The Arrangement (18 page)

Evie nodded.

Brooke checked her watch. “I’m due a break. Let me go clock out, and I’ll meet you in the coffee shop.”

“Thanks.” Evie walked to the coffee shop at the back of the library and ordered an iced coffee. Last weekend students and alumni had packed the small coffee shop as they relived the game’s highlights hours after the final touchdown. On a weekday, students could be seen studying at the large tables and filtering in and out through the library as they picked up reference books. But today the emptiness echoed the feeling inside her.

She did not even notice when Brooke arrived until she sat down across the table from Evie with her drink. Evie wondered why she felt so inclined to share everything with Brooke. Something about her old friend invited confidence.

“I told my parents about Ben,” she stated simply as though that was all the conversation involved. She swallowed a lump in her throat and waited for Brooke’s reaction.

“What did they say?”

“They told me they paid him not to see me again several months ago.” The statement still shocked Evie just to say it. She sipped her drink without tasting any of it.

Brooke blinked several times before speaking. “Wow. I…I don’t know what to say. What did you do?”

“I packed my stuff and drove straight to Ben’s apartment.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, when he finished making out with the girl-of-the-week, he denied taking any money.” The returning anger caused her hands to shake slightly. She almost wished she had felt that angry when she was at Ben’s apartment. Maybe then she would have been able to do something besides walk away.

“He had another girl over? When he’s supposed to still be dating you?” Brooke waited for Evie to nod. “I hope you really broke it off this time. You deserve someone who will treat you better than that.”

“He acted like the girl was only part of the act to convince people we were broken up.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I told him it was really over this time and walked away.” She paused. “I didn’t know where else to go,” she pleaded.

“Do you really believe your parents paid him to dump you?” Brooke asked quietly.

Evie snorted. “He moved to a larger, nicer apartment with a much higher rent, and he bought a new truck. You tell me.” She picked up a napkin and dabbed at the condensation on the outside of her cup.

“So what now?”

Evie looked back at Brooke. “I don’t know. I had dinner with Eli last night, but he seems to think I’m going to need some time to deal with breaking up with Ben before we start dating. I think he was a little upset that I hadn’t actually broken up with Ben yet.”

“You know, he’s probably right to be a little upset. You should have broken up with Ben first. I mean, how would you feel if someone invited you to dinner, only to tell you he still had a girlfriend?”

“Point taken,” she mumbled. “He said to call him a day or so after I actually broke up with Ben, and we could talk about how I feel. I’m beginning to think maybe he doesn’t want to date me.”

“Does that really matter?” Brooke asked.

“Of course it matters. I like him. I’ve never dated anyone as long as I dated Ben, and I broke up with him for Eli.” She plopped the now soggy napkin back onto the table.

“So you wouldn’t have broken up with Ben—the guy who took money from your parents not to see you again and then didn’t tell you about it—anyway? Funny, I thought maybe you broke up with him because you knew he wasn’t God’s best for you,” Brooke mused.

“Yeah, yeah.” Evie waved her hand. This whole trusting God and following him was turning out to be harder than she thought. What if Eli hadn’t been around? Would she have broken up with Ben anyway? Once she found out her parents paid him, yes. And she knew eventually that truth would have surfaced. So where would she be in that scenario? Alone? Trying to figure out where in the world to go from here?

“Evie,” Brooke said gently, “figuring out what God wants for us isn’t always easy. We all struggle with that question over and over again. About the time we think we are on the right path, something will happen to make us question that path. Sometimes God wants to know we trust him. Give this some time. Keep praying and studying his Word. He’s given you direction to be a Christian in politics, so follow that and see where else He leads you.”

“I just wish he would write out the plan and give it to me. I’m not very good at taking things day by day. I really like knowing what’s coming.”

“I know.” Brooke smiled at Evie. “Me, too. But that’s what faith means.” She took a long sip of her drink. “I joined a new Bible study at the Christian center here on campus at the beginning of the semester. Why don’t you come with me Thursday night? Maybe being around other women who struggle with these same questions and studying the Bible together will give you a little encouragement.”

“I don’t know, maybe.” Evie drank the last of her coffee as her stomach growled. “Thanks for letting me talk, Brooke. I needed it. Now I think I need some lunch.”

Brooke looked at her watch. “Well, my break is over and I must get back to those magazines. You know, they don’t shelve themselves.” She snickered at her own joke.

Evie smiled and shook her head. They both chunked their cups in a nearby trash can. “Think about the Bible study. I really think it might help.”

“I will,” Evie promised.

They walked back through the library and said good-bye. As she walked back to her car, she heard a few cars in the distance and the rustling of a nearby tree, but no other sounds penetrated the deserted campus. She felt numb.

For the next hour Evie drove aimlessly around town. She tried to avert her eyes whenever she passed a place where she and Ben often studied or ate together. But when she passed the intramural softball field, where they shared their first kiss, the empty feeling stirred again.

Not willing to relive any more memories like that one, she chose the shortest path back to the sorority house. Skipping the customary greetings, she rushed up the stairs and into her room. For hours she lay on her bed, staring into nothingness.

Sometime midafternoon she drifted into a restless sleep.

10

)

vie pulled her hand away each time it touched the cool metal of her phone. For twenty minutes she willed the cell to ring. But she knew Eli would not call. He had specifically said she should call him, and they would talk about where to go next. She wanted to call him the night before, when she woke up from a two-hour nap and realized how her world had changed so completely in just one day. But Eli had asked her to wait until the day
after
she and Ben broke up to call.

Evie flopped backward onto her bed with a groan. A solid wood frame on her nightstand caught her eye. With a shaky hand, she pulled the photo closer and traced around Ben’s face with her finger. One of her sorority sisters had taken the photo at homecoming last year. She hugged the frame to her body and allowed sorrowful tears to flow quietly down her cheeks. She felt no shaking sobs or uncontrolled screaming in her grief, only a silent ache for what might have been.

Maybe she always knew she and Ben would never work out. He was so different from her family, or at least she thought he had been. But just because he did not come from a family with money did not mean money was not the focus of almost everything he did. He at least had that in common with her parents. She thought about what Eli had said about grieving the lost relationship with Ben and even the lost friendship with his family. Maybe she did need a little time.

She got out of bed, then dug through mounds of dirty clothes in her closet to find the cardboard box from her new printer. She carefully placed the picture and frame into the box. Evie looked at herself in the chest mirror and pulled a necklace from where she had tucked it under her shirt. The heart-shaped pendant glittered with tiny diamonds.

“I don’t have a fraternity pin to give you,” Ben had said the night he dropped the thin gold chain around her neck, “but you can wear this to show people you are mine.”

The words sounded so sweet that day. She knew he had spent any extra money he had on what many of her friends would consider an inexpensive piece of jewelry, but that made it all the more special. She had worn it every day. Even when they had pretended to break up, she’d worn it under her clothes.

“When did it become not enough to just have us?” she wondered aloud as she fingered the delicate chain. She removed it from her neck and gingerly placed it in the box as well.

Next she collected the photos stuck in the mirror of her chest. One featured Evie and Ben dressed as Wilma and Fred Flintstone, including a bright red wig and a foam club. They had won the award for the best couple at the sorority’s annual spring costume contest. Wilma and Fred fluttered to the bottom of the box.

Evie tossed more photos on top of the first one without pausing to remember the details of those dates. On the bed behind her lay her still silent phone. Her finger itched to dial the number she had now memorized, but her heart resisted the temptation. She wanted to have a clear head for her talk with Eli, and maybe, just maybe, she needed an excuse to give herself more time to work up the courage to call him.

When she finished discarding all the photos on her dresser, she moved to her bookcase, where she removed a photo album documenting her relationship with Ben. The photo on the first page caught the couple hugging after her sorority’s intramural softball game. She could see the photo without ever opening the page. She closed her eyes and allowed the other images she knew the book contained to flow through her mind.

Finally she set the now heavy box on the floor and tossed in several stuffed animals. Luckily Ben didn’t have an obsession with filling her room with teddy bears, but he did send her home with one from the county fair they attended one year. He’d won it after spending nearly twenty dollars playing fair games. And he made one especially for her to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day together.

The phone jumped as Evie fell forward onto the mattress beside it. She wiped her palms on the spread before picking up the phone. Flexing her fingers, she began to dial. She barely heard the ring over the
thump, thump, thump
of her pulse in her ears.

“Hello?” Eli’s voice rumbled an instant later.

“Hi, Eli.”

“Evie, how’d everything go?”

“You would not believe it.” She rolled over onto her back and propped herself up with a couple of pillows. “When I told Mom and Dad about Ben, they told me that he accepted money from them months ago not to see me anymore.”

“You’re kidding,” he replied.

“I wish,” she muttered. “I kind of stormed out of the house and drove straight over to Ben’s.”

“Made you pretty mad, huh?”

“Are you kidding? I think God let there be some distance between us because he knew I’d kill Ben if I could get my hands on him right away.” Evie leaned up from her pillow prop and picked at a snag in the comforter.

“Glad I wasn’t the one at the end of that drive. Do you want to talk about how all that went?”

“Oh, it got better.” She paused for dramatic effect. “He was all hugged up on the couch with someone else.”

“Oh…,” is all Eli said.

Evie couldn’t tell if he didn’t know what else to say or he was merely playing it safe.

“I told him it was over. He tried to tell me my parents made it up, but then I started thinking about some things that have happened over the last several months. Like Ben and his roommates moved into a really nice, much larger apartment. He doesn’t have the money for that. And a week or so ago, he bought a new truck.”

“When you say he took money from them, you mean he took
money
from them,” Eli interpreted.

“Yeah.” Evie snorted with disdain.

What’s he thinking?
she wondered as silence consumed the connection.
What if he asks how I feel about this whole thing?
She grinned and rolled her eyes.
He’s a guy. He’s not going to ask how I feel. But how do I feel?

She’d spent most of the day avoiding answering that question for herself. She and Ben had spent a lot of time apart the last several weeks, and she’d missed him less and less. She also knew he wasn’t the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

But was Eli that person? She still had no answer for that question, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to find out.

“Evie, you there?”

Eli’s voice brought Evie back into the present. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You okay?” he asked gently.

“I guess. It just didn’t go the way I thought it would.”

“What did you expect to happen? Did you think he would chase you or call you and beg you to forget what happened?”

Evie wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, kind of.”

Eli laughed.

“It’s a girl thing,” she explained with a little giggle of her own.
I laughed,
she thought.
After all the tears and denial, I can still laugh.

“So now what?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what did you do today, ‘the day after’?”

“I went to church,” she answered.

“Really. Where did you go?”

“A community church my friend Brooke attends.”

“Oh, good, you had someone to go with you.”

She licked her lips. “Not really. I went by myself. Is that bad?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Sometimes it’s just easier to go with someone, especially if you’ve never been to a place before or you don’t know anybody.”

“I’m just not sure I’m ready for all the…” She ran a number of words through her mind and settled on, “
Fellowship.
”

“Good word.” He chuckled. “Did you speak to anyone?”

“No. I sneaked in late and then left as soon as they finished. I hoped God would somehow speak to me. I wanted him to tell me what he wants me to do.”

“Did he?”

“Not really.”

“Well, did you learn anything?”

“That God loves me enough to give his Son’s life for me.” She was surprised—the response came as easy as if she’d said it every day of her life.