Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!

Zoey lied awake in bed, unable to sleep no matter how much she wished she could drift away and forget about the night. The incident weighed too heavy on her mind.

Now that Total Drama was over and all the contestants were adults who had moved on with their lives, reunion events had become much less common. It had been over a year since she'd seen some of her old cast mates. While they managed to keep in touch with close friends like Cameron and Sierra, a lot of the others were too busy with their own closest friends or their own personal lives to keep up much contact. Both she and Mike had felt excited about this for months; even if their feelings on the show itself weren't exactly warm, they had still become quite friendly with a lot of the other players and still admired some of the ones who they'd watched before joining. Spending the evening at a reunion event when there hadn't been one since the show went off air sounded like an excellent way to spend an evening.

They didn't even stay an hour.

Mike and Zoey initially parted ways when they got to the event, both to catch up with their own personal friends and to dissuade any present reporters who intended to pry into their relationship rather than ask questions about their creative endeavors. Zoey didn't think much about Mike's whereabouts until she saw Anne Maria and Vito, both with scowls on their faces, being followed by a reporter.

The reporter caught Zoey's eye. He asked if she wanted to see the video he got. He showed her the video before she could even protest.

Anne Maria and her boyfriend – her boyfriend's body and not his mind, but still – in a janitor's closet, kissing and- where the hell were his hands?!

Mike came back after Anne Maria walked away, and the reporter gleefully showed him the video before he could even adjust to being out again. The entire party mood died for the two after that. Zoey stormed out after giving only a terse goodbye to the group she had been speaking with, and Mike followed her out, calling apologies the whole way. She couldn't even bring herself to speak to him on the entire drive home.

Logically, Zoey knew none of this was Mike's fault. It wasn't as if Vito had been triggered; his shirt stayed on the whole time. (A good thing, for the very idea of another girl's hands on Mike's bare chest made Zoey shudder.) How could Mike have known that the very action of greeting Anne Maria could bring Vito out? Even after all these years, neither of them could perfectly predict the actions of the alters. If anything, Anne Maria was the one who should have put a stop to it... but Zoey couldn't blame her, either. It's not like any of them had talked in ages. Everything Anne Maria could possibly know about Mike and Zoey's present life would have to come from the tabloids, which pushed "Have Zoke broken up?!" headlines every other week. Add in the fact that Zoey wasn't by Mike's side, and she probably thought the two had split. It was all a misunderstanding.

If it was anyone's fault, it was Vito's. Zoey wished Vito didn't share Mike's face so she could punch him in it.

This whole argument was stupid, and banishing Mike to the couch was simply petty. Zoey got out of bed and headed for the living room to check on him. He sat in the dark, cocooned in a blanket and staring vacantly at the TV as it played some old sitcom Zoey didn't recognize.

"Mike...?" she called quietly to get his attention. He turned to face her, and the two sat in awkward silence for a moment. Mike was the one to break the silence.

"I'm sorry, Zoey. I was so stupid tonight."

Zoey shook her head. "You weren't... I was. Making a big deal out of something you can't control was the stupid thing about tonight."