Zoe hates dead shifts.
It is not possible, she thinks as she glances up at the clock, that only two freaking minutes have passed since the last time I looked up.
She has a letter to reply to – she just wants to go home and write and not be here anymore. Thinking about the letter she has to write leads to thinking about tomorrow. She’s meeting Alex tomorrow. She’s meeting him, finally, and her stomach won’t settle down. She has to finish writing all his clues tonight, too. There’s so much to do, and she hopes he likes it – she wants to make him smile, she wants to see it, she wants to —
She has to stop herself there, though. She’s had this argument so many times, she’s not having it again.
She looks up at the clock again. Another two minutes have passed.
She sighs heavily and leans on the counter to try and relieve her aching feet a bit. She’s swept the floors and wiped down counters and checked condiment levels. There is nothing else to do and still a whole hour left in her shift. It is 3:03, and they have had two customers in the last hour.
Zoe is about to raise her voice and ask Bradley in the kitchen if they can please turn on the radio when a customer walks through the open doorway.
Zoe straightens immediately and puts on her professional smile, as if there is nothing in the world she would rather do than make this girl a sandwich. But before Zoe can offer the usual greeting, the girl demands, “Are you Zoe Ballard?”
Zoe blinks, confused, and takes a hard look at the girl. She’s shorter than Zoe is, and very severe, her eyes framed heavily in black, her cheekbones sharp and highlighted. There’s something dark and mysterious and deliberately alluring about this girl. She’s staring at Zoe likes she knows her. And doesn’t like me, Zoe can’t help but think. Zoe is racking her brain, but she’s almost positive she doesn’t know this girl, and she has a good memory for faces.
So she responds as she would to any other customer, even though most don’t address her like they’re looking for her specifically. “Yes, I’m Zoe. What can I get for you today?”
“We need to talk.”
The girl is clearly not here for a sandwich. She speaks with an air of superiority that is really irritating, like Zoe is her subordinate or something, and not in the “you’re just a sandwich shop employee” way that Zoe is more or less used to. This feels personal, somehow, like this girl feels she has the right to make demands of Zoe in particular, which is both presumptuous and bizarre, especially since Zoe still doesn’t know who this girl is.
She stays friendly, asking with a smile, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Emma?” the girl says, like it should have been obvious. “Emma Donovan?” Zoe’s stomach is resting somewhere near her shoes. Emma? Alex’s Emma? What the hell is she doing here?
At Zoe’s silence, Emma crosses her arms. “Obviously you don’t talk about me as much as you said.” She huffs and — God, is she pouting? She’s like a three-year-old on the verge of a temper tantrum. She seems legitimately upset, insulted even, that Zoe didn’t immediately know who she was.
It takes Zoe too long to dredge up a response, and when she does, she’s flustered and awkward and not how she wants to appear in front of this girl, of all people. “Oh! Um, we’ve never – I didn’t know what you looked like or anything.” She can’t fathom what Emma can possibly be doing here. Unless — “Is something wrong? Is Alex okay?” she asks.
Because that’s the only thing that makes sense, that Alex sent her. Maybe something happened, and he wanted to make sure she knew — but why wouldn’t he just text her? Maybe he sent Emma when Zoe didn’t answer her phone? But no, Emma doesn’t seem like she’s on anyone’s errand but her own.
“I need you to stop writing to him.”
Zoe stares, barely even able to process the request, let alone how completely outlandish and inappropriate it is.
“I’m sorry?” is all that comes out when she opens her mouth to speak, but there’s an edge to her voice that wouldn’t normally be there because who exactly does this girl think she is?
“Stop. Writing. To. Him. It shouldn’t be that hard.”
Seriously, who does Emma think she is? And the age-old question, rearing it’s head with more force than ever: how can Alex possibly be friends with a girl like this, a girl who would go behind his back and make a demand like this?
But Zoe is determined to remain civil. “I don’t see how my friendship with Alex is any of your business,” she says evenly, “and you don’t have any say in who I choose to write to. Now, I’m sorry, but I really can’t have this conversation with you here.”
Finally, her job at this God-forsaken sandwich shop is proving good for something. She’s on the clock, and Tim the Manager from Hell is very strict about his “no fraternization with customers” policy.
“No, we’re having it, okay?” Emma insists, unrelenting, and there’s something in her voice that half-makes Zoe want to call Bradley out from the kitchen, just to have some kind of support or backup — against what, she’s not sure, but she wants it all the same. “Because you are . . . are . . . leading him on and it needs to stop.”
Zoe doesn’t even know how to respond to that. Leading him on? She’s done the exact opposite of that, she’s practically shoved him in Emma’s direction! But Emma doesn’t give her the chance to dwell on that because she’s saying something even crazier. “He has this crazy idea that he is . . . is in love with you, and he hasn’t even met you! I have done everything I can to get him to give it up, but it’s not working. So either tell him you’re not interested, or stop writing, but stop doing this to him.”
Zoe can’t breathe. She can’t, she can’t wrap her mind around — in love with her? In love with her? No. No, that’s not – it’s not, it can’t be –
“I – that’s the craziest thing I ever – Alex isn’t in love with me!” The words come out stunned and flustered, and with a little laugh that’s almost a sob. Get it together, Zoe, the voice in her head says, threateningly. Not in front of Emma, don’t you dare. After half a second, her anger and indignation catches up with her shock. “And regardless of any of that,” she pushes on, voice stronger now, “who are you to dictate—”
“Oh, he’s not, is he?” she interrupts. “Personally, I think he’s delusional, but why else would I have found this on his hard drive?”
She pulls a CD from her bag, and throws it down on the counter hard enough to crack the plastic case. Zoe glances down at it, but it’s unmarked.
“Listen to it,” Emma continues, sounding like she’s daring Zoe to, as if Zoe is someone whose life is dictated by things like that. “You’ll see. It’s the most pathetic, idiotic—”
“Don’t talk about Alex like that.”
Zoe has been told that she is at her scariest when her voice goes that quiet, that low. She can’t speak to that, of course, but she does know that she can’t remember the last time she was this angry. Emma has always made her feel this way, seething and furious and — How can she profess to be his friend, and then treat him and talk about him the way that she does? Zoe never pushed it with Alex, but if Emma is here, and pushing first, Zoe is going to push back.
If Emma had been anyone else, she’d have backed off with Zoe looking at her like this. But she isn’t anyone else. And for all that she came in here looking for a confrontation, she’s not paying attention to Zoe. “I’ll talk about my best friend any way I like, thank you. It’s not like you have any say, you’re just his pen pal. God, he wouldn’t have even started writing to you if I hadn’t dared him, and he certainly wouldn’t have continued if I hadn’t bet him he couldn’t do it.”
Zoe waits for those words to hurt, waits to feel betrayed or stung at the thought that she was nothing more than a dare to him — but the hurt never comes. It doesn’t matter. If Emma is looking to wound her, she’s picked the wrong ammunition. Because this doesn’t hurt – it just makes what they’ve grown into mean even more.
Emma is watching her with something like triumph, also waiting for the words she said to hurt. Zoe is happy to disappoint her. “Then it seems I owe you my thanks,” is all she says. “Now, if you would like a sandwich, Miss Donovan, I would be happy to help you. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Emma is taken aback by the lack of confrontation, and it takes her a moment to demand again, “So you’ll stop writing to him?”
Zoe levels her chin and looks Emma straight in the eye. “No,” she says coolly. “I won’t. Have a good day.”
She said it to Alex ages ago: Say whatever you want about me; I don’t care. But come after someone I love? You and I are done. And she was done with Emma a long time ago, long before she ever met the girl.
They face off across the counter for a long moment, and then Zoe sees something in Emma snap. “Fine,” she finally says, eyes wild. “I didn’t want to do this, but you’re forcing me to.” Emma storms out, leaving Zoe filled with dread. She needs to talk to Alex, now.
She turns for the door to the kitchen and almost runs into Bradley. “Zoe, is everything okay?” he asks. Zoe shakes her head.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I need to use my phone. It’s an emergency.”
“Yeah,” he says immediately, eyes on the entrance to the shop. “Yeah, I heard the whole thing. I’d have come and escorted her out in another minute. You call who you need to call, okay?”
Nodding her thanks, Zoe runs for her phone, but Alex doesn’t pick up, so she leaves a voicemail. “Alex, it’s Zoe. Um . . .” She knows she has to say it, but she really doesn’t want to. Emma is the one thing she’s never felt able to talk to him honestly about, and now this . . . She steels herself and pushes through. “Emma just came into the shop, yelling about – well, it’s not important, but she wanted me to stop writing to you, and when I said no, she said that she didn’t want to do something, but that I was forcing her to. She was really mad, and I’m worried about what she meant. Please be careful, okay?”
She wants to say more, but she doesn’t know how. She wants Emma out of Alex’s life, she has for a long time, but — that’s not her place. His friends aren’t hers to dictate. And she doesn’t want him to think for a moment that she’s trying to displace or replace anyone. So she leaves it there, and then she sends him a text with the same message, and a tweet asking him to check his phone, and then she has to go back to work, because there’s nothing more she can do.
“Everything okay?” Bradley asks when she reemerges. “Do you need to leave and go find this guy?”
It’s tempting, that offer, but she glances at the clock. 3:11. She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t know where he is or even where to start looking. I called him and left a message and sent him a text, so hopefully he’ll get one or the other before she does something crazy.”
“You think she might?”
She fills Bradley in on the situation, as briefly and simply as she can. She tells him about the party last fall, how Alex got drugged, and how certain she is that Emma was behind it. She tells him how Emma has been trying to sabotage Zoe’s friendship with Alex for months. And she tells him all the ways Alex has let himself be turned into Emma’s whipping boy, ready to take the fall or the punches, whatever Emma requires, because she’s been manipulating him so long he doesn’t even see it.
Bradley frowns through the whole thing. “Can you call his family or anything?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t have a number for them. And — let’s hope I’m just blowing the whole thing out of proportion.” She attempts a smile. “My shift is over soon, I’ll look for him then.”
She tries not to worry, she honestly does. She stows the CD in her bag, to figure out what to do with later, and she tries to think about tomorrow. If she can’t get in touch with him tonight, she’ll tell him about this then. She’ll try to break it to him gently. And she’ll lock down every last damned feeling she has for him if it’s the last thing she does, because it’s bad enough that this is true about the girl he really –
She is not going to be that jealous girl. She’s not. This is bigger than that. She has to be nothing more than the worried friend tomorrow, or he won’t believe her. And God, he might not anyway. She reread those letters recently, that first fight they had, and it was about Emma, it was about this, about Zoe voicing a concern, and — she doesn’t know how she’s going to bear it if that happens again. Losing him then would have been something she could have handled with a little pang and a shrug. But losing him now? She can’t imagine it. She doesn’t want to. But she can’t just stand by.
She’ll tell him tomorrow. She’ll tell him, and she’ll just have to hope he trusts her.