She watches me over the top of her mug, blowing gently on the steam. Comet lets out a content purr and jumps onto my lap, twitching her tail at my hip before settling into a furry little heap across my knees.
“What are you avoiding?”
“Hm?” I can’t think when she looks like that, my flannel over one shoulder and her bottom lip at the edge of the mug.
“You said you’re not going. What won’t you be attending?”
I drop my eyes and busy myself with a frayed edge of the blanket. “Trivia night at the bar.”
“Did Carter ban you or something?”
I snort. I’d like to see him try. “No.”
“It sounds like fun,” she says as she takes a sip from her mug, brown eyes fixed on me. Her voice has more of a rasp to it than usual, a huskiness that has me shifting in my seat and remembering what it was like to hear that voice in bed. Now that she has color back in her cheeks and I’m less frantic with worry, I find myself considering the stretch of smooth brown skin of her shoulder. How soft she felt with my arms around her. Her nose in my neck and her hands curled around me.
She holds my stare and waits. I pack those thoughts away.
“I don’t—” I break off and consider not finishing my sentence. But she prods me with her toes and I sigh. “I don’t like going into town.”
“I’ve gathered that.” Another sip. “You go grocery shopping in the middle of the night.”
Not the … middle of the night. I usually wait until half an hour before the shop closes, when I know they’ve restocked the strawberry jam and the fudge cookies. The store is almost always empty and I don’t have to talk to anyone over cans of soup.
Social anxiety. Sound sensitivity. Fancy terms for my general discomfort around other people. My parents sent me to a therapist when I was ten years old, overwhelmed by all the noise around me. The worst of it was in school, when I couldn’t get the damn noise to … stop. All the chatter around me felt like the worst sort of buzz under my skin, settling into a deep ache that pounded like a metronome through every inch of my body.
I couldn’t focus. I could barely speak. It was miserable.
“Beckett?”
Evelyn touches the top of my knee lightly, guiding my attention back from the table to her open and eager face. It’s the part I like best about her, I think, her curiosity and kindness. Her desire to help where she can, however she can.
When she says something, she really means it.
She frowns at me and I wish I could swipe at it with my thumb. Make everything a little bit easier for her. Be half as good at this as she is. A shiver slides down the smooth line of her neck and I reach forward to adjust the blanket higher. I think I’ve got a heated blanket around here somewhere. An extra quilt or two in my room.
My knuckles brush her throat and she shivers again, a little shimmy of her shoulders and a clench of her jaw.
“Still cold?”
She shakes her head, a dazed smile kicking up the corner of her mouth. I feel her gaze like a touch on my skin, dancing down my cheek and cupping at my jaw. “I’m okay,” she finally says. She wiggles down further in her blankets. “Is it people?”
I hum, distracted again by her hands around the mug. Her nails are a pale pink. The same color as sand on a beach. A perfectly ripe peach, sitting pretty on a tree branch. “What?”
“You’re not exactly a talker, Beck,” she grins at me. “Case in point.”
I huff a laugh and tuck the edges of the blankets tighter around her. “I don’t know how to explain it,” I tell her slowly. “I’ve always had trouble talking to people. I try to avoid large groups if I can.”
I’m most comfortable with people I know. Outside, if I can be. Something about seeing the sky above me loosens something deep in my chest and makes everything … easier. I don’t think so hard about what I have to say. I don’t trip over my own thoughts.
“The first time we met,” she begins, her eyes squinted in thought, remembering. “You came right up to me and asked me what I was drinking.”
The first time ever, I think, that I approached a woman at a bar instead of letting someone come to me. It had felt necessary that I talk to her. A tug, a pull—whatever you want to call it. I saw her sitting there and I wanted to be sitting right next to her.
“The bar we met in was empty. Do you remember?”
She nods. “There was a baseball game on the TV in the corner. I stopped in because I smelled the french fries from the street.” She grins. “The ones that you stole half of.”
I did steal half of them, after I was two shots of tequila deep and her hand found my thigh under the table. “I chose that bar because it was the least crowded place on the street.” Then I saw Evelyn and I didn’t want to go anywhere else. “Plus, everything gets quiet when I look at you.”
She gives me one slow blink, lashes fluttering. Her eyes dance between mine, bottom lip caught by her teeth. “Would it help?”
I rub the edge of the blanket again, the worn blue gray material soft under my touch. “Would what help?”
She tilts her head to the side and reaches over me to set her mug on the side table. Her hair brushes my forearm and I’m the one shivering.
“If I came with you,” she says. I swallow hard and become fascinated with the legs of the coffee table. “Would it help to have a friend with you? At trivia?”
I don’t want to be her friend. I want to be the exact opposite. I want to be the people we were when we were away from everyone else. I almost say it, biting down on the inside of my cheek to keep the thought to myself.
“I don’t know,” I answer slowly. Probably not. I’m most comfortable with my family and even then, it’s a challenge for me to sit somewhere with so much sound around me. Trivia night is an … event. It almost always ends with Dane carting people to the drunk tank at the station. Last time, he had to put Becky Gardener in the back of his cruiser for launching a plate of chicken tenders across the room.
“I’ll go with you,” she says, just as slowly. “If you wanted to try.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
EVELYN
I grunt as I reach for the handle of the bakehouse door, seventeen layers of clothes thick and warm around me. Beckett had glared at me as he forced a sweatshirt over my head in the kitchen this morning—an old green, faded thing with a giant badger across the chest.
“Stay away from water today,” he ordered, lips tilted downward. I had gone to pull my hair loose from my collar but he had gotten there first, gathering it up in his fist. He had paused, just for a second, and then released it down my back.
There had been a handful of memories in that second. I could see it in the single flash of darkness in those bright eyes. He remembered, same as I did. His hands in my hair, tilting my head back as he guided me towards a bed with too many pillows. Sticky humidity against my skin. A deep, indulgent moan from me. A shaky exhale pressed right between my breasts from him.
The ribbon of silver bells above the door announces my arrival and successfully disrupts my little daydream.
Layla and Stella glance up from behind the counter, Stella’s face twisting in confusion at my marshmallow man layers. It’s not even cold today. I can feel a single bead of sweat slipping down my spine.