Zac woke up the next morning on the floor of Jarren's spare bedroom, his arm draped around Gwen who was still asleep beside him. He looked at the time. It was eleven o'clock. If he'd was still part of the band, now that Taylor was home, he'd probably be in the studio grueling away at an album that never seemed to be finished. He was glad he wasn't doing that any longer.
He sat up; his head was buzzing. It wasn't going to be a good morning for anybody in the house. After he got high with Lindsay, Jarren, and Gwen, a couple more of his old friends showed up and they had a good time, drinking and smoking until they all inevitably fell asleep around six o'clock in the morning. Zac was always up after five hours of sleep. That was one thing that would change once he went to LA. Studio hours were set to the same, normal time just about every day. No more weird sleep patterns and jet lag. He'd have the closest thing to a normal job he'd ever had in his life. That was something he could get used to.
He stood up and walked to the bathroom, which took him a couple of wrong turns to find. Unfortunately, there were people sleeping in the shower so privacy was something he wouldn't be having that morning. It didn't matter; all he did was wash his face. He walked back to the guest room. Because Gwen had insisted on staying up longer than everyone else, all of the beds were taken. Brandy, Matt, Lindsay, and someone else Zac didn't know were all squeezed onto the double bed. Gwen and Zac slept on the floor without contemplating too long over it.
"Gwen, Gwen baby wake up," Zac said, shaking his girlfriend's shoulder. Gwen groaned but didn't wake up. "Gwendolyn! Wake up!" He hit her arm and she woke up.
"Ow! Damn you, Zac, that's abuse!"
"Get up, we're going."
"Why?"
"Because I have to go home and so do you. It's eleven o'clock." Gwen groaned again and sat up. He took her hand and helped her up.
"All right, all right�you're lucky I love you."
"What?" Zac asked. He let got of her hand and she fell backwards onto the bed behind her, hitting Matt, who just kicked her away and went on sleeping.
"You heard me," Gwen said. She stood up. "Thanks for nothing. Let's go." She walked ahead of Zac and they walked out the front door. She stayed ahead of him all the way to the car and waited by the car door. He opened it for her and she got inside. He went around to the driver's side and got inside. Before he started the car, he looked at her.
"Did you mean that?" Zac asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I did. I just thought you should know." Zac didn't say anything as he started the car and drove. "I just thought of something. If you're quitting the band and moving out of the house to get away from Taylor, what are you going to do for the next three weeks before you're legally allowed to move out?"
"I don't know," Zac said. "I was going to find somewhere else to stay. I thought Vinnie at first, but he's not going to want to talk to me for a while, and then I thought of you, but�"
"But what?"
"But I never asked you," he said, looking over at her.
"Zac, you know you can always stay with me," Gwen said. "I don't have a problem with that. You know my mother won't let you stay in my room, but you could always stay in the guest room across the hall, at least until your birthday. She won't object to that, my mother loves you."
"I know she does," Zac said, smiling. Gwen's mother was always surprisingly clueless when it came to the kind of things Zac and Gwen were up to when they were dating. She either was stupid enough to not know, or just chose to look the other way.
"Of course I have no idea what your mother thinks of me, since I've never met her. I'm your friend for a year and then a girlfriend for a year after that and never once did I get to meet her." Zac sighed. He should have seen that one coming.
"I had reasons for that, Gwendolyn," Zac said.
"Ooh, the full name. You must not want to talk about this," Gwen said. "Whatever, Zac. At this point it looks like I'm never going to meet her, what with you staying with me until your birthday and then moving out to California." He gave her a look and she didn't say anything more. He drove her home in peace. When he arrived at her house, she turned to him. "So when do you want to move in? Today, I'm guessing."
"Yeah. I'll have to go home and finish packing all of my things, of course, but once I finish that I'll come by here."
"Do you want to pick out a room first? We have a couple of spare bedrooms."
"Sure," he said. He turned off the car and got out. The two of them went inside and up the staircase to Gwen's side of the house. She had a lot of rooms in her house, but that was because it was so huge and she was an only child. His house had a lot of rooms too, but there were a hell of a lot of kids in his family.
"This one is the biggest," Gwen said, opening the door across from her room. "I'm not in any of these rooms all that much, but they're all really nice. The walls are kind of blah, but you could always paint them."
"They're fine," Zac said, looking around. He definitely liked this room. There was something very temporary about it and this entire stay was temporary and he wanted to constantly remind himself of that. "What do the others look like?" She walked out of the room and down the hall to the next one. She opened the door.
"This one is smaller but it's got a more homely feel to it," Gwen said. "It's kind of girly, though." Zac scrunched his nose. "Yeah, I don't like it either." Gwen closed the door behind her and went across the hall. "This is the last one." She opened the door and when Zac walked in he felt immediately at home.
"I think I like the first one the best," he said, shaking off the feeling. He didn't want to feel so much at home here, otherwise he would never leave. Since this was only a three-week stay, he didn't want to get attached to anything. Gwen nodded.
"All right."
"I'll be back later today when I get my things ready," he told her.
"Do you want me to go and help?" He shook his head.
"No, I'm perfectly capable of doing it by myself."
"Oh, okay," she said. "Give me a kiss and I'll let you go." He kissed her. "I'll tell my mom what's going on. It'll be the only way she'll allow you to stay here for three weeks."
"You don't have to tell her everything," Zac said, walking out of the room and to the stairs.
"I won't tell her everything, everything," Gwen said, "but I'll tell her a lot of it. Don't worry, she won't bug you while you're here."
"Okay." They reached the front door and he turned around. "I'll be right back."
"See you." He kissed her again before he opened the front door and left.
Zac opened the door to his house and looked around before stepping inside. He moved quietly to the stairs and was nearly there when his mother appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. "Where have you been?"
"Shit�" Zac breathed. "Mother, I really don't have time for this."
"You were supposed to be in the studio at seven o'clock this morning! Because you never showed up, everybody had to come home!"
"I told you," Zac said, starting up the stairs. "I quit the band. I'm not going to the studio anymore."
"Zac, come back here."
"I've got things to do, mother."
"Zachary Walker Hanson, get your underage ass right here, right now." Zac sighed and walked back over to his mother, still standing a good distance away from her. "Where were you?"
"I was at Gwen's," Zac said. "All right?" Diana stepped up to him and he took a step back, hitting the wall.
"Look at me."
"What?"
"Look at me." He looked at her. "You're high."
"What?!"
"Don't act innocent, Zac," she said. "You smell like it and you sure as hell look like you've been smoking. It's bad enough that you stayed out all night without informing me�" Zac opened his mouth. "No! It was bad enough when you did it with Ginger, but now you're doing it again with this Gwenyth girl."
"It's Gwendol�"
"And leaving the band? This doesn't just affect you, Zac. This affects everyone in the band, everyone who works with you, and your entire family. Now I'm sorry if Taylor does what Taylor does and slept with your girlfriend, but he'll get his when the time comes, all right? Leaving the band and completely alienating yourself from this family because you have a problem with him is not the answer. And throwing your life away like this?"
"Throwing my life away?" Zac yelled.
"How long have you been like this? I certainly haven't ever seen you as terrible as you are now. Staying out all night with people I don't know, coming home the next morning smelling like drugs and sex�who are you?"
"Oh, but Mom, this is me!" Zac yelled. "This is who I am! I back out on commitments to my family, I go out and have promiscuous sex with girls I don't know, and guess what, I don't use protection either! I use all kinds of drugs�you name it, I've done it, and I do it all the time. Why right before I walked in the door I was snorting cocaine. I drink ten beers a day and that's just when I'm busy!"
"That's enough, Zac."
"But really, why stop there? I worship the devil and I have a set of triplets with a girl named Alicia that I knocked up and never called again."
"That may be closer to the truth than you think, Ma," Taylor said, walking into the room.
"Nobody asked you, you fucking bastard," Zac spat. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to pack. I am moving out of the house and there is nothing any of you can do to stop me." Zac turned and ran up the stairs. He went into his room and started to take all of his clothes out of the closet and his drawers. As he began to put his clothes into his suitcases, his cell phone rang. "Hello?"
"Hey, are you home safe?" It was Gwen. He let a smile grow on his face at the sound of her voice. He'd never known that she could make him smile like that, but there she was, barely saying hello and he was beaming like crazy.
"Oh, hey babe. Yeah, I'm home. I don't know if I'm entirely safe, though. Everybody's against me. The sooner I get out of here the sooner I'll be happy," Zac said. He looked around. "I'm going to need to get some boxes, though. I didn't realize I had so many things. I was hoping I could do it all today."
"I could get some boxes from the storage place and bring them over if you want," Gwen suggested.
"Nah, I'll just do it later."
"Oh, all right."
"I know all you want to do is come over, Gwen," Zac said. "Even if you did come over, there wouldn't be much to see. My room is in shambles because I'm packing and the only one home is my mother. I don't know where everybody went, but even all the little kids are gone."
"So I'm guessing Taylor's at the studio, then?" Gwen asked.
"Who's Taylor?" Zac asked.
"Oh, don't even, Zac�"
"I'm serious. He's not my brother anymore. He's not even some guy I know. He is one hundred percent dead to me," Zac said.
"Don't you think that's going a little too far?" Gwen asked. "I mean, think about it. You were only dating that Ginger girl for three months, if that, and I always said she was no good for you. Those Hollywood chicks will screw you over before you know what hit you." Zac's nostrils flared in anger and he decided to end the conversation as quickly as possible.
"You know what, I think I'm going to go out myself and get some boxes," Zac said. "I'll see you later, Gwen." He didn't let her say anything before he hung up the phone and put it back in his pocket. He grabbed his keys off his desk and walked out of the room. He was at the top of the stairs when he heard his mother talking to Taylor.
"I don't know what to do with him, Taylor," Diana was saying, "He said he was out all night with this Gwen girl, and I don't know who she is�"
"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. He was out with Gwen? Gwendolyn Garcia?" Taylor asked. "Why the hell would he do something like that?"
"What, do you know her?"
"Gwen is the worst thing that's ever happened to Zac. I don't know what he's doing back with her but they broke up and I thought they broke up for good. The last time Zac even talked about Gwen was before they broke up. It was so bad he wouldn't even say her name for months."
"They were dating?"
"Yeah! You didn't know? They were dating for an entire year! That was the girl Zac lost his virginity to." Zac gasped. He couldn't believe Taylor was gossiping like a fifteen-year-old girl to Diana.
"Really? He said he was going to be living with her until his birthday when he could officially move out of the house," Diana said. "I'll be damned if I let that happen to my son."
"Mom, she is not good. That girl is a bad influence on him. She is really bad news. All they're going to do while Zac is there is have sex, smoke pot, and drink." Zac could feel his blood begin to boil. If he hadn't been so unexplainably mad at Taylor before, he would be now.
Peering around the corner, Zac saw that Diana and Taylor were not in sight, even if he could hear them talking, and decided to make a run for it. He slid down the banister, landed on his feet by the door, and was gone before anybody could suspect a thing.