Chapter 11
“Everett. Really. Everett? Really? Everett! Really!”
Somehow that speech sounded familiar. I nodded calmly and picked up my sister’s phone and also her glass so that I could wipe underneath them.
Jannie wasn’t too concerned about the cleanliness of the bar, but I liked to keep my area neat and non-sticky.
I had given Willow some water because it had seemed like she was about to overheat.
“Really, Everett,” I agreed. “I’m staying with him to save money so I can get a place of my own.”
“I can’t believe this, Zoey! Have you gone batshit whacko?”
I thought for a moment before I answered. “I don’t think so,” I told her. She shook her head at me and threw up her hands.
I had been very surprised to see her come into the bar tonight with no accompanying boyfriend. For the last few months, I had been alone with her only rarely and I found myself looking again at the door and wondering about Boyd. “How did you get here?” I asked.
“I drove,” she answered shortly, and my jaw went slack.
“You already got your license?” It didn’t seem possible.
It wasn’t. “I don’t exactly have it yet, but when I heard what you were doing, I had to come.
” She picked up her phone and waved it at me, but it had gone to sleep while she was haranguing me over my choice to stay with Everett.
I knew what had been on the screen before, though.
There was a whole lot of stuff about the Woodsmen on social media and people around here avidly followed all of it.
Right now, one of the hottest topics was who would be the team’s starting quarterback.
The head coach was going to announce his decision tomorrow, although everyone seemed to feel like Everett had it in the bag. I sure hoped so.
All that hype and excitement around the team and the possibility that he would lead it had also led to a big uptick of interest in his personal life.
There had been various deep-dives into his relationship with Eris, including their custody battle.
I’d started to listen to one of the podcasts centered on that but hadn’t been able to continue after I’d heard the story of how they’d first met at a party, and then how they’d been caught together in flagrante delicto in an elevator.
In case it hadn’t been obvious to her listeners, the podcaster had gleefully explained that they’d been naked and presumably about to have sex, but then she’d sorrowfully concluded that there were no pictures.
She’d also admitted that there was no proof that any of that happened and that it might have been only a PR stunt.
And then I’d turned it off, all of it. I hadn’t looked up his name again.
That was why I hadn’t seen the latest gossip, but my sister had.
She had stormed into the bar tonight, her gait smoother and faster than I’d seen since before her accident.
I hadn’t had time to say anything about how she was walking perfectly (she liked superlatives) before she had slammed her phone on the bar top.
I’d winced, knowing how much that little piece of tech had cost since I had bought it, and she had started right in on the issue that had brought her here.
Her phone, which (thankfully) wasn’t damaged, had displayed a new post about Everett Ford, Woodsmen quarterback, and his new girlfriend, a local woman he’d met and was already shacking up with in his beautiful rental home (at least they didn’t give away the address).
“Zoey, does this mean you?” Willow had asked me.
Yes, they had meant me. “It doesn’t say my name,” I’d pointed out, which maybe she had been worried about.
But that wasn’t her issue at all. “Everett. Really. Everett? Really? Everett! Really!” my sister had seethed, and here we were.
Like she had done so many times before when I’d introduced an uncomfortable issue, Willow skirted around the problem of how she’d been driving without a license and (as far as I knew) without a lot of skills in a car.
Years before, she’d practiced a little to prepare for her permit, going on the road with me a few times and once with our dad.
But after she’d had the accident, that had stopped.
“Have you been driving with Boyd?” I asked, but she smacked her phone with her hand and redirected my attention.
“I warned you about this. I warned you! I told you to be careful with Everett, didn’t I? And did you listen?” She shook her head, her blonde hair flying. “No, and I’m right!”
I’d also been right about a lot of things, like how she had needed to exercise, how she and Mom needed to go to therapy, how she needed to get a job.
Those were just a few examples, but had she listened to me?
I didn’t bother to say that now, because she would have ignored it just like she had ignored those good suggestions.
“I think I am being careful,” I told her. “I never drop anything on his nice rugs, and when I back out of his garage, I’m very aware of his truck so that I don’t accidently ding it.”
“That’s not what I meant!” She shook her head again, obviously frustrated. “You’re so na?ve, Zoey.”
“I’m tired of you saying that,” I answered sharply, and her beautiful eyes widened.
I didn’t often use that kind of tone with her.
“I’m not na?ve. And Everett has been nothing but kind and generous to me, like how he’s letting me live in his beautiful house so that I could get out of an apartment that smelled like the world’s worst ashtray and was probably filled with mold.
The moisture meter went wild when I used it.
” I had shown that to my landlord as we’d discussed whether he should return my security deposit, since I’d moved out early.
He had held a bandana over his face and his eyes had watered as we’d talked in the hallway of the building, and that hadn’t helped his case that things “weren’t so bad” and I could have “toughed it out.” My heart had pounded but I had stood up to him and once I’d mentioned that the smoke detectors hadn’t worked that night, he handed over the money.
As I’d talked about the ashtray apartment and mold, Willow had looked at the scarred wood of the bar top instead of meeting my eyes. Now she mumbled something about how it would be better for me to find a new place.
“I’ll be able to do that pretty soon,” I said.
Since I had the deposit back from my former landlord and with my job at the elementary school starting up soon, I would be fine.
And there was also another reason I’d be more solvent, which I needed to discuss with my sister.
I hadn’t been looking forward to this conversation.
“I’m not going to give you any more money,” I stated.
“What?”
“I opened a new bank account that’s just for me, and I’m putting everything I make in there. I left the minimum in the account that we had together and you can close that or use it just for yourself, because I won’t touch it anymore. I won’t be adding to it with any deposits,” I explained.
She stared at me. “This is because I moved in with Boyd. You’re trying to punish me.”
“No!” I told her. “No, that’s not the reason.”
“Right. Sure, Zo,” she said scornfully. “I bet you’re giving money to other people!”
“Who?” I asked, puzzled. “I’m not. I have to think about my own future just like you were thinking about yours.”
“You’re trying to control me! I’m sorry I came over here. Everett Ford is going to use you and then throw you away just like—just like other people that you won’t give up on, people who don’t deserve it. Don’t come to me for help when he does, because I don’t care anymore.”
“What are you talking about? He won’t do that! And I already know that I can’t depend on you. You’re the person who got into Boyd’s car and drove away after the fire, and you never even asked me what I was going to do. It didn’t bother you to leave me in that stinky apartment.”
She stared at me, her lower lip trembling and tears filling her eyes. “That’s not true, you liar,” she told me.
“Yes, it is. You didn’t care what happened to me and I bet you also didn’t care about the kind of trouble you could get into by driving without a license.
If you go out in the parking lot to do it again, I’ll call the police and report you,” I said next, but that wasn’t from vindictiveness.
I was afraid for her safety and for other people on the road, too.
My sister stared at me, then grabbed her phone and stormed out of the bar.
“I’ll watch her,” Jannie told me as she went to the dirty window.
She and the guy drinking in the corner booth had been able to watch our fight and they’d also heard everything we’d said.
Besides his slurps of 7 and 7, it was quiet here tonight.
The sound system (an old CD player that Jannie had jury-rigged to speakers that were even older) had shot a few sparks and then refused to play.
She positioned herself in front of the glass, not too close due to the wide circumference of her sombrero.
“Willow is sitting in the car texting,” she reported over her shoulder.
“I don’t think she started it.” She opened the window by shoving it hard.
“Yeah, the engine isn’t running. Did she say that you’re living with the Woodsmen quarterback? ”
“He’s one of the quarterbacks. They’re going to tell him today if he’s the starter.
” But from the way they’d been preparing in practice for the next game, he had thought that signs were very good.
Everett had been working almost exclusively with the offense, while Dallas had worked out with the Woodsmen defense.
He’d explained that the backup’s usual job was to prep that side of the team.
Jannie raised her eyebrows until they disappeared under the black velvet of her hat. “So you are living with him. Good for you!” she said, and smiled.