One Life

by A. J. Pine

  I have to know. “Devon?” I work hard to calm my voice. Never mind the kaleidoscope of butterflies spinning like a vortex in my belly.

  “Zoe?” he asks, mirroring my tentative tone.

  “It would really mean a lot to me if you could approximate a day or week or month even when the Old Town people came in.”

  Devon scratches the back of his neck, looks up at the ceiling while his lips move as if he is speaking, but no sound comes out.

  “Right! Got it,” he says. “It was Tuesday. I was thinking Wednesday because it was after the new releases came in, but then I remembered it was Tuesday. Still after the new releases came in, just later that day.”

  Devon is probably still talking, but at this point I’m done listening. Tuesday. Right now I’m sure of one thing. Of all the days in the week, Tuesday is definitely my favorite. I turn around and press my face to the glass in the door again. It feels good to hope.

  * * *

  Zach

  I wait until the panelists are seated, wait as far back from the small crowd as I can. This is Zoe’s day, her time to shine, and while I wouldn’t miss it for the world, I have no idea how she’d react to seeing me, and there is no way I will take a chance on ruining this for her. I’ll watch from a distance and sneak out when the presentation is over. I tell myself it’s a solid plan.

  I roll my eyes when I hear my own voice come through on the sound system. It wasn’t even my idea to throw CDs at the guy last week. But I couldn’t not stop in when I saw Zoe’s name in the window—in the fucking window. I just wish I was on my own and not with my roommate, Jason, another teacher at Old Town.

  “I know her,” was all I could say when I pointed to Zoe’s name on the flyer. “I just want to see if it’s general admission or if you need a ticket or something.”

  But Jason saw right through me. It’s my fault. In the six months I’d shared an apartment with the guy, I’d brought home a total of zero girls. Not one single date. It felt right to pour myself into the music, my only outlet while I waited. The only reason Jason knew I was straight was because he flat-out asked me, and I laughed when he did. Just like when we met, Zoe never asked me to wait. But I’ve been doing it anyway. Hope is funny like that.

  “She’s the song. Isn’t she?” he had asked after leaving the shop’s manager with a recording of our New Year’s show. Turns out I’m pretty good at the teaching thing, and when all was said and done with the showcase, I turned down a contract and decided to stay on as a resident instructor, recording with the best of the best—the musicians I’d met that summer.

  It was the question everyone had asked and that I still wasn’t answering. Who was the inspiration for the song “Uncover You”?

  But I never give anyone an answer, afraid if I said it out loud, it would mean some sort of ultimate closure for me and Zoe, and when it comes to the girl I love, letting go of hope isn’t in my repertoire.

  “It’s just a song,” I’d said to him. But hearing it now, with Zoe in the same building, the two of us under one roof for the first time in months, for a second it feels like something more. And then I just feel like an asshole.

  Because of course she is the song. She was always the song. But I fucked up in so many ways. We both did to some extent, but Zoe was grieving. And she has every right to distance herself from me now.

  You know what it means to be an addict, Nolan, I tell myself. Sometimes it’s best to cut ties with the life you had before recovery. You need to let her go if that’s what she needs.

  But here I am, infiltrating her life, not letting go. I rest my hand on my back pocket, the one with Zoe’s folded-up letter. Maybe she hasn’t let go yet either.

  I brace myself for seeing her for the first time in half a year. It’s like this is our thing, going six months without seeing each other. Last time I showed up at her door after she lost her brother, and she welcomed me back into her life. Today is different. I know I’m not welcome, not in the traditional sense. If she wanted me here, she would have told me somehow, right? Or maybe I’m just holding on to the irrational thought that she does want me here but is trapped behind the lapse of time, the heaviness of how we left things.

  But it’s a public event, and I’m a member of the public, right? No way I could stay away once I saw her name in the window.

  Devon, the guy Jason forced our CD on, stands in front of the small crowd.

  “Hey, everyone. This is the first event of this kind we’ve ever done, so thanks for being a part of our debut author panel. We’re really informal here, so I’m going to introduce our three panelists, let them tell you about their debut works, and then let the party begin.”

  Applause erupts from the intimate audience, but all I hear is the thump of my heart, the organ threatening to burst free from my rib cage. Then, as if it is the most natural thing in the world, Zoe Adler takes a seat at a small table in front of the onlookers. I’m pretty sure two other people sit at the table with her, but it doesn’t matter. The only person I see is her.

  If someone asked me what I felt right then and there, held a gun to my head and forced me to articulate the inarticulable, I would say falling. Of course, I fell for her long before I admitted it to myself. I loved her while we were together and throughout her absence from my life. But in the instant of seeing her, I fall in love with Zoe again. And when she speaks, that surety and poise—it blows me away completely.

  Mid-introduction, Zoe laughs quietly and runs her hand over her head, still covered in a red wool cap.

  “Whoops!” she says. “Takes me so long to warm up, I forget to lose the outerwear sometimes.”

  She pulls the hat off, and I watch her chin-length locks spill forward—her blond chin-length locks. Shit. I thought she was beautiful the day I met her at a comic book convention last year—black hair, piercings, zero ink.

  Now here she sits, the girl I’ve desperately wanted to see, showing herself to everyone. And I’m in awe of her.

  The light catches the glint of the stud in her nose, and I wonder if metal still clings to the outline of both ears, but as I move forward to get a better look, I can see the lip ring is gone, both brows free of embellishment too. But the ink is still there, spilling out from underneath her sleeves, and for a second I itch to trace the outline of the feather, run my lips along the words.

  “Hey, Supergirl,” I say quietly to myself yet somehow hope she can hear me.

  She can’t, of course. But can she feel my presence like I feel hers? Did she recognize my song, or was she too caught up in the moment to notice the music at all?

  Another step forward as I drink her in, intoxication building. That’s the only explanation for me closing the distance between us. Intoxication by proximity. Sure. If anyone asks, I’ll go with that.

  “My family experienced a huge loss last spring,” she says, and though her voice wavers, she never falters.

  “My comic, One Life, is a tribute to him. A way for Wyatt to continue on his adventures and for me and my family . . . and hopefully you . . . to remember what he taught us, that living was always an adventure.”

  That’s it. Short and sweet. She finishes. The next person begins to speak, and I somehow find myself sitting in one of the chairs, packed into the small crowd in the even smaller shop to see a girl with the biggest light in her eyes.

  There’s no going back. When it’s time to get in line to purchase a signed copy from any or all of the three, I take my place at the back of her line, waiting patiently, planning out what the hell I might say. But when I’m close enough to touch her—when I can smell the sweet scent of her presence, all my planning flies out the window.

  Jess sees me first. She’s sitting next to Zoe, playing the part of assistant. Her smile encourages me, and when she nudges Zoe in the shoulder, forcing her to look up from the book she is signing for the person in front of me, I fucking fall in love again.

  Then it’s my turn. Here we are.

  “Who should I sign it to?” she as
ks, her eyes crinkled in a smile despite the tears that gather in them.

  I have to clear my throat, hold back my emotions for a few seconds more. I can manage that—maybe.

  “Zach,” I say. “Could you sign it to Zach?”

  She nods, and laughter spills forth from her along with the accumulated tears.

  “Hi, Zach,” she says, extending a hand. “I’m Zoe.”

  I touch her then, first only her hand. But she stands from her chair, reaches across the table with her other hand. That hand hangs in the air for a second, next to my face, so I grab it and press it to my cheek. All the air escapes my lungs as I close my eyes, lingering in her touch.

  I’m the last one in line. I made sure of that before she saw me. So when her other hand lets go of mine to cup my face in her palms, I know I’m not alone. Zoe has fallen again, too.

  I look down to where the sleeve of her hoodie rides up on her left arm, spotting the difference immediately in the tattooed inscription. To live would be an awfully big adventure.

  “You changed it,” I say, about to lose the battle with emotion.

  She nods. “I changed a lot of things.”

  We both have, and I know there’s so much to catch up on, that we’re both not the people we were six months ago or even when we met. But I can’t help thinking that if we make it past this moment, we might have more moments in our future.

  “Did you change everything?” I ask, and I know this might be too much, the weight of the question. But this is it. Go big or go home, right?

  Her hands are on my face, though, and all that separates us is a small table, one I can easily lean across to reach her. But it’s her call.

  She shakes her head, her cheeks wet with tears. “Not everything,” she says. And that’s all I remember before her lips are on mine.

  I smile against her, at the touch of her tongue, the Supergirl stud assuring me some things are still the same.

  I fall again and again, and every time she catches me. I’ve tasted salt water on her lips before, but it never felt like this—like home. Like the beginning of an adventure, our adventure. And somehow I know that neither of us can wait to write the rest of the story.

  Epilogue

  Devon taps me on the shoulder, and I hold up a finger, signaling for him to wait.

  “I’m at a really critical part,” I say, and he chuckles.

  “A really critical part of shelving the new releases?” he asks. “I didn’t realize there was such a part.”

  When I look up, his arms are crossed, and he wears a huge grin.

  “I told you. I gotta check out the competition. This is more than just a day job, you know. It’s important research.”

  Devon snatches the comic out of my hand and slips it into its spot on the new release shelf. “It’s after two. Your first week at your new day job ended seven minutes ago. And your ride is here.”

  I let out a small squeak, and my head jerks toward the door. Zach stands just inside the shop’s entrance, and on the street behind him—illegally parked with hazards flashing and the engine still running—is the Zipcar of the day, something compact and cherry red.

  “You ready?” he asks, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them for warmth.

  I bite my lip and grin. “Just need to grab my coat.”

  * * *

  Once inside the car, a blanket of heat surrounds us, and Zach chuckles as he turns down the intensity of the vents.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t want you to be cold.”

  I peel off my gloves and pull my hat from my head, shaking out my hair.

  He clears his throat. “Wow. I still need to get used to that.”

  Zach’s gaze lingers on my hair before his eyes find mine again.

  “Took me a while too,” I say, and I hear a slight tremor in my voice.

  Zach grips the steering wheel with both hands, but he doesn’t put the car in drive. He stares out the window and then back at me.

  “So—I’m really fucking nervous,” he says. “I’m just going to put that out there.”

  I laugh, and the tension in my shoulders relaxes.

  After meeting more than a year ago, going from zero to living and sleeping together in what felt like minutes, to six months with no contact—here we are, on our first date.

  “I’m terrified,” I admit, still laughing. “It’s all I could think about for the past two weeks, but when I woke up this morning . . . I almost canceled on you.”

  Zach’s eyes widen. Shit.

  “I didn’t mean—it’s not that I didn’t want this moment to get here as quickly as possible. It’s just . . .” I whack my head against the back of the seat, sure I’ve pretty much ruined the date before it even starts with my newfound need to be all honest and shit, when I feel his hand uncurling my clenched fist. Then he threads his fingers through mine.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Somehow he manages to maneuver us out into traffic without ever letting go, and we head to wherever it is we’re going, his hand squeezing mine, and those words—the ones I wrote to him—playing back again and again in my head.

  Everything’s going to be okay.

  We’re only on the interstate for about ten minutes before he takes the exit ramp onto Martin Luther King Drive. I know exactly where we’re going.

  My first instinct is to kiss him, but he’s driving. For a second I consider pulling his hand to my lips and using that as a substitute, but things are still—strange. After seeing him at the signing two weeks ago, everything kind of got put on hold. Devon offered me the job, and I started training the Monday after, working more nights than days until today, the first day I was free before nine at night, and Zach made me promise my afternoon and evening to him.

  “You got tickets to publishers’ day at WinterCon?” I ask, and he keeps his eyes on the road but nods, a sly grin spreading across his face. “But how? Today is only for local industry pros. My editor couldn’t even get me tickets because he’s not from Chicago, and because I’m not a publisher or bookseller . . .”

  He nods again, and it all falls into place—Zach asking me out on a Thursday afternoon and Devon changing my shift to the early one instead of the evening.

  “Devon gave you these? But he barely knows me.”

  He shakes his head as we pull into the McCormick Place parking lot.

  “It was actually a trade. I get early purchase privileges at Old Town, and there was a show Devon wanted to see. Just so happens there was a con I wanted to get into, and well, here we are.”

  Zach throws the car in park and turns off the ignition, the air cooling at an exponential rate, yet all I feel is heat running through my veins. He turns to me but doesn’t make a move, and I can feel the tension of both our restraint—of holding back because we think it’s what we’re supposed to do.

  “I didn’t expect you to wait,” I say softly, making the first move with my palm on his cheek.

  “I didn’t expect you to still want me,” he says, turning to kiss my palm.

  “I loved you,” I say. “Kinda hard to shake that.”

  He laughs quietly. “I loved you too.”

  Zach runs his free hand through my still-blond hair, letting it rest on the back of my neck. He rests his forehead against mine.

  “I have a confession,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “I never stopped, Zoe. You’re it for me.”

  I feel his warm breath on my lips—so close I can almost taste him.

  “I never stopped either,” I admit, and I obliterate that final space between his lips and mine.

  Soft, gentle, exploring, his mouth reacquaints itself with mine, and it doesn’t take long for us to remember how we fit, to find our rhythm. His tongue flicks against the Supergirl stud in mine.

  “See?” I whisper against him. “Some things haven’t changed.”

  He doesn’t say anything, just kisses me again, his breath ragge
d as it mingles with mine.

  Everything is new and yet completely the same.

  When we finally separate, the increasing cold too much for our body heat to combat, he reaches for a rolled-up plastic bag on the floor of the backseat, handing it to me.

  “Shit. Gifts? We’re doing gifts? I didn’t get you anything.”

  He laughs. “Just open it, Zoe.”

  So I do.

  “Oh my God,” I squeal, pulling out the Vulcan ears he wore when I met him just over a year ago. But that’s not all that’s in the bag. I reach in for the headband that has a blond Princess Leia bun on each end and thrust it immediately over my hair.

  “You know a Jedi and a Vulcan would never live happily ever after in real life, right?” I ask.

  He rolls his eyes. “Jedis and Vulcans aren’t real.”

  I think on this and then lean in for one more kiss.

  “But we are,” I say.

  He grins. “Yeah. We are.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, for being a great collaborative partner. Zoe was just an idea when you read One Night. Now look! She’s got a story all her own. And to my amazing editor, Leis Pederson, and the whole crew at Berkley who made One Life all pretty and book-like, so much thanks to all of you and the amazing work you do.

  I can’t do what I do without the best friends/critique partners a girl could ask for. Natalie Blitt, Jennifer Blackwood, Megan Erickson, and Lia Riley, this was such an emotional book to write. Your help and support throughout the journey means the world.

  To my family, especially S and C, thank you for understanding my deep connection with my laptop and for reminding me to close it every now and then. I love you to the moon and back to the living room.

  Thank you to all the wonderful readers who fell in love with Zoe and Spock in One Night and wanted to see how their story played out. They had a rough road but made it to their happily ever after. Jedis and Vulcans forever.