7. Zola
ZOLA
EIGHT YEARS LATER…
The Cracked Cask smells the same as it always has—stale beer, sweat, and that peculiar tang of desperation that clings to places where people come to forget.
I'm wiping down the bar top, watching condensation rings disappear under my rag, when Ava sidles up beside me with that practiced smile that never quite reaches her eyes.
"Girl, did you see table six?" She leans in, all conspiratorial warmth. It makes me suspicious instantly. "That's Anthony. Comes in every Thursday. Total gentleman."
"Mm." I don't look up.
"I'm just saying, he's been looking over here all night." Her voice drops lower, sugary. "Probably wondering why such a gorgeous woman is working in a place like this."
I finally glance at table six. Anthony is mid-forties, wedding ring tan line still visible, nursing a whiskey that's more ice than liquor at this point. "He's married."
"Separated." Ava waves a manicured hand. "That's basically single."
I bet he isn't and she just wants to stir up trouble. Otherwise she'd be blowing him in the back right now.
"That's basically still married."
She laughs like I've said something charming instead of dismissive.
Everything with Ava is a performance—the hair that falls in perfect blonde waves, the jeans painted onto her thighs, the crop top showing off a stomach that's never known the comfort of carbs.
She's pretty in that deliberately manufactured way, and she wields it like currency.
"You're so uptight sometimes." She bumps my hip with hers. "When's the last time you even went on a date?"
Never, I think. Not a real one. Not since—
"I'm working," I say instead.
Ava shrugs and drifts away, her attention already captured by a group of boys who just walked in. Definitely runners for one of the crime families in the area. They're the type who'll tip well if she laughs at their jokes and leans across the table just right. She knows exactly what she's doing.
I miss Naomi.
Naomi never played those games. She'd stand behind this same bar with me, all business and work. She was fantastic, great at small talk and serving up drinks. She didn't like the drama Ava does or to pass off work in favor of getting paid to sleep with the customers like everyone else seems to.
But Naomi doesn't work here much anymore. She took some shifts last month, but mostly she's home now. With Nilos. With her son Jordan. Living the life she spent years convinced she'd never get to have.
I'm happy for her. Genuinely. Watching her and Nilos fall together was like witnessing something I didn't quite believe in anymore—two people who actually chose each other, who made space for each other's jagged edges instead of trying to file them smooth.
I warned her at first, but it seems it's good she didn't listen to me.
Nilos looked at Naomi like she was the only fixed point in a spinning world, and Naomi stopped carrying everything alone because she finally had someone strong enough to help her bear the weight.
They moved in together six months ago. Nilos built a family around her, around Jordan, with that quiet certainty that terrifies me because it looks too much like the thing I used to have and threw away.
The thing I had to throw away.
A customer signals for another round and I pour it automatically, muscle memory taking over while my mind drifts somewhere darker.
Being back in Philadelphia still feels like wearing clothes that don't quite fit anymore—familiar but wrong, restrictive in ways I can't articulate.
Every street corner holds a ghost. Every familiar landmark is a reminder of who I was when I left.
I came back for Nia.
Owen died eleven months ago. Some structural collapse during a routine call, a floor giving way beneath him, and just like that—gone.
Nia was seven months pregnant, glowing and exhausted and so goddamn happy, and then she was a widow planning a funeral while trying to figure out how to raise a daughter alone.
I got the call in New York at three in the morning. Nia's voice on the other end, flat and hollow in that way that meant she was holding herself together through sheer force of will. "Owen's dead."
Not passed away. Not we lost him. Just those two words, stark and brutal, because anything softer would've shattered her completely.
I was on a bus twelve hours later.
New York had been my escape after everything fell apart with Declan.
After I destroyed us trying to save him from having to choose.
I'd left Philadelphia with a broken rib that was still healing and a hole inside me that felt like it might never close, convinced I was doing the noble thing. The selfless thing.
The right thing.
What a fucking joke that turned out to be.
I'd found work while I healed—nothing glamorous, just whatever kept money coming in.
Waitressing mostly, though the physical demands were hell on my still-recovering body those first few months.
Eventually I moved into bartending because the money was better and I could do it without wanting to scream every time I bent wrong.
I saved every penny, thinking maybe I'd get back to school eventually.
Finish that nursing degree I'd been so determined to earn.
But the months turned into a year, then two, then three, and I was still pouring drinks in Manhattan dive bars, still living in a shoebox apartment in Bushwick with two roommates I barely spoke to, still waking up every morning feeling like I'd left something vital behind.
I never made real friends in New York. Never dated, despite the endless parade of men who asked.
A few times I'd let someone buy me a drink, let the conversation stretch long enough to remember what flirting felt like, but it never went further.
Because none of them were him. None of them would ever be him.
Nia hadn't liked me leaving. She'd threatened to come after me once I finally called her and told her where I was. I could hear her fighting tears over the phone. "You don't have to do this."
"Yeah, I do."
"He chose you, Z." She never once believed my excuses that we just weren't right for each other, and I had to get away from him so I could live. "He was willing to give up everything—"
"Exactly." I'd shoved another shirt into my duffel. "He was going to give up everything. His whole future. Because I got hit by a fucking car and lost my uterus. You think I can live with that?"
"You think he can live without you?"
The question had hung there between us, unanswerable.
"I know you need time," she'd finally whispered. "Just come home soon."
But soon turned into over seven years.
I'd visited, of course. Came back for a weekend every few months, stayed with Nia, carefully avoided anywhere I might run into Declan or Stellan or anyone else connected to that old life.
Nia would update me—she'd opened the bookstore five years ago, right before marrying Owen.
The wedding was small and perfect, all warm wood and string lights and Nia in a simple dress that made her look like something out of a painting.
She was so happy it hurt to look at her sometimes.
And then Owen died and everything went to hell.
I'd planned to stay a few weeks after the funeral. Help Nia through those first impossible days, meet baby Maeve, make sure they were stable before heading back to New York and my carefully constructed life of emotional avoidance.
Then six months ago, Nia got the diagnosis.
Stage four. Some rare cancer with a name I still can't pronounce, the kind that grows silent and vicious until it's too late to do anything but manage the pain.
The doctors gave her a year, maybe less.
She'd been feeling tired, losing weight, but she'd blamed it on new motherhood and grief and all the other reasonable explanations that turned out to be her body eating itself from the inside.
I haven't left since.
My shift finally ends just past midnight. Ava's still working the college boys, laughing too loud at something that probably isn't funny, and I slip out the back without saying goodbye. The June air is thick and warm, clinging to my skin as I walk the six blocks to Storybound Books.
Nia's bookstore.
Even after all these years, thinking of it as hers makes something warm uncurl in my chest. She'd dreamed about this place since we were kids—a real neighborhood bookstore with actual wooden shelves and reading nooks and a children's section where she could host story time.
When she finally opened it, I came in from New York for the launch party, watching her stand in the middle of her dream made real with Owen's arm around her waist and tears streaming down her face.
"We did it," she'd whispered to me later, both of us sitting in the empty store after everyone left. "You and me. Just like we planned."
"You did it," I'd corrected. "I'm just the supporting character in your success story."
"Bullshit. I wouldn't have made it through business school without you. Wouldn't have had the guts to take out the loan, wouldn't have—" She'd grabbed my hand, squeezed hard. "This is ours, Z. Always."
Now I unlock the front door with the spare key Nia gave me, stepping into the familiar smell of old paper and cedar shelves.
The store is dark except for the small lamp Nia always leaves on by the register, casting everything in soft golden shadows.
I lock the door behind me and head for the back staircase that leads up to the apartment.
Home. At least for now.
The apartment is quiet when I push through the door. Serena, the night nurse, is sitting in the living room reading something on her tablet. She looks up when I enter, gives me a small nod. "She's sleeping. Maeve's been down since eight."
"Any problems?"
"Ate half her dinner. Threw the other half on the floor." Serena stands, gathering her things. "Pretty standard eight-month-old behavior."
"And Nia?"
Something shifts in Serena's expression—not quite pity, but close enough to make my chest tighten. "She had a good day. Alert, kept some soup down. But she's weaker, Zola. Every day she's a little weaker."
I nod because there's nothing else to do. Nothing else to say. We've been having this same conversation for weeks now, watching Nia fade by increments so small they'd be imperceptible if I didn't know her body as well as my own.
Serena leaves and I stand in the dim living room, surrounded by all of Nia's things.
The framed photos covering every surface—her and Owen on their wedding day, baby Maeve sleeping on Owen's chest, the three of us as teenagers making stupid faces at the camera.
The quilts draped over furniture, the books stacked on every available surface, the plants that are somehow still alive despite my black thumb because Nia has detailed care instructions and I follow them religiously.
This apartment is so completely her that walking through it feels like moving through her memories, her love made physical.
I check on Maeve first. She's sprawled in her crib, arms thrown up beside her head, mouth slightly open.
Her dark curls are a mess, one chubby fist clutching the elephant blanket Nia made before she got too sick to hold a needle steady.
She looks so much like Nia it physically hurts—same rich brown skin, same perfect bone structure, same way of pursing her lips even in sleep.
This baby will grow up without her mother.
The thought hits me like it does every night, sharp and vicious.
Maeve won't remember Nia's laugh or the way she hummed while cooking or how she could make anyone feel seen with just a look.
She never got to meet a father who wept when he found out she was coming.
She'll only have photos, stories, secondhand memories that will never be enough.
I force myself to turn away, to move down the short hallway to Nia's room.
She's awake despite what Serena said. I can tell by her breathing, the particular quality of stillness that means she's lying there thinking instead of sleeping. I push the door open slowly and her eyes find mine in the darkness.
"Hey." Her voice is paper-thin, barely there.
"Hey yourself." I sit on the edge of her bed carefully, hyperaware of how fragile she's become.
Six months ago she was still recognizably herself—a little thinner, a little tired, but fundamentally Nia.
Now she's all sharp angles and translucent skin, her beautiful coily hair covered by a soft wrap because chemo took what cancer hadn't already stolen.
"How was work?"
"Ava tried to set me up with a married guy."
A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Sounds about right."
"I miss Naomi."
"I know you do." Nia shifts slightly, wincing. I told her all about my work friend and she was outraged I was replacing her—jokingly, of course. "She's living her best life though. Woman deserves it after everything she went through."
"Yeah." I reach for Nia's hand, so small now in mine. "She does."
We sit in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the city filtering through the window. Somewhere down the block, someone's playing music too loud. A car alarm goes off and gets shut down. Normal city symphony, the soundtrack of our whole lives.
"I'm glad you came back," Nia says finally. "I know you didn't want to. I know being here is—"
"Stop." I squeeze her hand gently. "There's nowhere else I'd be."
"Still haven't seen him?"
She doesn't have to clarify who him is. There's only ever been one him that mattered.
"No. It's been almost a year and nothing. Maybe he's—" I stop, unable to finish that thought. Maybe he's moved on. Maybe he found someone else. Maybe he's married with kids and a life that doesn't include the girl who broke his heart to save his future.
I kind of expected Declan to show up the second I moved back. After eight years, he shouldn't have, but he always knew where I was. Always watched over me.
But he just let me go. Even though I asked for it, it still hurts.
"Maybe he's waiting," Nia says softly.
"For what?"
"For you to be ready."
I want to tell her I'll never be ready. That seeing Declan again would destroy whatever fragile equilibrium I've built. That I came back for her, not for ghosts and second chances.
But I'm too tired to lie and Nia can read me too well anyway.
So I just sit there holding her hand in the dark, feeling her pulse flutter weak and unsteady beneath my fingers, and try not to think about all the people I've lost and the one I gave away.