She Just Dropped In
by Thisisfunwhattooksolong
Zack's apartment wasn't exactly in a high-end part of Boston. The buildings were weathered and covered in graffiti, the street was at least fairly crime free but only because the local gang didn't want to cause trouble so close to where several of their dealers lived, half the stores were boarded up or abandoned and even on the other half the windows looked like they were last cleaned on a date beginning '19'. And the guttering didn't seem to have been cleaned, well, ever, which was a bit annoying when it rained.
And Zack's own apartment building was no exception. The parking lot was surrounded by a chain-link fence – which of course couldn't cover the entrance and so combined being an eyesore with not even being a decent security measure, the building itself had crude spray-painted images that were probably intended to be genitalia but were so badly done that he couldn't be certain, the stairwell – especially the bottom – smelled of caked-in urine and had some rather disgusting things discarded in it (and that was Zack thinking that), and the apartment doors – which probably once gleamed with red paint – had withered and flaked to the point that, despite being wood, they reminded him of rust.
In fact, Zack was only happy to live there – on the fourth floor of six, because of one specific detail – it was very cheap. His job was supposedly reasonably well paid – at least for an entry level position – but all the training he needed to do ate into that. It wasn't that he didn't find his job rewarding – it was great getting to make furniture while learning from the great master crafters there, but he still had to deal with classes for other people to sign off on it. The only good thing was that (thanks to said on the job training) he'd managed to test out of some of those evening classes – the one for using fabrics for seat cushions and the like being a good example. But those classes he did still need, in addition to keeping his van fuelled, and keeping both the taxman and the power company happy, not to mention himself fed, did little for his finances, so the fact that the rent was almost negligible was a major gain.
And his woodworking and joinery also made for difficult and tiring work, whether for his job or his classes, or furnishing his own home – which came with kitchen and bathroom units and nothing else. One slip up and instead of the nice rounded legs he was going for, he would've sanded one off. Or if he was really unlucky, his own leg.
And the result of all that was that even when he could afford to do something, by the time he'd factored in relaxing, he didn't have much in the way of time to do so.
Still, at least he was in the final year of his training now – soon to lose that dreaded 'trainee' title and replace it with something more robust (and take the significant raise that comes with that).
Making his way home, Zack passed Timmy from the second floor in the stairwell, nodding to him in greeting on his way up – though Zack couldn't claim to know much about him beyond his name. He knew a few of his neighbours. The apartment between his own and the stairs was occupied by a middle-aged woman named Laura who worked in a florist's and her teenage daughter Sofía who was on her high school field hockey team and worked part time at an open all hours diner Zack frequented, both of whom came from Mexico and considered English a second language. He got on with them well enough despite a rocky start due to his translator app (designed for English tourists in Spain) spectacularly letting him down during their house-warming party – it had taken a mixture of London explaining the Spanish and Mexican along with Janice explaining the British to him when he messaged them later to figure out how 'Would it be OK if I took some of your brownies?' became 'Would it be OK if I banged some of your junior girl scouts?', but luckily his neighbours had seen the funny side.
(And London also mentioned that his use of the '-se' ending on 'cogiese' along with his use of 'vuestras' for 'your' would've made it clear he wasn't using the Mexican version even if he hadn't had the translator open in front of him but that was where Zack got lost. And not understanding something London explained really made him feel stupid.)
Anyway, having them as neighbours wasn't bad, but the walls weren't the thickest in the world and hearing the two of them have a typical parent-teenager relationship at 1 in the morning made him almost feel he should apologise to some people from his own teenage years, not to Cody or his mother obviously, but maybe to anyone who may have found themselves in the adjacent suite.
Moving on, in one of the apartments on the third floor there was a man named Sandy who worked for the postal service – who he met in the Post Office at least a month before realising they lived in the same building. As for the others though? He only knew their names if that.
Timmy, Zack believed, was a student who was paying his way through grad-school with a job in a supermarket.
Zack sighed as he unlocked his door and made his way inside, hanging up his jacket as he walked in before swinging the door closed behind him. He considered that he should probably build a boot-rack – without Cody living with him, or even in the same city as him, the bootprints from his door to his bed often stayed there quite a while, and while Zack certainly didn't mind the floor being less than spotless he had a rather lower opinion of dirtying the tables and chairs that he himself had made.
He walked down the hallway, arm raised in the hope of catching the light switch as he went down.
He failed, his hand instead catching the bathroom door-frame, but soon he was in his living area anyway – with its light switch in a more convenient place.
He'd just turned it on, and, not having an evening class today, was settling down planning to unwind to an episode of whatever it was that had a rerun that evening (he thought it was Joey but he wasn't certain) when he heard something.
"Help!"
He blinked. Somehow, impossibly, the voice seemed to be coming from outside the window.
"Please, help!"
Yes, definitely outside.
He hurried to the window and opened it just enough to look around out, trying first to look to ground level even though there was no conceivable reason for someone to be below his window – he had a great view of some undergrowth, the base of a pylon, and a ditch with a sewage pipe crossing it, with some barbed-wire fence in the distance – but nonetheless he found his view blocked, by someone who appeared to be suspended in mid-air!
He blinked, but the figure was still there. She, or at least Zack thought they were a 'she', was dangling from cords, head about a foot below his window. On instinct he looked up and, was that the ends of a parachute dangling from the roof. Had it caught around the chimney for the building's vents or something?
The figure's head rolled up to look at him.
"Oh, thank god, a person. Help me!"
Zack gaped for a second, still not quite believing it.
"Please." The figure put her hands in front of her face in the begging position.
Zack nodded. "Um…" What to do? "Wait here a sec."
He bolted back inside, barely hearing the "It's not like I have a choice" as he rushed into the bathroom, and yanked down the curtain-rail over his tub, not caring as the curtain fell over the rim. Soon he was back at his living room window, and opening it fully, he fed the rail down.
The figure grabbed onto it and Zack pulled back hard, almost losing his balance in the process, but it worked – after a brief moment of being caught on the window sill the figure was crumpled on his floor.
(And yes, definitely a 'she'.)
"Thank you so much," she said, shaking as she got to her feet. "Being out there was not fun."
"I can imagine," Zack retorted, watching her as she unfastened herself from her bulky safety harness. "How long were you out there?"
"My jump was just before 10, so uh… what time is it now?"
Zack glanced at the clock. "5:50."
He didn't need Cody to work that one out – she'd been out there for around about eight hours. Didn't any of his neighbours see her?
And being Zack, he said the first thing that sprang to mind.
"That must've sucked. Did no-one notice?"
She unclipped her crash helmet, letting her long hair fall around her face. "You don't know the half of it. And yours was the first light that came on – I don't think anyone else was in."
(On some level, Zack recognised that her hair was really pretty. In fact, now that she was no longer in the harness, he could tell the rest of her was really pretty too. However, even he realised that this wasn't the correct time and place for flirting.)
(And Zack had passed Timmy, but come to think of it, his apartment faced the opposite way.)
"Hey, um… is there any way to get to the roof?" she was asking. "I'd kinda like to get my parachute back."
Zack thought. The access to the roof was usually locked, however…
"Let me call the landlord. Normally he keeps it locked but trust me, he's not going to forgive himself if he misses this." How often do you get a parachute draping off the roof? That had to be a rare enough sight to drag even Mr. Lovan – a man whose small stature and portliness were at risk of combining to make him larger round than he was tall – over to see it.
"I'm Zack by the way," he greeted.
"Rebecca." She shivered.
He made the call, the landlord struggling not to laugh for long enough to say he was on his way, and returned to where Rebecca was waiting in the living room.
"He'll be here in 10-20 minutes," Zack told her. "Uh, do you need a hot coffee – and for once I really do mean a literal hot coffee? You're shaking. And uh, the bathroom's in there if you've somehow lasted this long." He indicated the door for her.
"Thank you, coffee would be great." She took off for the bathroom. "And I was managing not to think about it."
"Sorry," Zack called as he went to put the kettle on, remembering to fill it for two cups instead of one.
"It's OK now I can go," she replied before the door closed.
Five minutes later the coffee was ready, Rebecca was finished with the bathroom, and drinks were in their hands.
Zack casually drank from his, but Rebecca seemed to be revelling in the warmth coming from the mug and took a couple of minutes before she took a single sip, before gulping down half the mug at once.
"A bit parched?" Zack raised an eyebrow.
Rebecca nodded. "Very, thank you."
Her eyes had found the pictures on his wall – photos of past times that he'd only put up to keep his mother happy (well, that and he'd enjoyed making the frames) – and she was looking at them a little bit oddly.
"Uh, Zack?"
"Yes?"
"Do you mind if I ask you something that, if the answer's 'no', might sound a bit odd?" She guzzled yet more of her coffee.
Zack chuckled. "Sure, go ahead. You fell out of the sky – as far as I'm concerned you can ask me if I'm a Martian. I'm not by the way."
Wait, did she recognise something in those.
"OK, uh, did you ever enter a beauty contest under the name 'Tyreesha'?"
"That was Cody." Zack laughed. "He's my brother by the way."
And then his memory kicked in. "Well, except at the end, that really was me." He was an adult – he didn't mind talking about his middle-school era shenanigans, but why did it have to be that one? "Cody had stopped caring about winning the bikes because he had a thing for this girl and was going to simply not turn up so I filled in, but I got disqualified so this girl named Rebecca won which good news, was who Cody was crushing on, but bad news, put our plans for new bikes on the old back burner and…" Zack's brain finally caught up with his mouth. "Wait, was that you?"
Rebecca's mouth had dropped open, and she was gripping her coffee cup in both hands, but she nodded.
"I was ashamed to win in that way," Rebecca spoke, but her voice distant as if she wasn't speaking to him. "Maybe 'Tyreesha' was a cross-dresser, but still beat us in fair competition."
Zack laughed. "Well, there were two of us, and we were kinda impersonating a contestant who couldn't make it, so they may have had a point in disqualifying us. Do you think Cody would still have been disqualified if he'd signed up as 'Cody Martin'?"
Rebecca sighed. "I don't know – it depends on the rules of the individual contest. How is Cody anyway?"
"Cody doing OK. He lives with his girlfriend in New York, studying chemistry and working weekends in the kitchen of the Tipton hotel there. And he's back to being the producer of 'Yay Me, starring London Tipton'."
Rebecca gaped at him. "I didn't know he did that in the first place," she said before finishing her drink. "And you say he lives with his girlfriend?"
Zack nodded. "Bailey's the best. Which makes it rather surprising if not alarming that Cody managed to win her heart given his behaviour at the time was… less than gentlemanly – worse than mine even – but he's through that now. What about you? Do you live with your girlfriend too? Uh, you know what I meant."
Rebecca shook her head. "For the record, the closest I've ever come to having a girlfriend was maybe liking 'Tyreesha' before discovering that he was a boy. And it's been a while since I had a boyfriend. I inherited a house, hopefully only a few miles away."
The doorbell rang and Mr. Lovan's voice carried through from outside. "Zack, this had better not be a joke."
With the landlord in attendance it took about five minutes to recover the parachute – two of which were spent taking photos of it because seriously how often does this happen? And then another couple before the landlord went on his way. And then Rebecca asked Zack where they were exactly.
"Oh no," said Rebecca, once Zack had explained. "It's what, 10-12 miles to my house. That would be hard even without the parachute."
"Do you need a lift?" Zack asked.
Rebecca started to shake her head, only to stop suddenly. "Honestly, I think I do."
"It's OK, I don't mind." Zack smiled at her. "So um, why did you throw yourself out of a plane – or high flying hot air balloon or something? Is this something you do for fun?"
Rebecca shook her head. "I need sponsorship if I'm ever going to open a free veterinary clinic. And grovelling to rich donors to sponsor me out of the goodness of their hearts has never been my forte so that only leaves getting them to pay me for stunts. Todd St. Mark offered me $10,000 to jump out of a plane, so that's what I did."
Zack thought for a moment. Would he jump out of plane for $10,000? Yes, yes he most certainly would. He'd probably jump out of a plane for $1,000. He wondered if it was possible to get London to pay him to do stupid things. All the things he could do…
"Zack?" Rebecca tapped his arm.
Zack blinked, shaking his head. "Sorry, I was lost in thought."
He led her downstairs and out to his van, where the parachute was soon stuffed in the back around his tool chest, and she took the passenger's seat in the front.
"You keep your tool chest in your van?" Rebecca asked him when he joined her in the front.
Zack nodded. "I'm a woodworker so, y'know, never know if or when I'm gonna need them."
Rebecca chuckled. "At least you have a reason. My ex-boyfriend, um, well, I think I could probably summarise by saying he claimed to have a lathe in his toolbox."
Zack snorted. Suffice to say that it would be possible, albeit difficult, for Zack to fit a lathe in the back of his van, but it was downright crazy to try and fit one in a toolbox.
"Yeah, even I knew that was stupid," Rebecca explained. "It's part of the reason he's an 'ex-boyfriend'. Can we talk about something else?"
"Of course," replied Zack, firing up the engine and putting it into gear. "And I've just realised that I don't know your address."
She laughed, and then guided Zack to her house, and along the way told each other more about themselves. He'd learned that she was worrying about her next round of exams and that she had a respectful if distant relationship with her family.
And he in turn told her about his own life, and his increasingly distant relationship with his own family being the only one left in Boston.
The was the easiest time he'd had talking to anyone in quite a while, but all too soon they were pulling up in the driveway of a small stone house.
"Do you drive anything?" Zack asked, noting the lack of vehicle, but not sure if it meant she didn't or if it meant she'd left it at wherever she boarded the plane.
"A Vespa," she replied. "But I keep it round the back. Usually I take the bus. I can drive cars, but I didn't consider one a good expense."
She sighed. "Well, this is me, but uh, before I leave…"
"Yes?" Zack asked.
"I'm fairly certain this is a dream," said Rebecca, staying in the passenger's seat for an extra moment. "Though I'd rather not think about what dreaming of being strung up all day says about me, but it feels too bizarre to be true – of all the ways to meet someone again… But just in case it really is real, can we exchange numbers?"
Zack nodded. "Sure." It felt somewhat like fate to him too.
Soon they had exchanged contact details, tested them to make sure they got it right, and Rebecca plus the parachute made their way out of his van and over to her house, where she collected a key from under a brick before letting herself in, and Zack drove away.
Taking that trip without having dinner first had left him hungry, so he made a brief stop in the diner on his way home. Sofía had been surprised to discover that someone had been trapped outside their building, and had told him she'd gone straight to work from school so hadn't been there to see anything, which solved a minor mystery that he'd stopped thinking about, but the major one still lay before him. What should he do about Rebecca now?
Once he was back in his apartment, Zack slumped into his chair, fingers finding the grooves he'd inlaid into the armrest. He wanted to call her, he really did, but things were always complicated when it concerned any of Cody's ex-girlfriends, or even 'sorta ex-girlfriends'. Granted he'd never been remotely attracted to Barbara, or Irma, or Gwen, and while he had been attracted to Jessica it wasn't the fact that she and Cody had maybe possibly been on a date that kept him from making a move, but when Cody had met Bailey he'd become very possessive, and Zack was quite sure that he didn't want to deal with that. But he didn't want to live his life according to what might possibly set his brother off either.
He stared at a wall for a moment, as if wondering if it held the answer. And when that proved fruitless, he shifted his attention to the window. The window where Rebecca had been suspended, having fallen out of the sky.
Zack nodded. Assuming it wasn't a dream, he would call her, and Cody can lump it.
Suffice to say, it wasn't a dream, and over the next week the two of them spoke a lot, and Zack received a lot of picture messages, usually of her in different clothes, which struck him as odd because he didn't think he'd said anything to her to make her think he had an interest in fashion (nobody could really count the picture of him cosplaying as Captain Atomic at a recent comicon as fashionable), but he wasn't going to complain – especially about the photo of her in a swimsuit (she was positively smoking after all) – and they talked about anything and everything, and the following Friday, Zack found himself inviting her out to eat.
It wasn't a date – the diner wasn't anywhere close to upmarket enough for a first date – but it was the first time he'd invited someone to socialise with him outside of work in some time. And he even put in more effort on his appearance, turning up to meet her at her house in a shirt that had buttons on it!
(She, unsurprisingly for a former beauty queen, opted for an over-the-shoulder dark yellow knee-length dress that showed off her figure. Zack's mouth twitched for a moment before he led her to his van.)
Soon, and after considerable focus on Zack's part to keep his eyes on the road, they were parked outside and making their way inside – Zack insisting on being in front, knowing it wouldn't do to walk into something because his eyes were glued on her.
Zack swung open the door and walked through, happy to note that he'd hit that time between the day workforce popping in on their way home, and the evening workforce doing likewise, so it was almost completely empty.
He quickly introduced Rebecca to Sofía, and his neighbour was all smiles as she led them to a table, even more than her job required. Zack would like to think that some of her happiness was for him but he wasn't that self-absorbed. More likely that either her hockey team had won a game (or should that be 'match'? It wasn't a sport he was familiar with) or she crushed on someone who crushed back. Besides, it wasn't like there was any great achievement to be happy for him over. All he'd done was invited a girl to eat with him – something he'd done more than a thousand times before.
(Though, now that he thought about it, not recently. After Maya broke up with him it had taken him longer than he'd like to admit to put himself back out there, and with him having less free time it hadn't happened so much since then either.)
"OK, what about you, Zack?"
He blinked back to the present to find Rebecca smiling at him.
"Huh, sorry, I kinda zoned out there."
She nodded. "It happens. Anyway, we were wondering what you wanted to order." She waved a menu in front of his face.
Zack didn't even need to think about it, ordering the double-hamburger and his regular side-dishes along with a large glass of cola – he was driving after all.
Rebecca laughed. "I'm glad one of us can eat that much."
Sofía smiled again as she left as she left towards the kitchens ("Zack, espero que le disfrute la cita," she'd told him – not that Zack understood it).
"No creo que Zack considere que esta sea una cita-" Rebecca broke off, presumably realising that she was no longer there.
He and Rebecca made small talk while they waited for their food – he told her about a bespoke cabinet he'd made earlier that week and she told him about a trying class she'd had earlier. Even Zack with his usual disinterest in formal education had to wince at the professor being drunk. He'd just started telling her about a funny thing that happened the last time he'd met with Bob and Barbara when the food arrived.
"Here you are."
The plates were put in front of him, and soon any attempt at conversation lay forgotten as he and Rebecca tucked in, though not with his usual gusto – for some reason he was far more careful about getting ketchup all over his shirt than he would be normally. And he was sure that he wouldn't normally be so enthralled by the scintillating topic of guinea pigs, but he found himself listening as she described the conditions people, even well meaning ones, kept them in.
And it was then, as she waved her arms around passionately, her sauce squirted onto her dress.
"Oh no!" Almost on instinct Zack reached across with a napkin and started dabbing at the spill (not rubbing – he'd heard that somewhere, probably from Cody) – right over her chest – only vaguely aware of what he was feeling beneath his fingers.
Rebecca's eyes widened in front of him and she gripped his arm before he could continue.
"Allow me Zack."
And using her other hand she started to dab a napkin at the sauce herself.
"Zack, I'm sure you were acting more to salvage my dress than caring about where your hand was going, so I'm not mad, but let's not cop a feel out here, huh?"
Zack gaped.
"I wasn't trying to-"
Rebecca smiled, continuing to dab. "Like I said, I'd figured. That said, let me lay my own cards on the table. If, when we're done with this meal, you want to find a bathroom stall where we can 'get to know each other' properly, I would be more than happy to do so." She released his arm.
Zack's mind slowed to a crawl as thoughts of that suppressed everything else. "Are- you saying- what I think you're saying?"
Rebecca chuckled. "I hope so. We're both adults after all, we're both good looking, and I'm having fun with you."
Zack gasped. He knew he was seriously attracted to her, and the idea of just going into the restroom to, as Rebecca put it, 'get to know' her, seemed great. In that moment, Zack didn't really care what Cody thought about any of it. In fact, there was only one possibility he could think of against it. Unfortunately, it was a big one.
"I'm going to regret this, but I really shouldn't." He gestured towards the counter, where his teenage neighbour was talking with another customer. "If Sofía needed to 'go' and walked in on us then I would not want to have to explain that to her mother. Not to mention I don't particularly want her to have that image of me either." (Or any of the handful of other customers for that matter.)
Rebecca laughed and reached across to his shoulder. "Zack, the venue was the least important part of my suggestion."
"Huh?" Zack blinked.
"What I guess I'm saying is, how do you feel about taking our relationship to another level?"
"Huh?" His mouth dropped open. Could he actually be on the receiving end of one of these conversations? He couldn't remember the last time that had happened.
Rebecca gasped. "We don't have to!" she blurted. "I'll still be your friend and all. I just thought I was getting a good feeling about us so I thought I'd just ask rather than waste… I don't know, maybe six months using increasingly bizarre plans to escape the friendzone, but that doesn't mean I don't value your friendship – although perhaps I explained myself badly because I'm interested in dating you and I've just realised my pitch was more of a friends-with-benefits one. I haven't done this for a long time. And if you also want to take our relationship to another level but not go all the way on the first date then that's fine too of course."
It seemed she'd misinterpreted his shock for alarm and started rambling. Zack's thoughts sped through his head. Firstly, did he find her attractive? Duh. Secondly, did he enjoy her company? Uh, yes. Thirdly, did he want to date her? He hadn't thought about it at the time, but, they may as well have been on one.
Zack laughed. "Stop, stop stop. Let's try this again. Yes, Rebecca, I'd love to be something more with you. How's 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' sound?"
Rebecca smiled. "It sounds wonderful."
And so, when the meal was finished (and paid for etc.) he didn't hesitate to drive Rebecca back to his place where, after placing their shoes on the rack he'd made the other day, they spent the night… talking before they fell asleep. It wasn't what either of them had had in mind, but they'd started a conversation while they were in the van and they just hadn't wanted to stop. The passionate kiss that they'd shared in the morning before parting for the day on the other hand was entirely what they'd had in mind, even if Rebecca had morning breath. (Zack probably did too, but, well, it's really hard to smell your own.)
That turned into the first of many dates, some great, most good, and a few that didn't go so well but they still made the best of, and they spent many a night together too – though it proved harder than one might think for them to find times when their schedules allowed – but, to Zack's surprise, he found himself utterly enchanted by her voice. Soon, Zack found himself excitedly checking his phone during his lunch break every afternoon to see if she'd sent him anything. He on the other hand would send his messages in the evening if he didn't just call her outright and he hoped she looked forward to checking her phone at night too. And so it was one day, he hit the button with barely contained excitement, cup of coffee placed on the desk just to be on the safe side.
"You have… 5 new messages," the robotic voice droned out.
Wait, 5?
"Message 1:"
"Hello, Texas resident, we promise we can beat your provider's price…"
It seemed like someone really bungled their area code. He tuned the rest of that message out before deleting it.
"Message 2:"
"This is Tipton Enterprises coming to you with a special offer on dog food…"
Zack made a mental note to complain about this next time he saw London but otherwise tuned that message out too. He left it there however, to better explain to London what exactly he was complaining about.
"Message 3:"
"Hey Zack,"
(Ah, there was Rebecca.)
"Early morning classes were such a drag today – I'll give you the details later because right now I only have a few minutes to reach my next lecture and I have to use the bathroom first. So, I was thinking we should do something fun this weekend; there's a twitcher convention coming up and I thought it might be interesting. I'm sure you'd like looking at the birdhouses and feeders and the like while I'm engaged with, as I remember you putting it, 'that dull sciency stuff'." There were some chuckles over the phone.
(Oh, how Zack enjoyed making her laugh.)
"And if not then well, we can always see a film or something, I don't know. But I'm sure we'll think of something. OK, that's all I have time for now- Out-of-order, of course…" He started hearing rustling in the background. "OK, I guess I can talk to you a little longer, and I'm sorry if this sounds funny, but I'm now having to jog across campus to another restroom because otherwise I'll be late to Professor St. John's lecture on performing surgery on octopus tentacles and my phone's catching on my bag straps. I was delighted to hear that you're one step closer to your own certification."
(…Right, Zack had included that in the message he'd sent her last night. He only had one week of one class left now.)
"I'm sure you joined those planks so well the examiner had to see it to believe it…"
(The test was on seamlessly inlaying gems into wood but he supposed he may have forgotten to say which test it was – the final joinery one was the one in a week's time.)
"…and I've no doubt you'll pass whatever one's left." He heard what sounded like heavy footsteps. "Man, the university should hire you to replace the balustrades on these stairs – the things are crumbling. OK, how am I doing for time? Just about alright. Also, I want you to know that I did have a fun time at the bicycle expo – I was going through some stuff with my parents at the time that I didn't want to bother you with, so I know I was in a bit of a mood, but you really did cheer me up so thank you. Wow, it's so much easier to think of what to talk about in person."
There was a pause for a few seconds as, presumably, she tried to decide what to say next. (Zack agreed, talking was easier in person, or at least when it was a reciprocal conversation. Then again, he found her rambling cute.)
"Um, I finished another one of my ghastly gen-ed classes yesterday – no more boring you with classical literature. Also, um, please tell me if you've made anything else that's interesting – I enjoyed hearing about the table with the hand-crank in the middle of it. And the adjustable chairs to go with it of course. And did I remember to tell you how impressed my cousin was with the towel rack you gave me? Ah, and there's the ladies' room. OK Zack, I gotta rush so talk to you later. I love you. Bye."
Zack sat there for a moment, barely registering as his phone relayed message number 4 (his local congressman's office touting for votes) as he chuckled at his girlfriend's message. And then his brain caught up with the ending – 'I love you. Bye.'
It had been a long time since a girl had told him she loved him, and Zack couldn't keep himself from jumping for joy. It took a moment for him to realise his phone was still talking.
No – he didn't care. He could deal with what he thought was his dad telling him that his girlfriend was pregnant, and Cody's inevitable breakdown over it, later on – firstly, he had a proper date to plan with a girl that, almost without noticing it, he found he loved back.
Closing author's notes:
My assigned pairing: Zack Martin and Rebecca.
Zack, as one of the Suite Life lead characters, should need no introduction to anyone reading this, but Rebecca was the pageant girl that Cody had his first kiss with in the SLoZaC episode 'The Fairest of Them All'. It's also a piece of trivia that Rebecca was played by Victoria Justice.
I remember reading Strange Love back in the day and thinking 'That would be fun', but at the time, I really wouldn't have trusted myself to write anything worth reading. And I was amazed to find, while writing a Thanksgiving story for Lody, that she was bringing back after more than a decade away and I wondered if anyone would actually write a story for it.
At first, it didn't look too promising – Snapp, I had no doubt would produce a good story, but the other people who signed up this time included some fool named Thisisfun who's dreadful when it comes to finishing things, and coming as it did right after FFN changed how it's email alerts worked, I wasn't sure how many of the stalwarts of these collections even knew about it.
And sure, this story isn't exactly on time, in fact, none of them were, but I'm glad to be a part of Strange Love this time, late though it might be. It was an experience trying to figure out how this pairing could potentially work, and I had what I'm sure all the other people would consider an easy one!
I mean, seriously, if you haven't reviewed chapters 1 and 2 yet, please do. Tiger and Snapp both wrote great stories to start us off with pairings that were definitely not 'easy ones', and yes, I know I haven't reviewed them properly either (I did congratulate them in the forum however) but I plan to at some point – I just thought it better to finish my own entry first.
Anyway, it was a battle to keep this story from getting away from me, as it so wanted to do – the very last thing I did with this was remove the second half because it was bogging down in things that had nothing to do with Zack and Rebecca. And I'm not sure how well I managed with it in the end. Maximum respect to the people who, in the earliest years of this challenge, wrote upwards of five stories! Still, I had so much fun with this, frustrating though it might have been, so thank you, Lody, for bringing this, in your words, 'insane story collection' back, thank you to the other entrants, and thank you to any reader who's actually made it all the way here.
I'd urge you to join in too. [Yes, please do. - Lody] Or, knowing my lack of luck with earlier attempts at writing this story, she will find that it breaks a rule and send it back to me with a curt 'What were you thinking' message, but hopefully it'll be OK. [Better than OK. I think you did a great job with this story - Lody]
