Legal Bindings

36. Evan

Evan splashedsome water on his face then grimaced when his mascara began to run. “What else did you think was going to happen?” he mumbled, yanking a few paper towels from the dispenser to dab at his eyes.

Behind him, the bathroom door swung open, and a vaguely familiar man stepped in—one of the hundred and one oligarchs Evan had met so far at this gala, which was just like every other gala he’d attended in New York. Never in his life had he thought he would get sick of parties, but there he was, annoyed at rich people and the commodification of fine art and late-stage capitalism.

Forcing a smile, he nodded at the man then went back to fixing the scant amount of makeup he’d applied for the occasion. That makeup, which had once felt like an extension of himself, lately felt like a mask he could use to make himself seem happy and glowing when, in reality, he was conflicted and tired. The conversation with Maureen several weeks prior had unsettled him, and since then, he’d been treating every conversation as if the universe was testing him. Was he happy, or was he miserable? Could he paint, or was he tapped out? Should he stay, or should he go?

The last question was answering itself lately. Seattle seemed to be forgetting him, which was probably the fates telling him he should forget it too. Sydney still texted most days, but not every day, and when they’d last spoken on the phone, she’d seemed distracted and distant.

Mascara rescued, Evan headed back inside the event, where there was a silent auction, a dance floor, and food that looked gourmet but tasted like school-cafeteria slop with some fancy garnishes. Judy spotted him and waved him toward a group of people he hadn’t yet met. More strangers to woo, he assumed.

“Evan, hi. I was just looking for you. Come meet Richard.”

Evan nodded, only half listening as he met Richard and Melissa and Marian and the other three people in the group, none of whose names he would remember and all of whom were only interested in him for what he could add to their portfolio. Just as he was giving a rote nod to Richard, his phone began to vibrate. Happy for the distraction, he pulled it from his pocket only to stop short, his mouth falling open when he saw the name Nick on the screen.

“Sorry. I have to…” He didn’t bother finishing the excuse as he stepped away to seek a quiet corner. “Nick?”

“Hi. Oh, it’s loud there. Are you out? I’m sorry, I can—”

“It’s fine. I’m at a… thing. It’s not important. How are you? Is everything okay? Is Sydney all right?” Having not heard from someone in over two months made a guy suspicious.

“Sydney’s fine. Everything’s fine. Well, no, not fine. It just…” Nick inhaled sharply as Evan reached a door on the far wall and pushed it open, letting himself into a service corridor, where catering carts full of half-eaten plates lined the walls.

“Nicky, what is it?”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say goodbye,” he said so quickly that Evan nearly missed it.

As apologies went, it wasn’t one he’d been expecting, and it was a case of too little, too late but was still nice to hear. “Thank you. But it’s all right. I know you had to work.”

“Yeah, work,” he muttered with a tinge of bitterness. “It’s not just work. And look, I need to say something, and you don’t owe me a response or anything, but I’ve been realizing that I owe you more than what you got. So basically, I want you to know that the time we spent together meant something to me. Not just the sex. Don’t get me wrong—the sex was great, but it was more than that. You challenged me, and you made me better. You made me want to be better and to care less about what better looked like to the outside world and more about what it looked like to me and the people I give a shit about.”

Evan clutched the phone tighter, his heart thumping in time with the bass of distant music. It was a lot to hear, almost too much. “Nicky…”

“No, let me finish. I need to finish.” There was another inhalation, and Evan wished he could be there with him. “I have this bad habit of not letting myself be vulnerable, and I’m sure there’s all sorts of trauma-related reasons for that. When I’ve let myself trust or love in the past, I’ve gotten burned. Even Ben—we were both so fucking stunted that we dragged the corpse of our marriage around for years before putting it in the ground. And I realize that saying this doesn’t change anything—I wouldn’t expect it to. You’re where you are, and I’m really happy for you. But I let you leave without knowing that you meant something to me, which sucks. So, there. Now you know.”

Evan took a beat and a breath, finding himself at a rare loss for words. “I don’t know what to say except thank you. And I’m glad you told me.”

“Me too. I think.” Nick laughed a little, which Evan took as a good sign.

“Can I ask what brought this on?”

“Oh. Sydney.” Nick sighed, and sounded like he was smiling. “She figured us out, and she got on my case about it, and then, I don’t know. Things are a little weird right now.”

“With Sydney?”

“No, Sydney’s fine.” He hesitated. “I just realized that I missed being able to talk to you. You put things into perspective. And I knew I couldn’t just call you up and act like things didn’t end weirdly. Plus, like I said, I owed you something.”

“I’ve missed talking to you too,” Evan blurted, trailing his fingers over the cinder block wall of the staff passage. “I know it sounds stupid, because I’m with people all the time, but I don’t have any friends here yet. And… and regardless of whether we were fucking, I think we ended up pretty good friends. I miss that. I miss eating dinner with you, and I hate that we can’t get pepperoni pizza anymore.”

Nick snorted, and Evan could just about picture him standing at the kitchen counter, one arm folded across his stomach, or sitting on the couch in the living room, some boring book open on his lap.

“I miss talking to you too,”he said. “Even the parenting stuff. You’re the only other person in the world who gets Sydney. Like, last week, there was this thing at school where she got in trouble.”

“She got in trouble?”

“Oh, God, yeah,” he said, before telling a cringe-worthy story about some mean girls and how Sydney name-dropped Evan’s relationship with Rachel Roberts for popularity. There had been some hair pulling and screaming, and while Evan winced at the retelling, he had to give credit to Nick at the end of the story—he’d handled it well. “I did ground her for the weekend. But the other girl should have gotten life in prison as far as I’m concerned.”

“Fair enough. The petty part of me wants to show up to her school with Rachel Roberts just to prove that Sydney is actually friends with someone cool and famous.”

“Yeah, but you’re not that cool, Evan,” Nick said.

Holy shit—is he teasing?“Rude. Anyway, I meant Rachel!”

“You think she’d do that?”

“She might. She can throw a punch too—she learned how to fight when she was a Bond girl.”

“Well, in that case, tell her she has an open invitation. And you know, so do you if you’re out here.”

Evan’s heart fluttered, and he swallowed around a new thickness in his throat. “Thanks, Nicky.”

“You’re… you’re welcome. I should let you get back to your party.”

“Sure. But thank you for calling. Do it again sometime? And don’t wait another two months.”

“Definitely.”

Then Nick was gone, and the lifeline connecting Evan to Seattle went with him. Gritting his teeth, Evan headed back to the party, but no sooner had he started to schmooze than his phone pinged with a new text from Sydney.

SOS we’re going down, she’d sent, accompanied by an image. Evan’s heart dropped to his toes when he realized he was looking at a For Sale sign in the front yard of Nick’s house.