Chapter 6 Roll With It
Roll With It
Jamie
When he walked into Crockett’s, he immediately spotted Eve, as she was literally too beautiful to miss, her skin dark, like midnight, but rivaling the sun in brilliance, and her hair in long braids that fell past her waist. It had been almost a week since they met, but he’d thought of her often in the intervening days.
He instantly and instinctively smiled at the sight of her in line at the register.
He’d kept his promise to stay out of her way, but seeing her in public, purely by coincidence, seemed like a good excuse to initiate another conversation.
Jamie called out to her a couple of times before tapping her on the shoulder, receiving a confounded scowl when she turned his way. She removed one of her AirPods when she finally seemed to recognize him.
“Oh,” Eve said, holding on to a smile. “Hey.”
He’d obviously startled her and took a step back to give her some space.
“Sorry,” he said, and gestured to the earbud she was clutching.
“I’d been calling your name, but I guess you couldn’t hear me.
” He wondered what song had her so engrossed.
She seemed like someone who would put on Sade for a day like this.
Eve only stared at him. “Did you…need something?”
“No, I just…It’s good to see you again.” He hoped he wasn’t coming off too eager. He was a pretty low-key guy, but she had a way of making him feel like he was constantly doing too much.
“Well, I’ll…probably see you again at some point,” she said plainly as she turned back to the register.
“I’m sure you will.” Jamie smiled at the back of her head wryly.
If she was uninterested in furthering the conversation, he would leave it at that, but his eyes stayed on her as she went through the motions of making (or rather, avoiding) small talk with Jill, the cashier.
She was kinda awkward, closed off in a way that he didn’t quite understand but that he liked.
The opposite of Hazel Beasley, but he could see the older woman in her when he looked long enough.
“…They say it might get up to about seventy today,” Jill was saying to her, oblivious to Eve’s indifference. “If it’s seventy up here, I can only imagine how hot it is at lower elevation. Probably ninety-somethin’ down there.”
“Well, it is almost July,” Eve said.
“How long are you visiting for?” the cashier asked. Jamie’s ears perked up as he waited for Eve’s reply.
“I’ll be here awhile.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“That’s the plan,” Eve said.
It wasn’t until she finished the transaction that Jill asked the question clearly sitting on her lips, her eyes searching for the answer on their own. “Aren’t you Hazel’s girl? From New York City?”
Eve replied with a curt “No” before practically running away once her receipt was in her possession.
“She’s like that with everyone,” Jamie said, stepping forward to place his order. “Don’t take it personally.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Jill said, eyeing him now. “People in pain aren’t always the best communicators.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow, wondering if she knew something he didn’t.
It would be an understatement to call Jill nosy; it was entirely possible she had Eve’s entire backstory in her pocket.
But there was also a melancholy about Eve that was perhaps more noticeable than he thought.
At least it wasn’t just in his mind. “I guess that’s true.
” He was perusing the take-out menu when he noticed his neighbor’s debit card in the reader.
“Can’t remember the last time I saw you here on a weekday,” Jill said as he gazed out of the exit. “Everything okay with you ?”
Jamie kind of enjoyed that Jill couldn’t help herself from prying. It was a hallmark of tiny towns like Gatlinburg, charming when it wasn’t annoying. “Everything’s fine,” he said. “I’ll have a fried cinnamon roll and a small coffee.”
She smiled at him sweetly. “No bacon today?”
“And bacon,” he said, glancing outside again.
He handed over a twenty-dollar bill and grabbed Eve’s card.
“I’ll be right back.” He rushed out of the restaurant to catch Eve before she could take off, spotting her at the back of the moderately full lot, unlocking Hazel’s champagne-colored Honda Accord.
“Eve,” he called out, careful not to surprise her yet again.
But as he reached the car, he realized that she was leaning against the vehicle for support. “You…okay?”
“What do you want?” Her tone still lacked any of the playful indignation of their introduction.
“You left this inside.” Jamie gingerly handed over the red, orange, and yellow Wells Fargo card but retreated like a skittish puppy when Eve dropped her bag to the ground and appeared to double over in pain.
He could hear her mutter a series of expletives as she rested her hands on her knees and shook her head.
“Eve…” He said her name as delicately as he could, warning her that he was moving closer.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
“I won’t.” He halted in his tracks and watched as she frantically tried to remove the hoodie she was wearing. “I just wanna know if you’re all right.”
Eve tried to cover her face, but he’d already caught the tears rolling down her cheeks as she began to hyperventilate.
“Can I help you take this off?” Jamie remained calm, recognizing the signs of a panic attack.
He’d been through this a few times with Jack, and it never got any easier watching his kid devolve into a fit of sweats and trembles while gasping for air.
Especially when they seemed to coincide with some of his worst fights with Lucy.
Luckily, Eve seemed amenable as he assisted in getting her sweatshirt over her head.
“I feel like I’m not breathing right,” she said through tears. She was massaging her throat with her fingertips as if trying to coax air from it. “What the fuck?”
“I know,” Jamie said. “It’s scary, but I can help you get through it.
” When she didn’t protest, he moved to stand directly in front of her, taking care not to touch her any more than necessary.
“Close your eyes and try to think about three things you can hear right now. My voice. The birds. That car pulling off.” When Eve nodded, he gave her a moment to focus before moving on.
“Now, put your hand flat on your stomach. Just above your belly button.” She immediately followed his instruction.
“And I want you to take a big, long inhale through your nose, and then exhale slowly… slowly …through your mouth.” He nodded along as she completed the task, her eyes squeezed shut as she drew in big gulps of air and softly released them.
“Just breathe,” he said. He wanted to wipe her tears, but that wasn’t a boundary worth crossing just as she was regaining her bearings. “Keep breathing.”
When Eve’s breaths seemed to quicken after a few minutes, Jamie interjected again. “Think about two things you can smell right now,” he said. “Think about something you can taste. Whatever you just had for breakfast.”
Eve nodded again, seeming to focus on those tiny diversions until the worst of the attack began to subside. She kept her right hand on her stomach and was wiping her face with her left when she finally reopened her eyes.
“You okay?” Jamie asked.
“I think so.” She continued to rest against her grandmother’s car, which left him dubious of her claim.
“You wanna go back inside and sit down?”
“No,” she said. She looked down at her feet as if in deep contemplation before speaking again. “That’s never happened before.”
“This was your first panic attack?”
She looked like she wanted to argue but didn’t. “It’s never been so debilitating before, I guess. If what I’ve been having are panic attacks, they were much more composed. Elevated heart rate. Maybe tingling or shivering. But this literally felt like my throat was closing up.”
Jamie wished he had something useful to offer, but nothing would allay just how terrifying that must have been. “Did something trigger it?”
Eve stared out to the horizon as she shook her head. “I don’t know. Feels like everything about this place is a trigger.”
He wondered what that meant; he also knew better than to ask. “You sure you’re okay? You wanna go to a hospital, maybe?”
She seemed to consider it, at least. “Is that little one still in Pigeon Forge? I think it was called Crestwood…something?”
“I haven’t heard of it,” Jamie said. “Closest one to here is Covenant over in Sevierville.”
Eve made a face, and he had a pretty good idea of why, considering the demographics of the area. At least on this side of town, visitors to Dollywood and the national park gave the illusion of some diversity.
“I can take you to Knoxville if that would make you more comfortable,” he said.
“No offense. Truly. I appreciate you talking me down,” Eve said. She finally stood up without the aid of her grandmother’s car. “But that would make me exponentially more un comfortable.”
“Understood.” Jamie extended a small smile and a bit more space now that she seemed beyond the attack, at least. “But I wouldn’t feel right just leaving you here like this. So what’s our move?”
“ Our move?” She matched his grin with one of her own, and all at once, it felt like the sun was shining on their dreary day. “So in a situation where I have a panic attack, your comfort trumps mine? Is that what’s happening here?”
“I’m afraid so.” Jamie was prepared to go head-to-head if she wanted, as it was what he enjoyed most about their first interaction.
And if she was in the mood to banter, maybe he didn’t have to worry about her as much as he presumed.
But he also hoped, as his smile grew wider, too, that she recognized he was joking and wasn’t truly trying to encroach on her boundaries.
“In that case, I guess I could afford to go back inside and sit down for a few minutes,” Eve said. “I assume you came here to have breakfast and not tend to a crazy lady.”
“I did.” Jamie motioned toward the restaurant entrance, cuing her to go ahead of him. “Lucky for us, I can do both.”