28. Evelyn
28
Evelyn
Move in with me, baby: Tuesday, 4 p.m. – 10 p.m. @ My Place
“ Y ou cooked?” Quinn embraces me with her free arm inside the entryway. She’s started using her fall perfume, transitioning from florals to warm vanilla. I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to experience it this year.
“I did. But just know if you go to the pub and it tastes the same, they stole my recipes. Not the other way around,” I say. I am a nightmare in the kitchen. The first time I’d “cooked” to try and impress Quinn and Oliver, I’d plated Olive Garden alfredo and soup to pass it off as my own. It worked up until Quinn found the bag in the trash.
“I love it when you host. I always know I’m going to get restaurant quality.” Oliver throws me a conspiratorial wink. A drizzle has started outside and a cool breeze floats in before he shuts the door.
“Only the best for my esteemed guests. I see that you’ve brought the finest vintage to pair with our meal.” I cock my head toward the hand Quinn’s using to clutch the box of red blend.
“I couldn’t break tradition,” she says. “You really think your man will be able to stomach it?”
“He doesn’t drink much so he’ll probably take one sip and then dump it out in the sink at some point when no one is looking,” I say, already imagining how he’ll go about it.
“Not everyone can have our refined paletes,” Quinn says disapprovingly.
I usher Quinn and Oliver the rest of the way into the house. When we reach the dining table, Garrett is placing a tray of mini sliders next to the bowl of mashed potatoes.
He and I spent the last few hours prepping. He brought over a suitcase with clothes and toiletries to make it look like he’s been living here with me. Oliver isn’t exactly the snooping type, but I’ve been right alongside Quinn at house parties when trips to the bathroom turned into self-guided tours.
Tonight is the first time I’ve used the table since I arrived—well, at least for its intended purpose. I had to clean off stray papers and to-go cups before we could put down the emerald table runner we found in the linen cabinet.
There’s always been something special about sit-down dinners for the three of us, even at restaurants. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t make the food or that we used to eat off the cheap plastic plates that every college student bought for their first apartment.
It was our way of making time for each other.
Quinn adds the box of wine to the table and Garrett raises his eyebrows but plays along and fills his glass. I don’t think he takes a single sip. When Oliver’s fork clatters to the ground Garrett offers to get a new one and takes his glass with him. I share a look with Quinn when he returns with an empty glass.
“Wow, you really downed that,” I say. My knee nudges against his under the table. When I start to pull it away his hand lands on my thigh, keeping it in place. The touch is warm and steady like he’s done it a hundred times before.
“I couldn’t help myself. It was too good to just sip,” Garrett says.
“I’ll make sure to tell Pat to get some at The Gas Station,” I threaten.
His lips twitch in an entertaining mix of a smile and a grimace. “Maybe we should just keep it for special occasions.”
“Tell me, what notes did you pick up on?” I press my leg further against his. In response his thumb glides up my inner thigh. Heat flashes through me, landing low.
“Earthy. Definitely earthy.” The gravel in his voice skates against my skin.
“You know, not everyone picks up the dirt aftertaste!” Quinn chimes in. Her cheeks are slightly flushed from her second glass.
“I didn’t say that. I will say the tannins are impressive.” Garrett picks up my half full glass and gives it a swirl. “Decent legs.” On the word legs he squeezes my thigh, prompting me to reach for my water to cool off.
“You can say it’s bad. We know it’s bad,” Oliver volunteers, as an olive branch.
“Because you hate yourselves?” Garrett asks.
“Sometimes,” Quinn admits as she reaches for more fries. “But there’s this liquid nostalgia to it that is impossible to replicate. What seasoning is on these? There’s something spicy about them that I can’t place.”
“Ahh, that’s the essence of ghost pepper, I think.”
“You really have a way with ingredients.” Quinn nods approvingly then takes another bite.
We all settle into the night slowly spiraling back to who we are, a mattress that remembers the shape of the bodies that have worn their impressions into it. Quinn and Oliver spare no detail telling us about the birds they spotted on the hike yesterday and the loose gravel that almost sent Oliver to the hospital with a sprained ankle. The trays empty as we refill our plates. Eventually, we’re left picking at scraps, savoring everything left at the table.
Oliver’s face brightens when he notes the state of the food and then calls out, “Capitals!”
“Wait,” I say and put up a hand to stop the progress. “Let me explain it to Garrett first.”
Quinn raises a brow. “Do you think he’ll have a fighting chance?”
“They don’t let him participate in local trivia, so I think so,” I say.
“What am I missing?” Garrett looks more amused than confused.
“It’s what we do to determine who does the dishes after a meal,” I say. “We pull up this website and whoever gets the least amount of capitals of countries right in under a minute has to do them.”
“Can’t we all just help out?” Garrett offers a logical, albeit boring solution.
“When Quinn and I lived together we had this tiny kitchen and only one person could actually fit in it,” I explain.
“It didn’t even have a full-sized fridge,” Quinn adds.
“And practically no cabinet space,” Oliver jumps in. “Remember that time you stored those plastic cutting boards in the oven and we forgot to take them out.”
Quinn’s face scrunches her nose. “Even thinking about it makes me get this phantom smell. God, burning plastic was the worst. And then we had to use those shitty lighters to melt the plastic off because we were all too broke to get new oven racks.”
“Like we could find ones that worked with that ancient oven,” I say. That apartment was one of my favorite places. It was cramped and we were always finding mold, but it was ours.
“So, are you in?” I ask Garrett.
“If you’ll let me,” he says.
I text Garrett the link to the website. It’s a bit jarring to take a look at our messages; there have only been a few. Most of our exchanges have been through calendar invites.
The website has a timer built in so we don’t have to synchronize our start times. There’s a few seconds between each of us finishing. As usual, Quinn wins with forty. It’s less that she likes being the best at things and more that she hates failing. Oliver gets thirty-five and I get thirty-three. Surprisingly, Garrett gets twenty-four. Accepting his fate, he grabs a stack of dishes and heads through the door to the kitchen. I wait a beat before collecting an armful of trays and serving utensils.
The dishes clatter as they jostle in my arms causing Garrett to look up from where he’s turning on the sink. “What are you doing in here?”
“Helping. There’s room for the two of us and they’re my friends. You don’t need to do this alone,” I tell him as I unload my armful onto the counter.
“I lost on purpose so you could spend time with them,” he says in that weighted way that forces me off balance. “You guys looked like you were having a good time.”
“Are you just saying that so I think you know more capitals?” I tease, instead of acknowledging the gesture. An aftershock of heat climbs to my cheeks as I also remember his hand on my leg. Then there was the kiss from three days ago, the way he asked how I wanted him to kiss me, tender then ravenous.
“I could start listing them if you need proof,” he offers.
“Feeling confident?”
“Minsk,” he says, then turns off the water.
“Easy.”
“Brussels.” He takes a step closer and my heart thunders.
“Basic,” I breathe.
“Helsinki.”
“Obvious.” I lean back against the counter and his body eats up the remaining space between us. His arms land on either side of my hips, caging me in. Bergamot and lavender wash over me.
“Port au Prince.”
“Passable,” I say. His eyes are on my lips. He’s not even hiding it. I want to reach up and pull him in. I want him to close the distance. “What else do you have for me?”
“I’m coming in to get water!” Quinn shouts a second before she strides in. Garrett doesn’t move an inch. It takes me a moment to remember that it’s good for Quinn to catch us like this, acting like a couple who’d casually occupy each other’s space.
“Thanks for the announcement,” I say, trying and failing to keep my voice steady.
“I just ate, no point in ruining a good meal by walking in on something pornographic. It looks like I got in just in time. Cups?” Quinn asks, and I point to the cabinet to my left. She navigates around us, selecting a commemorative Love Letter Festival cup from 2016 and then going to the fridge to get the Britta.
“Can you blame me? She’s the perfect dessert,” Garrett says as he runs the cold back of his hand against my flaming cheek.
I gasp into his mouth as his lips seal against mine. My chin tilts upward guided by his thumb and forefinger. My eyes flutter closed. The kiss is over a moment later, but I still feel it everywhere. Not just this kiss but a collection of all the moments he’s touched me. Calluses skating across my skin. Fingers in my hair. The seer of his fingers through fabric.
“I’m going to go finish the boxed wine in hopes I forget I heard that,” Quinn says to herself. “Carry on, but please keep any moaning to a minimum.”
“Go make out with Oliver on the couch,” I say, and it feels more natural than I would have thought.
Quinn halts in the doorway putting a hand on the door jamb and considers. “Tempting. I’m more of a rendezvous in a bathroom gal.”
Even as Quinn leaves, Garrett doesn’t pull away.
“You didn’t have to kiss me,” I tell him.
“As long as they’re here, you’re mine,” he says, guiding my chin up so I meet his heavy lidded gaze. “That’s the deal right?”
His. I like that too much.
“Yeah,” I breathe out. “I just don’t want you to do anything you're uncomfortable with.”
“Don’t worry, I’m very comfortable with kissing you,” he says. His body holds in place one second longer before moving to the sink and turning the water back on. “It seems like things are better between the three of you.”
“Yeah, we’re getting our footing again. We’ve never been so out of sync before. Not even when Oliver and I broke it off,” I admit, thankful for the subject change.
“Do you think there’s a reason for it?” he asks as he plunges his hands into the mountain of suds growing in the sink. “You dry, I wash?”
I move to his other side and grab a towel. “Sure. I think there’s a part of me that was hoping they’d just forget me? I have always had this tendency to build in these excuses for people to leave or to push me away. Like, if I can know the reason, then at least I can understand it. But then they showed up and we’re in different places.”
It’s a hard truth I’ve been grappling with. If I can control why I’m alone, if I can make it my fault, then at least there's a justification. It’s better than being left with an explanation of just because that sends me spiraling. But also it’s hard to trust myself to not do what I did to Oliver with someone else.
“That’s fair.”
“I think it’s part of what terrifies me with Lyla. If I go public, there will be plenty of people who hate me for no reason. I know that’s normal, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough. I mean, I obsess over podcast reviews and they don’t even know anything personal about me,” I say.
“From what I can tell, you’re not obsessing over them anymore.” His focus is directed to scrubbing. “But things would change. People start caring about you when they used to act like you were never there. I hadn’t seen my mom for almost four years at the time we started touring.”
“You were what, seventeen? Eighteen?”
“Eighteen.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
His eyes jump to me as he hands me a plate and his expression shadows. “Don’t do that.”
“What? Acknowledge how much that fucking sucks? Because it does.” I hate thinking about how he went through all of that. How, even though I thought I knew him, I didn’t at all. How maybe if I paid more attention I could have done… I don’t know. Something?
“I’m just saying you’re right to expect a shift and there are things that are shitty. I have my career. I was able to make it work,” he says, voice turning hollow. Sometimes when he talks it’s like he’s telling me a story about someone else, like it wasn’t him it happened to. Maybe that’s his way of coping with it, being someone else.
“A career you seem to hate.” I feel compelled to remind him.
“One that I’m good at. One where I’m valued and I earned everything I have,” he says, but I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince. “One that I’m going back to on Monday.”
“You don’t have to.”
I don’t want this version of him to disappear, the one who jokes about wine and holds my hand at museums. The one who gets lost in the moment when he plays music. He’s the man that I—well have this massive feeling that blooms to life in my chest when I think about him. Impending dread blankets me, struck by the feeling that if he starts working again, he won’t stop. And it will be like these past two weeks never happened. I’ll lose him. But I think he’ll lose himself, too.
“Eve, of course I do.” His shoulders slump and he looks away. It’s like he’s tugged on a thick winter coat. One that he’s so used to wearing, so he doesn’t seem to notice that it’s weighing him down.
“Those things you just said also go for music. You’re still great at it. People valued what you did.” I almost don’t say it, but after a moment I add, “I know you miss it.”
That should matter, not just the validation it gave him but the way it made him feel. If he wants that life, he should have it. But why can’t he see that as a relevant variable in his decision?
“It wouldn’t be the same, I’d be alone this time around.” His attention snaps back to the sink. “Let’s not talk about it. I’m going back and if you’re worried about what to tell Quinn and Oliver when I leave, I can take care of that,” he says, then hands me a knife. “Careful. Make sure to grab the handle.”
We finish the rest of the dishes in taut silence. No matter what I’ve learned about Garrett, I have to come to terms with the fact that our friendship is still new. Sometimes I feel like I’m navigating a minefield. He’s not explosive, but it makes me ache whenever he tucks himself away from me.
Once done we head back toward the living room.
“Coming in. Please pull on any discarded pieces of clothing!” I project my voice with a similar warning to what Quinn had given to us earlier.
“Get over here. Cuddle me.” I think Quinn is the one to say it but I’m not sure based on how low and hushed the words are.
“Ow. Watch your elbow,” comes a second voice.
“Do you guys need a second?” I ask, not quite sure what we’re interrupting.
“We’re decent!” Oliver croaks.
Quinn is reclined on Oliver’s chest holding a mostly empty glass of wine on the couch. His arms encircle her and rest on her stomach. It feels more different than uncomfortable to see them like this. I think I’ve settled into the fact that the awkwardness I do feel is because it’s as if I missed out watching a season of our favorite show with them. They know all the details and subplots, what characters have been written off, and I’m reading into every context clue I can get.
“Do we have time for a game?” I ask, looking between them as I try to regain the connection we had during dinner. “There’s Monopoly and a few others in the closet.”
“Actually, I think we’re going to call it a night,” Quinn says.
“We have to pick up the wine for the festival tomorrow at this berry farm. You guys should come!” I say. A few days ago, spending the car ride with them would have been impossible. Now, I think we’ll be able to survive it.
Oliver and Quinn exchange a look and a silent conversation passes between them.
“Could be fun,” Oliver says as he shifts to skate his hands up and down the sides of Quinn’s arms.
“I’m not sure you guys are going anywhere unless you brought a kayak with you,” Garrett says. I turn to find him looking out the back window toward the deck. Sheets of rain are coming down obscuring the usual view of the trees
“The car has four-wheel drive,” Quinn counters. “It’s less than two miles.”
“Good for the car. The problem is the road. It turns into a river in weather like this. If you don’t believe me, go check outside.” Garrett raises his arm gesturing toward the door.
This prompts Quinn, Oliver, and I to go look. I know Alina told me the road has drainage problems, but there’s no way it’s that bad. The moment I open the door I realize how wrong I am.
If I didn’t know there was a fully paved road at the base of my driveway, I would have believed there was always rushing water there.
“It’s a low priority project for the town. The water will clear up a few hours after the storm breaks,” Garrett says reassuringly, but that doesn’t seem to comfort anyone.
“We can walk,” Quinn says.
“You mean swim,” Oliver corrects. “Then get hypothermia. I’m sorry, but I don’t exactly want to spend my vacation in bed.”
“We have a spare room,” I offer.
“Oliver, you can borrow some of my clothes,” Garrett says. When I look at him he has this self-satisfied expression that clearly says, Good thing I was thorough.
Garrett’s clothes in my closet remind me about another key factor in this very fun, super voluntary, sleepover scenario. Oliver and Quinn aren’t the only ones stuck here.
And it’s not like Garrett and I can sleep in separate rooms.