Chapter 16 #2
“That is just adorable,” Mom said, clapping her hands together, marking the first and only time I’ve ever been happy to have my mom interject herself into a conversation between me and a girl. “Now, let’s eat while it’s still Thanksgiving.
“So, Ever, where are you from?” Mom asked between bites of mashed potatoes.
Norman, Oklahoma.
Ever took a sip of her water, clearing her throat. “Oklahoma, near Oklahoma City.”
“Oh, tornado alley. Have you been through one?”
Jesus, Mom.
“Yes, actually. A couple of them.”
“A couple of them? I would have been out of there after one.” My mom laughed at her own joke, eliciting a polite smile from Ever. “Why did you move up here?”
I set my fork down, glaring at Mom, hoping she would take a hint. Spoiler alert: no hints were taken.
Ever, god bless her, didn’t flinch. “It’s a long story, but I guess the bottom line is that I needed a fresh start somewhere else. Anywhere else. And at that point, I didn’t care, even though I probably should have taken climate into consideration.”
“How did you end up here?” Nix asked, ignoring me glaring at him from across the table.
“I threw a dart at a map and ended up here.”
What? Well, that was certainly new information.
“Is that right?” Mom asked, stunned. “And you would have moved anywhere that dart landed?”
Ever nodded. “I mean, within reason. If it would have landed in the next county over or somewhere in Arkansas, I would have done a redo.”
“What’s wrong with Arkansas?” Nix asked, chuckling.
“Have you seen Arkansas?” Ever had a gleam in her eye that I hadn’t seen in a while.
A letting-her-guard-down-to-allow-the-real-Ever-to-come-out kind of gleam that if Nix were a smart man, would scare the living shit out of him, as he was about to be ripped a new one if he dared enter into a battle of wits with Ever Moore.
“I have, actually. It’s nice. In parts.”
“So are those cookies I brought. Nice in parts, but other parts are sketchy and just may kill you if you’re not careful.”
“What did your family think about your move?” And there goes Mom again.
“Mom, this isn’t twenty questions. Let Ever eat without having to tell you her entire family history.”
“It’s fine, Loche.” Ever turned her attention back to Mom. “I’m an only child. My dad left when I was a toddler. My mom died around four years ago, leaving me without any kind of immediate family.”
“Shit.” Nix sat frozen, his fork suspended in mid-air in his hands.
Mom’s jaw dropped in conjunction, her brain short-circuiting as she stared at Ever in disbelief. “No wonder you left home. You poor thing.”
“No, I’m not a poor thing at all. Moving here was the best thing I ever could have done for myself.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve secured a decent-paying job and a rental home in kind of a sketchy area, but that makes it affordable, so I’m not complaining.
I’ve made friends, and I’ve had the experience of meeting your son.
But between you and me, I haven’t determined whether that’s actually a fortunate thing or not. ”
“Yeah. Us, too.” Nix chimed in, adding his own two cents, which was met with a reprise of my middle finger.
“You know, I almost turned down Loche’s invitation to come here because having dinner with one of my bosses sounded about as fun as a pap smear.” Ever quipped, likely trying to change the subject. “But then he told me Conrad wasn’t going to be here, so it made the decision a little easier.”
“Yeah, my brother is a first-class asshole,” my mom replied, “but he helped me with Loche’s dad and Loche. Even though I suspect he did so to try to limit the embarrassment to him.”
“What happened? Were the two of you getting divorced? Was Loche a teenage heathen? Come clean to me, Evie. He was a real juvenile delinquent, wasn’t he?” Ever glanced at me, raising a playful eyebrow.
Mom and I locked eyes, and I shook my head, indicating that I hadn’t yet told Ever what had become of my shitbag of a sperm donor or the fact that he’d met his end with a knife to the heart, inflicted by the child who was the spitting image of him.
A child who, quite frankly, preferred to wear a mask rather than look in the mirror and see the face of a monster.
“Well, we didn’t get a divorce, but what happened achieved the same end result. The man isn’t in my life anymore, and that’s all that matters.”
“Oh, he died, then.” Ever covered her mouth, glancing between Mom and me as though she were at Wimbledon and information was being rallied between the two of us. “I’m sorry. I should have known I was going to say something I shouldn’t have. That seems to be my specialty.”
Mom smiled. “It’s okay, dear. But I think my son owes you a little bit of an explanation.” She looked up at me, ignoring my headshake as she mouthed You need to tell her. “Loche, why don’t you and Ever have a chat while Nix and I clean up.”
“Yeah, Loche. Why don’t you and Ever have a nice, long chat. You know, tell her everything.” Nix eyed me, beginning to gather dirty plates from the table.
Yup, I was going to kick his ass at our next training.
“I’m really sorry,” Ever said, turning my attention back to her and her wide eyes that were staring at me as though she’d just backed over my dog.
“It’s okay, really.” I stood up from the table, nodding at the balcony. “Why don’t we go outside?”
A blast of cool air hit me as soon as I slid the sliding glass door open and Ever and I stepped onto the balcony.
Great. I should have told her to grab her coat because she was already shivering.
“Here,” I motioned for her to come closer to me.
I put my arms around her, bringing her in closer to my body. “I’ll make it quick.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
Was she making a joke, belittling my stamina on Thanksgiving?
Fuck, she was brutal. But that was also kind of hot.
Great, I’m now standing on my balcony, holding her close to my body for warmth, about to tell her I’m a murderer while sporting a chub.
If there is a God and he or she is listening, please don’t let Ever notice and think that patricide made me horny.
“I’ve never brought a girl here, to be honest.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not much for dating. Plus, Nix likes to walk around naked, so there’s that.”
“Too bad your mom and I had to ruin the holiday for him and make him put on pants.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“He seems to care about you.”
I looked down at Ever’s face as she peered out toward the city. “What about any of our exchanges today would make you think that?”
“You two rib each other, but there’s love there. It’s pretty obvious he would do anything for you.”
“And vice versa, honestly.”
“Yeah, I caught that, too.”
“I haven’t always had that—someone there for me when I needed them. Mom tried, but she was messed up for a while. As was I.”
“Something terrible happened, didn’t it? That’s why we’re out here?”
I nodded. “It’s also part of the reason why I don’t bring women home. They either already know, or they’ll find out later and leave me.”
“What happened, Loche?”
I exhaled, closing my eyes, willing the visions of my father’s lifeless body crumpled on our carpet, his blood staining his t-shirt, growing in area like a puddle in the rain, as his blank eyes stared up at the ceiling, and the gun remained clutched in his hand, to go away.
“When I was fifteen, my father came home drunk, like he was known to do. Most nights, he would come home, stumble through the door and pass out on the couch as he pissed himself. But other times, he would come home in a fit of rage that he would take out on either Mom or me, whoever he saw first.”
“Jesus, Loche. That’s terrible.”
“It gets worse. The last night he came home from the bar, he was in a fit of rage after running into one of Mom’s ex-boyfriends there. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at her. I don’t doubt he would have pulled the trigger, murdering her, and possibly me, that night—had I not killed him first.”
Ever’s body stiffened, and I mentally prepared myself for her to run screaming from the apartment. But she stood resolute, allowing her brain to process what I’d told her. How I would give anything to know what she was thinking right now.
“I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and snuck up behind him. When I was within arm’s reach, I called his name. He turned around, and I drove the blade into his chest.”
Ever let out a shaky breath. The thought that she may be afraid of me made my stomach turn, but as fucked up as I was, maybe it would be for the best if she was. “If you want to leave, I understand.”
“What happened next?” she asked, purposely looking away from me.
“Well, long story short, it was determined to be self-defense, and I was placed in an intensive, inpatient therapy hospitalization program before being slowly reintegrated back into society and eventually back home. Conrad had a large part of that, managing to keep a lot of things hush-hush, but the public still found out about the teenage boy who murdered his father and got away with it—or so that was the narrative that was spun. Whispers still follow me around town today. They’re quieter than they used to be, but I still can’t quite shake the thought that I’m a pariah. ”
“I’m so sorry,” Ever whispered, her voice cracking. She took a step back, and my heart sank at the thought that any gains I’d made with her as Loche had been wiped away by my admission.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to share an office with a murderer. And I’m sure Sylvia would appreciate it if we weren’t in the same vicinity as each other, too. She could probably take a vacation.”
Ever scoffed. “And lose the chance to incur enough points to warrant being called back into her office for a verbal spanking? Never.”
“You’re not disgusted by me?”