The Hope That Starts

by Heidi Hutchinson

  The door cracked open and Kiley peeked out.

  He tilted his head and held up the bag of pastries. “Can I come in?”

  She stared at the bag, then back at him for a second before letting the door fall open.

  Stepping though the doorway slowly, he didn't take his eyes from hers. The dark under-eye circles showcased just how tired she was. She closed the door and then swallowed, waiting for him to speak.

  He held out the bag. “I heard a rumor that you could only eat one thing right now.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes and she reached a shaky hand out to him.

  He smiled softly as he took in her pajamas, mussed hair, make-up free face, and fuzzy robe. It was a far cry from her usual slinky look-at-me-now short dresses she was so fond of. “I've never seen you look so comfortable,” he remarked.

  Kiley shuffled to the couch and opened the bag, taking a deep breath of the fresh cinnamon and icing. “This baby is making me both fat and skinny at the same time.”

  Harrison chuckled and pulled out the chair by the table and sat down, propping one ankle on a knee.

  “How have you been feeling?” he asked.

  “Terrible, mostly,” she responded dryly. She pulled out a roll and tore off a small piece, putting it in her mouth. Her cheeks flushed and Harrison was so glad he'd taken his sister's advice. “But this is definitely a bright spot.”

  “Have you been to a doctor?” he asked.

  She chewed slowly, nodding. “I have to get back to Boston in a couple of days for my next pre-natal.”

  “Would you like me to be there?”

  Her eyes lifted to his and then fell to the floor.

  “Kiley?”

  Something was happening in her head and it was playing itself out on her face. He waited as she sought and found the right words. Though he didn't expect what came next.

  “I didn't plan on you falling in love,” she said quietly. Harrison felt his frown start and he tried to relax his face. “I was being...” She sighed and her head dropped a little. “I was being selfish. I just thought you'd be happy that there was a baby. I never planned on making you choose. It sorta happened spur of the moment.”

  She pressed her lips together and looked at him. Her expression filled with regret and something else he couldn't identify. “But I was so scared. I thought if I backed down... I'd lose everything.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes and then slid slowly down her cheeks as she twisted off another piece of the roll and ate it. “I'm not a good person, Harrison.”

  He frowned at her and put his foot down to lean forward. She shook her head to stop him from speaking.

  “No, really. I was lying to you the whole time.”

  Harrison felt his stomach dip and then turn over. “What do you mean? You're not pregnant?”

  “Oh, I'm totally pregnant,” she said dryly, eating more of the roll and talking around the food in her mouth. “I had a boyfriend the whole time I was seeing you.” Her sentence ended on a higher pitch as she forced it out around a sob.

  Harrison thought maybe he should comfort her. Or something. But he was mostly frozen in a state of confusion.

  “I was cheating on him with you.” She rolled her eyes. “And a couple other guys, too.”

  “Oh my God, Kiley,” he blurted out.

  She nodded heavily in agreement. “I know, right? I'm awful. I hate myself so bad right now.”

  Harrison’s mouth was open to say more, but he didn't know where to start. His instinct was to tell her not to hate herself... but, damn.

  “Anyway,” she continued, taking a deep breath to calm herself down, “he's the father. Not you.”

  Harrison's heart turned over in a similar fashion to his stomach. “What?” he asked, his throat dry.

  “I wanted it to be you,” she continued, oblivious to his shock. “But it's just not. I was really mad at Wade and I had broken up with him because he made a comment that he never wanted to get married. I thought, I mean, I just knew, you would be a great dad and I knew you liked me, so... I picked you.”

  “That's not usually how it works,” Harrison responded, half-distracted by all of this new information. Life-changing information. Again.

  “No, it's not,” she agreed. “But... someone said something to me that got me thinking, and I knew it wasn't right to keep it from the actual father.” She forced a smile and fresh tears poured out of her eyes. “He's excited and he wants to get married. He'd actually been planning on proposing, and he had only said what he said to keep me from ruining the surprise... If you're wondering.”

  “Whoops,” Harrison said darkly.

  “I'm sorry, Harrison,” she whispered, and he raised his eyes to her. “I'm so, so sorry.”

  He let her apology tumble around in his head for a minute. Somehow those words seemed far too inadequate for the chaos and pain they were supposed to mend.

  “I suppose you think that your being sorry will somehow make what you've done okay. But it's not okay.”

  “Harrison, I'm really sorry,” she stressed again, her eyes round and wide.

  “Those words are just too... small,” he finally said.

  Kiley sniffed pitifully, but he was having a hard time feeling anything but contempt for her.

  “She left me,” he stated flatly.

  Kiley's head jerked. “What?”

  “She left. To avoid making me choose, to make sure the band wasn't embroiled in a scandal. She left while I was sleeping.” The pressure in his chest built up and he swallowed hard to keep it from escaping.

  “That's not my—”

  “Not your fault?” he finished sharply. She had the decency to look both wounded and regretful at the same time. Harrison dropped his chin to his chest. “It's not all your fault,” he said quietly, knowing his part in it couldn't be ignored.

  “She'll come back,” Kiley encouraged.

  “I sure hope so,” he mumbled.

  “I'll help you,” she offered suddenly. “I'll talk to her and tell her the whole story.”

  Harrison grimaced and stood up. “I think that's a very bad idea.” He chewed on his bottom lip for a second. “I actually think it's best if you and I part ways right here. I wish you and Wade the best with your life and your decisions, but please stay out of mine from now on.”

  Kiley nodded and hung her head.

  He didn't hug her. He didn't smile at her. He just walked to the door and got the hell away from her as fast as possible.

  He made it all the way back to his own hotel across town, into his room, and had the door closed before his own tears started.

  He had no idea why he was crying. It made no sense. The baby wasn't his. It never had been. His life would continue without the huge change he had been trying to prepare himself for.

  So why did it feel like, while he would get Zelda back (eventually), he had lost something precious today? How could you miss something that was never even yours?

  He ran a hand through his still-short hair and his mind landed on green eyes and soft arms. He needed her. He needed to talk to her and look at her and feel her all around him.

  For nine days he had felt like his soul was disconnected from his head.

  He hoped she'd been keeping it safe.

  Chapter 23

  Red

  The downside to going to Comic-Con alone and dressed like a spaceship was that there was no one to help you navigate. Especially for someone as clumsy as Zelda. Add to that an extra thirty pounds of fluffy fabric, and hair that decided to migrate to the small shield she was using to see through, and you were asking for a wreck of epic spaceship proportions.

  She should have called someone to go with her. But here was the thing: she hadn't decided she was going until the very last minute. So all the people she should have gone with were probably already there. She'd planned on finding them when she got there—here—wherever she was. She really should have foreseen the issue of not being able to see any of her friends.

&n
bsp; “Pardon me,” she mumbled when she bumped into someone, then realized they probably couldn't hear her. “PARDON ME!” she yelled. She had no way of knowing if they heard her that time, so she kept moving.

  This may have been a very bad idea.

  She should have gone with the standard geeky sayings on a cotton poly-blend shirt in a color that would make her eyes stand out instead of this monstrosity she'd so cleverly thought up long ago.

  But there was going to be a panel. With Joss Whedon. And she wanted to get close to him and impress him with her awesome Serenity re-creation. Even if she wouldn't be able to see his reaction.

  Oh, who was she kidding? This was a terrible idea.

  Adding to her misery, she'd broken her phone yesterday. So she had no more covert messages from Harrison to get her through her day.

  She had really, really loved having that connection to him, even if it wasn't entirely fair. It was so hard to just walk away from him. With the texts, at least she knew he was okay and he was thinking about her.

  It's all she had left at this point.

  And now that was gone, too.

  Because she'd accidentally dropped her phone while she was running to catch a cab to get to an interview where she didn't get hired anyway.

  She stopped walking beside a booth that looked like the California Browncoats. If only she could see!

  She yanked off the top portion of her spaceship in frustration. It completely ruined the entire look. Without the top portion, she looked like a woman being sucked into a giant pile of poop. It was gross. Which is why she had struggled with the top half for as long as she did.

  A modern Westley and Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride were posing for a photo right in front of her.

  The girl was so pretty. She had her hair all twisted and perfect and golden, while Westley was dashing in his head-to-toe black and a drawn sword. But it was the way they were looking at each other that finally pushed Zelda over the edge.

  Large, fat tears began to roll down her face as she took a step forward and blubbered, “You guys look beautiful.”

  Princess Buttercup's eyebrows arched and Westley tried pulling her in the opposite direction.

  “You have a forever love!” Zelda yelled, ignoring the firm hand on her elbow. “Don't let Humperdinck come between you!”

  “Whoa, turd girl, are you high?”

  Zelda's day was just not getting any better. She faced the man who had stopped her from chasing down the happy couple and forcing them to exchange vows. He wasn't as remarkable as people sometimes were at these things, but his face looked friendly enough.

  Taller than she but not too tall, larger without being either round or muscular, hair that hung to his chin and kind of puffed out to the sides. Glasses that covered gray eyes, and a flannel that looked soft enough to sleep in.

  “I'm not—I'm not high,” she said, clutching her costume around her, suddenly wishing she had never come to this thing.

  What was she thinking? That she could just go back to normal life after all of that?

  “I had that once,” she said, gesturing at the place where the couple had been standing a minute before.

  The guy looked at where she was pointing and frowned. “You used to cosplay The Princess Bride?”

  “No,” Zelda wailed. “I used to have an epic love.” She suddenly lurched at him and grabbed him by his shirt in two desperate fists. “It was epic!”

  He gently took hold of her hands and nodded slowly. “Okay, my name is Eric,” he introduced himself softly. “And you are...?”

  “Zelda,” she said, staring at his shirt and wondering what on earth she was going to do with her life now.

  “All right, Zelda,” he said, gently getting her hands to relax and let him go. “It's going to be all right.”

  Her eyes snapped back up to his. “I shouldn't have come here.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “But we're going to get you a soft pretzel and talk for a minute.”

  “A soft pretzel?” she asked with a sniff, not understanding how that would help her at all.

  “I really like soft pretzels,” he said.

  They maneuvered through the people and booths to the outskirts, went up to the second floor mezzanine by way of the escalator, found an open seat, and Eric produced two wrapped soft pretzels from his backpack.

  “You just happen to have soft pretzels with you?” Zelda asked, pulling the plastic away carefully.

  Eric shrugged. “I like soft pretzels. If I had cookies, I would have offered you one of those.”

  Zelda took a bite and let her eyes listlessly scan the crowd below. So many people, all just walking around, living their lives. Completely unaware that her heart was a broken mess of memories and hopes and promises.

  “So,” Eric began. “Nerd love gone wrong?”

  Fresh tears threatened to surface, but Zelda swallowed them back down. She wasn't going to cry in public anymore today. Even if she had to stop the tears by shoving this soft pretzel directly into her tear ducts. Crying was the kind of thing you did when you got home, and you were alone, and no one could see the snot-bubbles or hear the mournful howling she was no doubt going to be doing.

  “So wrong,” she said carefully, not trusting her voice.

  Eric nodded.

  “I think...” Zelda began, vocalizing her thoughts for the first time since this whole thing happened. “I think that I was really stupid to believe that I could go back to regular life.”

  She took another bite of the pretzel and chewed thoughtfully. Going over the past ten days over and over again. She had been sad, but mostly fine. Until her phone broke, and it felt like her tiny thread that tethered her to reality shredded instantly. It was such a final, explosive ending. Her phone was in eight pieces, for crying out loud.

  “I guess I just thought that maybe... eventually... he'd call me. And now he can't.” She looked at Eric. “I don't think I'm gonna be okay for a really long time.”

  Eric's mouth turned down on the sides and Zelda recognized that he might not know exactly how she was feeling, but he could relate.

  “Are nerd hearts just meant to be broken, or what?” she asked softly.

  He cracked a sad smile. “I've had that thought a time or two.”

  “What do we do?”

  He shrugged and looked away, his eyes going to a place further away than she could possibly follow. “We have to be optimists.”

  “The hopers of far-flung hopes?”

  He looked back at her, his smile bigger but no less sad. “And the dreamers of improbable dreams.”

  Zelda nodded in understanding, then offered her pretzel in salute. Eric returned it and they ate in companionable silence.

  ***

  “I have no idea how we're supposed to find one specific nerd girl in a place like this,” Sway said as he strolled through the rows and rows of booths with Harrison.

  Harrison was thinking the same thing, but he wasn't ready to call it quits just yet. He had to find her.

  He'd been calling her since yesterday, but her phone was off. So he'd left messages until the box was full and he couldn't leave any more. He had to talk to her. He had to tell her that their life could back to its regularly scheduled programming after that very rude test of the emergency broadcast system. Or something like that.

  Carl, possibly more relieved than he should have been that Kiley was just a lying liar with her pants on fire, told Harrison the address where Zelda had gone the night she left. But she wasn't there. No one was there. The apartment was empty.

  So Harrison went to the next logical place. Comic-Con.

  He'd been driving all over Southern California all day long.

  Mike and Sway volunteered to go with him. Blake and Luke had to go do a radio interview. Technically, they were all supposed to be at the interview... but some things were more important.

  “How the hell did you do this?” Harrison asked when he'd stopped to look around the impossible situ
ation they found themselves in.

  “Huh?” Sway frowned at him.

  Harrison looked at Mike seriously. “You were in love with Clarke and you voluntarily spent a month away from her. It's been ten days and I feel like I'm losing my mind.”

  Mike gave him an understanding smile. “That's because it's unique to you. What worked for us, would only work for us.”

  Harrison sighed and ran a hand over his very short hair. He just wanted to find her. Kiley had already stolen too much time from them. “I have to find her.”

  “We could have her paged,” Sway suggested.

  Mike's eyebrows shot up and he looked to Harrison.

  “Yeah,” he said, finally seeing a bright spot in his day. “Let's do that.”

  But they couldn't do that.

  “I'm sorry, but we don't have a PA system.”

  Harrison stared at the face of the Comic-Con staff member, trying to understand what he was saying.

  “There's gotta be some way for us to find someone here,” Sway said, trying his hand at diplomacy.

  The staff member shook his head. “Most people just call each other on the phone.”

  “There's no need to get snarky about it,” Harrison snapped.

  “Okay,” Sway held up his hands. “Thank you for your help.” Sway grabbed Harrison by the elbow and turned him around. “We'll figure something else out.”

  Harrison grabbed the top of his head with both hands and let out a growl. “It shouldn't be this hard to find someone dressed as a fabric replica of Serenity,” he yelled, not caring of he sounded absurd.

  Mike and Sway shrugged and looked around. No one had any other ideas.

  Harrison was trying really hard to not freak out. They had a show that night and then they had to leave for Phoenix right after. He thought he would have found her by now. He'd get her back on the bus and the tour could continue.

  So where the hell was she?

  ***

  “She didn't show up for her interview this morning,” Carl said, his face grave.

  Harrison's frustration was growing.