Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Oh…my…God, Evie thought to herself. She couldn’t stop staring at the message. Was it really true? Tears welled in her eyes, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth in shock, and gratefulness. As Teddy purred lying against her leg, she began texting back. Brave once again. “Your place or mine?”
Please say yours. Please say yours. My house isn’t nearly as nice as yours probably is. But then it hit her. He already knew where she lived. He’d have to be careful walking up her steps and prepare for mild vertigo on the slanted porch.
“Yours,” he wrote. “I already know where you live. Can I head that way?”
He sent a smiley emoji.
That stopped Evie straight in her fantasies.
All at once, the emotional train of romance and love derailed and flew off the tracks.
It was a booty call. It had to be. Why else would he want to go to her place so late at night?
And why the smiley emoji? She knew men well enough to know that once again, she was going to be either a rebound or the mistress.
When she had written “your place or mine,” what she had meant was for when they met up.
She didn’t think that when he said he was ready now that he would have literally meant right now.
Her heart sank, and her head dropped with regret.
On the other side, Caleb waited while biting his thumbnail. She had seen it but hadn’t responded. What was taking her so long? She had asked him out, and now she was getting all weird and reclusive. Once again, a woman was confusing to him. He feared he had already offended her in some way.
She thought.
He waited.
She cried.
He sighed.
He had enough of waiting. Apparently, she wasn’t interested in seeing him that night.
Or maybe she was busy. He put the phone on his nightstand and called for his bloodhound Charlie to come on his bed.
Caleb pulled the crisp, white cotton sheets over his shirtless body and turned off his lamp to go to sleep.
He had to be up early, as most contractors and active military people had to, so he didn’t have time to wait around. Let her think and think.
But then the darkness of his closed eyes illuminated with blue light and rolling over, he saw she messaged him.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t feel well all of a sudden.”
She was getting second thoughts, he presumed. But he asked, although he didn’t really like to play games with people. He was giving her the benefit of the doubt. Evie didn’t seem like that kind of person on social media or even in real life to him, so perhaps something was truly wrong.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. My chest feels weird, I’m having trouble breathing, and I can’t stop shaking and my feet are tingly.”
He knew exactly what that was. “Don’t worry. I’m coming over. You’ll be okay.”
Evie was gasping for breath. Unlike Pawpaw, this wasn’t because of a sneeze. This was because of something else far more frightening and unfamiliar to her. “Please hurry,” she wrote. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
He sent her his cell number. “I’m on my way. Call me if you need to. I mean it.”
She saved his number and sat up straight in bed.
It wasn’t clear if she was going to faint or worse.
This had never happened before, and she clutched Teddy with her heart pounding hard and fast. The grip on chubby Teddy tightened a little, and her hands violently trembled.
“Pawpaw, I’m scared,” she whispered out loud.
It was the longest fifteen minutes of her life, but Caleb occasionally checked on her and found out the situation was getting worse.
In her living room, Evie paced around, and the unsettled nerves in her stomach weren’t helping.
Not the most romantic first time. As her hands raked through her hair, her legs felt weak, and she knew she was going to faint.
The lights of a big truck came pulling up her driveway. He was there.
Please hurry.
Caleb ran up the uneven stairs, opened the door and rushed to her without even bothering to close it.
All he saw was Evie reaching out to him, her eyes wet and wide, her face pale and her hands shaking badly. All over she shook like she was being electrocuted.
And then she fell into his arms.
She cried horrendously and pressed her face into his chest. It was warm, soft, strong, and enveloping. Caleb put his hand around the back of her head and squeezed softly around her lower back with his other arm. “It’s okay,” he hushed deeply. “You’re having a panic attack.”
Through her sobs, she mumbled, “I am? Is that what this is? It can’t be. I feel like I’m going to die. I don’t get panic attacks.” She felt embarrassed as she choked for air through her cries.
He smiled and rubbed her lower back, gently swaying her left and right in his embrace. “Apparently now you do. It’s probably from your grandpa passing away. It happens with sudden trauma.”
She opened her emotions and clutched his shirt fabric on his chest. “But that was over a year ago. My mom died suddenly, and my dad died quickly. I didn’t have this problem then.”
His chin was on her head. His squeeze now came with both arms, and she melted. “The body can only handle so much. And believe me, sometimes it takes that long for the trauma to set in.”
That thick accent. That deep voice.
But her heart suddenly felt like it was going to burst, and the rise came again. She whimpered his name and said, “I think I need an ambulance!”
He removed his arms from around her and led her to the beige couch, tossed the throw pillows aside, and sat next to her.
He held her hands. “Listen to me, you’re having a panic attack.
The tingling in your hands and feet is because of the disruption of carbon dioxide and oxygen. You’re hyperventilating.”
Caleb flicked on the nearby end table lamp and looked back to her. “Breathe in deeply with me. Smell the roses and blow out the candles.”
Their eyes met. Hers watered and full of fear, his calm and certain of the control he had over the situation.
As they breathed together, they watched each other’s shoulders rise and fall. Evie tried to match his pace. Within minutes, the shaky hands he held steadied. Slowly, he reached over and felt her pulse. It was steady. She was steady. The room was quiet.
He smiled. “There. You see? Feel better?”
Evie wiped her eyes. “I can’t believe it. How did you know?”
“The military. Always gotta learn the symptoms of certain things and how to handle them at any given situation.”
A soft smile curled onto the corners of her mouth.
She glanced down at their hands still holding one another.
Then Evie lifted her left hand and softly glided her fingertips across the muscled and veined top of his left hand.
They were tanned and looked dry. I can’t imagine how a man who could do such kind things… could be bad.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Their voices were delicate and deep with one another. “Oh, I’m fine. You’re the one with the trauma and the panic right now.”
She held that hand a bit tighter and leaned forward to look up into his eyes more. “Don’t all military people still have trauma and panic?”
He laughed. “Nah. I’m good. We learn to take it one day at a time and live with it.”
She shook her head. “Why would you want to live with it?”
“Well,” he said as he stood to close the front door.
Before he did, he swatted out a few bugs that had flown in.
Then he came back, sat down, and leaned against the couch, staring at the ceiling.
“It’s not that I want to live with it. I don’t have a choice.
What you went through, I can guarantee it’ll happen again.
And it’s scary at first, but then you start to accept that it’s a part of life now. ”
Evie stood up immediately and went to her bedroom.
He watched her leave, and then he placed his arm across the top of his head in a slouched, relaxed position.
He called to her in a brief chuckle, “Where are you going?” Then he sarcastically joked in a voice too low for her to hear, “Did I scare you off?”
Caleb examined the living room. The carpet was stained and old, but it smelled and felt like it was freshly cleaned.
The walls were painted with a petal-pink tone with white trim and crown molding.
Either she tried to add the crown molding and did a terrible job, or it needed to be replaced.
Right across from him was a beat-up looking antique coffee table that was doubling as an entertainment stand and a bookshelf.
There was an old TV, a DVD player, and numerous classic books by authors like Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Stephen King.
Apparently, she was a Stephen King fan most of all.
How in the hell does a girl who’s so obsessed with flowers and pink love Stephen King? he thought to himself.
A few watercolor paintings of flowers were framed on the walls, and they complemented charming photos of her with a gray furry cat and another one with a fat orange cat.
He knew from her Facebook posts that the furry gray cat was her old cat named Phil that had passed away.
Then there were photos of her family, her and her pawpaw, photos of her on Hollywood Boulevard wearing a stylish bodycon dress and sunglasses. He smiled.
Out came the thundering fat ginger cat. He beamed, leaning over to pet the kitty, who sniffed his hand and then flopped on his foot.
“I can tell you seem useless, like a big fat paperweight, but she probably spoils you rotten. I bet you’re the infamous Teddy she’s always posting pictures of.
” He found the collar tag. “Yep. You look like a Teddy.”
Her voice rang from the bedroom in the back, “You did something nice for me.” She came back in and wiggled a bottle of shea butter in her hand. “Now I’m going to do something for you.” A perky smile and confidence flashed her face.