Chapter 9

"So, what did you wanna talk about?" asked Vanessa as she took a seat on the couch. Better to get straight to the point, she thought.

"Yeah… I just wanted to…" Zac trailed off, distracted as his phone dinged. "Sorry, do you mind if I take a quick call?"

"No problem, go ahead."

"Hi sweetheart…" Zac spoke into the phone lovingly as he went to the hallway for some privacy.

That must be Olivia, thought Vanessa. Slightly confused but not wanting to seem like she was eavesdropping, she scrolled through her phone.

As Zac came back to the couch, she heard the last part of his conversation.

"Goodnight, I love you Livi. Bye."

"Girlfriend?" asked Vanessa. As soon as she said it out loud, she regretted it. She didn't mean to be nosy. "I mean-" she tried to correct herself, but Zac decided to play with it. He grinned.

"She's the girl who has my whole heart in the palm of her hand - that's for sure," said Zac, taking a seat in the armchair next to the couch.

"Aww that's sweet," she replied, still unsure about his answer.

"Wanna see a pic?"

"Umm… sure?"

Zac handed her his phone as she prepared herself to see a modelesque persona on the screen. However, staring back at her was a small young girl with a toothy grin and pigtails. Huh? She thought. Who was that? Her eyes bore a striking resemblance to the man in front of her. Could it be? She knew she hadn't been in touch with him, but she also wasn't that out of the loop - surely she would know if Zac had a child?!

"Is that…?" she pointed at the girl.

"Olivia Efron. My… little sister," Zac said, peering over her shoulder at the picture too.

"Sister?!"

"Yeah… that's most people's reactions. Haha. Long story short…as of a couple of years ago, I have a younger sister, Olivia, and a younger brother, Henry."

"Wow… I knew I missed a chapter but I didn't see this coming."

"Honestly, me neither. It really took me by surprise when I first found out too. But I couldn't be happier. I can't imagine life without them."

He scrolled through some more photos to show them to her.

"They're adorable. I can see the family resemblance," she smiled at a funny video of Henry, Olivia and Dylan. She didn't want to pry but her curiosity got the better of her. "Your mum must have her hands full again. No more empty nest syndrome, huh?"

"Haha mum does have her hands full - she's taken on surfing, actually! She's killing it. But actually - mum and dad split some time ago… My dad remarried and these guys are from his new marriage."

"Oh my gosh - I'm sorry I didn't mean to pry and I'm sorry to hear that. Starla and David always seemed so happy… I'm sorry."

"Nah, no worries. I mean it was a tough transition, I'm not gonna lie. When you hear your parents are divorcing - it sucks. At any age. But it just wasn't working, and something had to give…I'm really happy that after all that they're in a good place now, though. They're friends and at the end of the day we're family. We might look a little different than others but they're our parents - that never changes. Dad's new wife is really nice too - she's become like a friend to us but more importantly she's a great mum to Hen and Liv. And without her, we wouldn't have them - so it all works out in the end, you know?"

"Yeah…" She gave him a warm smile. She was impressed with his maturity and huge heart.

Zac cleared his throat. "So… while I love gushing about Henry and Olivia, haha, I actually wanted to talk to you and clear something up."

"Okay, shoot," said Vanessa sitting up straight.

"You said you messaged me after you received the flowers I sent…"

"Oh!" she said, remembering their previous conversation. "Yeah!"

"And you wondered why I hadn't replied…"

"Yeah."

"It was on Instagram, wasn't it?"

"Yeah - I messaged you there because I didn't have your number."

"Right…but the truth is I never got your message."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. It's so stupid. I had gotten the offer for Baywatch, and I had switched to a social media manager for the first time ever. She said she wanted to do a deep dive and see how my profile stats were working with the algorithm on Instagram before the movie came out - something like that. But first, she wanted to clean up my social media before I started the new project and my team thought it was a good idea. Turns out, she didn't really know what she was doing and ended up deleting all my messages. She almost wiped out my feed too, but someone caught her just in time. She was taken off my account, but I heard she's working on an app that lets you get back deleted DM's 30 days after you delete them - go figure, haha. But yeah - I just wanted to let you know, I wasn't ignoring you - I really never got your message. It's been weighing on me since you mentioned it, and I just wanted to clear that up. I didn't expect to hear from you since we hadn't been in touch; otherwise I'd have looked out for your message… but yeah I'm sorry if it looked like I didn't reply to you especially at a time like that."

"I always thought you didn't want to reconnect after seeing my message. It made sense because you didn't show up to the HSM reunion either…"

"No no - that was a really bad scheduling conflict. I would've loved to be there in person. And had I seen your message, I definitely would have replied…"

What would it have been like if he had replied? Thought Vanessa. Would they have continued talking? Maybe be comfortable bumping into each other at a mutual friend's house? All these years later and still so many questions…

"Thank you for explaining. I appreciate it. Honestly, it's so easy to misunderstand or misconstrue a situation like that. And not being in touch for so long, things definitely get more confusing with so many unanswered questions…"

What other questions did she have about him? He thought. He found himself wanting to answer them all. Tell her everything. Maybe that's why the universe had brought them together today to let everything out in the open.

"But maybe all of that miscommunication and confusion has led us here to this moment and maybe we were meant to be having this conversation today. No more unanswered questions," she wondered the same thing out loud.

"Yeah, I'm starting to think so too…But if that's the case, then we better do this right," said Zac immediately standing up and looking around the room for something. Once the object of desire was in sight, he went over and procured it.

"What do you mean?" she craned her neck to see where he had gone.

He approached her, shuffling a deck of cards as he sat next to her on the couch. "If the universe has given us this chance to clear the air, get closure or whatever you want to call it… then we should do it. But properly. I'm sure there's other stuff on your mind too…"

"I mean sure, but it doesn't matter. We don't have to rehash the past. It's in the past. Besides, it's been a long night… she waves her hand.

"Sure, of course. We don't have to do anything." This was probably a silly idea, he thought. She was right. We should let bygones be bygones.

Her curiosity got the better of her. "But, hypothetically, what did you have in mind?" she asked, peering over at the deck of cards, imagining an answer would appear on them.

"War!" he grinned devilishly

"War?" she asked, concerned.

"Well… I was thinking we could play a game of 'war'. Well, a variation of the game. We split the deck," he demonstrated by cutting the deck in half and placing both piles on the table. "We each flip over a card from our pile and place it upright.The person with the highest value card asks the other a question."

"And if we have the same value?"

"Then it's war and we battle it out. Haha, nah, I guess in our version of the game we can just do rock, paper, scissors for who has to answer next."

"Okay… so kind of like 20 questions except-"

"26 questions. Exactly!"

"So, what are we asking one another?"

"Each person asks a question or assumption they've had about the other over the years…and we answer it. Anything goes. This is a judgment-free zone. Nothing's off the table. But once we ask the question, we don't have to discuss anything about that topic again… closure once and for all…"

Did she really want to pursue this? It was one thing to run into an ex, another thing to hang out with him, and even crazier to get stuck in an elevator with him but voluntarily spending time together, alone, bringing up the past felt exceptionally wrong.

"Seems dangerous…"

"Ah come on, you're not one to back down from the hot seat, Hudgens. What do you say? One night and one night only the answer to all your questions…"

After all these years, they were finally in a good place. What if this game hurt them more than it healed them?

"Unless you need to go…"

He was giving her an out, and she should take it, but a small voice inside compelled her to see this through.

"Alright, game on, Efron" she declared as she picked up her deck.