Everly After (6 page)

For a minute, my resolve melts, and I fold in half, cradling my head in my cold palms. I want to scream, but I blow out a rush of air instead and sit back up, gripping the couch cushions tight. “I didn’t ask for you to do that.”

Beckett rubs a hand over the scruff of his face as he studies me. That intense look of want is gone now, replaced with hate. And maybe a little disgust and pity, too.

I want none of it.

“Sorry. I’ll leave.”

I stand and instantly regret it. I swallow back the vomit in my throat and bring the glass into the small kitchen. Maybe I should wash it out so I’m less of an inconvenience. My hand is on the faucet when I hear him talking on the phone in the other room. He’s speaking in French, and I think maybe he forgets that I’m fluent. Then I hear what he says and the smooth laugh that follows. I shouldn’t be listening. A blush climbs to my cheeks, as if I didn’t wake up earlier in bed with Hudson and another girl. Earlier when? I don’t know. Maybe this morning or yesterday. It’s getting harder to keep track of the days.

I want to hear Beckett speak to me like he does now on the phone. I want him not to hate me. I’m not even sure why. I’m used to people hating me and using me and hurting me. I’m not used to people worrying about a harmless skinned knee or setting a glass of water out for me when I wake up hungover.

I turn on the faucet and scrub the glass clean as if I’m hazardous, using soap twice. He made me feel this way with his cold stare. I cup my hand to my mouth and test my breath, nearly knocking myself out. Maybe I’m not much of a prize right now.

What I am is an idiot. I’m here in Beckett’s apartment, showing up like a sad disaster on the doorstep of a guy I hardly know. I can’t even remember how I ended up there. I hate myself for forgetting, and I hate myself for letting him judge me like an asshole. I hate that I actually care what he thinks.

Not wanting to soil Beckett’s things, I wipe my wet hands over Hudson’s dress shirt. At least I think it belongs to Hudson. It smells like his cologne. I picture Beckett burning everything after I leave, his eyes returning to that non-condemning blue once the traces of me are gone. The same blue they were when we sat on the steps and he brushed his finger over my arm in circles for some strange reason I haven’t been able to figure out. His eyes were nice then. Kind, maybe.

But that doesn’t matter. Girls like me only fill voids for guys like Hudson and Beckett. If they need money, I’m their sugar mama. If they want a beautiful girl on their arm, then I’m the go-to pick. If they feel insecure, I’m the girl they can hate on until they feel better about themselves. I thought I mattered to someone last spring and look where it got me—standing half-naked in the apartment of someone who may or may not hate me. But probably hates me.

I turn the faucet off, and Beckett is still on the phone. The air crushes out of my lungs when I hear him mention her name.

Nadine.

I rush into the living room and grab my purse off the coffee table. I push my sunglasses up over my hair and rummage through the bag, pulling out the stash of jewelry I carry around. I feel like it’s safer with me than at my place. I mound it up on the table in front of me, my hands shaking as I try to block out what Beckett is saying. I don’t want him to talk to her like that. As if I have any say over who he can talk to. As if I care.

Maybe I do and that’s why I start to tear at the silk lining of the purse. My hands tremble and the world goes a bit fuzzy, but I focus on the lining, sure that if I rip it out, I’ll find what I need at the bottom of the bag.

“What are you doing?”

I can’t stop. The panic claws inside of me until my heart is racing, and I struggle to keep breathing. I turn the purse upside down and shake it out, unsure what I’m even looking for anymore, but there must be something. There must be something in it that can make this all stop.

Make
me
stop.

“Everly. Breathe.”

My whole body is trembling, my stomach uneasy, and then my throat burns and I know I need to be sick. I need to throw up and get this all out of me, and then I need to find something to fix me. Something to make me right because I’m not okay right now. I’m not okay and I’m in some guy’s apartment, half-naked, and I don’t remember how I got here…

I see naked skin and camera flashes and feel the pain wash over me from what Hudson’s done. Of greedy hands and the rush in my veins.

I push up onto my legs, preparing to run out the door or catch a cab or hurl myself down the stairs, when everything tips and the ground rushes up to meet me.

My head strikes the coffee table, and warmth spreads over my temple. I’m sprawled on my back, clamping my eyes shut as the world spins, moving without me. Somehow, that doesn’t bother me. The rest does. The fact that I’m here. The fact that I have to live with everything, and it never seems possible without everything building and building until it explodes and I end up on my back with my head split open. That bothers the hell out of me.

Fuck.

“Open your eyes.”

I’d rather lie here and pretend the world is black. That I’m someone other than the girl I am. Someone who has her life together. Someone who functions well and loves and wants to live and experience the world.

“What were you looking for?”

A laugh bubbles up in my throat. I’m looking for a lot, but it won’t to be waiting for me when I open my eyes.

“Everly.”

I wrap my arms around my middle, afraid that I’m going to laugh myself into disjointed pieces that won’t fit back together again. When I finally look, there isn’t hate in his eyes. There isn’t pity, either. Beckett is staring at me as though I’m missing a part.

He crouches down, his hand hovering above my head as if he’ll die at my touch. I want to throw up or disappear. I want to be invisible.

Except, in the back of my mind, I think that I might want to kiss him. I wonder if his lips are what I’m missing. With his lips on mine, I might be able to pull myself back together.

But he goes ahead and touches me and ruins everything.

Beckett

I have no fucking clue what just happened.

Her nervous laugh is unhinged, a broken shard of what’s considered normal. I’m stuck, my hand suspended above her face, afraid that if I touch her, I’m going to change something between us. It all goes back to that night on the roof. I wonder whether she would have jumped if I had never crashed her private party. If she really meant what she’d said that night or if she’s like the girl lying on my floor now, laughing while she falls apart.

I lift my shirt to her head to stop the bleeding. Again. She’ll ruin my whole fucking wardrobe if I know her long enough. She’s shivering, her bloodshot eyes glazed over.

“Why are you here?” I’m so fucking pissed that she’s here, bleeding onto my shirt, crashing into my life.

Tears well up in her eyes until I panic and press the shirt tighter against her head. Some part of me still wants to wrap my arms around her, cover her up.

When our eyes meet, she fumbles with the sunglasses on her head. “I’m sorry.” Her words are slurred. I wonder if it’s from her fall or whatever she has in her system. “I’m leaving. I’ll leave. I’ll leave you alone.”

“I don’t think you should move.” Her temple is bright red, and she has a bruise that’s swelling. I peel back my shirt, and her cut is still bleeding. “You might need stitches.”

“I’m fine.” Everly tries to sit up but falls back on a sigh. “I’m fine,” she repeats in a soft whisper.

The color drains from her face. I pick her up before she can make an even bigger mess and bring her to the shower. She throws up for a few minutes, hunched over on her hands and knees. I hold back her hair and wait, naming off every other place I’d rather be than stuck in my bathroom with a puking party girl. I get twelve shitty places on my list before she goes quiet. I roll my head over the wall and watch her bowed figure pressed into the corner of my shower. The world suddenly seems poised to swallow her up.

“Feel better?” I ask.

Everly gives a small nod, blowing out a breath as she rests her forehead against my shower wall. “I’m fine.” Her voice is louder than it should be, echoing around us. That tiny, disjointed laugh bubbles past her lips, and she sinks back onto the floor opposite me. She clutches her sunglasses as if, with them, she’s invisible.

“Right,” I grumble. “Whatever you say.” I prop her against the sink cabinet and wet a towel to clean off her face. “But you’re wrong.” Everly drops her sunglasses and looks at me, her eyebrows stretched high. “You’re a mess.” She laughs again and knocks her head back against the cabinet. “You’re going to knock yourself out, Everly.”

“That’d be great,” she mumbles.

I only sort of agree. I don’t want to deal with her anymore, but she’s gotten under my skin. There’s no point in lying about that any longer.

“I’m tired.” She yawns and stretches until her body goes slack again. “I’m so tired.”

“It’s not a good idea to sleep with a concussion.”

“I don’t have a—” She doesn’t attempt to say it. “I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding all over my shirt. Again.”

“Stop using your shirts to clean—” She hiccups. “—me up.”

“I would if you stopped hurting yourself, pet.”

Her features pull tight, like she’s going to yell, but then it fades. Everly stares back at me blankly, shutting me out.

I stand and wash the cloth in the sink, ignoring her as she crawls over the floor, back into the living room. She doesn’t want to be seen, and I don’t want to face what’s going on with this strange, broken girl.

“I’m leaving,” she announces again. She tries to pile everything back inside her purse, but her hands are trembling too badly. Jewelry tumbles out and spills all over my living room floor. She bends down to pick it up, but she weaves and stumbles, grabbing the table before she takes another nasty spill.

This girl is a fucking nightmare.

I storm to my front door and yank it open. “This isn’t another room, Everly,” I say, waving my arm outside. “It’s Paris. You can’t leave. You’re not even dressed.” I drop my arm, my body a tense bundle of nerves. I can’t let her undo me. “You’re staying here until I know you’re not going to black the fuck out.”

She cringes when I slam the door shut, and I feel like the biggest asshole in the world. I don’t want to scare her. I don’t mean…

I clench my hands and breathe, coming up with another three shitty places I’d rather be before I help her onto the couch. I pull off her sunglasses even as she fights to keep them.

“You can stay.” I lower my voice so I don’t sound like a cranky dickhead. “For a while. Until morning at least.”

She nods, looking at me again as if she’s behind a glass wall. I can see her, but only the solid parts. Not what’s in her head. That’s what I want to know. I need to understand what she’s thinking, why she has to come into my life and haunt me, follow me around as if I have to repent for something I’ve done.

She bites her bottom lip until it bleeds, assessing me as if I’m the one who sold her out. I’m not. I don’t know who did, but she’s not a secret anymore. Nadine couldn’t be happier to discover she’d hired a scandal-prone American heiress to wait tables at the café. Everly means euros to Nadine.

I don’t care. I don’t have time for a socialite or the damn café I never wanted. Those are distractions. What I care about is getting my fucking job back. I don’t belong in France. I belong in war zones, covering unrests and uprisings, reporting on the uglier side of humanity. I need deadlines and stress, the uncertainty of each day. Nothing made me feel more alive than the threat of no tomorrow.

I should tell her I know about the photos of her that are going viral, except I think it’ll only make tonight worse. Instead, I tell her I’ll be outside for a few minutes.

My heart hammers against my chest as I sink onto the steps and drop my head in my hands. The sounds of Paris do nothing to stop the image of her empty eyes staring back at me, nothing to erase the ringing in my ears like I’m back in that hellish desert. I clench my head tighter and breathe.

I’m in Paris, in Paris, in Paris.

I sit there on the steps and wait until the cool spring night pricks my skin. With Everly around, it seems like I wait a lot.

Otis Redding is playing when I step back inside, feeling a little more pulled together and a lot less angry with the world. The old vinyl wobbles around the record player, stuffing up my apartment with his familiar voice. My aunt played him a lot late at night when I first started living with her. For a while, I hated it because it reminded me of what happened to my mother. How I bounced around foster homes until my father’s sister stepped up and took me in because my father was in jail.

In this moment, though, it’s different. The way his voice breaks mirrors the sadness here—how Everly is sprawled out over my couch, her blonde hair fanned around her in messy waves.

I should have gotten her ice or something when she fell. Instead, I yelled at her for being ridiculous for wanting to leave. I don’t blame her for that. I’m a fucking asshole.

She’s kicked off the quilt, so I cover her again. “Are you asleep?” I ask.