “Fantastic to meet you, Maddy. I’ve heard
a lot about you, but I didn’t think you were really real.”
“That’s OK,” I say, examining my hand where he kissed it. “Some days I’m not.”
He laughs too loudly again and I find myself laughing with him.
“Wonderful,” Olly cuts in. “Let’s move this along. There’s a loco moco with Maddy’s
name on it.”
A loco moco is a mountain of rice topped with a hamburger patty topped with gravy
topped with two fried eggs. Zach’s taken us to a mixed-plate restaurant for a late lunch.
We sit at a table outside, the ocean just a few hundred feet in the distance.
“This place is the best,” Zach says. “It’s where all the locals eat.”
“You tell your parents yet?” Olly asks him in between bites.
“About the rockstar thing or the gay thing?”
“Both.”