Chapter 23
“Hey.”
Zoe’s voice was soft and disembodied in the darkness, and Dan stiffened in surprise where he sat.
“Hey,” he said after a startled pause. He squinted in the darkness, and just about made out her shadowy, slender form, standing a few feet away.
She gestured to the bench swing he was sprawled on. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
This was unexpected. “Not at all.” Dan straightened and then scooted over, and Zoe sat down, pushing off with her feet a little so they swung gently, the only sound the squeak of the swing’s chains.
“How’s your dad?” Dan asked after a moment of silence had passed peacefully.
“Surprisingly well,” Zoe replied on something of a wry laugh. “He made dinner tonight.”
“He sounded like he had big plans when I took him to Litchfield.”
“Thank you for doing that.”
He shrugged, glad she wasn’t annoyed by his interference. “I was going, anyway.”
Zoe pushed again with her feet, so they rocked gently back and forth.
“I feel like he and my mom have got a burst of energy somehow,” she said musingly.
“I think we were all slumping toward the finish line…” She swallowed hard before continuing, “But it’s like now they’ve decided they want to sprint.
In a good way. Make the most of every opportunity, because there aren’t that many left.
” She sighed. “I think I was keeping them back without realizing I was doing it, because I thought it was the best way to keep them as healthy as they could be.”
“That’s understandable,” Dan said quietly.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.” She twisted to face him, and in the moonlight he could see no more than the curve of her cheek, the gleam of her eye.
“But I didn’t want to talk about all that,” she said.
“I wanted to ask how you were, because I realized tonight that I’ve been pretty selfish, focusing on all my issues instead of your own. ”
Dan stared at her, touched but also confused. “I thought we weren’t doing this,” he said at last, gesturing to the small space between them with his beer bottle. “I thought it was all too complicated.”
Zoe ducked her head. “It is complicated,” she agreed. “But I still want to be your friend.”
His friend. Damning words if he’d ever heard them, but friendship, he supposed, was better than nothing. He knew he could certainly use a friend, anyway.
“How’s Sophie?” Zoe asked, and Dan leaned his head back against the bench.
“Mad at me again. Her mom finally video-called a couple of days ago, which you’d think would be a good thing, but she was promising Sophie all sorts of things and saying how much she missed her, and now Sophie hates Starr’s Fall and wishes I’d never brought her here.”
“So that’s why she turned against me, I guess.”
“It’s always complicated with Lindsay.”
Zoe nodded slowly. “Will she follow through on what she said, do you think?” she asked.
Dan sighed, the sound long and low and weary as he considered the matter.
“Honestly? I have no idea. I know Lindsay thinks she means what she says. She wants to give Sophie all the things she never had as a kid. But her follow-through… well, it can suck sometimes. She just doesn’t have it in her.
” He paused to take a long swallow of his beer.
“It took me a long time to realize that—not just with Sophie, but with me. Lindsay could only handle a serious relationship when the other person was willing to compromise all the time.”
“Was that why you got divorced?” Zoe asked quietly.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replied. He realized he was glad Zoe was asking these questions, that he wanted her to know.
She’d told him so much about her history, and he could certainly share his.
“Lindsay was the one to end things,” he admitted.
“I would have kept going. I was of the old-school variety that a marriage should mean forever, no matter what, at least within reason. Every couple should expect a few bumps in the road.” He glanced at her in the darkness, saw how serious and still she looked.
“But it’s hard to keep your vows when the other person just walks away.
I did everything I could to keep our marriage going.
I wasn’t perfect, far from it, and I think my desperation made Lindsay all the more determined to end it.
So that was a lesson learned, I guess. Both people have to want the relationship to make it work.
” He heard the throb of emotion in his voice and inwardly winced.
He realized he wasn’t talking about him and Lindsay anymore, and he had a feeling Zoe knew it, too.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The night stretched all around them, the velvety darkness pierced by the sleepy blink of a few fireflies.
“I wanted it to work, Dan,” Zoe finally said, her voice no more than a whisper.
“I was just scared.” He turned to her in surprise, and she let out a wobbly laugh.
“Okay, I hope I read that right and you were talking about us, if there even is an us, and not you and your ex-wife. Because if you were still talking about Lindsay, I’m just going to slink back home right now and quietly die of mortification. ”
Dan felt an ache in his chest—of longing as well as of sudden, unexpected hope.
“I was talking about us,” he confirmed, his voice a low thrum in the darkness.
He hesitated and then decided to plunge ahead, painful as such honesty could be.
“I really like you, Zoe. I know we haven’t known each other for that long, but I felt a connection with you right from the beginning.
But…” He paused, and he felt her tense. “I spent a long time trying to make a relationship work and feeling like I was the only one doing the heavy lifting, or any lifting at all. I don’t want to be that way again. It wasn’t good for either of us.”
“I understand,” Zoe whispered. She sounded sad, and Dan’s gut twisted. He hadn’t meant to make his words sound like a threat, but after Zoe had walked away from him once, he realized he couldn’t just be the one waiting. Wanting. Not again.
But maybe this conversation was no more than a rehash of regret rather than trying to forge a future. Maybe he’d been the one to read it all wrong.
“Why did you come over here?” he asked abruptly. “Was it just to say sorry?”
“I…” Zoe hesitated, and in that second’s pause Dan felt as if his whole future—their whole future—was suspended, hanging in the balance.
He told himself not to be so melodramatic, that he and Zoe had been on exactly one date, that they had plenty of time to figure out what they wanted, and in any case, relationships didn’t have to be decided with a single conversation.
The trouble was, this relationship felt like it was about to be.
“I came over to say I’m sorry,” Zoe agreed quietly, and Dan’s heart sank right down to his shoes. “And… also to do this,” she said and, leaning over, she pressed her lips to his.
For a second Dan stilled completely beneath that entirely unexpected kiss.
Zoe’s lips were soft and warm and so very sweet.
He reached up with one hand to slide his fingers through her spiky, silky hair, anchoring her mouth more firmly to his.
A soft sigh escaped her as they both deepened the kiss, and Dan felt hope and happiness and heat bloom in his chest, spread throughout his whole body.
This was what they’d both been waiting for.
Finally they broke the kiss, easing back to grin at each other. Dan was pretty sure the expression on Zoe’s face matched his own—embarrassment mixed with a profound relief and even joy.
“Well, I’m glad you came over,” he said, and she let out a little laugh as she touched her forehead to his shoulder.
“Me too.”
He rested his chin on her head, reveling in the quiet peace of the moment. He knew everything was still complicated, just as he was sure Zoe did, too. Nothing in that regard had changed… and yet everything had.
Right now it was enough to feel that… and believe it.