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Zoe was never one to believe in love at first sight, but if she did, she knew she felt it at The Ellison’s performances.
There was something small-town and charming and lovely about them, something that reminded her of why she loved music at all. And so, h er first night back from college for winter break, sleep-deprived and still spewing flashcards from finals, Connor dragged her into the family car and shuttled her on a barely ten-minute drive which was so familiar it ached.
“Why are we so old?” She whines at him. She’s missed whining at him. “We’ve been doing this since middle school. Almost an entire decade.”
“Aging is a cruel mistress, Zoe,” Connor says, not taking his eyes off of the road. “It’s treated some of us better than others.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Her heart warmed at the sight of The Ellison, especially when she saw its brown siding and tiny-windowed facade completely unchanged from the months she’d been away.
She and Connor were in middle school the first time they made the trek out, taking in live music and reveling in being away from the Murphy house. Connor would push ahead and grab them hot chocolate or eggnog, and Zoe would stake out the best seating with the ferocity only a middle schooler can manage. And together, warning their hands on the drinks and ignoring the bitter cold awaiting them outside, they forged the very first Murphy family tradition.
Even though Zoe expected them to be out of return from their semester apart, Connor handled it with a grace he never could’ve managed during high school. “Now it’s the holidays,” he says as he pushes her through the doors, encouraging her to push past the crowd. “Get a good seat!” he calls as he continues on through the café.
Zoe shakes her head, her eyes scanning over the crowd a little. A few faces seem familiar, but she feels, more than she ever has, uncertain in this space. She hasn’t been here in so long.
Eventually, she shakes her head one last time for good measure. Just as an employee takes to the stage, she slides into the first seat she can find.
“Hey, you’re Connor’s sister, right?” A voice says to her left. She turns automatically, her eyes falling on the girl sitting at the table across from her.
“Yeah,” she replies, quiet to fit under the announcement of the first performer.
“I knew it! He’s been talking about you all semester!” she says, a little too enthusiastic and loud for the space. “I’m Alana.”
“Zoe-”
In her peripheral vision, a mug of eggnog slides across the table until it bumps her hand.
“Told you she’d be here,” Connor says over her head.
“Do your friends not believe I exist?” Zoe demands, turning to glare at Connor. He refuses to meet her eyes.
“D’you know who’s up first?” He says instead.
The three turn their attention to the makeshift stage, sitting through acts and clapping when appropriate. Zoe gets up once, only to get another eggnog, and when she makes her way back to the table her heart drops to her toes.
“Next up, we have Evan Hansen!”
Zoe slides their cups across the table like Connor did, but doesn’t look at either of them, only examines the way that the all-too-familiar Evan Hansen sets sheet music on the piano and poises to play.
“Is that the one Jared kept talking about?” Connor whispers, ducking his head to get closer to her ear without making too much of a ruckus. She just nods and jerks her head away, letting Evan’s chords fill her ears instead.
On their third or fourth trip to the Ellison, Evan was the first on the docket. He’d looked fit to bolt, but a restraint filled his posture and made him drop to the bench with a thud. It was something terribly overplayed, but when he opened his mouth and sang his first shaky note, Zoe thought she’d be rooted in that shop forever; Evan’s curls and frightened, a determined expression and smooth fingers flying over the keys matte in the cheap lighting, something inside of her shifted.
Too soon, he leaves the stage, departing with surprising speed for the number of papers he had spread over the stand. Zoe taps her fingers against the table, one at a time, one and one and one again. She’d tried to talk to him a few times before, to no avail. Her eyes meet Connor’s, and he mouths go.
She goes.
“That was a pretty good set,” a voice says behind Evan, making his fingers twitch for a second. Most of the time he can recognize who is going to say something to him. This voice he isn’t sure he can place.
Well, until he angles his head, a half-formed sorry on his lips.
The girl in his line of sight was familiar; she couldn’t help but be. He’d seen her countless times, and thought about her countless more.
When he was young - youn ger, certainly, than he was now - he’d started going to the Ellison. Just on the nights his mother was working and there was no one to be accountable to at home. Especially around the holidays, once Hanukkah ended and the Christmas season rolled around and he didn’t want to think about this cheery holiday which would never apply to him much as his father wanted it to, he found himself turning up more and more. It was a short walk from his house, and also from Jared’s. The Ellison started as a good place to get coffee to calm himself down, since Heidi never kept any in the house. But the open mic had drawn him in one night, and with the several years of piano lessons and a voice that Heidi assured him was “lovely” tucked under his belt, he braved it himself one night, with only a few other people in the café crowd at all.
He couldn’t say a word in front of his classmates, and any kind of band was off the table for that reason. But the Ellison? It was - well, truly, it was familiar. Safe from most of the people he knew. Stage fright couldn’t seem to grip him.
Some of the people, too, really drew him back to performance after performance.
“Oh, u– thanks,” he says, dropping his sheet music into his bag. “Um, you’re, actually same to you Z-”
“I’m Zoe - oh,” she says at the same time, cutting herself off. “You - know me?”
“It’s, oh,” Evan says, regretting every moment of his existence. “I meant, I meant I’ve seen your sets before. Uh, a lot of Billie Marten?”
Zoe laughs a little, biting her lip in an absent gesture. “I had a phase junior year, yeah.”
“And you - huh, this is maybe a little weird, but I just mean I enjoyed it, um, not in a weird way but in a musical-”
“What-”
“The, um, the original, original song, Cain and Abel? Um, that really - I liked that a lot.”
Evan looks down, suddenly unable to look at her. But her voice coaxes his eyes back up to hers, deep brown and suddenly guarded.
“You remember an original song I performed? I - how long have you been coming here?”
“Uh,” he shrugs, a small half-tug of the shoulders, heart rate skyrocketing at once. “Yeah, like, six years? You - I mean, I recognize a lot of the performers, but-”
“I’ve only seen you a couple of times, though. I was actually hoping to see your performance tonight but-” she cuts off, her cheeks darkening. “My mouth got ahead of me.”
“I was actually hoping to see you, too,” Evan says, the words tumbling out.
Someone hits a power chord to start the next performance, muffled in the cramped staff hallway. All at once the distance between Evan’s hands gripping his backpack doesn’t seem so far away from Zoe’s bit lip. He can’t look away from her eyes, and she can’t look away from his. The air is heavy for a moment.
Some shield drops in Zoe’s eyes, and she releases her lower lip.
“Yeah, I didn’t have time to put together any arrangements this year,” she says, her voice softer. A lisp curls around her r’ s, one he hadn’t heard before. She shrugs. “School.”
“Oh,” he says, blinking. “Same, actually. Well, in rev-reverse. Didn’t have time to perform during the semester so, so here we are.”
“I’m even more impressed, honestly. Want a hand?” She asks, gesturing for his bag. After a pause, with her hand outstretched, she says, “so you can get your coat on?”
He glances back down at the floor, where his coat lies crumpled haphazardly, a shock of navy blue against gray. “Oh. Right. Thanks.”
“Where do you go?” she asks. “I graduated last year, and I used to see you around a lot.”
“Oh, I’m - I had a gap year last year,” he says, hands fumbling on his zipper. “And I’m at Franklin Community this year, y’know, so I’ve been around. But you have, um, not been?”
She hums a note, discordant with the song playing behind her. “I’m in New York this year. First day back.”
“Ah.”
“I normally come with my brother, actually. He’s in the crowd somewhere talking with someone. He’s at Franklin too, actually.”
Something clicks in Evan’s mind all of the sudden. “Connor? Murphy?”
Zoe laughs, half startled, half amused. “Yeah? That was quick.”
“We have an art history seminar together. Oh,” he says, accepting her outstretched offer of his backpack. “Thanks. And, well. You guys look similar, that’s all.”
Zoe turns her head away, catching her eye on the old poster on the wall. “We get that a lot. Alana, I think, is the person?”
“Small world,” Evan says. Off of her confused look, he smiles. “She’s also - same seminar.”
“Ah.” she turns, peeks out at the crowd which seems to be only getting more intense and into the performance. She seems to catch Evan’s wince as the sound crescendos. “Are you staying til the end of the concert?”
“No, I think I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna head out?”
“Do you want a ride?” she says, each word careful, precise, unlike how she’d rushed them before.
“Oh, no, thank you, I can walk-”
“It’s nearly the solstice, it’s fucking freezing,” she says, cutting him off. “Let me, really.” And, seeming to sense his next question. “Connor already said he’d get a ride back with Alana, if that’s what you’re worried about. No pressure, really, but if you got frostbite I’d feel terrible.”
Evan’s fingers tighten on his backpack strap for a second, like he’s back in his high school hallway, stranded, one light leading him through. “Yeah. Yeah, thanks.”
“It’s no problem.”
She cuts through the staff-only exit, and as soon as they’re away from the performance Evan’s shoulders relax and his head clears.
Zoe leads him to a car that’s clearly a family SUV, the kind that other parents see in the middle school parking lot and scoff at the expense. “You can just throw your bag wherever,” she says, turning on the heat as quickly as humanly possible, rubbing her hands together from the short walk. “Cold?”
Evan nods, holding up a hand to the heat. “I have, I have horrible circulation.”
“God, same,” she says. “Connor always just tells me I’m weak.”
Evan laughs a little at that. “I doubt it.”
Zoe shakes her head, biting her lip again.
With Evan’s directions, she makes quick work of finding his house. The rows of houses with string lights blur his eyes, tunneling his vision. He glances towards Zoe, noticing how the light catches on her face.
“I can’t believe you remembered my song. Remembered it.”
Evan scrunches his face. “It was - I mean,” he hesitates. “It’s what made me want to write music at all.”
The Christmas lights peter out, and Zoe pulls to a stop in front of his dark house. Her face scrunches to match his, as she shifts in her seat, rubbing the hem of her sleeve. “Really?”
“Really,” he says, mirroring her stance. Her face catches him off guard again, unguarded, open. “And, um, what was the one, the other one - I can’t see through you anymore, you’ve clouded around me but I’ve left no trace, so you beg me for honesty, still I know that you’d be so kind you lie to my face-”
He’s cut off by her lips, and he lets out a hum of surprise for a second. Her lips are cold, even though they’ve clearly been in a heated car, and they hit him like an electric jolt. When he was a kid, he would build static up on his palms in the winter by rubbing them together, and then hold his palms just apart, reveling in the crackling feeling. When it became unmanageable, he’d touch his bedside lamp, concentrating it all into one point, fascinated by that stinging jolt he’d created from nothing.
This kiss feels like that jolt.
His eyes slide closed, hand reaching to touch her wrist. Her lips are soft, and the sweet smell of rosewater fills his senses from her curls. His fingers graze her wrist, the barest of fingertips, and she breaks away as quickly as she began the kiss.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have - I’m so sorry,” she says, pulling away.
“No, it’s - please, don’t, please don’t apologize,” he says, his hands straying towards her as she rocks back in her seat. “I’ve - godthisisprobablyweirdbutI’velikedyoufromafarforawhile?”
A “what?” escapes from her, halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“I’ve - you can, I can leave, I’ve just - liked you for a while, I think, um. From your whole, you know, vibe. And - my friend Jared, I think he knows Connor, um? He talks you up sometimes and I just - yeah. Please don’t apologize,” he says one last time, entreating.
Zoe laughs for real, a bubbling sound that expands and breaks in the still car, as Evan can’t help but mimic her. “God, Jared, that asshole.” She glances back towards him. “He does the same for you, too.”
It’s Evan’s turn to sit back heavily at that. “God, that asshole.”
“Here’s to asshole friends,” she says. “But I really shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
“No, I - I liked it. Really.”
She shakes her head, eyes resolutely away from him. “You normally do the spring performances, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, rubbing his palms together, already cold. “It’s less crowded.”
“I think I saw you perform before I ever started. It’s where - damn, you were playing the piano and singing? I think it was - was it Ed Sheeran?”
“I hope not,” Evan says, suddenly horrified. “But probably.”
Zoe laughs, and she finally looks him in the eye again. “It was. I was the same way.” She rubs her palm against her thigh. “I was in band, but no one else so young performed at the Ellison. Until you.”
“I’m a trendsetter,” Evan jokes, cringing a second later.
“Oh, for sure.” Her leg bounces in the driver’s seat. “I’d like to kiss you again, if that’s okay.”
“Yeah,” Evan says. “Please. Yes.”
And she does.
( addendum, later)
Long distance is, admittedly, not ideal.
But when Zoe gets off the train and gives Connor one of their quick, comfortable hugs on the platform, she has only a simple request.
“Can we swing by the Ellison?” She asks, breathless and barely ready to be back in town.
Connor raises an eyebrow. “It’s hardly nighttime.”
“Think outside of the box,” she says, and takes off towards the car.
The Ellison is a cheery reflection of suburban spring, wilting flowers by the door that clearly were put out too early and got caught in the final frost of the year. When she rushes forward, leaving Connor calling “wait up!” behind her, a bell jangles to announce her entrance, clashing with the opening piano chord she recognizes from dozens of videos Evan sent asking her for feedback.
She settles into the first seat she can find, although she’s one-third of a tiny afternoon audience. She is enthralled, as always, in everything Evan; the way he pulls music from the air, poised, ready, confident even in the face of nerves.
He meets her eyes. He smiles, and she smiles back.
A few minutes later, when Connor slides a hot drink to her, she hardly notices.
(If she looked, she would see that Connor is smiling in exasperation, too.)