Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  She’d used his soap.

  Jacob knew there was nothing strange about that fact, under the circumstances. Nevertheless, it joined the list of things in his head that he couldn’t get rid of.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t break anything.” Which is when Jacob realized looming in the bathroom doorway wasn’t a normal thing to do.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and stepped aside. “Listen—my room is down there. I put some clothes on the bed for you. Get . . .” His cheeks heated, his voice catching on the words, though fuck only knew why. “Get dressed. And, you know, go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Um,” she said, “about that—” But she’d made the mistake of leaving the bathroom, which meant Jacob could enter the bathroom. He did so, quickly, and shut the door fast and firm behind him. Then he leaned against that door—again—and blamed the steam in the room for the fever rushing through his body. When he closed his eyes all he could see was Eve’s bare shoulders, water droplets winking like diamonds in the light.

  And her smile. He could see that, too.

  * * *

  It took a long, burning-hot shower to scald away whatever weirdness was messing with Jacob’s head. But by the time he was clean—properly clean, his skin fizzing with it—he felt like himself again. Normal. Balanced. In control. Not in danger of fixating on any part of his employee’s anatomy. Excellent.

  Then he left the bathroom, entered the bedroom, and found her sitting at the end of his bed. In his clothes. His soft, white T-shirt pulled tight over her chest, his basketball shorts practically cut into her thighs, and Jesus Christ he hadn’t thought any of this through.

  He could see her nipples beneath the thin fabric of the T-shirt. Shit. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  She looked down, presumably following his line of sight, then back up at him. Without hesitation, she threw a pillow at his head.

  Jacob cleared his throat, averted his gaze, and said with complete sincerity, “Thank you.”

  “Yes, you’re welcome, I am a goddess of mercy. Were you staring at my tits?”

  “No,” he said honestly. She really ought to ask more specific questions. “What are you doing here? I told you to go home.”

  “Hm, yes, about that—”

  “Could you just . . . get out, for a minute?” he cut in. “I’m tired and I really want to put some clothes on.” And you’re making me dizzy. You and your eyes and your body and everything I know about you now, it’s all making me dizzy. That disorientation sharpened his words and his expression. Eve, most likely offended by his shortness, pressed her lips together and left.

  Which was the desired result. So why the fuck did he feel deflated as soon as she’d gone? It was the puppy effect, again. Jacob didn’t want to kick her, and so when he did, he felt the urge to apologize. With a sigh of resignation, he threw on some pajamas and rushed out of his room, hoping to catch her before she disappeared to wherever the hell it was she lived. But when he opened the bedroom door she was standing right there in his hallway, staring at the picture on the wall.

  So he hadn’t kicked too hard; he hadn’t hurt her too badly or scared her off entirely. Perhaps she was starting to understand that most of the time, his sharpness had more to do with himself than anyone else. He released a pent-up breath and moved to stand beside her, staring at the picture just like she was.

  What did she see?

  Well; he knew what she saw. Aunt Lucy, and Jacob, and his cousin Liam, clustered together at the pointless “graduation” ceremony their sixth form held, like some American school in a glossy film. Except this was Skybriar, so there hadn’t been gowns or caps and the blocky comprehensive building sat in the background of the photograph like a crumbling spaceship. Jacob looked stiff and uncomfortable, because he had felt stiff and uncomfortable. Lucy looked proud, and also short, standing between two teenage boys like that. Liam was grinning at the camera like some kind of supermodel because he was a prat.

  So that was what Eve saw. But what did she see? Must be something beyond a family photo, judging by the expression on her face. It was soft, her eyes like melting chocolate, her mouth a gentle curve. Her hair was still up, and for once, she wasn’t wearing her AirPods. She had small ears that stuck out slightly. He had the strangest urge to flick them, which made no sense at all.

  Then she said, “You grew up with Lucy, didn’t you?”

  Jacob ran his tongue over the inside of his teeth. “I met Lucy when I was ten.”

  Eve nodded before pointing at Liam. “Is that your brother?”

  “Cousin. Liam. He’s away right now. For work.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “So Lucy really is your aunt. I mean—a relative kind of aunt, not a mum’s friend kind of aunt. Because you and your cousin look so alike.”

  Jacob stared. “We don’t look alike.” Liam was handsome and charming and probably could’ve played the badboy love interest on a daytime soap opera if he hadn’t been born to play with engines instead. Jacob saw the family resemblance, but he knew he was sharper and harsher and altogether more awkward in a way that drained the handsomeness right out of him.

  But Eve frowned as if he wasn’t making sense and said, “What? You’re practically identical. You see that, right?”

  Jacob tried to compute the many implications of that statement and developed a small headache that encouraged him to stop. “You thought Lucy wasn’t my aunt?”

  “She’s protective over you like a mother. You have different surnames but you love her enough to name Castell Cottage after her. And you never talk about your parents. I thought maybe she’d adopted you or fostered you or something, and you didn’t want to call her Mum.”

  “She did adopt me. I’m her son.” He cleared his throat. “Legally, I mean.”

  “Not just legally, from where I’m standing.”

  Jacob supposed that was a comment on love or emotional connection or what have you. He shifted uncomfortably and searched for a new topic.

  But Eve apparently wasn’t done. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

  He blinked. So am I. “Sorry for what?”

  “That they . . . um . . .” For once, she looked awkward, lacing her fingers together and shrugging her shoulders. “Sorry . . . for your . . . loss?”

  Jacob realized what she was getting at and snorted. “Are you? You don’t sound certain.”

  “Oh my God, Jacob.” She squeezed her eyes shut and winced.

  He decided to put her out of her misery. “My parents aren’t dead.”

  Her eyes flew open. “Aren’t they?”

  “Well, I suppose they might be. I’d hardly know, at this point. But last I heard, they were alive and well, terrorizing a small village in southern Italy. Mind you, that was a few Christmases back. This time of year, they’re probably in . . .” He thought for a moment. “Thailand? Cambodia? Maybe Laos.”

  Eve stared as if he’d started speaking a foreign language.

  With a sigh, Jacob did what he’d always done, right from his first day at school, back when he’d arrived in Skybriar. He ripped off the bandage and splayed his guts out there like they didn’t matter one bit. All the better to speed up everyone else’s eventual boredom with his life story.

  “My parents are international adventurers, also known as spongers, grifters, or childish twats. They had me by accident and weren’t pleased with the result. After about a decade, they gave up and came back to England long enough to dump me on Lucy’s doorstep.” He made his voice as flat and robotic as possible during this recitation, because if his words were impenetrable iron bars, no one bothered to look beneath. To see the anxiety he’d grown up with, waking up somewhere different every morning in the bed of his parents’ truck.

  To hear the things they’d told him, as they arrived in Skybriar on that final day: You’ll be happier here, Jacob. Lucy has more time to deal with your . . . quirks.

  To understand how humiliating it had been, that first day at school, when he’d re
alized all the other children could read, and he’d had to put his hand up and whisper to the teacher that he . . . couldn’t. Because his parents hadn’t cared enough to teach him. Because they’d assumed, thanks to his slow speech and his atypical processing, that he was unable to learn.

  No, no one was supposed to notice all those parts. And yet, when Eve turned those huge, dark eyes on him, her brow furrowed and her soft mouth pressed into a hard line, he had the oddest sensation that she’d noticed it all.

  Which was obviously impossible. But still.

  “So you met Lucy when you were ten,” she said finally, “because your parents showed up and . . . gave you to her?”

  Jacob decided not to mention that the giving had been more . . . dropping him off on the doorstep and telling him to ring the bell as they drove away. “Yes.”

  “And before that, you—what, traveled the world with them?”

  “Yes.” Most people thought of that as an idyllic childhood. He was aware that millennial hippies in particular would call it parenting goals.

  But Eve looked horrified, probably because she’d read all his guidebooks and seen his meticulously cleaned bathroom and realized that spending the first ten years of his life on the road had grated against his fucking soul and turned him into the most nervous and unsettled child on earth. “Shit.”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, shit, Jacob. I bet you hated that. Did you hate that?”

  He opened his mouth to say Mind your business, but three completely different words emerged on a sigh. “God, so much.” He heard a hint of something vulnerable in his own voice and tried not to die of embarrassment. Attempting to lighten the mood after that little spillage of angst, he cleared his throat and said, “Thank God they eventually came to their senses and dumped me somewhere nice and quiet.” On second thought, maybe the word dumped wasn’t a mood lightener after all.

  It certainly didn’t have that effect on Eve. In fact, when he flicked a quick look at her, she was clearly the opposite of amused.

  Her expression was smooth, blank, almost serene. But her eyes burned. Badly.

  “Your parents,” she said, “sound like pricks.”

  Jacob instinctively wanted to argue, even after all these years. Instead, he took a breath, remembered how many times he’d woken up alone in the dark, and nodded. “Mm.”

  “There’s a story, in my family, you know.” She looked up at him suddenly. “It happened before I was born, but my grandmother loves to tell it. Back when my oldest sister was crawling, our family lived in some big old mansion. But the more my sister explored, and the better she got at communicating, the more she made it clear she didn’t like all those empty rooms. She liked the smaller spaces where she felt safe. She wanted a little bedroom and hallways that didn’t echo.” Eve was watching him steadily as she talked. “So my parents sold the house.”

  Jacob wished he could look away from her, wished he didn’t understand what she was getting at. But he did understand, and his stomach twisted with envy. Still, he managed to quip, “Is that a my family’s rich story? Interesting timing.”

  Eve rolled her eyes. “You know it isn’t. That is a story about my mother, who always wants the best and biggest of everything, not understanding her child’s needs but taking them seriously anyway. Because that’s what parents do. They take you seriously and they put you first. When I was at St. Albert’s, I knew a girl whose mum and dad both worked two jobs to pay her fees. Four jobs, Jacob, to support something as unlikely as a career in performing arts. But she needed it, and they could make it work, so they did. Because parents put you first. And I can hear in your voice—I don’t even need to ask—that yours didn’t. They didn’t put you first. They didn’t even try.”

  No. No, they hadn’t. They’d treated him like an inconvenience at best, and they hadn’t been apologetic about it. He remembered, sometimes, the agony that used to cause him.

  But it didn’t hurt too badly anymore. “You’re right,” he said stiffly. “They didn’t give a shit. But Aunt Lucy did.”

  Some of the murderous fire left Eve’s dark gaze. She nodded with an air of satisfaction. “Good. Then clearly she deserves you far more than they ever did.”

  Deserves you. He couldn’t touch that phrase, with all that it implied. It might make him feel too much. She was making him feel too much.

  Maybe she could see that, because she softened and smiled and asked different questions, lighter ones. “You said a child taught you how to speak French. When you were—?”

  “I made friends with a boy in the Congo. We stayed there longer than usual. I think something was wrong with the truck.” Jacob shrugged, the movement smoother than it should be. The way Eve was looking at him made this topic easier. She didn’t gawk at him like he was a lab rat, or act like he’d been raised by rock stars and failed to appreciate it. She looked like she understood a little bit and wanted to understand even more.

  His left hand flexed at his side.

  “Anyway,” he said firmly. “It’s late.” And it was. His eyelids felt weighted, his mind a little hazy, even as his blood fizzed with electricity in her presence. “You really need to go home.”

  “Ah. Hm. Yes.” Her steady serenity was replaced by a sheepish expression that did not bode well. “About that—and don’t interrupt me this time.”

  Jacob stared. “Pardon?”

  “Just . . . don’t interrupt me, because every time I try to explain this you cut me off, and if I don’t let it out soon I’m going to lose my nerve.”

  “What are you—?”

  “Shhhh,” Eve said. “Just shush.” Then she stepped around him and opened the door to his sitting room, the room he never actually sat in. He’d turned it into a kind of gym, cramming his weight bench and his running machine in there—not that either were much use to him now, since he’d fractured his wrist.

  And since, apparently, his weight bench was being used as a clothes hanger.

  Jacob stared, slack-jawed, through the open door at what should be an unoccupied and organized sitting room. There were clothes on his equipment. There was makeup sitting on top of his old television, the one he never watched. And his battered pullout sofa was now a battered bed, strewn with his spare winter duvet and his cushions.

  “What. The. Fuck.”

  Eve flashed a nervous smile and waved her hands. “Surprise! I live here!”

  Surprise. I live here.

  Jacob turned slowly toward her. “I beg your pardon?”

  Her smile faltered. “Oh my God, you look like you’re going to murder me. Don’t you dare murder me.”

  “I have to confess,” he said faintly. “I’m considering it.”

  “Well, don’t! My mother is a lawyer, you know.”

  Was she, now? Interesting. He’d assumed, based on the accent, that Eve came from the kind of family where women didn’t work. He’d also wondered if she might be secretly pregnant, and therefore disgraced and cast out, which would account for her slumming it over here in his B&B. But now he looked at the room she’d apparently been squatting in, and he decided that whatever had brought this particular princess into his life must be far worse, because . . .

  “What sentient human person would voluntarily sleep on that sofa bed? It’s practically springless.”

  She ignored his question. “Mont told me to sleep in here. You know, to keep an eye on you—with the concussion—and also because I had nowhere to stay and the B&B is booked up to the eyeballs, which, well done, by the way. And really, it’s more convenient if I live here anyway, what with the early hours, and all, and clearly I’m no trouble since you didn’t even notice I was here, so—”

  “Hang on,” Jacob said sharply, a thought occurring to him. “Have you been using my bathroom?”

  “Only a little bit,” she said. “Like, the teeniest, tiniest bit. While you were asleep. And I cleaned up after myself so you wouldn’t even know I was there. But also because I’m a superconsiderate roommate.”

/>   He looked at her. “Tell me the truth. Have you ever had a roommate before? Ever? Shared a bedroom with a sibling, bunked in college, anything?”

  There was a pause. “Well, no,” she said. “But I do share a floor with my grandmother and her girlfriend.”

  I share a floor with my grandmother and her girlfriend. I share a floor. With my grandmother. And her girlfriend. “Where did you come from?” Jacob demanded. “Some kind of palace? Some kind of elderly lesbian palace?”

  “Gigi isn’t a lesbian. She’s pansexual.”

  Jacob stared at Eve, then stared at the sitting room. “You know what? I’m too tired for this. I’m going to bed.”

  She beamed. “So you don’t mind? I can stay?”

  “Yes, I absolutely do mind, and no, you absolutely can’t stay. We’ll figure something out.” He wasn’t entirely sure what, but something. She couldn’t sleep next door to him, for Christ’s sake. That just . . . wasn’t right. Wasn’t safe. Or something. Somehow. “Christ, I can’t believe you’re on the sofa bed. I should’ve thrown that thing out ages ago. If it weren’t for—”

  “I know, I know,” Eve said. “If it weren’t for your many injuries and the space you need for your arm, you’d be a gentleman and switch beds with me.”

  Jacob snorted. “Would I fuck. No, I was going to say—if it weren’t for the fact that I poured all my money into this bloody business, I’d have already replaced the damn thing.” He shook his head and turned, leaving her to it. His own bed was calling him like a siren song. Even if he did feel slightly guilty at the thought of her lying on that monstrosity.

  Like she said, it wasn’t as if they could swap. He had to sleep with his cast propped up on a pillow.

  So why don’t you share? It’s a big bed.

  Jacob froze, then forced himself back into motion. Get. Out. Before you say or do something incredibly terrible.