Chapter 23 You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now #2
Eve wrinkled her nose, thinking Thanksgiving was practically tomorrow.
“Really?” she said, solely because she was too unprepared to respond with an outright no .
The last time he asked her to leave the confines of their little neighborhood, she responded by ghosting him.
He was testing her rigidity, and she was going to fail.
“Me and Lucy are splitting Jack’s Thanksgiving break, and he asked to meet you. I thought maybe a group dinner would ease the tension…”
“You told your son about me.” It was a question, but it had come out as a statement.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she said, shaking her head. She’d done everything in her power not to think about it. Or any of the realities of their situation.
“We’ve been at this for months now,” Jamie said.
“I know.”
“So yeah, I’m gonna mention you to my son,” he said with a tense chuckle. “He just thinks we’re friends.”
Eve was full on scowling by then, still trying to process the idea that he wanted her to come to Nashville and interact with his child. On a family holiday, of all things. Would she be meeting his ex, too? And Tyler? It all felt dangerously close to a real relationship.
“How old is your son again?” She was deflecting.
She knew he was eight. That fact didn’t leave her mind, because it often sent it wandering to what her own son would’ve looked like at that age.
At every age. She’d only gotten a glimpse after delivering him, and with her exhaustion and sorrow, she was never sure she remembered him quite correctly.
Through her blur of tears, she had a picture in her head of a round face, cinnamon skin, and a head full of soft black hair.
She squeezed her eyes shut, needing to block it out.
“He’s eight,” Jamie said. “It’s fine if you don’t want to. I just thought, since he asked, and he’s the most important person in my life, you might be interested at this point.”
Eve rolled her eyes at his attempt to emotionally manipulate her. “Don’t do that passive-aggressive shit,” she said, slamming the tailgate shut. “You’re better than that.”
“I’m not being passive-aggressive. I’m being honest.”
“Jamie, we’re not…” She ran a frustrated hand over her face. “What we have is working as is. I don’t know why you can’t leave it at that. Keep your kid out of it.”
He visibly bristled in response, his jaw clenching as he looked to the treescape ahead of them, and Eve knew she was fucking this up.
It had been such a good day. They awoke to the sun shining through the bare trees, had sex for breakfast, and ate pancakes for lunch.
They’d gone grocery shopping and then wood chopping.
And if this conversation had gone well, they would’ve retired to his cabin and cuddled up together to read their separate books—he was in the middle of 1984 , while she was rereading some Tayari Jones for inspiration—as was their typical Saturday routine.
But Eve was just a couple of wrong words from making their evening an uncomfortable one.
She wanted to give in. She wanted to tell him about the child she birthed and the ones she couldn’t. That she’d spent so much of the past year, the past decade and a half, aching for the little boy she never got to meet, she didn’t think she’d ever feel normal again. That was until she met Jamie.
But she’d rather him think she hated kids than find out she was just pathetic.
“I can take a lot, Eve,” Jamie said. “I dealt with you ignoring me. I’m fine with going slow. But you can’t disregard my son and expect me to play along.”
“I’m…not sure what to say here,” she said, attempting to tread lightly.
“Maybe you should sleep at your house until you figure it out,” he said, his twang uncharacteristically hushed.
Eve was taken aback, dismayed by the idea of him being down the road and them sleeping apart.
The last time that happened, they were still strangers.
“No,” she said. It wasn’t exactly optional, but she wasn’t ready to be pushed away.
“I’ll sleep on the couch if you really want me to, but I don’t think we should be apart. ”
“So I guess this is only a relationship when you want it to be,” Jamie said, heading to the driver’s side of his truck.
Eve didn’t respond, partly—maybe mostly—because she knew he was, yet again, correct, and there was nothing to respond with. She listened to his engine roar, some part of her wondering if he was going to leave her there, the other part unable to blame him if he did.
She let out a heavy, quaking sigh. She was on the verge of ruining the one really good thing she’d somehow managed to find in her mess of a life. But she just wasn’t ready to open the can of worms that included children.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck !” she hissed.
“Are you coming?” Jamie asked through his window.
Eve shook her head. “I’ll walk. Back to my place.”
—
Eve awoke the next morning on her own couch, discombobulated and cold.
The night before, she’d been too defeated to kindle a fire, so she drank some wine and curled up with a couple of fleece blankets.
She was paying for it now, feeling like she’d slept in an igloo, not to mention the ache in her back and joints, her thirty-four years hastily catching up to her.
She forced herself up and started on breakfast, mainly in hopes of warming up the house. But it was still early—still dark—so she would make some biscuits and bring them to Jamie before he left for the week. A sort of peace offering.
By the time her kitchen counters were covered in flour and the biscuits were in the oven, Jamie was knocking at the door. When she greeted him, she noticed that he’d driven over, which likely meant he was about to leave for Nashville.
“I didn’t even hear your truck,” she said, leaving him to follow her to the kitchen.
Jamie did follow, but not too far. “Just wanted to let you know that I probably won’t be out here next weekend,” he said evenly. “Figure I should use that time to prepare for the holiday.”
Eve made a concerted effort not to visibly react and simply looked at him. He stood in the middle of her living room as if afraid to get too close.
“Okay,” she said. She returned to her task of cleaning off the counters, unwilling to play whatever game this was.
“This is really how you wanna do this?”
“Jamie, I woke up this morning thinking we could start on a new page, because obviously we ended up on different ones last night,” she said, pointing toward her mess of a kitchen. “You’re the one who came over here to continue your tantrum.”
“I came over here because I didn’t wanna be immature and leave without saying anything. But I’m not gonna pretend I’m not bothered by this whole thing.”
“Well…have a safe trip home.” She offered a strained smile as the period at the end of her sentence.
Jamie nodded. “You said you didn’t wanna push me away, but that’s what you’re doing.”
“Don’t throw that back at me,” she said. She stopped cleaning and planted herself in the corner of her kitchen, coolly crossing her arms over her chest as she rested against the counter. “What do you want?”
“Why don’t you like kids?”
Eve rolled her eyes. “I don’t wanna have this conversation again.”
“We barely had one the first time.”
“Meeting your son makes this serious, and I’m not ready to be serious.”
“Well, maybe I should stop driving out here every weekend for something that’s not serious.”
“If you had somewhere better to be every weekend, I’m sure you would’ve been there.”
Jamie’s chuckle sounded so mocking it felt caustic. “All right,” he said.
“So I shouldn’t expect you anytime soon?”
“You’re just gonna spend Thanksgiving here? Alone?”
Eve shrugged. She was supposed to be home by now anyway. Jamie was the reason she didn’t have an exit plan. She’d been enjoying her new life so much, it was easy to ignore the old one. Until now. “I have a play to finish.”
With his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat, Jamie finally walked toward Eve until he was closer than she wanted him to be. He pulled a scrap of paper from his right pocket and set it on the counter in front of her.
“Whatever this is you’re doing, you don’t have to do it by yourself,” he said, his voice soft but clear. “People don’t exist… I don’t exist to distract you from whatever you’re running from. I’m a person, Eve. Not a fantasy.”
Eve should’ve left it at that. She wanted to. But he couldn’t leave well enough alone, and she couldn’t either. “Maybe you should’ve listened to me when I told you what this was.”
At the end of summer, she’d asked Jamie not to fall in love with her—not because she was taken, but because she was unavailable. This was always going to be the end result, her disappointing him in some way.
Jamie nodded again, his eyes scanning her face before turning for the door. “I wish I could turn it all off as easily as you do,” he said. “I’ll see you around, Eve.”