Chapter Four
Evan
“Hast thou not dropped from heaven?”
The Tempest
I leaned against the post while Elizabeth slipped the key into the lock.
Sporadic street lamps glowed hazily in the midnight gloom, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to turn right around and make the reverse trip in the dark alone.
I’d been digging a hole for myself since we left the bar.
One fun side effect of social anxiety was spouting opinions I hadn’t thought through, just to fill the silence.
There’s a weather phenomenon known as sprites—essentially lightning in the upper atmosphere high above the storm clouds.
The cold plasma discharge is nature’s way of balancing out the ground strike.
It isn’t rare, but hard to capture due to atmospheric light, but when someone does, it looks like a big red jelly fish hanging out in space.
I sometimes felt like sprites: fractured, propelling myself away from the tension of social interaction.
My knee-jerk responses left a mess for myself.
I hoped Elizabeth would understand, especially after what she’d said about nervous lying. I didn’t usually handle it well when people deceived me, but I couldn’t fault her for saying something weird out of awkwardness.
She kicked the door open and said, “Come on in,” with a bright smile, and I sighed with relief. My social gaffe hadn’t cost me a chance to spend another hour catching up with her.
The living room with its overstuffed sofa bedecked with pillows and throws felt very cozy. I tried to picture her house growing up, but I drew a blank. It had been nearly fifteen years since I’d known her, and I couldn’t even recall if I’d ever gone inside.
I scanned the titles on the bookshelf closest to me. If there was a system to her library, it was lost on me. A piece of paper hung from a tack on the side, and I lifted it. The first half was typed, followed by some additional hand-written lines toward the bottom.
Shakespeareisms:
This above all: to thine own self be true. —Hamlet
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting. —Henry V
Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.—Measure for Measure
“What’s this?”
“It’s nothing.” She plopped down, so I joined her on the sofa. “Just searching for permission.”
“Permission?”
“Yeah, it’s dumb.” She shrugged. “I have a pathological fear of speaking up for myself. I started jotting down quotes that remind me it’s okay to dare.”
“That’s…wow. Some people would grab a self-help book.”
She shook her head. “I know it’s silly to take life advice from some old white Brit who lived hundreds of years ago. Assuming Shakespeare wrote those words.”
“Do you think he stole them?”
“I dunno. It doesn’t matter.” She held up a finger. “A rose by any other name, right?”
I snorted a laugh. I wasn’t anywhere close to a Shakespearean scholar, but even I knew that line. “Still smells as sweet?”
“That’s the one. Shakespeare was my gateway lit.” A gray-and-white blur darted out of the bedroom into the kitchen.
“What the heck?”
“The other reason Chelsea wanted her own space. My cat, Jacques.”
“Jacques? Like the French? Or Jock like a sportsman?”
“The French. His full name is Jacques Lacan, though I sometimes call him Jacques le Cat.” I arched an eyebrow, expectant, and she went on. “Blame it on a semester of grad school.”
“You’re going to have to explain more than that.”
She pulled one knee onto the sofa. “I read a lot of literary theory. Jacques Lacan was a psychoanalyst turned lit critic. And you can’t name a cat Jacques Derrida.
That would just be mean. There’s no there there.
” She tilted her head, like she was reconsidering, and finished with.
“Then again, cats are natural-born deconstructionists.”
She’d gone over my head again. “I’m afraid I missed the classes on literary criticism in school.” Relaxing into the conversation, I considered my college curriculum. “You don’t get too theoretical in Principals of Physics.”
“Hmm,” she said, leaning a little closer. “Isn’t everything theoretical until you put it into practice?”
Was that a come-on? Or had my atmospheric instruments warped from so much disuse? “I suppose. Reading weather is sort of a mix of theory and practice. And magic.”
“How so?”
“I mean, there truly is science behind everything, but interpretation is an art. Our tools are super advanced now, so it’s much less staring at the skies and holding a wet finger up into the wind. But still, forecasts can be wildly incorrect. Snow can fall when you least expect it.”
“You make it sound like poetry.”
I laughed. “Nobody has ever accused me of that before.”
We sat quiet for a minute, and I started to wonder if I should leave when she dropped a hand on my knee. “So do you come back east often?”
I stared at her hand, trying to grapple with the implications. Then I lifted my eyes to hers, hoping she’d read my lack of reaction as permission. “I visit my parents in Annapolis once or twice a year.”
“How often do you visit Bas?” Her voice gave away some anxiety, and I didn’t know how to interpret that. Was she nervously working her way up to something more? Could we rekindle a decade-old flame I’d snuffed without even knowing?
If I was being honest, I wanted to get to know her again.
It wasn’t just because she was so pretty.
She was still funny and easygoing. Not to mention smart, kind, and interesting.
Plus we shared so much in common. We both loved books, which I hadn’t even known to look for in a partner.
And we both understood shyness or anxiety. Whatever made this so very awkward.
She prodded me. “I meant how often do you come back to Charlottesville,” and I understood her true question. Would this effectively be a one-night stand if I stayed tonight?
The truth was: my future was undetermined. There was a non-zero chance I might land a job here, but Charlottesville wasn’t my only option. Once I went back home, we could keep the lines of communication open, but sex would add a complexity that might be harder to navigate.
Still, I stared at her mouth, wondering what it would feel like to kiss her, wondering why I hadn’t all those years ago.
“Bas and I kept in touch after college, but we’ve been terrible at making the effort to see each other.” We were both chasing after careers, and whatever holidays we had were devoted to work or family.
Her smile slipped, like she was doing the same logistical gymnastics as me. “What brought you here this time?”
“I was pursuing a possible opportunity.”
“Oh yeah?” Her hand slid a few inches up my thigh, and the promise of her desire sent a crackle of electricity straight to my cock. “Like you might be moving here?”
I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep, so I didn’t think it worth telling her about the job interview. And if I did come here, there was no guarantee she’d want anything more serious with me.
Tonight might be all we got.
But if I allowed this to go on, my therapist would dissect it for months. After I’d spent the past year avoiding all offers of intimacy, Dr. Price would be right to wonder if the allure of Lizzy was the fact she represented what came before, like a wormhole to my innocent self.
That was a part of the attraction, believing I could trust her to be who she claimed she was and not secretly married or worse.
“Elizabeth,” I said, in a tone that sounded scolding even to my ears.
Hurt settled in her eyes, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment as she swallowed and pulled away. She let out a shaky breath. “God, I’m sorry. I misread—” She sat back, her hand settling back in her lap. “Does rejection ever stop being so mortifying.”
Her comment hit like a dagger to my heart. Had I hurt her when we were kids? Before she could get up and kick me out, I took her hand. “I wasn’t rejecting you.” I didn’t know how to broach this topic, so I just took full responsibility. “I’m just ruled by my fears.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
I recalled Chelsea’s soul-baring confession earlier tonight, how Elizabeth had loyally stood by her, and hoped she’d be as understanding with my murky trust issues.
“Believe it or not, I’ve been dealing with anxiety and low self-esteem most of my life, and it’s not an excuse, I know, but sometimes I act out of self-preservation.
” I grinned weakly, trying to brave my way through this long overdue explanation.
“Being back here, I’ve had to face down a few leftover demons.
High school for me was pretty brutal, but obviously that has nothing to do with you. ”
She winced. “I guess I should apologize for dredging those feelings up for you. I never meant to appear like some ghost of your past.”
Again, she was apologizing when she’d done nothing wrong.
“No, I’m really glad you did.” I sighed. “I’m a bit of a mess, but I’m working on it. Lots of therapy.” What was that one Shakespeare quote she’d scribbled down, something about losing by fearing to attempt? I squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. Is it too late to ask for a do-over.”
She breathed in, and I braced for her to tell me off.
“Not to psychoanalyze you, but I’ve come to understand how much fear comes from visibility, from being exposed.
It’s a proactive aversion to shame. Jacques Lacan says”—she waved toward the cat, now eying me warily from the other side of the coffee table—“the psychoanalyst, not the cat, and I’m going to massively paraphrase this, and probably get it wrong…
Shame comes from seeing yourself being seen.
Even if the person seeing you is purely imaginary. ”
I had to laugh that she’d taken this to another plane. “And that’s supposed to be a bad thing? Isn’t social shame a curb to”—I tried to think of the right word, but unlike Elizabeth, I didn’t have access to a brain dictionary—“shamelessness?”
“Of course, but that doesn’t make it real, or even right.
What I meant is, we’re all walking around with bullshit fears, carrying future or past judgment from people who don’t exist anywhere but in our minds.
” She shrugged like she wasn’t one of those people, someone I’d unintentionally wronged in my past.
“They exist.” I gestured toward her. “You exist.”
She smiled. “This version of me exists, yes, but when you remember me tomorrow, your mental version of me will not. The people you used to know, they live here”—she touched my forehead—“and their voices are mostly an amplification of your own fear.”
Jesus, was that true? Had I been carrying around ghosts this entire time? “Why have I been paying a therapist?”
“Oh, please don’t take my words professionally. I just tend to get up in my own head, and I like to try to understand why I think the way I do.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a very doctor, heal thyself situation. I’m the world’s biggest coward.”
It made me feel better that she was speaking from personal experience. “Smart. I get up in my own head and then stay there.”
“It’s better than avoidance. I’ve known plenty of guys who weren’t in touch with their feelings at all, and trust me, this is better.” She gave a half-shoulder shrug. “But maybe turn the volume down on the past and pay attention to what’s going on in the present?”
Funny. That was on my long list of reminders from my therapist. Stay in the moment, be present, let go of the past. “I’m trying. I really am.”
“By the way, you know what else Lacan said?”
“Uh. What?”
She waggled her eyebrows. “The only thing you can be guilty of is not following your desires.”
“Did he now?” That sounded conveniently made up, but I licked my lips, enjoying this weird, nerdy flirtation.
“Provided it really is your desire.”
“As opposed to?”
“What do you truly want, Evan?”
What a question. I wished I could step out of time and see where all my paths led. I scratched my chin. “Would it be juvenile of me to say I want you to like me?”
“I like you,” she said. Her bright gorgeous eyes sparkled with the same mischief from earlier, and I wondered if we’d managed to clear the air just like that. “For the record, you don’t want to kiss me, though. Correct?”
I swallowed and lifted a hand to her cheek. “I do. I just—”
Her hand settled on my wrist, a coy smile curling the corner of her mouth. “So what do you fear?”
“I’m leaving in the morning, and I don’t know when or if I’ll be back here again.”
“That’s exactly why you should.”
Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. But she was an adult, and she could make her own decisions. And damned if I didn’t want to kiss her.
I took a deep breath. Who knew what the future held? What if this chance never came around again? I slid my palm along her jaw, fingers tightening in the hair at the nape of her neck, and I pulled her toward me. She ceded easily, meeting me halfway.
Our lips brushed, and she moaned almost soundlessly. I withdrew slightly, testing, giving her time to change her mind. I rested my forehead against hers, her chest rising and falling in time with my own racing heart.
She said, “Stop thinking and kiss me, Evan.”
I gazed into her eyes, and I could see all the desire there, like a crush she’d harbored for years.
Then I gave in, letting go of the over-thinking, indulging in the feel of her mouth, the thrill of her ragged breathing.
I pressed into her, coaxing her lips apart with my tongue.
When I dragged the elastic from her ponytail so I could tangle my fingers in her hair, she drew back, eyes glazed over.
It had been a long time since I’d had a woman in my arms, and I loved knowing she wanted me as much as I wanted her, no games, no deception.
She stood and held out her hand. “Come with me.”
I let her pull me up. She walked backward, tugging me toward her bedroom, looking so gorgeous, like a siren.
And God help me, I followed, fallout be damned.