Prose Scene 35

It’s almost three-thirty when she gives up on sleep and pulls open her laptop. She puts the CD in, tucks her headphones into her ears, draws her knees to her chest, and lets his voice wash over her.

“Hey Zo. It’s about… 4 am. I, uh, well, as you probably know, I left the last letter in kind of a bad place.” She frowns, trying to place this letter. Usually, he says the date at the beginning, but he didn’t on this one. But as he continues, it clicks into place. Punching the wall. The night Michelle died. Except . . . he had added to that letter. He’d sent his addition to her. So, what is this?

“I know you’re going to be mad at me for that. Or… not mad. Disappointed. I just got so frustrated because I know I can’t help you, and…. And you don’t really want me to.

What?” She actually says it out loud, the word escaping her on a breath. She’s so busy being shocked that she misses what he says next. Fumbling for her computer, she pauses the track and goes back. She hears those awful, bizarre, completely untrue words again, and listens hard to what he has to say next, hoping for an explanation that makes sense.

“I hate that I’m the one you have to call, when you’d rather call him.”

Oh, God. She drags her hands down her face. This is about Kevin. Goddamn it, of course this is about Kevin. It’s been so long since Valentine’s Day, so long since she started this — this farce with him, that she forgets sometimes what it is he believes. But is this really what he thinks? That she only called him the night Michelle died because the person she really wanted wasn’t available?  

I know he’s got his own stuff to be dealing with, moving and dealing with a death in his family, but… I just don’t understand how he can so completely abandon you right now. And I don’t understand how you can l-love him when he isn’t there for you when you need him most.

His voice breaks on the word love, and her heart breaks along with it. He sounds so . . . so hurt, so lost, so bitter, and it shocks her to her core, the blackness in his voice. She wants to interrupt him, to stop him, to fix this somehow. The words tumble through her head, even though he can’t hear her, even though he’s not there, even though he recorded this ages ago.

No, she wants to tell him, No, Alex, I wanted to call you, I called you by instinct almost, there was no one else whose voice I wanted to hear. The him I love hasn’t abandoned me yet, despite everything.

She forces herself to keep listening.

Actually, I can, I think, because I did. But… that’s not a way to live, Zoe.

Frowning, she shakes her head, trying to follow his train of thought. He did . . . what? He loved someone who wasn’t there when he needed them? He has to be talking about Emma, but . . . why past tense?

Because she’s changing, Zoe thinks miserably. And she’s no longer someone who isn’t there when he needs them.

But another voice chimes in. If that’s what he meant, Zoe, then why would this letter have sent Emma into such a spiral?

She shakes her head again, not willing to think those kinds of thoughts, and listens to what he goes on to say.

I think Emma’s starting to figure out what I’ve known for, Dios, forever now. Ever… ever since he showed up, and by then it was too late. You asked me how to deal with a… an unreciprocated crush, and I gave you some advice, but I think I was wrong. Because what I felt for Emma… it was nothing like this.”

“Like what?” she whispers, confused, but not all of her is confused.

Zoe, that second voice says, dripping with derision, you’re not honestly that dense, are you? You can’t honestly tell me you haven’t figured this out already.

She shakes her head, determined to ignore the voice that insists on trying to give her false hope, and keeps listening.

Hiding that was… was fucking easy compared to this.

Compared to what?? She would yell if it wasn’t three-thirty in the morning, and if her heart wasn’t in her throat, and if she could remember how to breathe.

You know what! the voice in her head shouts in response, but she pushes it down.

It didn’t invade every corner of my life until I couldn’t function, until I couldn’t even step outside my door without being reminded… I wish on a daily basis that you had never met him, Zoe, because of what he did to you, and then I hate myself for wishing it, because I know he’s what you want…

She hits the pause button before she realizes what she’s doing. She’s shaking and tense, and she has to cut off the flow of his words because she is not in control of herself, and she needs to be in control of herself.

Coward.

“No,” she whispers out loud. “I’m not. I just, I shouldn’t be listening to this. It’s an invasion of his privacy, he never meant for me to hear this.”

He never meant for Emma to hear it, either, but she did, and now he’s in juvie, the voice counters. You’re never going to understand how that happened if you won’t listen to what he has to say, and you can’t help him if you don’t understand the situation.

“That’s a justification,” she whispers.

And that’s an excuse, the voice says immediately. Wanting to respect his privacy is noble, but it’s not why you’re scared to push Play.

“I’m not scared,” she says out loud, some of her conviction coming back with the words. “But I’ve heard enough. This is probably all that Emma heard, that his feelings for her aren’t . . . that something else has —”

She falters, because saying it out loud shows the holes.

Wake up, Zoe, the voice says then, not mean any longer, just emphatic. Almost pleading. How much longer can you deny this? Your argument this whole time for not letting yourself believe he might love you has been that he’s never said outright that he stopped loving Emma.

He still hasn’t, she tries to argue internally, but the other voice is having none of that.

He has, it insists. He said it straight out, weeks ago, that he thought he was getting over his crush on Emma!

“That was before,” she whispers, desperate to win this battle, though she can’t, or won’t, pinpoint why.

Before what? the voice demands. Before she starting hanging onto him tighter than a koala cub to its mother’s back? That’s not the way to win or maintain Alex’s affections, and you know it.

“I’m not gonna be that girl,” she whispers through grit teeth, tears pricking her eyes.

You don’t want to be the girl who won’t respect his choices. Fine. Good, even. But if he has moved on from Emma, if he has come to love you, then isn’t pushing him toward Emma out of some misguided sense of fair play just as big a refusal to respect his wishes?

She closes her eyes as two tears refuse to be held back and fall down her face. Because that’s the question in all this, isn’t it? She needs to respect what he wants, but how can she do that if she doesn’t know what he wants? Why is it so hard let herself believe that he could want her?

Okay, she tells herself firmly. Stop projecting, Zoe, for good or bad. Forget Emma, forget Kevin, just listen to what he’s saying and really hear it. Go from there. Don’t be afraid.

She pushes play.

“And that’s what we agreed, isn’t it? Wanting you to be happy is what should get me through this. But Dios, it’s hard. I don’t know how much longer I can do this, how long I can pretend that I don’t live for every single one of your letters. Hearing your voice just made it that much worse, and when you started to cry, I… I nearly broke down and told you right then and there, and damn that idiot and damn the consequences.

There. He still isn’t saying it, not directly, but there, with that . . . even she can hear it. He’s not in love with Emma. He’s in love with . . . her.

She’s so stunned by this realization, by everything it means and everything it implies, that she stops listening to anything else he’s saying. She hears “…and now I’ve gone and done it to you,” and she has no idea what he’s talking about.

She stops the recording and goes back, overshooting where she left off because she wants to hear him say it again, those words that mean he loves her.

“I nearly broke down and told you right then and there, and damn him, and damn the consequences. But if I did that, then… you don’t need that on top of all the rest. You just don’t… And do you know what the worst part of all this is? I can never ever tell you, because you’ll think I’m exactly like… whatever his name was that you told me about in one of your early letters. You always hated this about me, and— and now I’ve gone and done it to you. Payaso…”

And to think, she was on the verge of ecstatic just moments ago. Now . . . now she’s just bewildered, and she has no idea what he’s talking about. Whatever it is, he’s wrong. There is nothing she hates about him (except maybe his tendency to fixate on things she’s said and use them to beat himself up). She wishes he had said it on the phone that night. She wishes . . . God, she’s made this whole thing worse. She thought he loved Emma, so she let him think she loved Kevin, but then he couldn’t tell her he didn’t love Emma, because he thought she loved Kevin . . . This is the type of miscommunication-driven high school drama she always prided herself on being above.

Dios, what am I doing? I’m recording you a letter that I can never send… and yet I’ll never be able to delete it, because a tiny corner of my mind is wearing a tin-foil hat, hoping someday, maybe, I can play it for you and maybe you’ll understand, even though I know you never will.”

“But I would,” she whispers into the silence that follows that line. “I — oh, God, Alex, I do.”

The CD is still silent, but iTunes claims there’s more, so she keeps listening. Finally, he speaks again, his voice different, shaky and bitter, not as anguished, but full of much more self-loathing.

“Huh. Note to self: Never record Zoe’s letters at 4 am. Because apparently you have no sense of decency at that hour.”

The recording shuts off, and Zoe doesn’t realize she’s crying until the tears hit her arms.

She has to fix this. She has no idea how, but —

A sharp laugh escapes her, startlingly loud in the silence of her room. No wonder Emma charged into the shop this afternoon. Zoe feels a surge of vindictive triumph and immediately damps it down because wow that’s an inappropriate response. Forcefully and deliberately, she reminds herself that this was never a competition between her and Emma to anyone but Emma. Feeling triumphant, therefore, makes her behavior no better than Emma’s, and that is not the kind of person she is going to be.

Thinking about Emma sobers her, though, because before she can do anything to fix anything, Alex has to not be in a juvenile detention facility. But there’s nothing Zoe can do about that. She has to focus on what’s important now.

He’s not in love with Emma. And that changes everything, somehow. It doesn’t change anything about the severity of what happened today, of course, but for the first time since Emma stormed into the shop, Zoe feels focused. She’s going to do everything in her power to get him out of this mess. And once he is — well, once he is, then there’s another conversation they’ll need to have. But first things first.

She’ll go to The Book and Bean tomorrow as planned. And maybe, by some miracle, he’ll be there. But even if he isn’t, it’s a place to start.

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