A Shot in the Dark 🏹 Oliver Queen

EIGHT.

TODAY

Zoey tucked her hands in the pockets of her jacket as she strolled alongside Oliver down Starling Pier. Soft waves fanned the scent of salt water into the air and on the opposite side of the walk way, Zoey noticed a team of seagulls picking away at a handful of French fries that a little kid had dropped a few minutes earlier. 

Zoey reminisced fondly about when she was younger and her mother would take her to the boardwalk. They would get Zoey's favorite mint chip ice cream in a cone with Chocolate sprinkles from the cart on the beach and then they'd share it, even though her mother secretly hated mint. 

They would then sit on the bench and Zoey would outpour her pockets full of the treasures she'd been collecting along the way: seashells, rocks, coins. Once, she had found a silver gum wrapper that had been balled up and then stepped on so many times that it resembled a coin. The sole of one shoe had left an imprint of the letter "B." Her mother told her she'd found a piece of currency from the Royal Kingdom of Bellrosia. If she made a wish and tossed it into the ocean, her wish was sure to come true. 

Even then, Zoey was both overly practical and indecisive. She couldn't make up her mind about her wish. Rather, she kept the coin in a safe place so that one day, when she'd decided on her wish, she'd have it and her wish would be sure to come true.

Now that she was older, much of the fantasy had died, especially when she'd realized that going to the pier was one of the only ways her broke mother could afford to allow her daughter a fun day away from the Glades– and from her father.

At the end of the boardwalk, Zoey leaned her elbows against the wooden railing and looked over the water, just in time for a wave to break against the concrete pillars. The sunlight reflected off of the metallic flakes of mica and the foam dissolved in sparkly bubbles. 

"Man, I love it out here. I wish I was a little old man and I could just come out here and spend all day fishing." Zoey daydreamed, resting her chin on the back of her hand. 

"You like to fish?" he asked dubiously. 

"No I do not, but I like to stare at the waves with the stringy thing in the water so it looks like I'm fishing." Zoey joked, miming casting a reel over the boundary of the pier. The corners of his mouth turned up in amusement.

"You miss the ocean, then?" he wondered and Zoey raised an eyebrow, "Thea mentioned that you left Starling City." 

She knew that was bound to come up eventually. "About five years ago."

"Just couldn't stand the thought of the city without me in it, huh?" he teased. 

She amused him with a nod. "Something like that."

"So I guess this is your grand return to Starling City, too, then." 

She almost laughed at the idea of welcome banners being strung up and red carpets rolling out in anticipation of her return.

Zoey's face fell. She kicked at a rock with the toe of her boot, giving her somewhere to look other than Oliver's eyes– which were an eerily similar color to the sea foam glimmering below them. "I don't know if I'd call it grand. I didn't realize just how many people would be so unhappy to see me."

"I know the feeling. Other then, most of mine have a reason to wish I never came back. Who I used to be wasn't exactly someone worth missing."

"Well, I didn't know that I was someone memorable enough to make waves with my return." Zoey said honestly, remembering her quiet existence in Starling City before she left. Not even her next door neighbor knew her name until she had reminded him what it was a dozen times. "Now you, on the other hand..."