Prose Scene 37

Zoe has never felt weak-kneed relief quite like she does that Monday morning, when Alex sends her the message telling her that he’s fine and he’s been released.

She gets the tweet at lunch, after obsessively checking her phone all morning any time she thinks she can get away with it. She’s so relieved that she says, “Oh, thank God,” out loud, eliciting some strange responses from the people at the lunch table who don’t know the minutiae of her life, but Gabe just looks at her and mouths Alex?

She nods. “They let him go, he’s home,” she says, but she’s not willing to say more than that in front of eavesdroppers (she also doesn’t know much more than that, but that’s a less important consideration).

Once she knows he’s okay, the fight that’s been keeping her anxiety and uncertainty at bay leaks away, and she’s left with guilt and muddled feelings again. The guilt, at least, she figures she can do something about.

Alex I’m so sorry. This was totally my fault.

She hesitates before hitting “send,” because she knows he’s not going to like that, but this is her fault, and she needs to accept the blame for it.

His response, when it lights up her screen, nearly makes her cry at the lunch table. How the HELL is this YOUR fault?!

Furiously, she outlines it for him, every misstep she made this weekend, every way she failed him, everything she should have done differently to keep him from having to go through hell this weekend. But his response, when it comes, reads just as furious as he stubbornly refuses to let her take any of the blame.

She doesn’t know how to respond any of it, and the longer the conversation goes on, the more uncertain she becomes about how to move forward.

She knows how Alex feels about her. But Alex doesn’t know that she knows, and Alex doesn’t know how she feels. The balance is off, and it feels wrong, but . . . how does she tell him?

Over the course of lunch, and during her class breaks the rest of the day, she composes several text messages to him, even gets so far as typing a few of them fully into her phone.

So, funny story, I actually know how you feel about me. Crazy, right?

Emma gave me a CD this weekend, the night you punched the wall, and I was just wondering if you might be in love with me or something? Maybe?

Hey. I have a thing for you. I’ve been led to believe you might have one for me, too?

I’m in love with you. Please respond if you feel the same. Please completely ignore me if you don’t.

She’s not crazy enough to actually send any of those messages, but she does very nearly call him as soon as school is over. It’s really a blessing of massive proportions that Gabe gets into the car before she can hit the phone icon next to his name.

She switches to text message before she can hit that stupid green button, and sends the appropriate text she managed at some point to compose, then pulls out of the school parking lot, heading for home.

“So,” Gabe says, after they’ve been driving for a couple of minutes in silence. “Alex is okay.”

She’s driving past a small park when he says this, and she turns abruptly into the lot, parks the car, and turns to Gabe, who raises a single eyebrow in question. “I need to talk to you,” she says, slightly rushed.

“I gathered,” he replies. “What’s up?”

She takes a deep breath, then hesitates, biting her lip. She opens her mouth to speak twice, but each time closes it before saying anything, and after the second time, she shakes her head, turns to the front again, says, “You know what? Forget it,” and reaches for the gear shift.

Gabe intercepts her hand. “Zoe,” is all he says. Zoe slumps against the back of her seat.

“Okay,” she says on an exhale, and in the next second, she’s up again, finger pointed squarely at his chest, eyes blazing and fierce. “But I swear to God, Gabe, if the words I told you so or anything like them come out of your mouth at any point, I will not speak to you for a week and I will wear a different dress to prom and I won’t help you with any of your last-minute Into the Woods crises!”

“What the hell are you about to tell me?” Gabe asks at that, and Zoe slumps a little again, two nervous fingers tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

Finally, she speaks, direct and to the point. “Alex loves me.” She tries to say it like it’s no big deal, but she can see Gabe’s mouth quirk up in smug sort of way. “Gabriel Adotei,” she growls, “I will make good on my threats.”

“I said nothing,” Gabe points out defensively. Zoe glares.

“You smirked.”

“I — yeah, okay, I’ll own that,” he admits. “But back to the matter at hand, what, uh, what prompted this completely unexpected realization?”

He tries to keep a straight face, but he fails miserably. The smirk returns, so Zoe glares for another moment, then punches him in the arm.

“Ow!”

“Serves you right,” she says pointedly, then sighs. “Emma gave me a CD, from his hard drive, that he recorded but didn’t send, and . . .”

“And . . . he said he loved you,” Gabe fills in when Zoe trails off.

“No,” she says slowly. “I mean, not in so many words, but — oh, God, what if I’m wrong again?” Panic lights inside her, and she turns to him, a little frantic. “You should listen to it. You know, just to make sure that’s actually what he’s saying.”

“Yeah, I’m not gonna listen to a love letter to you from your future boyfriend,” Gabe says flat out. Zoe glares at him again, but it has little effect. She wants to protest, or scold, or something, but she’s been trying to wrap her head around this all weekend. She hates that she’s doubting what she heard, especially since she went back and listened to his letters, and it’s all right freaking there. Remove the idea that he’s in love with Emma from the picture, and . . .

“Gabe, I have no idea what to do,” she says, throwing her head back against the headrest and staring at the ceiling of her car.

“Really?” he asks. “Because I’d say it’s pretty obvious. Alex is out of prison, right?”

“He was never in prison, it was a juvenile detention facility, and he was wrongfully incarcerated,” she says to the ceiling of her car.

“Right. So seeing as how he’s out of prison, I say your next step is to start the car, get to where he is, and start making out with him as soon as humanly possible. Though preferably after dropping me off somewhere because I don’t need to see that.”

Zoe rolls her head to the side. Her glares are losing their effectiveness when he’s inviting so many in so short a span of time. “Not helping,” she informs him. He watches her for a long moment, then swiftly unbuckles his seatbelt.

“You know what will help?” he asks. “A walk.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Come on. You don’t work until, what? 5:30? Let’s take a walk.”

Zoe hesitates, but then nods her agreement and gets out of the car.

They walk down the path in silence for a bit, Zoe lost in thought, Gabe watching Zoe. Finally, Gabe speaks up. “What’s got you so freaked, Zo?”

She sighs and stares down at her shoes as they walk, because that’s the question, isn’t it? When this school year started, hell, when this calendar year started, she was so sure of who she was and how she operated in the world. But over the past few months, she’s felt like a stranger in her own skin, a fish out of water, and she’s hated it. So much of what she was positive about, so much of what had been her foundation for ages, had crumbled this year, leaving her sprawled on the ground, trying to figure out how to pick herself up again. What has her so freaked? That the new foundation she’s trying to build is as shaky as the old one, and that at some point in the future, everything she thinks she’s certain of now will likewise crumble into dust.

She doesn’t know how to say any of that to Gabe, of course, and that answer is also much bigger than the question he asked. So she tries to focus on what he’s asking, and she takes her time with the words, to try and get them right.

“It’s never been like this before,” she finally says. “In the past, when I’ve dated, it’s been on a seed of interest that I wanted to . . . cultivate, and see if it grew into anything. But this is already there, and he and I haven’t even . . . I’m in uncharted territory, and I don’t know how to navigate it. I’m scared I’m going to screw it up, and I’m going to chase him away like I’ve done with everyone else.”

“Whoa,” Gabe says, and stops walking abruptly. “Hold up.”

Zoe doesn’t want to turn and face him, because she knows what she’s going to see when she does. And yeah, sure enough, when she finally takes a deep breath and looks at him, he’s staring at her like he’s never seen her before.

“Who the hell have you chased away?”

“Everybody,” she tells him earnestly. “Every guy I’ve ever been with, Gabe. I’m intense and I’m high maintenance, and I scare them away.”

“That’s not even close to be true,” Gabe says, like he’s personally affronted to learn she thinks this. “You didn’t scare Dylan away.”

“Dylan’s the exception to the rule.”

“No,” Gabe insists, “Dylan’s your most recent boyfriend and the guy you dated the longest. He’s the evolution of the rule, Zoe. Come on, ‘every guy you’ve ever been with’? You’re talking about a fleeting handful of middle school guys, and if you scared them away it’s only because you were a confident middle school girl who didn’t giggle and blush and act shy around them! You’re not intense, and you’re not high maintenance, and Alex has been around for seven months and hasn’t gotten scared away yet.”

“He hasn’t met me,” Zoe insists, then says, “Not in person,” over Gabe’s protests. “When I’m words on a page, you don’t see how I talk too much when I get nervous, or how I have to be moving to think, or how I can’t keep my hands still. I’m still Zoe, but I— what if there’s something I do, and I’m not even aware of it, but he hates it, he just doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to prove right all the people who think two penpals falling in love is crazy, or because he doesn’t want something like that to mess up this great story we’ve supposedly started? What if — what if I can’t live up to what he’s expecting me to be, or I disappoint him or something, and it festers and festers until it’s so built up that it explodes and destroys every scrap of friendship we have along with it?”

She’s breathing hard by the end of this, this litany of fears that plague her and infuriate her at the same time. And she’s expecting to shock Gabe, to prove her point, that she can be intense, frighteningly intense, but he doesn’t miss a beat. He takes her by the shoulders and says, “Zoe, you can spin worst-case scenarios until you are blue in the face, but what’s the real worst case scenario? That everything plays out the way you just said? Or that your fear about what might happen keeps anything from happening at all?”

He’s right, damn it, and she knows it, but she still . . .

“But what if, Gabe?” she asks in a whisper, close to tears, because that’s the fear that’s really at the heart of all this. “What if something I do chases him away? What if I lose him?

“What if you flunk out of high school and can’t get into college and have to spend the rest of your life flipping burgers?” he asks then. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s not likely, because you’re not going to let it happen, and the other people involved aren’t going to let it happen. Being in love is something you work at; you know that. So can I give you the best piece of romantic advice I’ve ever gotten?” She sniffs and nods. “Do you love him?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“Then tell him how you feel, because the love you have for people should be expressed. Be honest and direct. Respect the answer that you get, whatever it may be, but don’t let the fear of rejection keep you from grabbing at happiness with both hands.”

“That’s my advice,” Zoe says to him after a second, around the lump in her throat. “You’re quoting me.”

“Yes, I am,” Gabe says with a smile. “Because you seem to need the reminder.” With Gabe’s encouragement, Zoe takes a deep breath, in and out, and it only shudders a little. “Look, I know you. And I know you’re going to be okay, no matter what. But I don’t want you to forget the most important part of all this.”

“And what’s that?”

“Before you loved him, you were his friend, right?”

Zoe draws back at that, stung by the implication in the question. “I still am his friend,” she corrects, and Gabe grins.

“Bingo.”

Zoe rolls her eyes with a smile when she realized what he set her up to say. He really does know her too well. “You could have just said that,” she informs him. Gabe grins, then goes on.

“Alex fell in love with his best friend. So, be his best friend, and you’re fine. Trust him to know what he wants, and trust that he’s going to put as much effort as you are into making things work.”

Zoe takes another deep breath. Then she smiles up at him, visibly calmer. “You’re right,” she says.

Gabe’s eyes practically light up. “Does that mean I get to say ‘I told you so’?” Zoe’s eyes narrow into a glare.

“Not without punishment,” she informs him. “But you do get to give me a hug.”

“I’ll take that,” Gabe says, and wraps her up in a tight bear hug. “So,” Gabe says when her feet are back on the ground and they’ve resumed the walk. “What’s the plan?”

“I still have no idea,” she says, and she pulls out her phone to see if Alex has responded. He has, and as if he’s been privy to this conversation, he’s given her an opening to reschedule their in-person meeting.

She bites her lip. “Will I be pushing things if I ask him if we can meet tomorrow?” she asks Gabe. He considers.

“It is kind of soon, but then, you were supposed to meet yesterday. I wouldn’t send him on your whole big scavenger hunt, though.”

She knows Gabe has a point, but she worked so hard on that! It took a lot of brainstorming and planning to come up with a day for Alex that wouldn’t overwhelm him or make the kind of fuss that she knew he didn’t want. A scavenger hunt of letter locations had been the perfect idea, but maybe it was too much now. Especially if they were going to meet after school. Maybe they should just meet at the park and talk.

“I’ll truncate the scavenger hunt,” she finally decides. “And I’ll give him the choice at the beginning to follow it or not. But I want to talk to him about all this as soon as possible, and I don’t want to do it over the phone. But if it isn’t tomorrow or Wednesday, then it’s not til next week, because I work Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday because Tim is demon-spawn. And it . . . it feels too much like lying to wait that long.”

Gabe nods. “Well, ask him. See what he says.”

They arrange to meet tomorrow at four at the Book and Bean, and just like that, the jitters are back in her stomach. So much is riding on this, and — Her mind can’t help but go to all the ways she could screw this up.

Gabe squeezes her hand just as she really starts to need reassurance (he really does know her too well). “You’re going to be fine,” he says.

“I just feel like this first meeting has been built up into so much, you know? Like, I honestly wonder if it wouldn’t be better if I just hung out at Cuppa Joe’s until we accidentally on purpose ran into each other, and did it all that way. Much less pressure, somehow.”

Gabe shrugs. “Unfortunately, you don’t have a schedule that lets you do that, and you’re already meeting him tomorrow after school, so you haven’t left yourself a whole lot of time.”

Zoe sighs. “I know.”

“And didn’t you say that being nervous about your first meeting was ridiculous, so you weren’t going to do that?”

Zoe gives him a pointed look. “Saying that and executing it are two different things,” she reminds him.

“Yes,” he agrees. “But you’re going to be fine. And when you forget that, oh, we’ll say nine times between now and tomorrow afternoon, you can call me, and I will remind you that you’re going to be fine.”

That wins a small smile out of her. “Thanks, Gabe,” she says. He wraps her up in her favorite kind of bear hug.

“Any time, Zo.”