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SIX MONTHS LATER
The radio was on and the windows were down to let the wind card through Zoe's hair, but she hardly seemed to notice any of it. Her eyes were staring out through the car's windshield as Taz drove, taking in streets that were still familiar to her, but not familiar in the way that home was. More familiar in the way that a friend you haven't spoken to in years was familiar. Zoe only pulled her eyes away from the road when she felt a hand rest on her thigh and she looked over to meet Taz's eyes briefly before his eyes were back on the road.
"Are you okay?" Taz asked, his fingers squeezing her thigh gently.
Zoe nodded, her eyes fixed on the side of his face. Then, remembering that he was driving and he likely couldn't see her nod, she said, "Yeah. This is just weird."
"How so?"
"It doesn't feel like home anymore," Zoe admitted, looking down at her hands in her lap. She still wore her mother's ring every day, and to keep herself from turning it around her finger anxiously, she took Taz's hand and turned it over so that she could slide her fingers into the gaps between his. "I was born here. I grew up here. It's weird to think that six months in London is all it takes to undo that."
"What, you thinking about moving back?" Taz joked, despite her words pointing to the exact opposite.
"Fuck, no," Zoe said, huffing out a quiet, humorless laugh as Taz pulled the car into a driveway so familiar that if Zoe was better with her hands in any way that didn't include writing or playing music, she probably could have drawn it from memory alone. Jay and Bree's house looked unchanged from the last time that Zoe had been there, but looking at it felt different than it had six months before. She couldn't explain it.
"Bub," Taz said, unbuckling his seatbelt so that he could lean across the centre console of the car and gently knock two fingers against Zoe's cheek. She was still staring at the house, but she managed to drag her eyes away from it and over to Taz. Once he knew he had her attention, Taz said, "It's only been six months."
"It feels longer than that," Zoe admitted, but then she was moving away, unbuckling her own seatbelt and climbing out of the car before she could lose her nerve. The car beeped as Taz locked it after climbing out after her, then jogged over to join Zoe on the porch as she knocked on the door. The second that Zoe knocked, the sound of barking erupted from inside the house, followed almost immediately by what sounded like a baby crying. Then came the sound of footsteps like someone was running and then the door was flung open, and then there was Jay's grinning face.
Taz opened his mouth to greet his friend, but before he could get a word out, Jay shot forward, squeezing both arms around Taz's back and bending himself backwards so that he could lift Taz off his feet, despite Taz's superior height. Taz was laughing as his feet left the ground and Zoe smiled as she watched them, her anxieties falling away. No matter how much time had passed, Jay was still Jay and Bree was still Bree. They were still her friends, so close that she considered them as much her family as Nate and Ethan, and no amount of time or distance was going to change that.
