55 EVIE
E VIE
He stood at the opposite side of the dark dressing room, facing the wall, leaning heavily on it with one hand.
I closed the door behind me and stepped backward toward it, as if for support.
A tapestry hung loosely tacked on one wall.
Candles sat lit on a tidy table with bottles of water and juices, a few innocuous bottles of beer, and one small, unopened bottle of bourbon alongside a basket of health-food snacks.
Quite different from the way it had once looked.
A leather love seat sat to the right, next to a large dressing mirror.
Outside in the hall, our brief exchange had been such an assault on my senses that I’d barely processed it. I’d imagined what it might be like to see him again so many times that I was having a hard time telling if it was real or yet another scene from my imagination. But there he was.
Eventually, he turned, wiping the sheen of the show’s exertion from his face with a towel and tossing it aside.
“Hi,” I said finally, alarmed at how timid my voice sounded. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I didn’t want to leave things like ... like that.”
He didn’t reply at first, and for a moment, I thought he might tell me to leave. But then he smiled just a little. “I’m glad. I’m sorry I didn’t ...” He looked toward the hall. “I just wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to cause a problem. I wasn’t planning to try to come back here or anything.”
He looked away. “Right.”
“But I’m glad Fred came to get me. Really,” I quickly added. “No pass these days.” I laughed nervously, gesturing to the empty space where a laminated pass had once hung around my neck.
My legs wanted to move; I wanted to go to him, to wrap my arms around him and give him at least the barest hug of friendship, if nothing more. But instead, we both stayed where we were, unnaturally.
“So how are you?” he asked. He twisted the cap off a small bottle of coconut water, taking a long drink.
“I’m good.” The word sounded ridiculously simple. Such a plain word for such a big question. “How are you?”
He watched me closely, then smiled, amused, and for a moment, I recognized the softer, younger version of him.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous.”
I smiled back, relaxing a bit at the surprising comment. “Really?”
“No. You were always so sure of yourself. Confident. It’s different.” Was that how he had seen me? I wondered. Confident? I didn’t remember that girl anymore.
“I guess you could say I wasn’t expecting to see you either.” I ventured a step farther into the room. “Not like this, anyway.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. That you’re standing right here, right now.” He cocked his head. “I’m not entirely sure this isn’t my imagination.”
“Trust me, I know what you mean.”
He shrugged slightly, and I noticed where his damp shirt clung to him from the heat of the stage. “But I always think of you when I’m in this town. You live here now, right?”
“I do, yeah. For a while now.” I wondered how he knew anything about where I’d been living.
“That’s good. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes. It has,” I said sadly.
“I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again. And now here you are. Out of nowhere.” He watched me closely. “You’re still beautiful,” he said softly.
I wondered if he saw the warmth hit my cheeks as I smiled. Beautiful. So are you, I wanted to reply.
What I’d feared most, I realized—what I had expected—was indifference.
That I’d been just a blip in the path of his life.
That he’d barely remember or care about what we’d once been.
I’d expected to feel foolish and profoundly forgotten.
Oh, hey, Evie Waters. I’ve gotta run, but, it was nice to see you.
Take care. As if we were kids who’d once had an inconsequential fling at a summer camp.
But as I stood there, watching him look at me, I saw that this was something else altogether.
There was a history of love and loss in his face that I recognized as if he were a mirror.
“Thank you. For saying that. You look pretty wonderful too,” I told him.
The years had been kind, serving only to improve upon what had already been perfect to me.
But he’d changed. Was hard. Detached. Not like the man with the schoolboy hands-in-his-pockets stance I’d fallen for.
I couldn’t help but wonder what else he thought as he looked at me in return.
It occurred to me that neither of us had moved barely a muscle as we’d been standing there, paralyzed by the shock of it all.
As if reading my mind, he relaxed a little, leaning back onto the edge of a table and crossing his feet at the ankles.
“So why are you here?” His voice was quiet and restrained, but a dark undercurrent ran beneath it. “Now, I mean.”
“Would it be okay if I said I didn’t quite know?”
He nodded and smiled slightly. The lines around his mouth, the ones I’d loved to kiss so much, had enticingly deepened since I’d last seen him.
I looked away from him, toward the stage. “You were great out there.”
“Thanks.” He turned his head the same way. “You were leaving early?”
“Not by choice, I promise,” I said with a smile. “My friend Kate had to get home to the babysitter.” I realized how foreign and provincial that statement must have sounded to someone like him.
“Gotcha.” And then he pointed to the hall, recognition dawning. “Wait, Kate? Your old friend from high school?”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
My lips parted in surprise, but nothing came out. Several moments went by, the words hanging in the air. I remember everything.
The space between us crackled. I longed to fill it with words—something, anything—to relieve the pressure, but came up with nothing.
A loud noise from the hall startled us both as the crew had already begun disassembling the stage to move on to the next city.
I was reminded of where I was and how fleeting and rare this opportunity might be.
How long I’d waited for it. It was important to get it right, to find the words.
Though I knew, I could never make all of it right. Some things are too big to fix.
“I’ve wanted to tell you ... that I’m sorry,” I said, surprising myself.
“For what?”
“I know it was a long time ago and you’ve gone on with your life and all of that.” Once again, I felt foolish, presumptuously assuming that he needed to hear it, but I continued. “For everything. For the way I handled things back then.”
“You’re right. It was a long time ago. It’s fine,” he said kindly, but something in his voice told me he felt otherwise.
“I know I made a mistake, handling it the way I did. That day—in New York. I thought it was the right thing, but after a while, I knew it wasn’t. I guess I waited too long. And I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean, you ‘waited too long’?”
“I mean I understood. Why you didn’t want anything to do with me after that. I always have. I understand why you wanted to walk away.”
“Why I walked away?” His eyes narrowed darkly. “Ev, you did the walking, not me.”
“I know,” I said, closing inward a little. “I just needed a little time to figure some things out.” The words felt too simple. Not enough. Yet filled with regret.
His face softened again as he watched me. “A decade is a lot of time.”
“It is.”
“So did you?” he asked, smiling a bit.
“Did I what?”
“Figure it out.”
I laughed slightly, able to breathe at last, and considered the honesty of the question.
Carter had never been one to hold back from saying what was on his mind.
“No. I suppose not,” I answered finally with a small laugh.
A true statement if ever there was one. Not much had changed—I still didn’t know what was right.
“Ah.” He shifted as he sat, looking away and then back. “Can I ask you something, Ev?”
Ev.
“Sure. Anything.”
“What was it? Back then. What did I do that scared you so badly that you could just leave like that? Throw everything away between us.” I heard something in his voice that hinted at whatever had been simmering.
“I must’ve played those two days in New York over in my mind a million times, trying to figure it out.
I knew that you were upset. I knew I’d been awful.
But there had to be more to it. I thought we were happy.
” I was surprised at the intensity in his eyes.
“It’s been forever, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.
And you don’t owe me an answer. But you’re here, so I figure I might as well ask. ”
He was right, of course. There was far more to it than he knew.
“It wasn’t you, Carter. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Well, I must have done something, right?” He said it a little harshly, then shook his head, looking away again.
“You just left. Out of nowhere. And then I found out you quit the film, and I figured, well, hell, I guess that’s it.
I called you over and over for days, leaving messages.
I kept hoping I’d hear from you but—nothing.
I had no idea why, but you were just .. . gone.”
“What do you mean, you kept hoping to hear from me? Carter, I tried to reach you for months.”
“What are you talking about?”
Something wasn’t adding up. “After I left New York, I regretted the way I’d handled things.
I’m so sorry I ignored your calls.” I could still remember the sound of his voice, pleading on my voice mail, leaving message after message in those first few weeks.
I could barely listen to them. Until one day, they stopped.
And then all I wanted was to hear his voice again.
“I couldn’t talk to you right away. But like I said, there were things going on, and a couple of months later—”
“What kind of things?” he persisted.