Chapter 16
Loche
“You put paprika on the deviled eggs, right?” I asked, removing the pumpkin pie from the oven.
Nix rolled his eyes. “For the last time, yes, Loche. Yes, I did. I paprika’d the fuck out of those eggs.
And before you ask me again, I also set the table, picked up all my dirty laundry from the floor in the bathroom, hid our gear so Ever won’t see it and discover your secret identity, and made sure there were no photos of Malachi and Cole in sight, so you won’t be forced to just come clean with her and tell her who you are.
Because all of those are perfectly normal things to do when your girlfriend is coming over to your house for the first time. ”
“Oh, that reminds me. I need to turn off my burner phone.”
Nix stood staring at me for a couple of blinks before saying, “Fucking hell, Loche, “ and returning to gather various condiments together to put out on the table, all while adorned in an apron with a cartoon likeness of Adam Sandler holding a turkey on a platter. Lyrics to “The Thanksgiving Song” were displayed above cartoon Adam Sandler’s head.
As much as I wanted to argue, I knew he was right about everything.
A knock at our door sent my stomach tumbling to the floor. I set the pie down on a table that was already loaded with the food Nix and I had spent the better part of the day making. On my way to the door, I glanced in the mirror, fixing my hair and letting out a breath, reaching for the handle.
“Oh. Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from seeping into my voice. “How did you get up here without buzzing in first?”
“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, son,” she answered me, obviously having taken a smidgeon of offense to my less-than-enthusiastic tone.
“I brought the rolls.” She held up a sad package of Hawaiian rolls, which I plucked from her fingers and took to the kitchen.
“Your neighbor was walking out the front door as I was coming in and let me in. You may want to talk to them about that. For all he knew, I could be some mentally unstable person or some sort of stalker or something.”
“Yeah,” Nix said, looking over his shoulder at me with a smirk plastered across his face. “Wouldn’t it be terrible if you had a stalker, Loche?”
I didn’t bother to suppress flashing my middle finger at Nix when my mom turned her back to take off her coat, a gesture he returned. In the kitchen, I opened the plastic package containing the rolls and removed each of them, positioning them on a plate and bringing them to the table.
“How are you doing, Mom?” Nix asked the woman who’d informally adopted him a little too enthusiastically, throwing his arms around her.
“This is the type of greeting I was expecting from my biological son,” she proclaimed to my brown-nosing best friend.
“Don’t worry about Loche. He’s just nervous that his girlfriend won’t think there’s enough paprika on the eggs and flip the table like one of those women on The Real Housewives of wherever.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said, shooting Nix a glare.
Mom’s eyes widened with a renewed spark appearing on her face as the possibility of her one day having grandchildren was spontaneously resurrected from the grave in which it had been buried.
“She’s my coworker. I invited her to have dinner with us because she has nowhere else to go. ”
“And he has a crush on her.” Nix smiled mischievously, knowing that while Mom was in the room with us, he was safe from any retribution.
“That was very generous of you.” Mom eyed me expectantly as though expecting me to begin spilling all the dirty details of my and Ever’s non-relationship. “Doesn’t she have family?”
“Her family life is—complicated,” I answered, hoping that would be enough to keep her from asking any further questions.
“She’ll fit right in here, then.” Nix chuckled, taking out a glass jug of sweet tea, Ever’s beverage of choice outside of coffee, and placing it on the table.
“If you like her, why don’t you ask her out?” Mom asked, telling me that she wasn’t going to leave this dinner without learning everything she could find out about Ever. “Life is too short not to tell people how you feel.”
“In that case, Nix, you’re an asshole,” I said to my friend matter-of-factly, my eyes wandering to the clock on the wall.
Ever was never known to be punctual, and the fact that it was still five minutes before the time I told her to be here should have been comforting, but there was always the thought that she might back out at the last minute.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked to see if I had missed any texts from her.
“Wow, you have it bad.” Nix watched me, amused.
“What? She’s never been here before, and I just want to make sure she isn’t lost and needs directions.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, opening my mouth to reply when the telltale buzz erupted near the door, signaling someone was downstairs waiting to be let in. Nix, like the bastard he was, ran to the door, beating me to the punch to answer.
“Is this the titular Ever Moore, the woman Loche can’t stop talking about, no matter how much I ask him not to?”
“You’re on borrowed time.” I sneered at him.
“That’s me, I guess,” Ever answered. Her voice shook just the tiniest bit.
“Why hello, Ever. I’m Nix. Loche’s better-looking, stronger, funnier, smarter, and better-hung roommate. Dinner’s ready, and we’ve been waiting for you in apartment 823.”
Yup. I was going to kill him.
“823, I’ll be right up.”
Nix buzzed her inside as my mom turned to me. “Her name is Ever Moore? Isn’t that a work of Edgar Allen Poe or something?”
“You’re thinking of the word nevermore, which also happens to be my nickname for her that she one-hundred percent doesn’t despise at all.”
“Another reason why Loche keeps striking out with her.” Nix ribbed me some more, clearly forgetting the frequency with which I routinely handed him his ass in the ring.
“Wait,” my Mom added, an epiphany having struck her. “If you two get married, her name is going to be Ever Greene.”
“For the love of all things holy and sacred to you, including Jon Bon Jovi, do not mention that to Ever when she’s here unless you want to see her disappear, leaving a trail of Ever-shaped smoke in her wake like a Warner Bros cartoon.”
“But it’s so cute.”
“Mother, I beg of you. Don’t.”
“Fine,” she answered, deflated. “I’ll have you know you just ruined Thanksgiving for me.”
“And I’ll be able to live with that.”
Minutes later, a knock on the door heralded Ever’s arrival.
Ignoring Nix’s snickering, I turned toward the door, exhaling sharply as I opened it.
Behind it stood Ever, looking less like the spitfire I’d gotten to know and more like the vulnerable woman she allowed herself to be when she didn’t think anyone was watching.
Her beanie matched the long, black coat that fell to her knees.
On her feet, she wore the boots I sent her last winter, after she came to work with wet feet from walking in the first heavy snowfall that blanketed our area.
“Nevermore.” I smiled. “It’s forty degrees out. Why are you dressed like you’re about to go hiking in the Arctic tundra?”
“Because everyone here has a warped sense of when wearing coats and shorts is appropriate. This is one of the coldest Thanksgivings I’ve ever celebrated, second only to the one last year.”
“Are you going to invite her in, or do we have to make our way out into the hall?” my mother asked from behind me.
Ever chuckled as my cheeks began to burn, and I gestured for her to come inside the very place she’d been begging V to show her. “Ever, this is my mom, Evelyn. Mom, this is my coworker, Ever.”
“Oh, isn’t she lovely.” Mom admired Ever, ignoring her personal space and taking her in her arms for a hug. “You can call me Evie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ever replied, her cheeks now a shade of crimson, matching my own.
“And now that you’ve been mauled by my mother, this is my roommate, Nix.”
Ever looked behind my mom to see Nix waving at her with a smug smile on his face. “Nice meeting you, too.” She paused, studying Nix as though trying to recall him from somewhere deep in her memory. “Have I—have we met before?”
Fuck me.
Nix may be a raging dick from time to time, but he knew how to play it cool when he needed to.
“Not in this life. I’m sure it probably feels like we’ve met before because Loche can’t stop talking about me at work, right?
” He covered half his mouth and leaned in, miming as though he was moving in to whisper a secret. “Dude is mildly obsessed with me.”
I rolled my eyes, reaching out to Ever to take her coat and the bag she’d brought with her.
“I didn’t want to come empty-handed, so I brought some chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies with those chocolate candies in the middle.”
“Perfect. I didn’t know you baked. You never seemed like the Martha Stewart type to me.”
“Oh, I’m not,” she replied, laughing. “You’ll find that half the batch of the chocolate chips is a tad on the, shall we say, well-done side. Vinny wanted to watch Animal Planet, and I was trying to find the channel for him.”
I took out the Tupperware containers, finding no lies detected with the half-edible, half-charcoal baked goods packaged inside.
“Do you have a son?” my mom asked, intrusive as always.
“What?” Ever took off her boots, glancing up at mom with wide eyes. “Oh, no. No. Well, not a human one, anyway. Vinny is my turtle.”
“And he watches television?”
“She’s a very well-educated reptile,” I said, suddenly feeling very defensive toward Ever’s shellbaby. Ever cocked her head, seemingly confused. “I mean, look who her mom is, after all.”
“Vinny’s a boy, but otherwise, I would agree with you.”
Shit. Time to backpedal like hell.
“Of course, he is. My apologies to Vinny.”
Nix raised an eyebrow at me as if to say, And you were worried about me fucking up.