28. Superstitions
DARREN
“You’re distracting,” I grumble from my seat at the kitchen island, a practice test in front of me for the second half of my Bar exam tomorrow.
“I’m not doing anything,” she protests while reaching for a mug in the cabinet.
“You’re doing that.” I pull my glasses off and use them to motion towards her.
“This?” She reaches for another mug, causing her sweater to glide up her body and expose the underside of her breast.
“Evangeline,” I warn.
This is playing with fire, and she knows it.
I pull in a deep breath because when she turns towards me, her lips pull into a pout and I my resolve disappears.
“Do you want me to fail?” I question, slipping my glasses back on. I only wear them to focus, the prescription not strong but helpful.
“You’re not going to fail. You’ve spent the last week in the office barely paying attention to me,” she accuses, setting a cup of coffee in front of me.
“You know why,” I remind her.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Professional athletes abstain from sex before a big game in order to pour all of that pent up energy into winning.”
She places her hand on her hip and takes a sip of her coffee. “Are you calling yourself a professional athlete now?”
“Do you want me to go back to the office?” I threaten.
“I’ll be a good girl,” she promises, and I slap the pen down on the marble countertop.
When I look over my glasses she’s smirking at me, and I wonder why I’m torturing myself. I want to fuck that smirk right off her face.
When her sweater slips down her shoulder, I almost crawl across the island to get to her.
“You realize how stupid this rule is,” she states, holding the cup with both hands.
“Of course I realize how stupid it is,” I grunt, flipping the page with more force than I intended, almost ripping it.
“You have a lot of pent-up frustration.”
“You think?” I ask with a raised eyebrow. “I haven’t fucked in a week. The last time that happened was when I was in high school and Kennedy Morgan popped my cherry. It took me a week to get up the nerve to do it again,” I confess.
Evangeline laughs, the coffee spilling over the side of her mug as she jostles it.
“Kennedy Morgan? I’m surprised you still remember her name,” she says between fits of laughter.
“Everyone remembers their first, especially when she’s your friend’s older sister.”
She mouths the word wow.
The laughter dies, and I look up at her. “Who was your first?” I inquire, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t you have studying to do?”
“Apparently I’m taking a break.”
“Well, don’t let me distract you,” she taunts.
“Uh uh,” I cluck with my tongue, and stop her from leaving the kitchen. “I told you mine, now you tell me yours.”
“Oh fine, Darren, but it’s not as salacious as my friend”s older brother crawling into bed with me during a sleepover.”
“Get on with it then.”
“A drive-in theater on a sweaty July night. The air conditioning didn’t work in his truck, so we laid out a blanket in the bed.” She shrugs.
“Well now I know where your fucking in public kink comes from.”
I gather her up, holding down her arms so she can’t swat at me. She struggles in my arms when I feel her phone vibrate in her back pocket and I release her. The wicked smile on her face is replaced with trepidation the minute she checks the screen.
“Hello?” she answers cautiously, as if she already knows the news is bad.
I watch as her eyes change like a shadow passing over them, closing up the blue skies with clouds. I try to wait patiently but she doesn’t look at me – won’t look at me.
“What happened?” I question, and her eyes snap up to mine.
She shakes her head, tears in her eyes, and hand over her mouth. I pull out a chair for her and she gladly takes it.
“She was doing fine. I just spoke with her. The medication was working. How?” she says into the phone.
“I just thought…” she doesn’t finish her sentence, the tears overtaking her speech.
“Thank you, Maria. I’ll let you know when I can get there.” She looks down at me as I crouch down before her, resting my hands on her thighs.
“I’ll be in touch.” She hangs up the phone, placing it on the counter, and letting the tears fall freely now.
She’s in pain, in desperate pain that I feel helpless to fix.
I do the only thing I can and take her into my arms, my shoulder collecting her tears as she once did for me.
“She had a stroke.” She can barely get it out. “I knew there was a risk with her medication, but I never thought…” she doesn’t finish. “I feel like this is my fault. I wanted more good days, and I was willing to sacrifice the possible side effects.”
“It’s not your fault, Evan. It’s okay that you wanted more time with her,” I try to console her.
“I know, it’s just…” she falters. “I knew this was going to happen one day, I just wasn’t prepared.”
“No one ever is,” I offer, and she looks at me understanding the meaning.
There aren’t words to convey how helpless I feel right now, how I wish she didn’t have to go through this. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whisper into her hair.
“I need to go back to Arizona,” she declares.
“I’ll go with you,” I blurt out. “Let me go with you.”
She pulls back just enough to look at me with watery blue eyes. “You have to take your exam tomorrow.”
“I don’t care about the exam,” I blurt out in a rush.
“Don’t say that. You worked so hard.”
“I’ll call the pilot, and he can have the plane ready to go as soon as I get out of my exam,” I concede.
“You would do that for me?”
I run my thumb along her jaw. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, Evangeline.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes.
“What could you possibly be sorry about?” I gather her face in my hands, wiping the tears from her cheek.
“Tomorrow is a big day for you and you need to study, but instead you’re consoling me. I just… I don’t…” she stammers.
“Evan,” I force her to look at me. “It’s fine. It’s not your fault. I’ll be fine.”
She nods, wiping the remainder of the tears from her cheeks and pulls away from me.
“What do you need me to do? I can call funeral homes, order flowers, whatever you need,” I speak a mile a minute.
“She had everything planned a while ago. There’s nothing to do really except take care of her personal things when I get there,” she explains.
I take in a deep breath. “What about your mother?” I inquire, feeling the tightness in my chest.
Her eyebrows furrow. “I’ll have to call her,” she confirms with a troubled tremble of her voice. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“I hate that you have to deal with this.” I pull her back into me, running my palm gently over her back.
She wraps her arms around me, and I can feel the tears soak through my shirt, but I just press her tighter to me. I have never been the kind of person someone would turn to for comfort; the kind of person anyone would go to for support.
The feeling makes my chest expand and my heart swell, just as much as it aches for her. In this instance, I’m the strong one, and I’m only too eager to give back to her when she has given me so much.
“It’s okay,” I whisper into her hair. “It’s gonna be okay.”