Everly After (15 page)

No food, just a bag of… I point, my eyebrows raised, but immediately drop my hand when it starts to tremble.

“I thought you could use some books.”

“I travel light,” I snap, rushing into the kitchen and uncorking another bottle of wine. I shake out the tremor in my hand and pull on the corkscrew until it pops and I can smell the biting acid of a well-rounded, albeit cheap, merlot. “And I have some fashion magazines.” Or did. They might be in the trash. The apartment was basically a hazard when I finally sobered up. It took a while to scrub away the wrongs.

Beckett nods, then strides over to the open balcony. He’s dressed in a hooded sweatshirt today and jeans that have a hole in the back pocket. His pair of Chucks are so worn in they aren’t exactly black anymore. His hair is standing up as though he’s forgotten to brush it, and there’s heavy stubble on his cheeks—a light gold over his tanned skin.

He looks so good, so right, standing here with me. He’s not even doing anything—nothing except making my day.

“But thanks,” I add, feeling like I owe him an apology for walking in on a bad mood. “Wine?”

He turns around and leans against the old metal railing, crossing his legs at his ankles, his arms around his middle. He’s brave to do it. I don’t trust anything not to break in this place.

“No.” He gives me a sad smile and glances back down at the floor, his eyes tracing the herringbone pattern as if he’s plotting the steps needed to escape me.

I gulp my wine, hearing the clinking of the empty glass before I realize I’m in the middle of pouring a second.

Beckett is making small talk, but only the stupid words Hudson said to me before I left are ringing in my mind.
I love you
. They’re stuck on repeat like a bad Lifetime movie playing over and over, and I can’t find the remote to change the channel. He gave me a ticket to Italy that’s still sitting on the counter where I left it. It’s like a paper grenade. I hate him for even giving it to me, for thinking I would spend the summer with him on his family’s yacht in Capri.

I watch Beckett’s mouth move, his voice lost to the screaming inside my head. I force myself to walk around and tidy my apartment and light another cigarette as he settles onto the couch.

And still:
I love you. I love you. I love you
.

It’s matched with a chorus of my own:
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you
.

“You’ve moved that stack of books seven times now,” Beckett says. “They’re fine there, yeah?”

Hudson’s not here, but he might as well be. I can feel him watching from the couch, a satisfied smile on his face as I fall apart at his empty promise. It’s what he’s wanted all along—company to his own twisted end. He can’t get what he wants, so he thinks dragging me down with him will be enough to make him happy.

“You’re making me dizzy. Breathe, Everly.”

I grab the wine bottle and try to pour another glass, but it’s empty. The smoldering cigarette in my hand has burned down to a pathetic stub. I really should quit again. I flick it into my empty sink and bury my head in my arms on the counter.

“Sorry, I’m just…” I can’t find the right words, so my voice drops off. I look up and blink through the wetness on my eyelashes. “I’m just…” I try to smile, to pretend I am that perfectly happy girl I wish I was, but I think I only end up grimacing. “How are you?”

“The truth?”

A dry laugh scrapes against my throat, my eyes stinging. It always comes back to the truth. “Yes.”

He shifts over the couch cushion, meeting my gaze. He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it. He does it again and finally says dejectedly, “Well, I’m rubbish, pet.”

I sniff back the rest of my tears, staring back at the echo of how I feel.

He rubs his forehead and sighs, suddenly shy after his confession. “Want to go for a drive? Leave the city for the afternoon?”

With the last possible breath I can squeeze out of my suffocating apartment, I say yes.

Beckett

Everly sighs as I downshift, racing past the outskirts of Paris. The magical charm of the city center has faded to the more mundane buildings of ordinary life. I have an idea of where to drive, but honestly, I don’t care where we go as long as it’s out of the city and I can drive fast.

I should be driving us to my aunt’s place in Étretat. There are things that need to be packed up, sold, or stored until my life settles. I only returned to France after Afghanistan because I have a responsibility to my aunt’s estate after her death. I think she was doing me a favor by leaving the café and chateau to me in her will. I wish it meant something more than money, but honestly, I don’t want to be stuck in a place I never considered home. And I don’t want to ruin my time with Everly dealing with that sad business. Even if I think she’d like the quiet there, the beautiful beach, the greenness of everything.

Instead, we drive east.

I glance over to see if she’s worried that I’m flying by the other cars on the motorway, but she’s riffling through her purse, undeterred.

She’s not wearing glitter or a party dress, opting instead for a simple, fitted white T-shirt, a pair of skinny jeans, and some beat-up leopard flats. I half-expected her to agree to come with me wearing heels and hot pink lipstick, but today it’s the simple version of Everly. I’m not fooled. She’s as complicated this way as she is when she’s dressed up in fancy labels.

I shift again, the old car rattling in protest. It’s been ages since I’ve driven this piece of shit. I’m not sure it’s even fit to drive, but it’s running for now at least. I should try to sell it, or parts of it, before I leave. It’s a waste sitting in the garage. I’d let Nadine use it, but I think she’d crash it now just to spite me. Better off selling it for sure.

Everly tips her head back and pushes on her large sunglasses. The sun flashes through the car, the warm spring air floating around us through the cracked window. She’s holding something in her hand, her feet braced on the faded dashboard. I have my phone hooked up to the speakers, playing some random mix I haven’t listened to in months. The Arctic Monkeys sound like shit through the busted speakers, but at least it fills up the car with distractions so we don’t need to talk.

I watch out of the corner of my eye as she slips off her flats and starts to paint her toenails, the pungent acetone smell wafting around me. One slow stroke at a time, her toes are painted red to match her fingers. She moves as if she’s not in a car racing down the motorway, and suddenly I don’t want to race anymore. I’m an asshole to do it. I slow down and keep sneaking glances at her. I wish I’d brought a camera along. I want to remember this. Remember how at peace she is in the passenger seat beside me. The wind tussles her hair, and her perfume wraps around me, intoxicating and warm.

Everly catches me watching. Color rises to her cheeks, and then her shoulders drop. I don’t want to lose her yet. I barely saw her today.

“I like that color,” I say lamely. I mean, I don’t care what color her nails are, but I’m not sure what else to say.

That does it, though. It brings a smile to her face. She rotates the balls of her feet over the dashboard in a quick dance, admiring her work. “Hmm.”

My hands twist over the wheel as I look back to the road, my palms clammy. There’s something soothing about gaining distance from the city, watching the cars go by, moving forward. I’ve felt so stuck lately, held back as the rest of the world barrels past me, that the wind whipping in the open car window feels like it’s filling up my lungs for the first time in weeks.

It took four days to change my life: the day my father murdered my mother, the day I had a gun held to my head when I was kidnapped in Afghanistan, the day I found out my aunt died, and the day I met Everly. Three of those days happened in the past two months. Nothing is the same now, not even me.

It’s going to take a lot of driving to wrap my head around it, a lot of unknown destinations to fill up everything I’ve lost.

I stop at a small market and buy some things for lunch. Everly frowns and sags against the passenger door, as though she thinks I’ve driven her an hour to stop in a tiny village for some day-old quiche. She grabs the bottled water I hand her and takes a sip, then sinks back down in the seat as I throw the car into reverse.

“Let’s just drive.”

I take my hand off the back of her seat and fight the urge to twist my fingers in her hair. I drop my hand to rest on the console instead and nod.

“Let’s be quiet, too. I just want…”

She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to with me. I get it.

We drive until the graffiti-covered overpasses fade to fields waking up with spring, which fade to forests on the N4. Eventually, we reach Lake Der-Chantecoq. I hike us out to a small outlet overlooking the marshy lake, quiet and away from the other visitors walking the paths curving around the water.

“They had to flood three villages to make this lake,” I say because I’m an idiot. I’m sure this is exactly what she wants to hear—the developmental plans of the French Water Commission. “They took a church apart and rebuilt it piece by piece.”

She locks her hands behind her back and circles around me as I throw down the ratty quilt I’ve brought along. She scuffs up the dirt, sending clouds of dust into the air. I never pegged her for an outdoor type of girl so I’m not sure what she’s doing. As usual.

I unpack the bag of lunch items I bought and hand Everly a sandwich. I think she’s going to refuse it, but she tears it out of my hand and takes a giant bite. She makes the most fucking amazing sound in the back of her throat. I bite back a groan. This girl.

This girl…

“I can’t remember the last time I ate,” she says with a blush.

We settle down onto the quilt and watch cranes fly over the marsh. We make small talk until she stands and marches to the water’s edge.

“It’s too cold to go for a swim.”

“I know.” Everly bends her knee backward and slips off one flat, then the other. She rolls her jeans up and tiptoes into the icy water. Tilting her face up to the sun, she yells at the top of her lungs.

I jump up at the noise, the blood in my veins icy from panic.

Everly glances at me over her shoulder. “I’ve been holding that in for too long.” Then, as if it never happened, she skips onto the rocks poking out from the shore. She gestures for me to follow, and I do because I’d follow her anywhere. She dips her legs into the water and splashes them in small circles.

“Come here.” She pats the rough rock with her hand, the late-afternoon sun glistening off the stacked rings on her fingers.

I slide down behind her, and she settles against my chest, back into my arms.

“Are you cold?” I whisper into her ear.

She shakes her head, taking hold of one of my hands and lacing her fingers with mine.

“We should talk.” I sound pathetic, but I owe her an apology. There’s still this huge gap between us. We have to cross it, or there is never going to be anything solid for us to stand on.

Her body is so frail against mine. I feel everything—her heartbeat, her ribs expanding and collapsing with each breath, the shake of her head at my request.

She peeks back at me over her shoulder, her eyes sad. “I don’t know what there is to say. I think we both understand each other. Let’s just put it behind us. All of it.”

“Still, I’m sorry I hurt you, Everly.”

I brush her hair away from her neck to drop a kiss there and spot a small heart tattoo tucked next to her hairline. It’s so like Everly to be full of surprises. She’s a woman of contradictions, a spirit who is free and trapped. I kiss her neck until she sighs and turns around. We kiss there in the sun for a while, slow and testing, like we’re learning one another with each press of our lips.

“Do you think that works with people, too, Beckett?” she asks later.

“What works?”

“People. Can people be taken apart piece by piece, then be put back together?”

I rest my chin on top of her head as she plays with my hands, tracing my palms like a fortuneteller. “The truth?”

She nods, pulling my hand up to her lips for a kiss.

“No,” I say. Her lips turn hard against my skin, puckering against my wrong answer. “People fall apart and come back together again, but they’re never exactly the same. There’s always going to be a part that’s left behind. Even if it’s a sliver. It’s the penance we pay to live fully.”

I laugh at myself. That’s exactly the sort of line someone would expect a fledgling novelist to say. Not only am I a nervous wreck around this girl, I’m a cliché as well. Lovely.

“At least you’re honest.” She drops my hand, and I stiffen, expecting her to leave. I’m not ready for that yet. I like what we’ve carved out for ourselves this afternoon. Outside of Paris, we understand each other. It’s nice to finally be with someone who appreciates the beauty of quiet. The necessity of it.

Everly stands and faces me. “You know what I think?”

I look up at her, shielding my eyes from the sun pouring around her small frame, and shake my head. “I never know what you’re thinking.”

She grabs the hem of her T-shirt and yanks it over her head in a quick swoop, then chucks it at my face, laughing. I peel it away and place it beside me on the warm rock. She’s already stripping out of her jeans, not trying to hide from me, not embarrassed.

“What are—”

She throws her jeans at me and dives into the pellucid lake, slicing through the water almost without a splash. A church bell rings out in the distance, echoing in the quiet aftermath of Everly’s quick jump into the unexpected.

I’m on my feet, waiting for her to come up for air. I clutch her jeans at my side when she finally springs up from the water, sputtering.

“I was thinking—” She brushes back the tangled hair from her face. “—I never swam in a French lake.”

I chuckle. “Isn’t it cold?”

“Freezing. Jump in. We have sins to atone for.” She waves her hand and dives back down, blowing out bubbles that ripple across the surface. When she reemerges, she waves again, but I shake my head, happy to be stranded on this rock. I’ll have even more to atone for if I jump into this lake with Everly.