Page 8 of Fracture

“Hey folks, gorgeous weather, amirite? Y’all have a blessed day!”

The people return Zee’s enthusiastic smiles with slightly more awkward ones, and hurry along the footpath. Zee watches them go, the smile not dropping til they turn back to face me, one hand perched on their hip.

“OK asshole, explain.”

“Can we go sit down for this lunch I’m buying you first, so we don’t put this lovely flower store out of business?”

Zee huffs, and grabs my arm again. “Fine. I’m starving and I need sushi. Let’s go.”

It’s not until Zee has a plate of spicy tuna rolls in front of them and I’ve downed half a red enamel cup of miso that they tilt their head and snap their chopsticks in my direction.

“OK, Kovac, speak.”

“Pointing your chopsticks at people is considered rude, you know.”

Zee jabs the chopsticks in my direction with renewed gusto. “I said, speak.”

I sigh and throw up my hands. “I was an asshole. It wasn’t like that though, I didn’t expect to get laid, I really didn’t. And the other stuff, I was… I was hurt.”

“Over?”

I watch Zee dunk their tuna roll in a bowl of soy sauce lashed liberally with wasabi. “Her not coming to visit us.”

Zee nods, chewing their food thoughtfully. “Mmm. Did she tell you why?”

My stomach does a deeply unpleasant flip, and my mouth runs dry. “She just said we weren’t the only ones locked up.”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm? Is that all you’re gonna say?”

Zee finishes chewing and takes a sip of their diet coke, eyeing me critically over the edge of the can. “You’re hurt, I get it. I would be too. But it’s not that she didn’t love you.”

The word love makes my chest ache in the worst fucking way, all the memories that kept me from sleeping the night before welling up at the backs of my fucking eyeballs. She loved me. Stellalovedme. She loved us. And she stayed away from us for ten fucking years.

“If it wasn’t that, then what was it?”

Zee leans back in their chair, crossing their lithe arms over their chest. “Has she told you anything? About where she went, who she lived with? What her life was like?”

I can’t help but frown at the questions Zee is throwing my way. “Who she lived with? Well, her mom of course.”

Zee laughs out loud, a sound that overshadows the other conversations going on in the cozy sushi restaurant. “Her mom? The bohemian alcoholic with 17 husbands to her name? You really think she came swooping in when her daughter needed somebody?”

My blood runs cold, and my mouth is the fucking Sahara. “Where did she stay? Her mom really didn’t come back?”

Zee shakes their head emphatically, picking up another tuna roll and inspecting it carefully. “Did y’all ever write to her? Like, did either of you ever sit down, and write her a letter, and ask what was happening?”

I swallow down my shame. “No. Her letters, they… They made us angry. They were… They were nothing. Just bland, like it wasn’t even her writing them.” I lift my gaze sheepishly to meet Zee’s. “It made me think she didn’t care anymore.”

“So there’s some truth to what you said the other night then?” Zee’s eyes bore into mine. “You and Levi felt she owed you, and when she didn’t perform the way you wanted, you dropped her like a fucking stone.”

I rub the back of my neck, laughing awkwardly. “Now, Zee, come on.”

“After everything that poor girl went through, you had the audacity to sit there and wait for her to come to you? To write you in a way that madeyoufeel special?” Zee throws their chopsticks on to the table and shakes their head. “Unbelievable.”

“I love Stella. I went to prisonfor her.”

“You went to prison for killing her dad.” Zee’s indignation is cutting, slicing straight through my confidence and the surety that I did the right thing. The look in their eyes tells me in no uncertain terms that they’re judging me, hard. “You and Levi, what happened that night, if either of you had thought aboutStella for even one second, neither of you would have pulled that trigger.”

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