“The only serious boyfriend I had was in high school and neither one of our parents was the cool kind that allowed sleepovers.” As I spoke, he started toward me and when I finished, he was right in front of me, our toes nearly touching. I lifted my chin to keep my eyes on his, so when his gentle fingertips grazed the underside of my jaw, I startled in surprise. But the shock quickly gave way to goose bumps as he trailed his knuckles down both sides of my neck.
“You have no idea how much my need to sleep in the same bed with you has multiplied knowing I’d be the first.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my face turn an as-of-yet-undiscovered shade of red with my blushing. “I’m not a virgin. I mean, I haven’t slept around, but, you see, my high school boyfriend-”
“Evie,” he said laughing, and then shushed me further by pressing his lips to mine in a soft and non-pushy kiss. He pulled away, his thumbs grazing over my cheeks. “I’m not talking about sex.”
“Oh,” I replied, sheepishly.
“Will you stay with me?”
All I could do was nod. I did want to stay in the room with him. I wanted to know what it felt like to be held by someone as I fell asleep. He kissed me again, only that kiss was hungrier, more urgent. More like the times in his truck outside my house when we didn’t want to say goodbye to one another. When our mouths eventually parted, I was panting, gripping his shirt with clenched fists.
“Okay,” he breathed, pulling away, just as worked up as I was. “First step to not rushing into anything is no making out in view of a bed.”
I laughed, glad that he was finding the situation just as painfully delectable as I was.
“Maybe we should go find Liv and Devon. Hey,” I said, suddenly remembering my shock at seeing them. “Was it your idea to invite them along?”
Elliot’s hands started at my shoulders and gently moved down my arms to link each of his hands with mine. “I just thought that maybe you’d be a little more comfortable if it wasn’t just you and me here.”
“That was really thoughtful of you,” I said as I looked down at our joined hands. “You’re always doing sweet things. It kind of ruins the ‘cool guy’ persona you try to put off.”
“Is that how I come off? Like I’m trying to be cool?” He shrugged then brought our linked hands between us, resting them between our bodies against his chest. “This isn’t a game, Evelyn. I’m honestly just trying to make all the right moves so you’ll let me in. I’m trying really hard to prove to you I’m not just some guy looking to score.”
The sudden serious tone of his voice and the way our bodies were intertwined in that moment sent a flash of panic through me, causing my defense mechanism to activate – deflection. “But you are looking to score eventually, right?” I asked with a sly smile.
He laughed, but seemed to see through my attempt at distraction. “Eventually. But not any time soon.” Then, before one of us could say anything to bury ourselves any deeper, he kissed the knuckles on one of my hands and led me out of the room.
The kitchen table was littered with empty beer bottles, snacks, and rejected playing cards. I’d never been one to gamble before, but when Elliot had told me we were playing for pretzels, I decided it couldn’t hurt. So far, my pile of pretzels was the largest. Elliot was running a close second, Devon third, and Liv was completely out because she kept eating hers and losing terribly when she managed to play.
All four of us were drinking, playing cards, and having a great time.
“I think you lied when you said you’d never played poker before,” Elliot said to me, but keeping his eyes on his cards.
I scoffed loudly, feigning insult. “I never lie, and it’s rude of you to imply I would.”
“Oh, I’m not trying to imply that you lied, I’m calling you out as a liar. There’s no way anyone could have this much beginner’s luck.”
I shrugged. “Some people are just luckier than others, I guess. Or perhaps I have more good karma saved up than you.” I picked up one of my many pretzels and tossed it in my mouth, not glancing his way. However, I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was smiling. I picked up my beer and took a long pull, loving the way the saltiness of the pretzels mixed roughly with the wheat beer.
“You guys are killing me. This is officially boring.” Olivia’s words were a little slurred, but her eyes suddenly got wide. “Let’s go in the hot tub!”
“I don’t know,” I said carefully, glancing up at Devon. “Won’t sitting in the hot water just make us more drunk?”
“What’s wrong with more drunk? I’m only halfway drunk anyway. Come on, Evie. Don’t be a buzzkill.”
“I’m not a buzzkill, Liv. I just don’t want to spend the night taking care of you.” Her eyes widened a bit and it looked as though I’d offended her, but just as quickly, she put on her party-girl, no-worries mask and waved me away with her hand.
“You won’t have to take care of me. That’s why I brought my boyfriend, here,” she said patting Devon playfully on the arm. Devon didn’t move, didn’t give one single physical clue that her words had affected him, but I could feel the air around us grow thick with tension.
“I’m up for the hot tub,” Elliot said, also oblivious to Devon’s change in mood.
“Great!” Olivia jumped up from her chair. “I’ll go get my suit on.” She ran down the hallway, only swaying a little on her feet.
“I’ll go get the jets started,” Elliot said as he stood, but before he left he turned to me. “Did you pack a suit?”
“Yeah,” I said with a forced smile, not liking the way the evening was progressing.
“Great. See you out there,” he said, leaning down and pressing a kiss to my forehead. He walked away toward the French doors, which I’d learned on my tour led to the veranda. Devon and I sat at the table for a few seconds in silence. I knew he was upset, but didn’t really know how to broach the subject. As my best friend, my loyalty should have always been with Olivia. However, in this situation, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Devon.
“I think Olivia has gotten into the habit of confusing having fun with being drunk,” I said cautiously, not sure if Devon would be offended for Olivia by my words. I raised my eyes to look at him, only to find him looking directly at me. We didn’t speak for a few moments, but then he sighed, brought both of his hands up, and rubbed them down his face, groaning.
“Has she always been like this?” he asked, his elbows coming to rest on the table with his forehead resting in his hands.
“No,” I said thoughtfully. “She didn’t start drinking heavily and often until a few months ago.”
“You mean, until she met me.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. “I guess. But I don’t think it’s you who’s making her this way. I think if she were seriously involved with anyone, she would have a hard time dealing with it. It’s always kind of been against her MO to be exclusive with someone. Maybe she’s using alcohol to deal with things she’s had buried that are being brought up by your relationship.”
“Hmm.” Now he sounded angry. Irritated. “Maybe one of these days she’ll open up enough for me to figure out what’s bothering her.”
“She hasn’t talked to you about it yet?”
“No. Every time our conversation turns serious, she changes the subject or suddenly remembers she needs to be somewhere and bails.”
Without thinking about it, I reached out and covered one of his hands with my own. “She really is a great girl, Devon. You just have to break through the tough exterior she puts up.” He heard my words and then turned his hand upward and his fingers closed around mine.
“The funny thing is, Evie, before I met Olivia, there was this one girl who I’d been thinking about for weeks.” His fingers squeezed mine a little harder and my throat went dry. “If only I’d been brave enough to ask you out that first day we met, things might be different right now.”
“Devon,” I whispered, my voice betraying me and saying his name like a curse.
I shook my head and pulled my hand free from his, both afraid of the words coming from his mouth and the way they made my heart tumble in my chest. I was panicking. Panicking because even though Devon had made small remarks to me over the last few months about caring for me, I had never chosen to believe they were meant in any more than a friendly capacity. Not only out of respect for my friend, but also out of preservation of my heart. I’d fallen for him that first day too, but learned to live with the regret of letting him walk away. Learned to tamp down the longing I felt whenever he was near – and even when he was nowhere in sight. But his words, his acknowledgment that I wasn’t alone in those feelings, was dangerous.
Before I could say anything more, even if I could think of the words that were supposed to come next, Olivia came out of the hallway clad in a pink bikini that left little to the imagination. She came right up behind Devon and leaned down, wrapping her arms around his chest, putting her lips to the skin of his neck that I had imagined to be soft and smell of him. She kissed him there, tenderly, as his eyes bore into mine.
“Come on, baby. Let’s go get in the hot tub. I bought this new bikini just for you.” His fingers came up to pat her hands that were clasped together over his chest.
“I’ll be out there in just a minute.”
“All right,” she said with an easy smile while standing up. “I’ll just go make sure it’s extra warm for you.” She strolled away, opened the French doors, then closed them not so gently behind her, and disappeared into the darkness.
I was frozen in place. Stuck in what seemed like an important moment. I didn’t know what to say, how to move forward, or if I should even acknowledge what Devon had said. Then, making my decision for me, he stood up from the table and walked down the hallway toward his room.
I exhaled as soon as he was out of sight, feeling a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders. For the rest of the weekend Devon made obvious efforts not to be alone with me – not obvious to everyone, but plain enough to me. And I tried to convince myself he hadn’t meant what he’d said, and I didn’t feel what I felt.
Chapter Eight
Present Day
“Evie, I’m really sorry, but there’s another late meeting I’ve got to attend. If you can’t stay late with the kids, could you maybe see if Mrs. Welner from next door could sit with them? I don’t have her phone number handy. Thanks, Evie. Let me know what’s up.”
I swiped the screen of my phone to the left, deleting Devon’s voicemail. “Sure,” I said to no one since I was in my car all alone. “I’ll just leave your children with the woman next door who is so old she can’t even walk from room to room without assistance. That sounds safe.” I flung my car in reverse, taking all my frustration out on my poor gearshift. “How in the hell did your wife live with you all these years?” My own breath caught at my words. Liv hadn’t lived with it. In fact, she’d died. But I knew she’d give anything to be here with him, being the one he called when he was going to be running late home from work.
I took in a deep breath trying to push away the sadness I felt at the thought of Liv, and the disgust I felt with myself as I took everything I’d been given for granted. Liv, in essence, had given me a family. I loved Ruby and Jax, and I needed to recognize that Devon could very well have hired a nanny, and I’d be stuck with weekend visits to the children I loved dearly.
I sighed as I merged into traffic, pulling my sunglasses down to cover my eyes. Knowing full well I’d be going to his house to be there when his daughter got out of school, then going to get his son, I silently cursed Devon for having such wonderful children who would always have a hold on my heart.
After I’d wrangled both kids, we walked up the driveway as I tried to text Devon to tell him the kids and I would wait at his house for him – no need to bother his elderly neighbor.
Ruby unlocked the door and Jaxy ran in ahead of us. As usual, the kids headed for the kitchen because they hadn’t eaten in over forty-five minutes so, obviously, they were starving.
“I’m hungry,” I heard Jax yell from the kitchen at the same time I heard the sound of the refrigerator opening. I heard the hum of the freezer, but something else was catching my ear. I put my purse down on the table and stood still, trying to figure out what was making me uneasy. I looked around and nothing looked out of place, and then I zeroed in on the noise coming from the laundry room.
I walked down the hallway and immediately knew something was wrong. Halfway down the hall, my feet were met with water. Standing water. Water that was slowly making its way toward the kitchen.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, trying to make my way through the lake that used to be the hallway. When I opened the door to the laundry room, I couldn’t stay calm anymore. “Holy shit!” My yells were heard by the children and somewhere in the back if my mind I registered they were coming toward me, but couldn’t think past the sight of water spraying out of the wall behind the washing machine. The water was freezing cold and ankle deep by the time I’d made it into the laundry room. The water was spraying out from behind the machine, sending water everywhere. It was coming straight at me. It was falling from the ceiling, and it was running down the walls. And I could tell it was coming out fast and I knew soon it would be flooding the whole bottom floor of Devon’s house.
“Yay! We’re going swimming!” I heard Jaxy’s excited yells from behind me and could see him jumping up and down near the door. I brought my hand up to shield my eyes from the water coming at me from all angles and shouted to Ruby.
“Get your brother and go upstairs! I’ve got to find the valve to shut this off.” Ruby followed my instructions and I noticed Jaxy’s face fall in disappointment, realizing it wasn’t a fun event. I waded through the water toward the washer, trying to find where the water was coming from. I pulled on the back corner, trying to move it away from the wall, but it only gave an inch. I squatted and pulled harder, trying to leverage my weight against the machine.
Water was still spraying everywhere, and all of my clothes were drenched and sticking to my skin. My shoes were completely filled with freezing water, and my fingers and toes were starting to go numb.
I adjusted my hold on the backside of the washer, now able to squeeze my arms between the two machines, and pulled hard. It took at least ten tries. Me tugging on the machine as hard as I could, feeling it barely budge, but move enough to motivate me to try again. Eventually, the machine was pulled far enough away from the wall that the plume of water spraying out was smaller and there was enough room between the machine and the wall to fit my body. I hopped on top of the machine and then squeezed my body down, feet first, still trying to assess where the water was coming from.
I was not familiar with anything I was looking at, made only more foreign to me by the water spraying everywhere, but I did spy a turn dial that looked just like the ones I’d usually seen outside of houses to turn hoses on and off. I reached for it and started turning furiously. After what seemed like a million rotations, the volume of water flowing from the hole in the wall finally tapered off and eventually turned into a trickle.
I was standing up to my calves in freezing water, drenched from head to toe, with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next. I climbed back on top of the washer and then hopped off again, heading back to the kitchen. The water had made its way into the dining room. I saw my purse sitting on the kitchen island and I grabbed it, searching for my phone. I called Devon, but I went straight to voicemail.
“Devon, some sort of pipe burst in your laundry room. There’s water everywhere. I have no idea what to do. Call me ASAP.”
I walked out of the kitchen and went up the stairs, heading toward the master bedroom. When I passed the kids’ room and saw them sitting silently on Ruby’s bed, so I halted in their doorway.
“Hey guys. Everything’s okay. Just a little leak.” Ruby’s eyebrows went up as if to say, “Little? Really?”
“Can we go downstairs?” Jax asked.
“Tell you what, gath
er up all the towels in the house and meet me in the kitchen, but don’t go into the water, okay?”
“Got it!” Jaxy yelled as he hopped off the bed and ran past me into the hallway, opening up the linen closet, on a mission.
“Help your brother, please? I’m gonna go try to find some dry clothes?”
“You’re going to wear Mommy’s clothes?” Ruby’s voice was both surprised and sad. I knew they hadn’t gotten rid of anything of Olivia’s, I knew it was all just sitting in her closet and dresser. None of them were ready to remove her from the house, and I wasn’t ready either. But it hadn’t occurred to me that wearing her clothes would upset Ruby or Jax. In fact, I hadn’t really thought about how I would feel wearing her clothes. The emptiness is my gut told me it was a bad idea.
“No, baby. I’ll find something else.” I saw the relief float over her features, tension obviously leaving her shoulders as she exhaled. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” I added, knowing that if there weren’t a lake currently residing on the bottom floor of her house, I would sit down next to her, hug her to me, and tell her all the ways her mother loved her. But in that moment, I couldn’t take the time to give that to her. Later, I thought. “Can you go make sure your brother doesn’t try to swim in your laundry room?”
“Yeah,” she said, her normal sassiness gone. She walked past me and I kissed the top of her head, wanting so much just to make all her pain go away. When she disappeared down the stairs, I continued on my way to the master bedroom.
When Olivia had been alive, I’d spent a good amount of time in her bedroom. Not a lot, but enough that I was familiar with it. We’d dye her hair in her attached bathroom, try new facial masques in there. When she’d gone to fancy dinners for Devon’s work, I’d sit on her bed and watch her try on dresses, always jealous of her amazing body and natural beauty. Even when she’d been hugely pregnant, she’d been slim and seemed to grow only in the belly.
When she’d brought Jaxy home, I’d spent hours in this room, watching her nurse her newborn, helping her in any way I could. When she’d been sick, I’d also spent hours in this room trying to help take care of her. It hadn’t ever occurred to me before, but in that moment, I was glad she hadn’t died at home. It was painful enough to stand in the doorway of the room I’d avoided since she passed. I don’t know if I could have gone in knowing I’d see the last place she’d been alive, or the place she spoke such soft and sullen words to me.
The Absence of Olivia Page 8
