Coach hires Zed, obviously. He says he owes all his success to Zed, that without him he never would've had the guts to pursue his dreams of owning a business. Zed smiles, small and polite, at the sentiment.
Everyday, Zed goes in and runs the froyo shop. And every night, he sits outside, sometimes in their front garden, sometimes on the roof, and watches the stars.
It takes a few weeks, but he starts talking to her. He tells her about his day, about the silly things the employees do. After about a month, he starts writing all his thoughts in letters. He tells her all about his day, what their friends are up to, everything he can think of. Every letter, he ends with, 'I miss you, and I love you to the end of the universe. Love, Zed.'
He folds them neatly, packing them in a green envelope (sometimes a purple one, depending on how he felt), and addresses them to her. No stamp, no address.
It helps. Surprisingly, he starts to feel better.
Three months after the intervention, Eliza corners him outside of Coach's Froyo, grinning widely. "It's nice to see you smiling again," she says.
"What?"
"Your smile. Your real smile, I haven't seen you smile like that in years." She shrugs, smiling. "It's nice."
Zed fights a frown. He fights tears. He fights everything, actually.
Eliza leans in closer, her smile turning somber. "It's not the same as it used to be, but it's still nice to see a little bit of the old Zed."
He lets out a shaky breath. Truthfully, he was afraid of the thought of what she initially meant. Being happy, as happy he was with Addison, with her gone, terrifies him. He knows, he knows. He's read her letter more times than he can count over the past four and half years. She wants him to be happy, and he's getting there. But he doesn't want to ever forget her.
Eliza snaps in his face, pulling him from his spiral. "Hey, you're spacing out on me, Z. You good?"
"Huh? Yeah, yeah. I'm alright, I'm great." He forced a smile. "Getting back to the old Zed."
Eliza grins, patting his arm before heading into the froyo shop. Zed heaves a breath, nodding to himself. He's got this. He's got this.
He's got this.
Later that day, inspiration hits. He spends two months staying up late, fine tuning details here and there, even drawing sketches, before finally bringing his big plan to Eliza.
She agrees immediately. She only takes one look at it but loves it.
"This is amazing, Zed! It's everything we've dreamed, it merges all our cultures together, it's…amazing."
She doesn't say it, but he knows: Addison would love it. He knows she would, because he loves it.
They spend the next six months working out the fine details, gathering their zombie-werewolf-human crew, getting funding, and working through paperwork. Zed switches to part-time. He dusts off the old zombie charm, talking sweet to government officials and getting the best rates from the developers.
By the end of the year, they manage to raise more than enough money and buy a large chunk of land just past the Seabrook Unification Gate. Their spot neighbors the cheer pavilion Addison spearheaded almost seven years ago. All of Seabrook shows out for the groundbreaking; even Bucky comes out to show support.
It takes a little over a year to finish construction, and another month finishing up the interior. The grand opening of the Seabrook Diversity & Inclusivity Community Center (SDICC) falls on what would've been Addison's twenty-fifth birthday. All of Seabrook shows up; even Missy and Dale Wells come back to town, though mostly to see the ribbon cutting outside of the heart of the SDICC: The Addison Wells Cheer Arena. No one seemed to mind a full sized cheer arena right next door to the official cheer pavilion of Seabrook. If anyone did, no one tried to convince Zed otherwise.
The real, alien relic version of the Seabrook Cup dawns the center wall. Right underneath it, a picture of the very first winners of it. Zed's favorite spot was actually on the top floor of the SDICC. Eliza came up with it, halfway through construction, and figured out a way to work it into the final plan.
An observation deck that takes up the entirety of the top floor that Eliza so brilliantly named the 'Eyes on Utopia Planetarium,' where anyone in Seabrook could go to look at the stars, or learn about their extra-terrestrial friends. Whenever he gets the chance, he's up there, watching the stars, talking to Addison. Being the co-founder of the brand new official landmark of Seabrook was great, but it'd be even better if he could share it with her.
He thinks of Addison everyday and every night. He talks to her before he falls asleep, writing her letters that he knows he'll never read again. He sits in the planetarium at least once a week, telling little kids all about the "scary alien invasion," how all the zombies and wolves and humans were so scared but the aliens were just looking for their new home, and how Seabrook's very own Addison went with the aliens to help them.
They all think he's a wistful old man. He's only twenty-six!
As the days go by, he talks about her more. It doesn't hurt as much to think about her. He can tell stories about her without immediately aching inside, which he takes as a win. He still looks at the stars, every night, but slowly, he does it with a smile. Wherever she is, he hopes she's happy, especially out there with people like her.
On the eight year anniversary of her departure, he see meteors. They last for a week, exploding in the sky in a rich mixture of blue and red, the sounds echoing throughout Seabrook all day and night.
By now, he lived alone, still in Zombietown. Some nights Eliza comes over to discuss how strange it is that they even get regular meteor showers. Some nights, the wolves join him for dinner, mostly to talk daily operations at the SDICC, sometimes telling him about the weird debris falling from the sky with the meteors.
He pushes down the hope bubbling in his chest.
Zoey, now twenty and off at Mountain College, spends every summer and break with Zed or at the SDICC. Zevon stays over too, though he spends a bit more time in corporate construction, especially now with his only two children out of the house.
Every night, when his visitors leave and the city sleeps, Zed sits outside with Addison and the stars. He sits on the roof of his home, holding his favorite letter from her: Zed, always know this: WE BELONG TOGETHER. He misses her.
"Hi Addy," he says to the stars. "I miss you. I hope things are going well, and you guys found Utopia, and everything is perfectly perfect." He smiles, taking a deep breath. "We all miss you back here. Things are getting better though."
Another meteor hits the skyline.
"I hope someday you come back to us. Because otherwise, I might have to develop intergalactic space travel and come and find you." he jokes, laughing to himself. As if he and Eliza haven't secretly been trying to crack some alien tech left behind, hoping to find a way to outer space.
"We'll meet again someday," he whispers. "I know it."
He watches another meteor hit the atmosphere, waiting until the sky goes dark before sighing. He climbs back into his home, putting the letter back to desk. He goes to draw the blinds, pausing only at the sight of another meteor — this one bigger, brighter, even louder than before, hitting closer to home.
It reminds him of the few he and Addison saw before the aliens crash landed in Seabrook. He even swears he sees a trail of smoke falling behind the tree line of the Forbidden Forest.
He wakes with a violent start, shaken to the core by something he can't quite place. Something is off, different and violent inside of him. Like the first few years he spent hacking his Z-Band, only worse.
Drink some water, it was just a bad dreams.
He climbs out of bed, descending the stairs and going straight to the kitchen.
He fills his only perfect glass up with fresh, clean water, taking a long refreshing sip. Zoey's artworks line the walls of the kitchen, cute drawings of their family, of their dog, of whatever she can think of, really.
Through the kitchen window, he sees it: something in the distance, glowing bright blue, drawing him towards it like a lighthouse for sailors.
In what feels like seconds, he's outside, walking through his backyard in a manner similar to a particular blue-haired girl, lost in the Forbidden Forest all those years ago. Except if he gets spooked, he doesn't swing.
He walks and walks for what feels like centuries, until the light shines so brightly he can't see. He winces, covering his face with his arms, back where it all began. When the light fades, he sees Addison, decked in silver and blue, standing across from him deep in the forest.
His heart clenches at the sight, an overwhelming amount of joy and shock freezing him in place.
She looks at him, a soft yet ecstatic smile overtaking her face.
"Addison," he breathes.
She runs toward him with open arms, but instead of feeling her warm embrace, he's jerked back into the gaping nothingness of reality.
His bedroom, cold and empty, in his cold and empty house still stuck in his cold and empty life.
No no no no no.
He looks around frantically, searching desperately for her. It couldn't be a dream — it couldn't. He saw her, he knows he saw her. She was so real!
He tears his room apart, tears his entire home apart, looking for any sign that it was real, that his mind wasn't playing a cruel, cruel joke on him.
There's no sign of her anywhere. It takes everything in him to not run outside and scour the entirety of the Forbidden Forest looking. Instead he sits in his destroyed living room, staring out the window in absolute sorrow.
This isn't the first time he's dreamed of her, but it's never felt so real, like she was actually there, running to his arms, finally back home.
He doesn't sleep that night.
His friends notice immediately. They confront him later that day, fearing another downward spiral on his end. Every time they ask, he shuts down, visions of Addison standing in the forest, running to him with open arms and the brightest, most beautiful smile, flooding his brain.
Eliza gets it out of him, though. In the evening, when he sits with the stars, she asks and waits while he gets his thoughts together, almost twenty minutes, before he tells her what he saw.
"It was like something crash landed in the woods," he says quietly. "And then…I saw her. In my dreams. Like, like she was home."
"Do you think it was…real?"
He pauses for a long moment, then sighs. "I don't know. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, or…"
"Or maybe she's out there." Zed turns at the sound of Willa, seeing her, Wyatt, and Wynter descending the stairs to where he and Eliza sit.
"Something was up with our moonstones' last night too," Wyatt adds. "It could be her."
"We'll send the pack out tonight to search the woods for anything unusual."
Zed looks at each of them. He's spent all day on the edge, but seeing them all there, making him feel more sane than he's felt all day, lets him finally relax. They believe him, they don't try to convince him it's all in his head and that he needs to move on (something they've been telling him for years).
"Thank you," he says sincerely.
Willa gives him a smile and a nod. "If she's out there, we'll find her."
The wolves search for a month. Zed knows it would normally only take a night, maybe two, and they spend extra time rechecking the woods because it's Addison and because they believe him. But the only thing they find in the woods are the remains and debris of real meteors, and only meteors.
Although they tried to keep their speculations to themselves, it doesn't stop a wave of sorrow from filling the SDICC, one that lasts longer than the first time Addison left. They all hoped that maybe Zed was right, that whatever crashed into Seabrook was her. Zed was so sure, and to find absolutely nothing but space debris was beyond disheartening.
When he sees meteors a few weeks later, he still thinks of her, knowing she's out there, somewhere. He isn't disheartened, he's determined. He'll find her again, someday. He knows it.