“Zander—” I say, the words a warning.
“No. Live in the fantasy of this, Zo.”
And then, because I’m still wrapped in the warmth of his laugh, I sigh then nod.
And the smile I get that time makes it worth whatever inevitable pain I’ll deal with when this all has to end.
TWENTY-FIVE
OUR SONG
-ZANDER-
“Can you take that stupid thing out?” I ask hours after the ticket conversation as we approach our next destination. Zoe’s feet are on the dash, her elbow out the window of her Jeep and her head back, silly pink cat eyeglasses on her face.
She looks at ease.
She looks relaxed.
Except for that stupid fucking ponytail.
“What?” Her hand moves to the dial to turn her music down to hear me.
I hate to admit it, but some of this shit isn’t half bad.
The old stuff—the stuff I was forced to listen to when Zoe and Luna were young? That drives me up a wall. But the newer stuff, the stuff with a folky twist to it, I can hang with.
At the very least, it’s great road trip music, perfect for driving with the windows down through old country roads as we avoid any major highway.
I’ve realized that as soon as we hit a highway, Zoe rolls her window up, bottling up her sunshine and smiles, the overthinking and dissecting coming back in her eyes.
So, for now, I’m staying on the backroads.
“Your hair tie. It’s giving me a headache just looking at it.”
“Uh, no,” she says with a laugh.
“Take it out, Zoe.” She looks at me confused, like what I’m saying doesn’t make sense to her.
“Zander, I will not be doing that.”
“Why?”
“Because then my hair looks a mess, and it whips everywhere.”
“What’s your excuse when you’re just walking around town?”
She blinks at my profile, and I glance over quickly before putting my eyes back on the road.
“What?”
“Every time you’re around town, you have your hair in that damn ponytail, slicked all the way back like you used a damn glue stick.
“I mean, I kind of do. I have this wax—”
“Exactly. Why?”
She doesn’t get it.
She doesn’t understand my question or why I’m asking. That much is clear when I look over and she’s furrowing her brow, fully confused. “When you were a kid, you wore your hair wild. All over. Your mom would chase you around with a comb, trying to pin it back with little barrettes.”
“I was like, ten, Zee.”
“Okay?”
“Now I’m an adult. I need to look put together. And I don’t always have it in a ponytail,” she says like she won some argument.
“You’re right. Sometimes you fry the crap out of it and straighten it.”
“What do you know about straightening hair?”
“I have a sister and a mom. I grew up with you. Know that those straightener shits get hot enough to leave giant burn marks and stink up a house.”
“Jesus—” She rolls her eyes, looking to the roof of the car like I’m exhausting her.
“Why, Zoe?”
My gut tells me that just like every change she made in her life to fit some mold, there’s a reason for this, too.
I think she’ll play it off or keep up the game.
But she surprises me with an honest answer I don’t have to drag out of her.
“Because people like me better this way,” she says with a sigh.
“What’s with you and making people like you? You’re Zoe, the girl who told me to fuck off and leave you alone when you were twelve.”
She did, too. We were camping, and she was sitting at the campfire, and I kept giving her shit for how delicate she was with her marshmallows, barely toasting the sides and starting over when it caught fire.
“I was so grounded for that.” I shrug and smile.
“I deserved it. I was bugging you, and you told me to stop multiple times politely. I didn’t.”
There’s silence as we both get lost in the memory of our shared childhood.
I like this most, I think.
Having this history, these memories we share.
“What happened to her?” I can hear her sigh even over the wind from the open windows.
“She grew up, Zee.” I shake my head.
“No, she disappeared.”
I know when, too.
I know the exact night she changed, the exact night that girl disappeared.
We stop at a red light, and I reach over, grabbing the thick scrunchie and tugging until it starts to slip from her hair.
“Zander!”
When it’s free, her curls fall wild, if a little dented where the hair tie was.
I made sure that after she washed her hair, she had no time to use the arsenal of hair tools she brought to fry her hair back to her preferred state.
“Zander, give that back!”
I look at her and smile, loving this version of Zoe.
This is my version.
What does she always say? Zoe’s Version?
This is Zoe, Zander’s Version.
I like her best of all.
“No,” I say, then I drive as the light turns green.
“Zander!” I glance over, and her hair is wild in the wind, flicking left and right, a full-on tornado of curls.
God, she’s so damn beautiful.
And she doesn’t even know it.
“No,” I say, and then when we hit the speed limit, I toss the scrunchie out of the window.
“What the fuck?”
“You look gorgeous with your hair down and natural. I like it that way.”
“Well, I don’t!” she shouts, reaching for her purse.
“You grab another, I’m tossing that one out the window, too.” Her head turns to me, and I just know if we weren’t in the car, her hands would be on her hips.
“Zander.”
“Zoe.”
“I can’t even see the road, my hair is so crazy!”
I look over at the Zoe tornado and she’s right.
She definitely can’t see through her dark curls flying all around.
Fair enough. I can help with that, I think, reaching back behind us, my hand moving a bit until I find it.
“Here,” I say, handing her a Springbrook Hills Bulldogs hat that says coach on the back.
She glares at me.
“If your only concern is that you can’t see, here’s a fix.”
“Zander.”
“Why don’t you wear your hair crazy anymore, Zo?”
Again, I think she’ll ignore me, not answer.
And then she does.
She might not realize it, might still be in her head overthinking every single interaction, convincing herself this is temporary, but she’s opening up to me.
Slowly but surely, she’s letting me in.
And there’s no way in hell I’m leaving without a fight.
“Because it doesn’t look professional. It doesn’t tell people I’m someone to trust with their business or that I have my shit under control. It looks . . . chaotic.”
“Chaotic is beautiful.”
“Not when you’re trying to convince people you’re the right fit for a job. Or when you want people to think you know what you’re doing or are trying to convince people you can handle yourself.”