Disclaimer: I do not own Eureka or any of these characters. No money is being made off of the writing of this work.

A/N: This takes place immediately after "I'll Be Seeing You."

Zane stood there stunned as Jo back-peddled and fled the station. Zoe hung cloying around his neck, and Andy started whistling from the back room. There was too much commotion, and all he could hear was a loud throbbing noise echoing in his ears. His heartbeat.

His body felt numb. Well, all except for his lips. They still burned and tingled with the memory of Jo's easy and enthusiastic kiss. He had been telling her the truth when he said that it had not felt like the first time. No... her kiss felt like the Christmas he remembered from childhood; all sparkly and warm and full of presents. But he had pushed - like always - and she had run off.

Zoe's sugary perfume clogged his nose. Jo had smelled of soap. Zoe's smell was just one more cacophonous thing pressing on his brain. He needed to get clear of it all and think.

"Listen, Zoe, I don't think we should see each other any more," Zane said softly, reaching up and slowly removing her tentacles from around his neck.

"You - what? Did my father threaten you? Ugh! I am going to kill him!"

Zane had to shake his head in response to the way she stamped her foot. "No, he didn't mention that at all. But I had a lot of time to think, Zoe, and I don't know if what we have would last. I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to get hurt either. You still have so much ahead of you, and I feel like I'd hold you back." His mouth kept moving and comforting words kept coming out, but his brain had tuned her out. He felt sorry for the kid, but that was about it. She was a friend, a good friend, but not someone he was going to bring home to meet his mother.

Jo, on the other hand... He was starting to get an inkling of what exactly was going on with her, and the possibilities excited him as a man and intrigued him as a scientist. It took a good twenty minutes of trying to pry a teary-eyed Zoe off of him completely, until finally she stormed out. Her temper would pass, like her infatuation, but right now he needed a drink.

Cafe Diem would be crawling with regulars, and the last thing he wanted to do was face friends and relatives of his most current ex. Besides, if someone wanted alcohol in Eureka, they only went to one place. The Ivy.

The Ivy was a little hole in the wall bar at the far end of town. They said the original founders did some of their best collaborative brainstorming in the bar. Rumor held that the current chalk-board covered walls were simply nailed into place over the original ones that still held the chalk musings of Eureka's founders.

People who came to the Ivy came for a little bit of quiet and a stiff drink. There were five bar stools at the bar, and three booths along the outside wall. It was never crowded, but hardly ever empty. Tonight there was only one other patron at the bar, sitting far against the wall. Someone Zane had never seen at the Ivy before.

"What are you drinking?" he asked softly, standing back a few feet from her. He did not want to invade Jo's personal space when she was feeling as vulnerable and unhappy as she looked.

Her eyes widened briefly before she closed them and shook her head in defeat. "What do you want, Zane?"

"Well, I really came in here for a few beers to relax after the afternoon I just had, but what you got looks better. Whiskey?"

She looked at him for a long second, then turned back to her glass. "Jack," she replied.

He signaled for another from the bartender, and sat down at the barstool next to her.

"I'm not answering any of your questions right now," she muttered into her glass before she took a sip.

"I'm not asking any of them right now. Though you know I wish I was." The bartender brought over his drink and he nodded his thanks. "I really did just come here for a drink."

"I thought you were celebrating your triumphant return to society." Jo would not look at him when she spoke, but he really wished she would. He hated to see that defeated look in her eyes.

"I'm pretty sure Zoe retracted her invitation when I broke up with her."

"You what? Why?"

She looked a little horrified. He felt a little horrified. And yet... "I guess in the end it came down being at different places in our lives. All she wants right now is a carefree fling."

"I was pretty sure that's what you wanted, Donovan," Jo muttered.

"Yeah, well, maybe that's my problem. I'm starting to wonder if I'm supposed to be somewhere else in my life. If I'm supposed to have moved beyond meaningless flings, wanting something more."

"This sounds more like a conversation between you and yourself."

"You started it, Jo. You started the conversation by hurling a ring at me that I wasn't supposed to be ready for yet. That I'm supposed to be afraid of. And now all I can do is wonder if the strange theories I've come up with in my head are real or not."

"I said I wasn't answering questions right now." Jo shot him a glare, and he realized that she was beginning to feel uncomfortable again. He had to remember not to push too hard, or she would just run. Well, run or taser him.

"Don't answer them then. Don't tell me anything. Instead, feel free to sit in silence while I do the same, contemplating my first mid-life crisis."

"I hardly think this counts as a mid-life crisis," she pointed out, waving her now-empty glass in his direction.

Zane shrugged. "Fine. Identity crisis. I need to reconcile the two of me - the man I am and the one you knew. From the limited bit of information I've been able to gather, thanks to you Ms. Lupo, it sounds like I'm the evil twin."

"Zane -"

"No, no," he cut her off. "I don't want to know. I just want to see how it feels for a few minutes to know that there's a good twin out there."

She let him sit in silence before sighing. "I can't tell you Zane. I don't know what you're thinking, but I just can't tell you."

"Can't? Can't and not won't?" he clarified.

"Can't."

"I suppose that makes me feel a little better." He glanced over at her drink. "Another?"

"Sure."

He motioned for the bartender, who had unobtrusively moved halfway back into the kitchen to wash glasses while they had been talking.

"So what are you drinking to?" he asked Jo when she had a new drink.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I kissed a woman who was not my girlfriend, then broke up with said girlfriend, and now I'm contemplating reevaluating my whole dating strategy. That's what has me drinking. Why are you here at," he checked his watch, "four in the afternoon?"

"You? The past? I don't even know anymore," she said softly, not looking in his direction.

"Well then. A toast perhaps is in order. To...maybe starting over?" He raised his glass, and she clinked it with a bittersweet smile.

"Sure. To starting over."