#zack martin
Sooo… I decided to backtrack a little to show a portion of how we got here. With some pointers from Zack Martin Specialist Extraordinaire @zenryverse I know that this one probably isn’t as accurate to the character. I’m still finding my voice as Zack, and hopefully he’s not very ooc, and if so, I plan to eventually be able to get him down pretty good. @bitchmilsky Just in case you want to go on this journey with us.
Cody told him that he should make a list, so that he wouldn’t forget the things that he’d need to know. Henry told him that there wasn’t too much… then proceeded to have a new thing that he needed to know to “keep the peace” with her… His best friend. Zack could handle it… He wasn’t gonna make any list. It would be fine. It wasn’t like she was a complete stranger. They’d hung out sometimes, with Henry. He was pretty good at reading people and stuff. But. When she got there, she was like a different person than the girl who had been joking around with Henry and Jasper, clueing him in to things that he was confused about and having the only brain in the room. She was kinda frigid. He didn’t know if that was the right word, or if that was fair. She was probably just homesick or something.
“This is the room. I tried to make it as accommodating as possible,” he said. Her eyes darted around the room, very judgmentally and he wished that he knew what she was thinking. “Is it okay?”
She looked at him like she had just noticed him, “There’s no window,” she mentioned, but she forced a smile anyway, “It’s just… I have a few plants…”
“Oh, you can totally put them near any of the windows in the apartment!” She nodded and for the first (not the last) time, Zack thought that maybe he had spoken too soon whenever he volunteered to let her stay here. He still didn’t make a list, but he knew that he’d have to probably think harder about everything Henry had said. Had Henry mentioned she’d come with plants? He couldn’t remember hearing anything about plants.
She declined his help unpacking her white hatchback. She didn’t really talk about her day whenever she came and went. Whenever they were near each other, she stared at him uncomfortably when she thought he wasn’t noticing. He wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong. Henry said that she was hard to please, but some of the stories that he’d heard would suggest that she could and had put up with a lot on the job. So, he wasn’t sure if this was a Zack problem.
Jasper had loved him right away. He had been a bit territorial whenever Henry and Zack were feeling each other, with Charlotte being the one to reign him in. What had changed?
“Is everything okay?” he had asked her as she set up on the table in the dining room to study. She stared at him, her eyebrows on a journey, like she was trying to figure out why he was asking. Great. Nothing had been wrong, now she must think he was being confrontational.
“I was hoping I could study here, since there’s no natural light in the bedroom?”
His heart was beating fast and hard. There was something in her tone. She definitely was on the defensive. “Yeah, yeah! That’s fine. It’s great, actually. I was hoping that you’d come out of the room some time when you’re here…” She forced a smile. All of her smiles seemed forced. He was obviously bombing this “make Henry’s best friend feel welcome” thing. “Well, if you need anything, I’ll be… inside of this apartment. I mean, I don’t have anywhere to go or anything, and I live here, so…”
“Got it,” she said, with a thumb up. She set her things on the table, a plant in the center of the table, her computer, a notepad, a stylus, and a cup of noodles with what appeared to be personal chopsticks sticking out of it. They had flowers of some sort of them and were not the plain wooden ones he usually saw. He wanted to ask her about them, but after a moment of staring, she looked up at him, confused and he waved his hands and made himself scarce. Charlotte blinked a few times, then dived into her studies.
Days passed. Every time Zack saw her, she was there, in that spot, with her things set up, with her disposal cups of noodles with fancy chopsticks she owned. Sometimes, she was playing music, but she would put it in her earlobes when he showed up, even though he told her she didn’t have to. He actually wanted to see what kind of music she liked and see if that could be his doorway in.
After a couple of weeks, the cups of noodles were troubling him, but he got even more troubled when he realized something. She was at school and he was getting ready for work. He went to the cabinet for his cup to make a morning smoothie and… there were no dishes in the sink. He didn’t remember when they weren’t there, but he knew that he definitely had not washed any… but he HAD used plenty… Oh no. Oh, God. Had Charlotte cleaned all of his dirty dishes? He didn’t even want to make his smoothie now. What if he made a mess? “It’s okay. I can just clean up after myself…” he sighed and rushed to make his smoothie… but he didn’t have time to clean up AND be on time for work, so he spent several minutes making a decision, and ultimately left his mess and was also late for work… But, when he got back, fortunately his mess was still there.
He had been texting and calling people all day, quite frankly stressed out, but Cody had helped out by suggesting he do something nice for her, like cook dinner or “just clean up after himself.” He ignored that part for the moment and wondered if there was anything simple (and inexpensive) that he could cook. Cody named several things, and Zack just repeated a couple back to him randomly, to get him to stop, and to get a couple of recipes out of him.
London and Maddie had been his rocks in advice on living with a woman… London asked him to send a photo of the bedroom he “stuck her in,” and whenever she saw it, she insisted that he couldn’t expect her to be that excited about the space. Well, that wasn’t helpful, but it reminded him that she needed to be comfortable outside of the room as well.
Maddie had asked him a lot of questions. Some he knew the answers to, some he checked his texts with Henry to see if he had been told, some he had to ask Henry about in the moment… But, he thought, felt and hoped that he would not fail this. What if he and Henry were together for a long time? He HAD to make sure that he was in good with the bestie. He didn’t want to see himself on AITA or something. Offering his boyfriend’s most cherished platonic friend a place to stay and then sticking her in a dim closet and leaving messes for her to clean up… “What about a farmer’s market?” Maddie asked and searched the area, “Looks like there’s one in the area coming up soon. If nothing else, you could at least have some fresh food options outside of cups of noodles?” He… finally made a list, but he was not gonna tell Cody that.
He cleaned his mess up first, then went shopping for the ingredients for the recipe that he was going to try first. Whenever he got home, she was at the table, listening to a lecture and highlighting things on her notepad.
She looked up whenever she heard the door and watched him struggle with way more bags than one should carry in one trip, but he didn’t like that whole back and forth to the vehicle, so he grabbed everything at once. “Decided to make dinner!” He said, with a smile. She didn’t have her cup of noodles on the table, so he was glad for that. She had a cup with one of those reusable metal straws in it and she looked confused for a moment as she stirred her drink with the straw.
Then she asked, “You’re making dinner?” She asked it pretty suspiciously, so she might have heard that he didn’t really cook. “For both of us?” She wondered.
“Yes!” He exhaled, dropping arm fulls of groceries on the kitchen counter. He promised, breathing hard, “It’ll be great. It’s the least I can do. You washed the dishes.”
She shrugged, “Didn’t have much of a choice. Couldn’t let all the bacteria mutate and spread. I can’t afford to get sick, and I really don’t want us to get pests or anything either. Plus… There was a spoiled milk smell that reached all the way to the bedroom.” She sipped her drink and he felt panicked. If a roach or a fruit fly ever found it’s way into the apartment, he’d be the reason. That wasn’t something he wanted her to walk from this living experience with.
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
She smiled, but her eyes suggested that she was doubtful about that. “I have a few air purifying plants, but they help breathe in, not eliminate such threats.”
“Well, it’s. I’m. Not gonna leave anything again, so they’ll be wasting their energy.” He smiled and she returned it and returned to her work. He’d show her! He was gonna be the best roommate, best guide, and best friend she had… outside of Henry and Jasper, and definitely in THIS apartment. This was her home, at least for now. He had to make sure she felt that, and that she conveyed that to Henry, too. Not that he was taking care of her to impress Henry. It was just good manners. Also, to impress Henry. Also to make Henry’s best friend happy. You didn’t want to be on the bad side of the best friend of the boy you loved… and he was pretty determined not to be.
