Zoey rolled her eyes, and Jonathan clapped once. “There it is again. The infamous Zoey eye roll. I missed that a lot.”
“Ha ha,” Zoey said, looking down. She examined a knot in the wood for a moment before she looked off at nothing in particular. “You missed me?”
“Just the eye roll. Absolutely nothing else,” Jonathan said. The eye roll was a problem in high school; she did it to a teacher by accident and was sent to the principal’s office. After that, she and Jonathan would exaggerate an eye roll whenever possible, usually in front of school authorities. Even when she had seen him off at the airport when he left for college, Jonathan looked back and rolled his eyes with his tongue out. It made her laugh in the middle of her tears.
She caught his eyes and didn’t look away. His hazel eyes still looked at her with warmth and a twinkle, his smile making her light up. Her leg started bouncing to release some of the nervous energy. So many questions wanted to burst out of her. There was one big one she didn’t know the answer to. The kind of question that haunted her on and off for her entire adult life. The kind of question she had resigned herself to never knowing the answer to.
Why?
As she opened her mouth, a bird dive-bombed the chips, snagging one, causing Zoey to yell out in surprise and jump straight off the bench. Jonathan laughed in staccato laughs, holding his middle. After Zoey caught her breath, she started laughing. Soon, they both had tears in their eyes. A child started crying, which made Zoey laugh harder.
“You’re… laughing… at… children,” Jonathan said, in between laughs and gasps.
Zoey’s laugh calmed down until they both caught the woman sitting with the child staring at them, and then they started up again. Zoey’s head dropped completely under the table.
“I think I just peed a little,” Zoey said, dabbing her eyes with a napkin. “I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years.”
“Only we would get attacked by a bird,” Jonathan said. His laughs were winding down.
“Do you remember the time those geese attacked you?” Zoey said. They laughed again at that memory.
“I forgot about that. Those mean fuckers. That was crazy. I’ve never run so fast,” Jonathan said. Zoey giggled again at the memory of Jonathan sprinting while a goose flapped its wings, followed by its three best friends chasing him. He had refused to give them a sandwich at a picnic she’d planned. Jonathan grinned as he took a drink of his water.
“Now it’s turkeys. They’ve taken over Lillyvale. They’re always trying to get laid.”
“One good thing about the desert: no horny turkeys.”
“Don’t you get a lot of other creatures?”
Jonathan nodded. “A scorpion once made it into my house. Nikki screamed so loud I thought she found a dead body.”
Zoey’s face fell at the mention of his ex-wife. When she first found out by accident he was getting married, she was devastated, wasting a whole week mulling over it and obsessing about it. Devastation had then morphed into anger, and now she didn’t know what to feel.
Jonathan quickly added, “It wasn’t as bad as the time they were giving balloons out as a fundraiser at school and you ran out of the room.”
There, with the balloons again. Much better than talking about Nikki. She only told trusted people about her displeasure with balloons. The knowledge that she hated balloons was used for evil. A lot.
“I’ve gotten a lot more relaxed around balloons,” Zoey said. She still couldn’t set foot in a party store, but that was neither here nor there.
“So, if I bought you a bunch of balloons…”
“I would still have to kill you.”
“Over balloons, huh? I figured it would be something else.”
They sat quietly, looking at their hands and the chip basket. Zoey snuck another chip.
“I’m not mad at you anymore, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Zoey said. “It was such a long time ago. I’m fine.”
Maybe if she said it out loud, it would be true. But she did still feel anger. And sadness. And a ton of other emotions she had been hiding.
“That’s good to hear.” Jonathan’s hands were trembling. “So… we should really talk about what happened.”
Zoey’s heart raced. They were having so much fun. Talking about the past and their breakup would kill this momentum, this easy feeling. If they talked about everything, she would vomit emotions like Addison vomited wine.
Zoey shook her hand like a wave. “Not now. Soon, but not now.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then, I want to know everything you’ve been up to the last eleven years.”
“I went to Sierra for community college, and then I went to Sac State. Graduated on time too.” She hoisted a finger up as punctuation. “For a while, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went back to Sac State for the credential program to be an art teacher.”
“Your art was always so good. I bet you were great at teaching it.”
“No,” Zoey said with a laugh. “It was an absolute shit show. I wasn’t good at it at all. I couldn’t control the class. I was so unhappy and reached my breaking point and just quit.”
Zoey left out the fact that she doubted everything after she left. She doubted herself, her confidence, her decision-making skills, her entire career path. She had no idea what to do next. She still had nightmares about teaching, starring one particularly heinous student named Hunter.
She also left out the string of failed relationships, the broken hearts she left while on her warpath, the disappointing sex she had with people she thought were something. She wasn’t ready to admit it. How no one measured up to him.
“Quitting must’ve taken a lot of courage,” he said. “I wanted to quit law school so many times the first year. It wasn’t until I interned the summer between my first and second year that I saw how miserable everyone was that I decided to quit.”
“Life is too short to be unhappy at your job,” Zoey said. You are so full of shit, she thought to herself. She didn’t even know if she was happy at the jobs she currently worked. She was too busy zipping from one to the other to feel anything other than busy.
She took a deep, cleansing breath. Jonathan’s cheeks were relaxed with his eyes on her, waiting for her to speak. “Do you like your job now?” she asked.
“Oh yeah,” Jonathan said. “It’s always a challenge to get the shot and follow someone without them knowing you have a camera on them. There is so much gross insurance fraud going on, and it’s so satisfying to catch it. Plus, I get out of the office and into the fresh air, which I like.” He looked down and then back up at her. “What do you do now?”
“I have three jobs. I help out at my friend Taylor’s spin/yoga studio. You remember Taylor Drew, from high school?” Jonathan nodded, and she continued, “I work at Buonissimo Italiana, again, and ISLAY, a women’s fitness apparel company.”
“Holy shit, really? That’s a lot.”
“Really,” Zoey said. “I have student debt that pisses me off, so I’m trying to get rid of it as soon as possible.”
“I do too, but it’s just normal nowadays, I guess, to have it. All of my friends have student debt.”