A/N: Hey, peops. Remember me? I did say I'd be back in September with a new story, and so, here I am. I'm not sure how this particular fic is going to pan out yet, but I hope you'll like what I have so far. If you do, please drop me a review and let me know. I've been out of circulation for a few weeks, so my confidence could use a boost! :)
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters and/or dialogue from Hart of Dixie belong to Leila Gerstein and other folks who aren't me.
Chapter 1
"Hey, bartender?"
When he turned around to look at her, she was kind of bowled over by how hot he really was. He seemed good-looking from across the way, but through the throng of drunken co-eds, and her own somewhat alcohol-impaired vision, Zoe couldn't be absolutely sure until she got closer. Now she was looking into the face of this guy, as well as getting a little distracted by the muscles straining beneath his T-shirt, and she was a little more sure of this crazy decision she just made.
"What can I get you, sweetheart?" he asked, eyes moving over her body too.
"I don't want a drink," she told him, smiling in what she hoped was a sexy way.
"Okay, so you were wantin' what exactly from me?" he checked, shaking his head slightly.
"Don't you know?" she said, tipping him an awkward wink that she quickly started to wish she hadn't tried. "Oh, screw it! Look, I'm not good at this," she told him straight then. "The truth is, my life has been kind of a mess lately, and tonight, I feel like getting a little crazy. So, what do you say?"
"What do I say to what, now?"
Zoe huffed out a sight. This guy may be hot, but he clearly wasn't God's gift to the human intellect.
"I'm trying to seduce you, doofus!" she told him straight, unsure whether she should be insulted or not when he laughed.
It was only when she replayed her own words in her head that she realised maybe she hadn't exactly put that in the best way. There was every chance it did sound pretty funny out loud, especially to a guy like him.
"Uh, you do know most people don't announce when they're trying to seduce somebody, right?" he asked, still chuckling a little.
"Shut up," she told him, even though it was hard not to smile herself. "Okay, so I never did this before, the whole seducing a guy in a bar thing, but does that mean there shouldn't be a first time?"
"Hey, I am not at all against a woman deciding she wants to do things on her terms, and I am absolutely in favour of gettin' crazy once in a while," he told her, his eyes moving down her body and then up again. "Exactly how drunk are you, sweetheart?"
Zoe moved up closer to the bar and leaned over it, giving him a good view down her low-cut dress. "Drunk enough to want to be wild and stupid, not so drunk that you should feel guilty for letting me," she said with a smile.
"Well, that sounds just the perfect amount of drunk to me," he told her, leaning over the bar to meet her and capturing her mouth in a searing kiss. "You wanna come back to my place or did you have somewhere you planned on dragging me off to?"
"Huh?" Zoe blinked hard a few times until her brain started functioning again - if one kiss could do all that, then she knew already she was in for one heck of a night with this guy. "Um, I have a place. A single. No dorm-mates to worry about."
"Then let's do this." He grinned at her.
Zoe grinned right back. "Yeah, let's do this."
It would be the perfect distraction and exactly what she needed. Zoe never had a one-night stand before. She certainly never thought about diving into something like this with a guy she just met. Everybody who knew her would say she was too smart and sensible, even too prudish perhaps, but tonight, she wanted to be somebody else that none of them knew at all.
Not that being somebody other than herself was a new concept for Zoe. In the last few months, everything she thought she knew about herself had proven to be a lie anyway. What did it matter if she broke another rule, threw another piece of her old self away? Reinvention could be a good thing. According to her friend Gigi, sex with strangers could be pretty awesome too.
"Hey, you changin' your mind already?" he asked, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist as they headed from the bar back to campus through the thick, warm night air. "'Cause I can just-"
"No, nope, no mind changing. Not at all," Zoe promised him, putting on a smile. "I was just thinking too much. I do that a lot. Part of what I'm trying not to do, actually."
"Well, let's see if we can't do somethin' about that..."
He pulled her closer, kissed her once more, sending her mind reeling. Zoe liked that. She so wanted not to think, not to worry, not to wonder. She seemed to have been in a constant state of being in her own head ever since a few months ago, when a man she had never seen before showed up on her doorstep at Yale and declared he was her father.
Of course, she already had a dad. Ethan Hart, cardiothoracic surgeon extraordinaire, and yet, when she called her mom, asking why some Southern guy named Dr Harley Wilkes seemed to think he was her real dad, Zoe had learned the truth. That she was the product of one of her mom's affairs. That half of her DNA really did come from an Alabama GP. That her life, up to that point, had been a lie.
It turned her whole world upside-down, not just learning that her parentage was other than she thought, but also that her biological father had come to find her because he was in poor health. Harley Wilkes had not long ago had a heart attack, just a mild one, but he said it had focused his mind in a way nothing ever had before. He had to come find Zoe, just had to meet and get to know his only child, if she was willing, of course. She hadn't known how to say no.
At least he was a good man, maybe one of the best and nicest Zoe had ever met, actually. On the flip-side, her mother became insufferable when she found out that Zoe and Harley were connecting. It was fairly hypocritical, the way Candice tried to imply that, if Harley really cared, he would have been in contact sooner, since she was apparently the one who encouraged him to stay away all those years.
For that, if nothing else, Zoe just wasn't sure how to forgive her mom. There had been so many lies, and then, to actually begrudge a sick man the chance to know his daughter, that was too much. With Harley living so far down south and Zoe having another whole year of Yale plus medical school to get through, she really wasn't sure how they were going to build a decent father-daughter relationship. Maybe she was an idiot for suggesting she could finish her schooling closer to where he was, but Harley had been so thrilled at the idea and Zoe had been pleased to have at least one out of three parents care about her and want her close so badly.
He had pull at the University of Alabama, both the main college and the medical school, which he had attended himself, some years before. With Zoe a Yalee for the first three years of her college life, it didn't take much to get her transferred. She would live in the dorms when she was in school and spend breaks in Harley's hometown, taking one of the spare rooms in his house as her own.
They had left it kind of late though. It was how come Zoe still hadn't actually seen the supposedly magical Bluebell yet. She had to go straight to U of A, moving into her single-room dorm just today, two days before classes began.
She had got her room all set how she wanted it, and then, set about her reading before classes began. By the end of the day, she knew she was ready. She also came to realise, she was completely out of her depth. It hit her all at once, the shock of her real father showing up, the sudden move to a new college in a new place where she knew nobody and was constantly suffering from the heat if she dared step outside of any place with air conditioning. Zoe had regrets and panic and a general feeling of woe that sent her into a crying jag for at least an hour.
When it was over and she found her calm again, she had stared into the mirror, met her own eyes and made a choice, giving herself a stern talking to.
"What is the matter with you? You may not be Zoe Hart anymore, but you're still you. Zoe Wilkes is a great name and you are an amazing person. You're smart and skilled and sexy and you deserve every good thing that you have in your life. Stop crying, stop stressing, and just... be a college senior already!" she told herself firmly.
Outside her window, there was whooping and calling, people clearly going out with friends, old and new, enjoying the freedom of college and living their best life. Zoe knew it was the only way to be. Better to throw herself willingly into the fun kind of crazy than let a more depressing kind drag her under. That was why she was a little drunk right now. That was why she was going to drag the sexiest bartender she had ever met into her bed.
"This is me," she said as they arrived outside her building. "Just down the hall. Single room, no dorm-mates."
"Yeah, you said that part already," he reminded her.
Zoe nodded, like she knew that. Truth was, she wasn't entirely sure what she had been saying out loud and what was in her own head. That wasn't something she could blame entirely on the booze. All that over-thinking, it made her all kinds of distracted, which was no good at all. Tonight, she wanted a different kind of distraction. She was going to go wild with this guy and forget everything else. Get crazy, get loud, get happy, because why the heck not?
"You don't have your name on this," he said, tapping his knuckles on the whiteboard on the dorm-room door.
"Doesn't matter," she said, unlocking said door and pushing it open. "One night, no names, no promises, no regrets, right?"
"Works for me, sweetheart," he told her easily, following her into the room and closing the door behind them.
To Be Continued...
