Chapter 36
At eight thirty, once the kitchen is clean and Mom has gone into her bedroom, I decide to drive over to Evie’s.
Maybe what I’m doing is stalkerish and I’ll be turned away at the door, but I can’t get what Mara said out of my head. That
I should be doing more, trying harder. I want to respect Evie’s wishes, but I also want to work this out between us. If she
tells me to get lost, I’ll leave, and I won’t bother her again until she’s ready to talk.
But Mara’s right. I have to at least try.
Evie’s mom is surprised to see me. “Claire! Hi. We weren’t expecting you.”
“I’m sorry to just show up like this, but I was hoping I could talk to Evie.”
Janet hesitates for long enough that I know she knows Evie and I are in a fight. She probably knows the full story. “Oh, honey.
She’s home, but I’m not one hundred percent sure she wants to talk to you.”
“She doesn’t,” Evie says, appearing behind her mom. She’s wearing an oversize Jaylen Brown shirt she must have stolen from
Eddie.
“Please, Evie.” I clasp my hands together. “This isn’t what we do. We need to talk.”
Evie hugs her arms around herself, deliberating. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I see just the slightest crack.
Finally, after what feels like a year, she says, “Fine. We can talk in my room.”
I follow Evie up the stairs. We’re both silent. When we get to her room, she closes the door and goes over to her bed. She
grabs a pillow and hugs it against her chest and makes a face at me as if to say, all right, go ahead.
“I should have told you, and I’m sorry I didn’t,” I begin. “I was planning to, I swear I was planning to tell you everything
the day after Eddie’s party, but I didn’t get the chance.”
“I just don’t understand. You know everything about me. I haven’t held anything back from you. Not ever.” She lets out a long
breath. “In fact, you probably know too much about me. Yet you lived this whole other life and you never thought to tell me? It hurts so much, Claire. It’s like our entire friendship has been uneven. Like I’ve trusted you so much more than you’ve ever trusted
me.”
“You told Lily and Dylan about Luke!” I say. “You couldn’t even keep that secret. How was I supposed to trust that you could keep a bigger one?”
“I didn’t realize how deep it went!” Evie is standing now, too, the pillow cast aside.
“If I’d known what you were actually hiding, I never would have said anything!
But you didn’t even give me that chance.
How is it fair that I share everything with you, and you’ve given me almost nothing in return?
Less than nothing! You’ve been flat-out lying to my face. ”
“This. This is what I was afraid of,” I say. “This is why I didn’t tell you. When we became friends, back when I first moved here—you
were like the best thing that ever happened to me. You liked me because of me, and not for any other reason. You didn’t want
to be friends because I was famous, or because you felt bad for me for being this tragic ex–child star, for having such a
shitty dad. Once it got to a certain point, I knew I couldn’t say anything, because you’d react like this.”
My voice breaks at the end, and Evie’s eyes go soft.
“I wasn’t ready to talk about it all back then, when we were first becoming friends,” I go on. “And then . . . I don’t know.
It all spiraled. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
“I wouldn’t have felt sorry for you. I would have been there for you.”
The lump in my throat is so enormous it’s a miracle I can say anything at all. “I know. I know you would have. And my not
telling you the full story had nothing to do with you. It was all me. It was me being terrified that if I finally did tell
you, you’d hate me for keeping such a big secret. That I would lose you.” A little bit of a sob-laugh escapes me as I motion
between the two of us. “Case in point.”
Evie is crying now, too. “You could never lose me, you dummy.”
And with that, she comes over to hug me. I hug her back tightly. Into her shoulder I say, “I am so, so sorry. I will tell you anything and everything you want to know.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “And I’m sorry I told Lily and Dylan about Luke. That was a shitty thing for me to do.”
“These past few days have sucked,” I say. “I’ve wanted to talk to you so badly.”
“Yeah. They’ve sucked for me, too.” She pulls away and I can tell she’s about to start crying again. “Eddie and I broke up.”
“What? When? What happened?”
“I don’t even know,” Evie says. “We had sex. That night. And it didn’t feel good. It hurt so much. He was so nice, and gentle, and tried to make me happy, but after it was over . . . I don’t know. It wasn’t that I regretted
it. I was just . . . overwhelmed that I’d done something so big and meaningful. And I think Eddie was hurt, since it was my
idea, and he never would have agreed to do anything if he’d known it would make me upset.” I reach out to hold Evie’s hand
as another sob escapes her. “And then one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was breaking up with him. And now I
guess we’re broken up. And it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t know if I can take it back.”
“Oh, Eves.” I hug her again. “I’m so sorry.”
A little while later, I text Mom to ask if I can sleep over at Evie’s. She says yes. I’ll go back early before school to get
my stuff. Once Evie and I get a couple of bags of honey pretzels, we get into her bed and talk until about three in the morning.
We brainstorm ways she can make it right with Eddie.
I tell her every single thing she wants to know.
Even about the stuff with my dad. Everything.
From taking my earnings to not doing anything about Brett’s cruelty to tricking me into plastic surgery to the recent interview.
I’ve never said it all out loud like this, not all at once, and I almost can’t believe how free it makes me feel.
How good it feels to share every last detail with someone who is as deeply on my side as Evie is, even though she is so, so horrified.
And I tell her about Luke. I tell her I still have the checks he gave me sitting in my drawer, uncashed, because the romantic
in me doesn’t want to take his money, and how I know he’ll probably fight me about this. I tell her how he notices everything,
how carefully he listens, how he makes me laugh, how much he wants to take care of the people he loves, how being around him
keeps me in the present moment, like I’m somehow more alive when I’m with him. And how I’ve basically been in love with him
my whole life.
“And now it’s happening,” Evie says, her face half smushed in her pillow. We’re both so tired but we can’t stop talking.
I smile. “Yeah. It is.”