How Horrible It Is To Grow Up
Tag for episode 4:15, Omega Girls
"Don't look now," Pillar muttered, leaning over her morning coffee and pastry, "but dickhead just came in."
Zoe looked, of course. There he was. In all his fine, unshaven glory. Zane Donovan. AKA Dickhead. Jackass. Cheater. Sleeper with her almost-sister. He was at the counter, talking to Vincent. Putting in an order, it looked like.
She wrenched her gaze back to their table.
She'd dreamed so many times about falling into bed with him. Worked out an embarrassingly large number of detailed fantasies of how she'd get him to admit his undying love for her, next long vacation. And of everything that would happen after that. The significant looks, the romantic seduction, the night of sizzling hot sex, the dramatic entrance into Café Diem the next morning…
Only – it turned out – he was just not that in to her. Never had been probably.
Because he was really, deeply, seriously into someone else.
As far as he'd been concerned he was tolerating her teenage crush just long enough to annoy her dad.
She looked back at Pillar. She'd sworn to respect the – quietly terrifying – secrecy that everything involving the accidental time travel required. But she needed to start backing off on Zane. And Jo. They'd screwed up, sure, but they were also caught in a situation that was truly fucked up, and, as far as she understood, absolutely through no fault of their own.
"Yeah. He's a dickhead. But. I think I got carried away. More than I should have."
"Oh come on! He cheated on you! With Jo! Who's like, practically your sister!"
"We, he, I… ," Zoe stuttered, tripping over her tongue with the mortification of having to fess up, "It wasn't like anything like that ever happened with us. I just thought it would. You know. Eventually. I read way too much into his flirting. I mean. He totally flirts with everyone. Even you!"
Pillar rolled her eyes. "Thanks. I love you, too, honey."
Zoe made a face and dropped an apologetic hand on Pillar's arm. "You know what I meant. Anyway," Zoe picked up her spoon and scowled at it, "I don't think he was ever that into me. He thought it was general friendly flirting. I'm the one who turned it into more. In my head."
"No. Definitely not, Zoe! It's not like you're some naïve little kid who'd never been anywhere or never had a boyfriend! You read his signals right. He just changed his mind. When the enforcer finally dropped her guard."
Pillar was staring fiercely at her. She was the awesomest BFF ever. She'd rearranged her whole schedule to come up this weekend from Berkeley, where she was in university, and hold Zoe's hand.
But it didn't change the facts. Even if Zane had been halfway interested in her, he'd abandoned the pursuit the moment he realized the one he really wanted was maybe available. That's what Pillar meant. Which wasn't at all comforting. Because it meant an outside chance with Jo was way more interesting to Zane than a sure shot with her had ever been.
"Yeah. I don't know, Pillar. Even if that's true, which I'm not sure it is, I still didn't notice when he changed his mind and started to pull back. I've been thinking about last summer. He never showed up at anything, no matter how many times I would remind him. Or all the times he said he try to meet me for coffee, but ended up texting that he couldn't get away from his lab. Remember?"
"I always figured he was just playing it cool. Trying to avoid all those stupid threats your dad used to make to Lucas. And that he didn't want to hang out with high schoolers and college kids. Might damage his too-dangerous-to-know cred."
"Yeah. I…. don't think so. Not anymore, anyway. It's not like he wasn't out and about. He was." She'd known it at the time. And had preferred not to dwell on it. "Just. Not with us."
"So why'd he lead you on?"
"I think, it's more like, he didn't stop me from following. To see if it would freak out my dad. Or Jo."
"Yeah." Pillar nodded. "I can see that. 'Cause he's a dickhead." She frowned thoughtfully. "So. Why didn't it freak out your dad?"
"It did? Just not all that much."
"Lucas freaked him out. And Lucas doesn't have 'trouble' written all over him."
"Okay. Yeah." Zoe sighed. "Truth is, I don't think my dad ever really believed Zane was that into me. And he actually trusted him not to take advantage. I mean. Zane's a lot of things, but he's never been a gigantic skeeze. So my dad wasn't very worried about anything other than my hurt feelings, when I inevitably realized the same thing."
Beacuse her dad was a gigantic romantic doof. He really believed in true love. He believed that Jo and Zane were destined to be together, in this timeline, in their old timeline, in every possible timeline, and that anything else was just meaningless diversion along the way. That one of the meaningless diversions happened to be his daughter was awkward and deserved condolences all 'round, but, nothing more.
That had been quite the morale booster. Not.
"Are you still mad at Jo?"
"No. I'm not." Mostly true. The time jump had been hardest on Jo, from all Zoe could piece together. Maybe because she'd been in a long-term relationship, been loved and in love, she didn't have the tougher shell she'd developed in this timeline. So everything about this version of Zane hurt more. Being angry with her for trying to recapture something of what she'd lost seemed outrageously unfair. Especially because it seemed to be encouraging Zane to shape up and be the go-to guy Zoe'd always been sure he secretly was. The guy she wanted everyone else to know and believe in. Before it turned out he really was a dickhead.
"But you're still mad at him, I hope!"
"Well, yeah! Definitely! He let me look like an idiot because he didn't want to man up and tell me to back off."
"Now's your chance to tell him so."
"What?" Zoe yelped so loudly several people near them turned their heads to stare.
"Can't avoid him forever. Jo lives with your Dad. You might as well deal with him today."
"You're a terrible friend."
"Oh, sweetie. I'm the best friend you'll ever have."
"Hey," Zoe said, to his back. Zane was standing alone at the counter, obviously waiting for an order to go. She was pretty sure he knew who was standing behind him. He'd been very successfully not looking at the entire half of Café Diem that housed the table where she and Pillar had been sitting.
Jerk.
Irritation fed her courage.
He turned face her. And smiled warmly. Like he was thrilled to see her. God was he an excellent liar.
"Hey," he said, rocking back on his heels and folding his arms across his chest. The better not to hug her with. "I hear you were pretty awesome yesterday. Jo told me you were the one who worked out how to wake everyone up. And that you tased one of Beverly's goons and clunked another over the head with a wrench. Way to be one badass babe." He held up his fist.
Zoe blushed, too flustered by the praise to remember what she'd come to say. She raised her own fist for the faint bump, "Yeah. I guess so."
"No guessing involved." He returned his arm to the safety of his chest. Jackass. "There's probably going to be an official commendation and everything," he continued. "Of course, you won't ever be able tell anyone, 'cause it'll be top secret." He winked at her, his expression laughing but genuine all the same.
She seized the opening, lowering her voice to say darkly, "Not the only thing I'll never be able to talk about."
His grin faded. Examining her thoughtfully, he lowered his own voice and said, "I saw you with your dad. In the infirmary."
"He told me their story," she whispered.
"It's pretty incredible, isn't it?" he murmured back, his tone light, his eyes scanning the room to make sure they were still relatively isolated. "Opens up whole new areas for research. Though I had to come up with some pretty intense workarounds to explain how we got to the FTL drive without it. Some of my best math to date, in fact. Sucks I can't brag about it!" he turned his head to catch her eye and winked at her again.
Math? That's what he got out of the story? That's what he wanted to talk about? What the hell was wrong with him?
"So. The minute you thought you had a chance to get in Jo's pants, I was yesterday's news, huh?" she hissed.
That definitely struck a nerve, judging by the muscle that jumped in his cheek, but after a beat he pushed it aside and looked her straight in the eyes. He also quit whispering, damn him. "You aren't yesterday's news, Zoe. Then or now. But there was never going to be anything more than friendship between you and me. Jo or no Jo."
"Why?"
She cringed. That came out far more tremulously needy than she'd intended.
Just then Vincent arrived with two coffees and a full carry out box.
Zoe looked at the coffees and tried not to feel small and heartbroken.
Zane thanked Vincent then looked at her. Understanding and, definitely, impatience flickered across his face. Then he took a deep breath, almost a resigned sigh, and said, "Come on. Sit outside with me for a minute."
"Don't you need to get that to Jo?" It came out way meaner than necessary, but Zoe wasn't very sorry.
"Jo was asleep when I left," he replied, his tone bland, as he held the door for Zoe. "She was at GD most of the night, along with Fargo and Larry, working on damage estimates and getting reamed out by DOD flunkies for the security breech. She'll have to work most of the weekend. Lots of clean up and reports still to be done. But a few minutes shouldn't matter."
Zoe was sorry Jo had to deal with the flunkies. As for the getting reamed, Jo had saved the day, practically speaking. Whatever commendations were being handed out, she should definitely get one. Without Jo talking her through it, she'd never have managed to do her own bit.
But the confirmation that Jo had gone to Zane's instead of sleeping at GD was gut churning anyway. Not standing in the way was one thing – having to dive for the curb so she wasn't trampled flat was another.
"Zoe."
She looked up to see he was holding out a chair for her. Once they were seated, he leaned forward and said, "You're a great person and, I hope, someday, a great friend – but you are also ten years younger than I am, with a whole future to go chase. I'm on the other side of all that, a felon on limited parole, trapped in Eureka until I don't know when."
Hope she'd thought was dead and gone filled her head. He hadn't said he didn't like her that way, right? "But if we …"
"Stop. Holo-skyping and trash talking stuffed-shirts and making physics jokes nearly a year ago is not a relationship."
She glowered at him. "You knew I was crushing on you."
"Yes."
"You could have shut it down. Instead you let it drag out."
"I should have shut it down harder. I'm truly sorry I didn't."
"Why didn't you?"
"I hoped," he shrugged and managed to look vaguely sheepish, "you'd hook up with new guys once you got back to school in the fall and it would all just blow over without a scene."
"Coward."
"Yeah," he agreed mildly, unoffended by the insult. "And a jackass. But it seems like you got more romantic about everything instead, once you got back to Boston. Why? It couldn't have been from skyping, because we weren't. And I know I kept my emails short and I never called. I kinda figured you'd cop a clue, you know?"
The look he was shooting her now was definitely more annoyed than apologetic.
"I guess it was…nicer? To hold onto my," she paused, swallowed, then rushed on, "crush than get busy with someone new."
"Lucas?"
"Dating someone from MIT."
"Ah." Zane actually looked sympathetic. The bastard.
"And you made a great story." Zoe forced a chuckle, feeling a little awkward about it, but at the same time Zane was probably one of the few who'd truly appreciate the joke. "Hacker, thief, ex-con, brilliant, handsome, ripped ... My boyfriend, the hot felon. Not many kids at Harvard can say that."
He stared blank-faced at her for a moment, then cracked up, his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. More of the tension she'd been carrying around since reading Pillar's texts two weeks ago unwound. Finally he managed, between snickers, to say, "Sucks to be younger and worried you're less experienced than everyone around you, doesn't it."
Zoe rolled her eyes, trying to cover up the way her heart pinched a bit. This was the fatally friendly understanding that had started her down what turned out to be wrong road last year. "The story was way more interesting than my actual life."
"Hmmm." His eyes were still twinkling with good-humored understanding. Then the light faded and he got all solemn looking. "So there was no good reason to be mad at Jo, was there?"
Zoe sat back, shocked by his sudden morphing into a patronizing, gently chastising adult. "She took away my story."
He had definitely stopped twinkling with good humor. "She didn't do any such thing. If there is a villain – it's me." He had also stopped sounding even the slightest bit apologetic.
"She slept with the guy she knew I liked!" Zoe snapped, trying to regain her status as the injured party, which, quite inexplicably, she seemed to be loosing.
" 'The guy' is sitting right here, Zo."
He was still using that even, compassionate, obnoxiously adult tone. Where in the hell had he learned to talk like that over the last six months? He actually sounded kind of like her dad. Or Allison. Or, good God, Henry.
"I'm not a piece of meat to be traded or shared. I'm a person," he said. "I have feelings. And the choice of who I want to be with is mine. Not yours. Definitely not something to be decided by divvying me up between girlfriends without even consulting me."
And now she was the one who had done something wrong. How the hell had he flipped the tables on her like that? "Do you love her?"
He looked down at his hands.
"You should figure it out. Before you hurt her by being too cowardly to tell her the truth if you don't."
Though, right at this very minute she hoped they hurt the crap out of each other. They deserved every bit of self-inflicted damage they dished out.
"Touché." He stood up. "I should take her her breakfast."
Now she felt like an idiot again. So she offered an olive branch. "See you before I leave?"
"Probably not a good idea, Zoe."
God. He was still being so fucking nice. So thoughtful. So adult. She really kind of wanted to punch him.
"Tell she can come home and shower, if she wants." Her attempt at graciousness fell seriously flat. She sounded like a four year old forced to say she was sorry when she wasn't. "I think I'm going to spend the night at Pillar's."
"And when you get back to school, you're going to tell everyone that the hot felon turned out to be a lying bastard and you dumped his cheating ass, right?"
He stared at her, obviously waiting for his answer before he would leave.
Zoe nodded, resigned and irritated all at once. "Yeah." She shot him an evil glare, "Because he's a dickhead."
He snickered approvingly, then picked up his coffees and turned away.
Watching him stride off, headed back to his lover, who was most definitely not her, Zoe assured herself that time heals all wounds.
Even when she actually wanted it to wound all heels. Especially the ones named Zane Donovan. Because, somehow, she was sure, in the end, her present unhappiness was really all his fault. He was probably going to break Jo's heart, too. And she wouldn't even deserve it. Much.
Zane left the takeout box in the kitchen, then headed for his bedroom, coffees in hand.
Jo was still in bed, but she was awake and staring out the window. Her expression was thoughtful, and offered him no clues as to her emotional state. As soon as he came through the door she sat up to face him and smiled happily. "You brought me my Vin'cpresso!"
"Yeah," he handed over her cup, grinning at the way she closed her eyes to savor the first sip. "Sorry I was gone so long. Zoe was there."
Her smile faded as she looked back up at him. "Did you talk with her?"
"A bit."
"Is she still upset?"
"Less. I think. Her dad told her everything, so." He shrugged. He actually had no idea what came next. "Well. She's still mad at me."
Jo snorted. "She should be. You were a jerk."
"Yeah." He'd been one before and undoubtedly would again. Just not any time soon. He hoped.
"And so was I." She looked down at her cup, her voice gone small. He hated it when she did that, even when he understood why. But it was all wrong on her, just the same. Which didn't stop her from flagellating herself some more. "I knew she had feelings for you, but I didn't deal with it. With her or you."
"Jo. Stop. She blew something little into something big all on her own. I didn't have very much to do with that and you didn't do anything at all."
"Maybe." Jo shrank further into herself, her hair falling forward to hide her face. "But I feel like a horrible friend anyway."
"It's not about her, Jo. It's about us."
"Yeah," she sighed heavily and concentrated on her fingers, picking at the sleeve around her coffee cup, "I know."
"Really?"
She straightened up and tossed her hair behind her shoulders. Her expression communicating nothing so much as exasperation. "I'm here aren't I? Naked and in your bed?" She looked meaningfully at the empty spot next to her and then up at him. "Where you are not. Naked. Or in your bed."
"Oh." He felt like he'd missed something important, on the way to something else that was equally important. He'd have to go back later and try to figure it out. In the meantime, he obviously had something else to do. "I can fix that."
She was already smiling again. "Then fix it already."
So he did.