Chapter Thirty-nine
Elizabeth
“You do assist the storm.”
The Tempest
Evan grinned at me, and for a heartbeat, I forgot I was mad. Boy, he was good. Did he have a harem of women he conned with that puppy dog smile? What if I hadn’t come here tonight? Would I have sailed along na?vely believing I was the one?
I crossed my arms and stood my ground. For once in my life, I was going to speak up for myself, demand some answers.
To my horror, Evan pointed at me and directed his other woman toward me, and Kyan kept cackling behind the bar. Was he in on this?
Oh, my God. What if they were a polycule, and I was being groomed to be their fourth? For the record, I fully supported throuples and other arrangements, but if I was going to join a foursome, it wouldn’t be with freaking Kyan. Chelsea and Bas would top that list.
I shook my head to stop these intrusive thoughts, reminding myself of the conversation I’d had with Evan on Sunday. We’d promised each other to talk before jumping to conclusions, so I took a deep breath, determined to trust until I had a reason not to.
The other woman gave me a quizzical look, like I was the interloper. What the hell? Now I wasn’t even good enough to be a third?
Before my thoughts could spiral again, Evan said, “Elizabeth Wright, may I present Liz Grant, formerly known as Lizzy.” He bit his lip, like he was struggling not to laugh, and I was so caught off guard, I had to plop back down on the stool.
“Kyan called me after I left Chelsea’s to let me know she’d stopped in and wanted to talk. ”
“Shit.” It was almost worse than Evan cheating on me. My chickens had come home to roost. Karma really was a fucker.
Lizzy turned to Evan and said, “Are you blind?”
I gave her a solid once-over, understanding her objection. We looked nothing alike. But man, this was awkward. “I’m sorry I accidentally co-opted your identity. Please don’t sue me.”
Liz scanned me from head to toe and said, “Darling, I don’t know how he confused you with me, but good lord, I’d die to know your skin care routine.”
Oh, thank God she wasn’t mad.
Evan nudged me. “I’m so glad I got a chance to connect with Liz again. I’m just amazed at how complicated the world is, how many weird twists of fate it took to be standing here now.”
He was right. If I hadn’t stepped into Lizzy Grant’s glass slippers for a night, I never would have met Evan. We wouldn’t be here. Well, I might literally be here, working at this bar night after night. Evan had even altered the path of my career.
“I’ll be sure to invite you to our wedding.” As soon as the words slipped out, I shot a panicked look at Evan, but he slid his hands into his pockets and sighed. It was the most relaxed I’d ever seen him.
I felt a wave of shame for how quickly I’d believed the worst of him.
That wasn’t on Evan. That was on me. But it made me understand his loss of control last Saturday night.
It gave me a window into Chelsea’s mindset on her most cynical days, when her inner demons got loose and convinced her she wasn’t enough.
Maybe I had an inner demon too. Maybe I needed to find an actual therapist instead of siphoning off Chelsea’s.
As soon as Liz said goodnight and headed toward the exit, I turned to Kyan and hissed, “Fuck you, Kyan,” explaining to Evan, “He told me you were reconnecting with an old flame.”
Evan pressed his lips together, a smile breaking through against his best efforts. “You were jealous?”
Fuck. Busted. “Maybe. A little. Mainly, I worried you were going to invite me to join your polycule.” Had I just spoken out loud? Kill me now.
Evan snorted. “My polycule?”
Kyan snickered. “I’d be down for that.”
“No,” Evan and I said in unison.
“This night has just been so weird,” I admitted.
Evan asked, “You want to get a drink and talk?”
“Yeah.” I exhaled the stress of the past turn of the clock. The shock of going from heartbroken loser to our regularly scheduled programming gave me whiplash. “I could go for an Irish coffee.”
“Make it two,” Evan said.
“Grab a seat,” Kyan said. “I’ll bring them over.”
As we settled into a booth, I realized how stressful that impromptu meeting must have been for Evan. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. That was uncomfortable, but somehow…I dunno. Freeing?”
“How so?”
“I’ve gone my whole life feeling bad one way or another, and it’s like you said the night we met.
I’ve been carrying around versions of people in my head who never really existed, stories about myself that weren’t true, and I’ve felt ashamed or angry, rejected and unloved.
And it’s all been my own voice narrating.
I’ve had the power all along to let it all go and write my own adventure. ”
That was a beautiful realization. “You’re starting to sound like me, you know.”
“That’s not a bad thing.” He reached across the table, and I slid my hand over to meet him halfway, so grateful we’d returned to this fragile, but real burgeoning romance. “I can see my life laid out in a new way. I have choices. I don’t need to be controlled by fear or other people’s expectation.”
“That’s incredible.”
“For the record, I’m not trying to claim I’m cured or won’t have any setbacks, but my perspective has shifted. I thought I needed to forgive you for a wrong, believing you harmed me in some way, even if that was never your intention.”
I braced for another round of this zombie fight. “And now?”
“Now, everything’s flipped around, and I can see how you nudged me out of my rut that night.
I never would have had that conversation with Liz or Vicky, and while they’re only two faces of a multifaceted history of regrets and grudges, talking to them has made me rethink the life story I’ve been telling myself.
I’m finally ready to let go of a decade of self-loathing.
Or at least try. I feel like I’ve been fighting a mirror. ”
“Very Luke Skywalker.”
He laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. Today had been one for the record books.
“Is Chelsea going to be okay?”
I loved him for caring. “I hope so. I’ll check in on her tomorrow, but we’ve been here a time or two. Did you talk to Bas?”
He shook his head. “I texted him, but he hasn’t replied. Poor Bas.”
“I really thought he might be the one.”
“He did everything right.”
That hung there with the implication that Evan hadn’t, but he had no idea how close we’d come to ending tonight the same way if I’d acted on my unfounded jealousy. Instead, here we were, embarking on something new, something unknown. “We do the best we can.”
Kyan personally delivered a couple of mugs oozing whipped cream. “On the house.”
I clapped with delight. “You are forgiven.” And I meant it. Kyan was a chaos agent with a cracked sense of humor and a quiver of Cupid’s arrows. He’d stirred up trouble, but he hadn’t caused any real damage.
Kyan bowed his head slightly then disappeared back from whence he came.
Evan stirred the melting whipped cream into his coffee like a heathen. He lifted his eyes and said, “So. About that list?”
Now that was a topic of conversation I understood all too well. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a few ideas.”
We stayed until close, hammering out the details, and then Evan walked me home, holding my hand the whole way, but we said goodnight without so much as a kiss, both of us understanding our real courtship would begin in exactly one week.