by Scott, Lisa
But looking at Nick now, she couldn’t hold back her grin. She walked over as he sat there, his mouth parted and his eyes wide. He must be nervous, too, she thought. He stood up. “Hi,” he said. He was well over six feet tall, with a very nice build, and a face that would send her home to write a poem—if she were a poet. Hey, I am a poet! Home and poem rhyme! Did poets ever write poems about men’s faces?
Before her mind spun totally out of control, she sat down, adjusted her hat, and smiled. “So this is different.” She offered her hand, even though it was a bit shaky. “I’m Zoe.”
He sat down. “Nick,” he said shaking her hand, still looking dazed.
He pulled his hand back and she set hers in her lap, clenching her fingers to try and calm herself down. “I’m so glad it’s you,” she said. “I mean, I wasn’t totally sure. I did catch the gaze of a few people—oh, not to say everyone was checking me out. God, no. I just meant, I like people watching and I did smile and acknowledge a few people, but I was hoping it was you. And you went to so much trouble to find me. It’s not like I’m trolling Craigslist to find people who are looking for me.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I was looking for an accordion and sometimes its fun to check out the missed connections. Makes you wonder how often you might’ve lost out on love because of bad timing. And you took the time to find me.” She pressed her hand over heart. “You don’t know what that means to me. No one has ever done anything like that.” She stopped and swallowed. Dear god, how long had she been blathering on? “I’m sorry. I’m nervous. I haven’t given you a chance to say one word.”
Nick blinked at her. “No, no. That’s totally okay.”
She let out a breath and dropped her shoulders. “So, were you surprised to hear from me?”
He looked down and ran his finger over a rose petal. “Yes. Yes, I was.” A lock of dark hair fell in his eyes, but she could tell he wasn’t smiling.
“What’s wrong, Nick?”
He looked up at her, and then back down.
She placed her palms flat on the table. “I’m sorry. I babble when I’m nervous.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re sweet. It’s cute.”
“Cute. That’s not a good word.” Damn. He must’ve gotten a second look at her and changed his mind. Maybe her hat had shadowed her face on the train. “Just level with me. What’s wrong?”
He looked up at her, with his mouth turned down. “You’re not the girl in the pink hat.”
She reached up to her hat and her heart dropped. “What do you mean? This is pink. Hot-time-in-the-city pink.”
Nick wouldn’t look at her. “It was a different hat. And she was taller. Her hair was longer, too. Which car were you riding in?”
“The first.”
“I was in the second or third.”
She pushed back her chair, but was too shaky too stand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I just thought…I was on that train. I was wearing this pink hat.”
He shook his head. “Her hat was this little flat thing, like a pancake sitting on her head.”
“A beret. It would have been helpful to include that in the ad.” She looked out the window, too embarrassed to see the disappointment in his eyes. “I’ve got to go.”
“No.” He reached out for her hand. “Stay. Let’s have a coffee at least. I’m always on the lookout for new friends who love the accordion.” His smile almost killed her. “You have to tell me why you were looking for an accordion on Craigslist.”
She pulled her hand away. “It’s a long story.”
“Well, now I’ve got to hear it. Long is usually good.”
She bit her lip, considering. “”You’ve heard of bucket lists, right?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Yeah. Stuff to do before you die.”
“Exactly. Well, my cousin, Jenny, had a bucket list.”
His smile fell. “This story doesn’t sound so good anymore.”
“No. It’s not. Jenny died right after the new year. Skin cancer.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry.”
She swallowed back the familiar surge of sadness. “I know. It sucks. Before we lost her, she gave me her list and made me promise to fulfill it for her. She called it her ‘live-it-up list.’”
Nick raised an eyebrow. “Playing the accordion was on her live-it-up list?”
Zoe laughed. “No. Not originally. Once I promised I’d do it, she started adding all these crazy things to it. Stuff she knew I’d never want to do—zip lining. Having sex in a tent. She knows I hate camping. Oh, and zorbing. I don’t even know what that is. I’ve been too scared to investigate that one.”
He stared at her with a little smile. “That’s really great of you.”
“Don’t give me too much credit. I’m just scared of what she’ll do to me from the afterlife if I don’t fulfill all these wishes.”
‘“Which ones have you managed so far?”
“I’ve made homemade jam. And I’m trying to solve Rubix’s Cube.”
“That’s it?”
“You should see the list. Really, it’ll be impossible to complete. She wants me to go to see Stonehenge. To throw a dart at a map and travel where it lands. To throw out a pitch at Fenway.”
“Do you have the list with you?”
“No,” she lied. “It’s somewhere safe. And she told everyone in her family about it, so they can hound me, too, just in case she can’t figure out how to turn herself into a ghost.”
Nick just looked at her with this adorable little grin on his face; like she’d told him she had proof the Keebler elves were real. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. That’s wild,” he said. “What else is on it?”
“Oh, she wants me to swim with dolphins and go hot air ballooning. Visit a nude beach. Kiss a man from every state.” She threw up her hands.
He whistled softly. “You’d better get busy, girl.”
“I know. I’ve only got two states down—Massachusetts and Rhode Island.”
He stared at her. “Hey, let me get you that cup of coffee.”
She stood up. “No, I’ve got to be going. It was nice meeting you. Hopefully, you’ll see the real girl in the pink hat again. Well, the pink beret.”
Nick popped up from his seat. “I’m sorry, Zoe. I shouldn’t have admitted that it wasn’t you. I put you in an awkward position.”
“Of course you should’ve told me. It would’ve been worse to never have heard from you again and not known why.”
“Zoe…” He turned up his hands, but she hurried out of the café before he could see the tears welling in her eyes.
***
She wasn’t proud of it, but she went home and cried—for the loss of happy days, for the loss of hope—for all the things on the list she knew she wouldn’t be able to do. Thinking she’d been a missed connection had been the only bright spot in the last six months. She’d been trying so hard not to count the number of times she’d invited Jenny to the beach, or to lie out by her parents’ pool. The cancerous mole had been on her shoulder. Why hadn’t Zoe noticed it? It was too late by the time her ob-gyn spotted it during Jenny’s yearly visit. What if she and Jenny had gone to the movies a few of those times instead of baking in the sun? Would that have been enough to make a difference?
Zoe slipped on her coziest jammies and crawled under the covers. Maybe she’d be able to cross off one item on the bucket list—spend the entire weekend in bed. Although Jenny had added ‘with a hot guy,’ so lying there with a box of tissues and a plate of cookies probably didn’t count.
***
The next few days Zoe would dash home from work, hoping an email might show up from Nick. But it didn’t. He was probably just as disappointed as she was that he didn’t find the real girl in the pink hat. A beret. A basic fashion IQ would’ve gone a long way, buddy.
One night after torturing herself with the missed connections, she took out her list and folded it in half. And then again. She tucked it in a desk drawer under her
tax information from the last few years. “Sorry, Jenny,” she said. “You had too much faith in me.” She unscrewed a new jar of the strawberry-lime jam she’d made, and started eating it with a spoon. “Yeah, look at me now.”
She closed her eyes and set down the jam. This was pathetic. She could do anything in the world—and Jenny couldn’t. Was she really going to disappoint her and do nothing? Just because of a misunderstood missed connection? She and Jenny would be laughing about this, not crying in jars of jam.
She opened her desk drawer and found the list. Spreading it across the desk she read it for probably the hundredth time. She ran her finger down the items and stopped on one that would force her to have a new attitude. “I’m going to do it, Jenny.”
She scheduled an appointment with her hairdresser and got ready to cross another item before she lost steam.
***
“Pink?” Katie, her hairdresser asked.
“Yep.”
Katie raised her pierced eyebrow; the small diamond stud winking at her like it was in on this joke. “Pink.”
“Pink.”
Katie shrugged. “What shade?”
“Like my hat.” Zoe held up the hat sitting in her lap.
“Hot pink.” She shrugged. “You really don’t seem the type, but okay.”
An hour later when it was all done, Zoe stared at herself in the mirror. It was by far one of the craziest things she’d ever done and part of her wanted to cry, she looked so different. Katie was right. She just wasn’t a pink hair kind of girl. But pink hair wasn’t something to cry about these days. Pink hair was an adventure—an adventure Jenny would never have. What the hell, it’s just hair. “I love it!” Zoe said, after staring at herself for a moment. “This is going to be fun.”
***
But it hadn’t been. Not yet. She had to answer endless questions at work about her hair. The girl in the cubicle next to her swore there was something in the employee manual about hair color under the dress code section. Retelling Jenny’s tale so many times to explain why she’d made the color change had taken its toll. So, Zoe should’ve been thrilled the weekend had arrived. But it just seemed like a long stretch of time to spend by herself feeling lonely and sad. Maybe she’d learn how to knit; it was on the list. I’ll knit myself a cover up for the nude beach. When she walked into the lobby of her apartment building, there was a note on her mailbox to see the building superintendent. Was Mrs. Beener next door complaining about the smell of cooking jam again?
She walked down to his office and knocked on his door. “You wanted to see me, Harry?”
He looked up from a baseball game playing on TV. “Miss Zoe. How are you?”
“I’m alive.” Which was a good reminder to enjoy what Jenny didn’t have.
“Always a good thing. I’ve got a rather large package for you.”
“For me?” Lord, had she been sleep shopping again? She really had to figure out how to block QVC from her cable box. The perfume of the month was more expensive than you’d think.
He picked up the big box and handed it to her. The return address showed a post office box, but no name. “Thanks, Harry.”
“You’re welcome. You have a nice weekend. Hope it’s full of more surprises.” He smiled at her and turned back to the game.
She took the elevator up to her apartment and set the delivery on her kitchen table. She put her ear to the box, and didn’t hear any ticking or smell anything weird. With a shrug, she grabbed a knife and sliced through the packing tape.
Slowly, she opened the package. Whatever was inside was surrounded in bubble wrap. She tore that off and her jaw dropped. Then she laughed. She laughed until she cried, then laughed until she had to run to the bathroom to pee. She ran back to the kitchen table and looked at it again “An accordion!”
She lifted it out of the box, and an envelope fluttered to the ground. She picked it up and slid out a note card. “Dear Zoe, I hope this helps fulfill your cousin’s quest. It’s a great thing you’re doing. Try to have some fun with it. I imagine that’s what your cousin wanted. Nick.”
“Nick?” How in the world had he found out where she lived? If she hadn’t met him and seen for herself that he had zero interest in her, she might have been a little creeped out.
She picked up the accordion, and looped the strap around her neck. She pressed the keyboard, and pulled the accordion in and out, but it sounded like she was killing something. Before her neighbors called the police, she took it off. Mrs. Beener next door didn’t tolerate much nonsense. Learning how to play the darn thing might be even harder than finding one in the first place.
Not willing to deal with that search yet, she popped open her laptop and emailed Nick. “I cannot believe you got me an accordion. That was really kind of you. Thank you. If you’ve got a hot air balloon stashed away somewhere, let me know. Zoe.” She hit send and made herself a cup of herbal tea.
When she sat back down to search for accordion teachers, she spotted a new email in her box. It was from Nick. “No can do on the hot air balloon, but I did find out what zorbing is. You in?”
“Is it legal?” she emailed back.
“Totally.”
“Moral?”
“You can hold your head up high when we’re done. And no fair searching it online now.”
She twiddled her fingers for a moment before typing a response. “You really want to do this with me?”
A response zinged back a few seconds later. “Yeah, I feel bad about the other day.”
Her fingers flew over the keys. “I don’t want a sympathy date, Nick.”
“It’s not a date.”
Ugh. She quickly responded. “Right, no. It’s just an expression.”
His response took a few moments. “No, I was going to say ‘It’s not a date, it’s a dare.’ I was trying to be funny. It doesn’t always work.”
Thank god he couldn’t see how red her cheeks were. “So, when do we do it?” She typed out, hitting sending before she realized she’d just invited him to do it. She dropped her head back against the couch.
But he was a gentleman and didn’t run with the joke. “How about tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at noon.”
“Right. You’ve got my address.”
“Internet search engines are remarkable things, and your security levels are too low. My fingers are wearing out. Can I give you a quick call?”
“Sure.” She typed in her phone number and he called a few moments later.
“Where did you find the accordion?” she asked, without even saying hello.
“Ebay.” He had a nice, deep voice. She’d been too nervous to notice the other day.
“Well done. And thanks again. Really. So, did you see the real girl in the pink hat again?” Zoe asked.
“No. But I did see someone in a black beret. Good to know what that’s called finally. So, what else is on the list?”
Something felt off. “Why are you so interested in the list?”
He said nothing for a few moments. “Maybe because I know something about not being able to reach your dreams. Coming along for the ride to fulfill your cousin’s is a lot safer than coming up with my own.”
Zoe toyed with the tag at the end of her tea bag. “What kind of dreams did you miss out on?”
“Nothing I want to talk about today.” He paused. “Sorry, that was rude. Let’s just focus on your list. And zorbing. Wear comfortable clothes tomorrow, and leave the hat at home. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
***
Zoe waited in the lobby of her building; surprised she’d agreed to see Nick again. Their first meeting had been one of the most embarrassing moments of her life, but like her new pink hair, it no longer seemed like that big of a deal.
But her heart swelled when he walked in the door. He was so cute, and every part of her seemed to agree he was her type, no doubt. Too bad she wasn’t his. It would be interesting to see if she could set aside her lust so they could develop a friendship.
Nick scanned the lobby and his eyes swept right past her. She waved at him. “Over here. The girl in the pink hair.”
His eyes bulged. “Zoe? Wow. Did you do that so there’s no mistake again in another missed connection?”
“Ha ha. No, that is not the reason. But it’s a good bonus. Coloring my hair a crazy color is on the list.” She reached up and smoothed her hand down the back of her head.
He walked over to her, still staring at her hair. “That must be one of the ones she added after the fact.”
“No, it’s something she wanted to do. I’m feeling lucky that I have the chance.”
Nick put his hands on his hips, smiling. “Thanks for letting me be part of this.”
“I still hope you’ll explain it to me someday.”
He nodded and looked down at the floor. Then his good mood returned. “You ready?”
“I hope so. First, this is for you.” She handed him a jar of jam she’d shoved in her purse. “It’s from my first homemade batch.”
He took the jar from her. “First batch?”
“There have been several batches. Turns out I like doing it. It’s a good stress reliever.”
He held up the jar and looked at it. “What kind is it?”
“Spicy strawberry.”
“Spicy? Can’t wait to try it. Thanks! And I’m going to lock this in my trunk, because you might take it back out of spite after you see what we’re doing.”
***
“I’m not getting in that.” Zoe stepped back from the giant plastic ball. She’d pestered him during the nearly hour-long ride, but he wouldn’t tell her what zorbing was. It was probably a good thing. “You expect me to get into that thing and roll down the hill?”
“Don’t worry, they strap you in,” he said.
She put her hand behind her ear and titled her head. “Listen. I can hear Jenny laughing at me now. She knows I hate roller coasters and spinning rides. At carnivals, I’d wait for her while she went by herself.” She looked up and shouted, “You’re hilarious, Jenny! You hear me? Super funny.”