Everly After (11 page)

I slump back in my chair, biting my fist, soaking all of this in. The music is intoxicating, but watching the way her hips gently swing back and forth is fucking killing me. She’s playing me like that steady pluck of the cello.

The snare drum hisses, and her eyes open wide, meeting my stare. Everly licks her lips, never stopping her soft sway. She’s looking at me like the first night I met her—when she caught me watching.

“Have you heard this before?”

Fucking hell, her voice is even husky now.

Her lips slowly widen into a tempting smile when I don’t answer. I drop my fist, knocking it against the table for a beat. I feel like I’m thirteen again, afraid to open my mouth because my voice might crack. I shake my head, but I don’t look away.

She tips her head back to the ceiling and laughs. “I think I want to listen to this every day. It’s just…”

There’s this thing between me and Everly—these tiny moments like this one that seem to pull me closer, open me up. I feel it. It’s like my body has been zipped up in a body bag, DOA, since I’ve been in Paris, but not now. Because with her I believe maybe there’s been a mistake. I’m surprised to discover there is still a part of me that’s alive—happy, even. Just another guy falling for a girl.

I can almost forget it all, sitting here, watching Everly dance.

“This is the song I want played when I walk down the street.” She shimmies her hips and mimics waving hello at passersby.

I can picture it, too—her all dolled up, shopping bags in her arms as she strolls down the sidewalk. The cheesy montage when she rounds the corner and knocks straight into me and we accidently kiss.

“It’d be a bit noisy if it was playing out loud. Lots of people in Paris with different soundtracks.”

She waves off my logic and walks back over to the stack of records. “These all belonged to your aunt?”

“Mmhmm.” I like the way her fingers flip the albums against each other with a definitive strike of curiosity, eager to see the next. “You would have liked her. She adored Coco Chanel.”

Everly peeks at me over her shoulder, the apples of her cheeks rounded as if she’s hiding a smile from me. She narrows her eyes, but I’m not sure whether I’ve said the wrong thing. Again. She turns back to scrutinizing the record collection.

The clock on the wall tells me it’s late, but it doesn’t feel that way. It was nine when we left the Eiffel Tower, and Everly’s been playing records for a few hours now at least. Time has a funny way of blurring into one long moment with her. I like that, too.

Everly takes the needle off the record, and the room falls silent. “This was all hers? The apartment, café?”

I expect my palms to start sweating or my heart to race, but everything beats on as normal. I’m so surprised that I confess everything. “It was until she fell in love and I showed up on her doorstep.”

She spins around, her head cocked to the side. So much for secrets. The longer I sit in this room with her, getting drunk off a night of simple pleasures, the more I’m in danger. She’ll know my National Insurance number soon enough.

I spin my glass of water over the table, an exhale rushing over my parted lips.

“You can’t stop there.”

I laugh in spite of myself and rub the back of my neck. “She won a hand of poker, and it changed everything.”

For a moment, Everly is quiet. She drops the needle, and Louis Armstrong croons into my suddenly too-small flat. Even though I’ve just taken a drink, my mouth is dry again.

She lowers herself on the floor, swinging her long legs out in front of her and resting back onto her hands. “There’s more.”

I nod again because I’m tongue-tied watching her hair sway over her shoulders, along her waist. This is going to be our new game? Pretending to be friends? I’m going to be a terrible friend because all I want to do is crawl across the floor, take her face in my hands, and kiss her senseless. I don’t see that ever changing.

“Well?”

I drum my fingers over the table, sucking in air through my nose so I keep it together. I lost my aunt while I was recovering in the field hospital. It’s hard to untangle the two events from each other.

“My mum died when I was young.” I blow out a breath, one sentence closer to the end of the story.

Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t react like everyone else does. She doesn’t coddle me or say “I’m sorry.” Doesn’t ask after my fucking father, either, which is a relief. I like her a little more for it.

“After a few foster homes, I came to live here with my aunt. I don’t think she was ready to look after a ten-year-old boy, but she tried. She was seeing this guy—Étienne, I think. He was a count or something. I always liked his suits.”

I remembered him, the way he would burst through the door as if he’d just brokered world peace.

“Anyway, he was in love with my aunt. He had asked her to marry him for a while, but she never agreed. One night, they bet on a hand of poker. If she won, she owned his family’s chateau. If he won, they would get married.”

“And she won?”

“She ended up with the chateau, at any rate. I found myself at a fancy boarding school soon after, and she moved out of Paris to make the place a bed and breakfast.”

The question plays out in her eyes, but she never gives voice to it, thankfully. Talking about dying would be a waste right now. It’s not exactly a good time to share my past—more so than I already have. An abusive father isn’t something to toss into a conversation lightly.

“Can I stay?” Her voice is small, a thin whisper against Louis Armstrong’s raspy vocals. “For a while longer?”

I raise my arms above my head and stretch, my body buzzing at her words.

She’s going to break you.

I leave her on the floor, head into the kitchen, and prop my arms on the refrigerator, resting my head against them. I can do this. I can let her stay. It doesn’t need to mean anything.

It does.

The record screeches to a stop, grating my ears. I wince, waiting for the sound of her grabbing her purse and shoes, but it’s quiet for a time. Long enough for me to realize I’m being daft. I grab two beers from the fridge and twist off the tops.

She’s searching through the stack of records again, her back to me, when I return to the living room.

“I can go. You’re probably sick of me by now,” she says, her voice sounding unnatural.

My hands shake as I walk closer. I nudge my shoulder against hers, dropping my voice to a low whisper. “You can’t leave. I just opened a beer for you.”

Everly glances at me, then back to the record player. She drops the needle and wraps her hand around mine, our fingers lacing together. Her skin is so soft. Her dark eyelashes flutter before she looks up at me with those killer blue eyes.

She’s going to break you.

“Thanks.”

I hate it when she pulls her fingers from mine. I nod, taking a sip of my beer without backing away. Her lips curl around the neck of the bottle, and I swallow when she does, fighting back the way my body aches to hold her, kiss her, taste her.

My phone vibrates on the dining room table—two long beats, then one short. Nadine can wait.

Spring rain strikes against the open windows, earthy and cold. The city rush outside filters in, a quiet rhythm mixing with Jackson Browne playing the piano. Everly’s side presses against mine, her sweet perfume filling each breath.

She might break me, but it’s too late. I’m all in.

Wisps of hair coil around her face. My fingers ache to tuck it behind her ear, but a friend wouldn’t do that, so I hold back.

“We should listen to records all night,” she whispers.

I’m having a shit time trying to sleep lately anyway. I hate the sleeping pills I’ve been given almost as much as the anxiety pills I never take. “Okay.”

Everly walks over to the couch and grabs the quilt she held hostage for a couple of weeks. The one my aunt made for me to take to boarding school. She wraps herself up and lies down, her hands pressed together like in prayer, her face resting on the backs.

“I think I like being your friend, Beckett.”

I almost miss it—the quick dreamy upturn of her lips, the way she narrows her eyes when she realizes we aren’t going to be friends.

I’m glad I don’t.

Everly

I keep my job, even though I don’t deserve it. I’m not thankful, either. I have to deal with tourists who’ve heard that their favorite socialite is in Paris waiting tables. I have to deal with the guys who take my picture while I bus away trash and empty plates or try to slide me their number as if they’re hot shit. I have to deal with Nadine, who hates me but continues to schedule me because I draw a crowd.

I feel like a caged tiger at the zoo.

There’s a certain guy I have to deal with now, too, who’s waiting for me on his stairs when I leave work.

I wipe the smile off my face a second too late. He returns it with one of his own, looking so casual with his arms draped over his knees. It’s been three weeks of us trying to be friends. I think we’re good at it, too. Mostly.

“Are you stalking me, Beckett?”

“You have enough stalkers, I think.”

It’s true. Since Hudson and his asshole photo leak, everyone who was at my apartment for the party knows where I live. I’ve caught a few people hanging around looking for me. I’m waiting for my parents to show up any day to drag me back to Manhattan, but I’m not sure they care much that I’m gone. They’ve already lost the child they loved the most. I’m the backup who’s a fuckup, so my being missing is better for them. I hurt the family’s name with last spring’s debacle enough as it is. The headline “Monteith Heiress Hospitalized for Suicide Attempt” didn’t sit well with the rest of the board members. The gossip blogs ate it up, though, just like those nasty pictures of me that Hudson sold.

I bark out a bored laugh, trying my best to ignore his damn British charm. I’m about to make another sassy comment when my phone rings. Hudson again. My stomach drops, but I take the call. He can’t ruin me now.

“What the fuck? I’ve been trying to call you, Ev.”

“Hello to you, too.” I blow out a hot breath. Beckett doesn’t move, but I know he can hear, so I hold up my finger and rush farther down the alley. “You had your chance, Hudson. I don’t need to deal with your shit. I’m not your plaything.”

“I bet you miss it. I bet you haven’t had your fix these past few weeks. Want to go out tonight?”

I tense up because he’s right. My skin is crawling at the idea of it, of getting so high I can’t feel my face. But I don’t need anything now. I’m going to be good. I’m fine. It’s not like I’m addicted. I’m fine with being sober. Life sucks just the same either way.

“Stop calling or I’ll ditch this number, too.” I glance over my shoulder at Beckett and see that he’s on his phone, his brows furrowed. I hope it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t need to worry about him being upset. I don’t want to change anything between us.

“I’m sorry,” Hudson says with a heavy sigh.

“You’re not sorry. I’m still waiting on an apology when you almost killed me the first time. Five. Years. Ago.”

“I need you.”

“You don’t. And I don’t need you, either.”

“I need you. I do,” he whispers. “I need you. I need you.”

It’s like a punch to the stomach to hear the shaky way he says it to me. I almost believe the desperation there, as if he depends on me to exist.

“I’m leaving Paris soon.” I trip a step. “And I’m doing better…without you.”

“Who is he?”

I startle at his question, then glance behind me once more at Beckett. He has his back turned to me, talking on his phone. “No one,” I lie. “There’s no one. I’m too fucked up to have someone in my life right now.”

“Whatever.”

I hear Hudson inhale a line, then another. I know what’s about to happen, and I don’t want to be around for it this time. “Don’t call me anymore, Hudson.”

The call disconnects.

I rest my forehead in my palm, the sinking feeling in my stomach growing until I whirl around and race down the alley to Beckett. I grab his hand and yank him forward, out onto the street, searching around before I remember there’s a bar around the corner.

“I have to go, Ollie. I’m being dragged away by a beautiful woman.”

I freeze for a minute, then twist back to glare at Beckett. I don’t want his stupid flirting right now. He raises his eyebrows as if that’s answer enough, and I swing around, my hand clutching his tight. I don’t trust myself to talk.

I rush us into the bar and dig through my purse. I don’t have much money, but I slap about fifty euros down on the counter and ask the bartender to give us as many shots of vodka as I can afford.

Beckett’s laughter dies out behind me. “Everly,” he says, all scolding like a damn saint. My skin already is on fire. If he only knew what I
wanted
to do, I don’t think he’d argue with me having a few shots.

“Then go back to your apartment,” I snap. I take the first shot and down it. It’s not nearly enough. “But I’m having a shot.”

“More like seven.”

The bartender comes over with another handful.

“You can’t have—” Beckett counts. “—thirteen shots.”