Pursuit of Happiness | Taz Skylar [1]

018. maybe

Taz was lying sprawled across his bed when his phone began to ring from its place on the bedside table, the slightly different ringtone from the usual one that played informing him of the fact that the call was a facetime call, not a regular voice call. Usually the only person who called him through facetime was Jay, so Taz's eyebrows drew together in confusion when he picked up the device and saw Zoe's name flash up on the screen.

The moment that Taz answered the call, Zoe's face filled the screen. She was sitting at her piano and he could see discarded pieces of sheet music crumpled up and thrown onto the floor behind her. She looked tired, evidenced by her sideways ponytail and the faint circles under her eyes, but she managed to smile at him nonetheless.

"Hey," Taz greeted. "What are you doing?"

There wasn't a hint of awkwardness in his voice. The change had come after his castmates had deemed it appropriate to call Zoe on his phone, all of them copiously intoxicated. When he'd woken up the following morning and realized what had happened, he had expected her to be annoyed, or even angry, but she hadn't. She had laughed, she had joked about it. Her amusement about the whole thing had allowed his awkwardness and uncertainty about where they stood with each other to fall away, allowing him to actually begin to entertain the idea of rebuilding the friendship that he'd once shared with her.

He didn't dare to hope for more than that.

"Trying not to lose my mind," Zoe said, using one hand to rub at her face. "I haven't seen anyone who isn't Palkia for three days. I'm going nuts."

"I would have thought you were going to go try those wedding cocktails with Jay and Bree tonight," Taz said. "Did that not end up happening?"

"No, they're still doing that. I have been told in no uncertain terms that I need to get my shit together with this album, so I had to give it a miss," Zoe explained, looking down at her hands so that she could begin to play the piano quietly as she talked.

"Oh," Taz said. "So you want company, then?"

Zoe's fingers were still tinkering with the piano keys, producing a quiet, fast-paced melody that filtered through Taz's phone speakers. It was nice, but Taz's attention was fixed on Zoe's face, at the almost shy way that she glanced at him before directing her eyes back onto the movement of her own fingers.

"Maybe," Zoe mumbled, her voice almost a match in volume for the music. Taz smiled at her, but he didn't say anything, simply content to sit there and listen to her pick notes at random, trying to find something that she liked. As she played, a hint of a smile began to tug at the corners of Zoe's lips and at first Taz thought that it was just simple enjoyment from playing music, but then that smile split into an amused grin and before he could ask, she was saying, "So I haven't gotten any late-night calls lately. Have your castmates not stolen your phone?"

"I told you I was sorry about that – "

Zoe laughed, shaking her head. "I told you, it's fine. It was funny. I'm pretty sure we did the same thing to Ivy back in the day."

Taz had forgotten about that, but she was right. They had been at a birthday party and while he couldn't recall whose, he could recall sitting with one arm thrown across Zoe's shoulders, laughing against her hair, as she and Bree had stolen Ivy's phone. The two women had shouted the first things that had come to mind down the phone until Ivy had reappeared, the red in her face only half due to the alcohol she'd consumed and snatched her phone back.

When Taz's attention snapped back to Zoe, he saw that she was smiling. The notes she was playing began to take shape, becoming more of a melody than just a collection of notes played one after another as she found something she liked. Zoe stopped playing for a moment, a pencil whirling in her hand as she leaned forward to write on the paper she'd left set up next to her phone. As she worked, Zoe remarked, "Ivy looked like she was going to kill us that night."

"Ivy looked like she was going to kill you a lot," Taz pointed out. "You guys didn't always get along."

"No, we didn't," Zoe agreed, sitting back and resuming her playing of the keys. "But she was always there when I really needed her. And that's what important to remember, I guess."

"You guess?"

"My therapist, for the most part, is incredible. But sometimes she says things and I don't really believe her," Zoe admitted.

"I didn't know you were going to therapy," Taz said quietly.

"It wasn't my idea," Zoe confessed, pausing her playing again to write down on the paper. "Bree forced me to go after I got drunk one night and told her that . . ." As if only realizing the story that she was telling now that she was halfway through it, Zoe hesitated, playing with her tongue piercing while she considered her words. Then, just as Taz would beginning to wonder if she had any intention of finishing her sentence, Zoe continued, "After I told her that things would have been better if I had died instead of Ivy."

As soon as the words left her mouth, they had burrowed themselves into Taz's head, where he knew they would live for quite some time. After all, it wasn't lost on him just how narrowly Zoe had escaped the accident with her life, but he'd always assumed that she at least realized just how lucky she had been. It hadn't occurred to him that survivor's guilt would burrow itself so deeply into her psyche that she would think, even for a moment, that things would have been better if Zoe had traded places with her sister.

"Do you . . ." Taz swallowed. "Do you still feel that way?"

Zoe lifted one shoulder and dropped it again in a strangely nonchalant half-shrug. "Sometimes. Not really. I don't know. I think a big part of it is I just wish she was here for Ethan's sake because, yeah, I lost my sister, but he lost his mom. But at the same time, if Ivy had lived and I hadn't, then my shit couple of years would be her shit last couple of years, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, let alone Ivy."

"Ethan has you, bub," Taz said, the old nickname slipping out before he could think to stop it. As soon as the word slipped out, he cringed, avoiding Zoe's eyes. This was the problem with having Zoe back in his life; everything that had been left up in the air between them was getting muddled together, making him do stupid things like call her an old pet name.

If Zoe was bothered by his use of it, however, she didn't show it. Instead, she remarked, "I haven't heard that in a while."

Taz peeked a glance at her, finding Zoe smiling softly while she played the piano, stopping every now and then to correct what she'd written. After a long moment of silence, Taz managed to ask, "Is it . . . okay?"

"I don't mind," Zoe replied, shrugging her shoulders. She looked as if she was going to say more, but then stopped, turning her head away and lifting her arm so that she could use her elbow to stifle a yawn.

"Go to bed," Taz said quietly, watching her blink a couple of times. "The song will still be there in the morning."

"But – "

"Go to sleep," he insisted, without letting her finish her sentence.

"Okay," Zoe mumbled, reaching up to brush a few strands of hair out of her eyes. "Thank you, for keeping me company."

"Anytime," Taz replied, and then Zoe's tired face was gone, leaving behind only a dark phone screen in her wake.