In Every Universe

9. Zacky

NINE

ZACKY

Zacky had a phone check-in with the team doctor to relay his MRI results, which was awkward and stilted since Zacky had never met him before—or he didn’t remember. The doctor was extremely worried about Zacky’s cognitive function, and it wasn’t like Zacky could disagree with him. His brain still felt like it had been replaced with a ball of aluminum foil. He’d had to admit he had memory loss, which was the way Zacky would have to play this.

Being concussed was boring and gave him way too much time for his thoughts to marinate. Every day, more hope leaked out of him. But as he started feeling incrementally better, he got cleared for low-impact workouts.

Shane, Elliott, and Micah came over whenever they had any slice of free time in order to entertain him—he thought Cameron might have been the one to encourage that. Micah made them play too many rounds of Catan—with a running tally of who won—and Zacky’s brain worked just enough to not lose every single time.

When he was allowed a bit of screen time, he used it to FaceTime his family. That was something that hadn’t changed. Even in this world, his brothers were still playing hockey. Dave was in Indiana, and Lukas was playing in Seattle. Clashing hockey schedules meant they couldn’t come visit him, but they were rooting for him. The normalcy of it helped.

He and Cameron got into cooking, since they could take up basically an entire evening making—and fucking up—complicated shit. But they made fifteen-hour potatoes, and they came out good enough to encourage making more weird stuff Cameron found on TikTok.

Everything about what Zacky was experiencing was weird, except for the fact that Cameron was his best friend still. Sure, they didn’t fall into bed together at the end of their days. Cameron didn’t drop to his knees and suck Zacky off on the couch when they got bored of the puzzle they were doing, and Zacky kept rediscovering the empty spot on his ring finger where his wedding ring should be. Every time, it felt like a cold bucket of water had been dumped over his head, resetting any temporary joy Cameron had been coaxing out of him.

But Cameron was still Cameron , silly and thoughtful and honestly more devoted to Zacky than he would have guessed he’d be without the romantic parts to their relationship. They shared a Venmo account in this universe, too. He was both baffled and completely unsurprised every time he found another layer to their friendship. He wouldn’t even be surprised to find out he and Cameron had bought funeral plots next to each other or some shit. Cameron’s passcode on his phone was Zacky’s fucking birthday, like his husband’s was. When they ended up standing next to each other in the kitchen when the boys would come over, Cameron’s hand always found Zacky’s shoulder, like it belonged there.

Cameron was still pure comfort, even if Zacky couldn’t have sex with him. Which was why, when he was having a bad night and couldn’t sleep because of the pain, he didn’t hesitate to snuggle up next to Cameron when he found him on the couch. Cameron closed the lid to his laptop and let Zacky tuck himself under his arm.

“Are you okay?” Cameron asked. His hand came up to cradle Zacky’s head gently against his chest, and while it didn’t stop the pain, it was still nice.

“Can’t sleep. Head is pounding.”And his heart was feeling tender and wounded, too. Cameron already knew that, though.

“Should I get you some drugs?”

“In a minute,” Zacky said, taking time to savor the feeling of being this close to Cameron. Pressing his cheek to Cameron’s beautiful, strong, warm chest was one of the reasons Zacky had been put on earth, and he wasn’t going to end this moment any sooner than he had to, even if it meant prolonging his headache.

“I’m sorry I’m not him,” Cameron whispered. “I’m sorry I can’t be who you need.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re already being too nice to me.”

“Not any nicer than I usually am.”

“Millsy said you spoil me.”

“You’re my favorite person.”

“You’re mine,” Zacky whispered. It was late and quiet in their dark apartment, and Zacky focused on Cameron’s heartbeat and his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest. That heartbeat belonged to him in another universe. It was overwhelming to think about how far away he was from the person he loved most in the world. He couldn’t help his tears, even though crying never made headaches feel better.

“Zack,” Cameron said, easing Zacky far enough away from him to wipe his tears away. Zacky wanted to kiss him so badly it hurt. It only made him cry harder. “Okay, you need painkillers.”

He got up to grab Zacky Advil and a glass of water, and he made Zacky finish the whole glass.

“Back to bed?” Cameron asked. Zacky didn’t want to go. He stood up to sag against Cameron again. Being close to him made everything better and worse.

“Will you lie with me again?” Zacky asked, only brave enough to ask because he was in pain, and part of him thought this must all be a simulation or a dream anyway.

“Yeah, of course,” Cameron said, no hesitation.

If this was all happening in Zacky’s head, why on earth would his own brain give him a version of Cameron he couldn’t kiss? If he’d made this Cameron up somehow to be this sweet and doting but not sexually attracted to him, well…he’d have to be pissed at the head injury gods then. “Do you want to sleep in my bed? It’s bigger.”

“Yeah,” Zacky said. He went to his bedroom and grabbed the blanket Cameron had bought him because he’d been cuddling it to sleep in lieu of a husband.

When he walked into Cameron’s room, he was facing away from Zacky, pulling his t-shirt off over his head. Zacky watched the reveal of the smooth expanse of Cameron’s back with bone-deep longing. This boy knew that Zacky was in love with, well, basically him. A parallel-universe him. And he still invited Zacky to sleep in his bed with him. How did Zacky deserve Cameron Vesper in any universe?

They both climbed into bed, Cameron flicking the lights off, and then they were under the covers. And Zacky had no idea what to do. Lie there, he guessed.

“Thanks, Cameron,” Zacky said into the darkness. The soft glow of the city permeated through Cameron’s blinds, and slowly Zacky’s eyes were adjusting. When he looked over at Cameron, he could see him lying there, head on the pillow next to his. It was so heart-wrenchingly familiar.

“Do you, uh, want me to hold you?” He sounded awkward as he offered, but willing to do what Zacky needed.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Zacky said, trying to give him an out. He didn’t know what he would do in Cameron’s situation. He was grateful for anything Cameron did for him.

“C’mon, Porter,” Cameron said, scooting in close to him. “Don’t act like we’ve never cuddled before.”

Cameron slid closer, closing the gap between them, and Zacky, out of sheer force of habit, flipped on his side facing away from Cameron and settled back into his body, finding his hand and pressing it to his own heart like he did every night as they got ready to fall asleep. He didn’t think twice about how his ass was now pressed against Cameron’s crotch. Should he scoot away? Had anyone in the history of the world ever been in a bigger mindfuck than he was right now?

Cameron didn’t move, though. He kept his hand pressed to Zacky’s chest where Zacky had put it, whispered a “Night, Zack” into his ear, and that was that.

Hours later, Zacky jolted awake. He had the same stress dream he’d been having since Junior, where they were all on the bus on their way to a game, and it was snowy out and the driver was trying to land the bus like a plane. It doesn’t make sense, but it always resulted in him waking up with his heart pounding.

He and Cameron had drifted apart in the hours since they fell asleep, but his jolt woke Cameron up enough for him to roll back toward Zacky and open his arms. “C’mere,” he said, his raspy sleepy drawl enough for Zacky’s half-asleep brain to wonder if he’d made it back to his real life. He tongued the gap in his bottom teeth and sighed. But he still pressed close to Cameron, facing him this time, and Cameron rubbed his back for a bit when Zacky pressed his face into the crook of his neck.

He didn’t remember falling back asleep.

Cameron was trying his best to acclimate Zacky to their life, if jogging his memories back wasn’t going to work. He’d ordered stacks of printed photos of the last three years, and they went through them together until Zacky started to cry. It was overwhelming to see himself in so many situations he didn’t remember.

Afterward, Zacky had gone through every one of his possessions in an attempt to understand himself.

But maybe the answer to his current anguish wasn’t to become the Zacky he had swapped lives with. He was in the kitchen looking for a pair of tongs to remove the frozen pot stickers he was making on the stove when he pulled out a drawer that must be a junk drawer. There was spare change, tape, pens, stamps, and rubber bands. And a notebook.

He had to retrieve his pot stickers from the pan with two forks before they burned, and once he plated them, he went back to the drawer.

He’d seen the speckled cover of a composition notebook under the rest of the junk, and he shimmied it out. On a quick flip through, it was almost completely blank. The first page, in what Zacky knew was his mother-in-law’s handwriting, was the date they moved into their apartment, the leasing company, and a few other details that Zacky was sure Cameron had in an email somewhere.

The rest of the pages were fresh and blank.

He tore the first sheet out and put it back in the junk drawer. Then he grabbed a pen and brought his notebook and food to the kitchen table.

This was what he needed. He didn’t need to fill his brain up with the last three years in this universe. He needed to comb through his brain and write down his actual memories of his life. His student-teaching position, and his husband. The house they shared, and the puppy they had been planning on getting that summer. The baby they were saving up to have. He brainstormed bullet points on the first page and then flipped to the next page to start writing.

Zacky worried about the legibility of his thoughts, but he couldn’t slow his thinking down enough to write more clearly. Once he started thinking about the months that came after quitting hockey, and the events that got the two of them to where they were before Zacky was ripped from it, he couldn’t stop. He let his food get cold, and finally, he couldn’t make his hand keep holding the pen as it cramped from overuse.

He inhaled his cold food, barely tasting it as he savored his memories. When Cameron first got injured, quitting hockey had been the scariest thing Zacky had ever done. All he knew until that point had been hockey. And then all they could do was figure out how to make a life together from the scraps.

But damn . The life they made together was beautiful. It was hard—through Cameron’s injury, dealing with setting boundaries with his parents, and finding new careers for the two of them. Zacky had never been one hundred percent sure they would make it through. But he knew something was going right when Cameron, who had always been worried about being able to be a good parent to a child, given his own parentage, had started talking about the two of them figuring out how to have a kid. Zacky ached for the future they were planning together.

He put his plate in the sink and brought the notebook into his room, sliding it into the top drawer of his side table, where he’d hidden the empty stick of Cameron’s deodorant that he took a quick, pathetic sniff of. His sadness in that moment felt like his own fault. And since Cameron was at practice in this universe, and Zacky still wasn’t allowed to look at screens, the only course of action was to climb into bed and pretend his Cameron was there with him, holding him and pressing the softest of kisses to the back of his head, which still ached. Everything ached.