Our plans to spend the day out on the Tickfaw were ruined by a couple of things. First off, no one dragged their butts out of bed until nearly one o’clock in the afternoon. And well, the rain. It was coming down in buckets, and I’m not talking about a nice, soft, summer rain. This was a full on Louisiana sorry-about-your-luck kind of rain.
Whatever. Didn’t bother me at all. I could have spent the entire weekend in bed with Everly. Even if all we did was cuddle, because the girl was soft and warm and she smelled amazing.
Also. Everly. Nuff said.
If it weren’t for the other three people in the cottage, we might have, but Brent was a total douche and kept banging on our door, making inappropriate noises, the kind that made Everly’s cheeks go rosy and adorable. After the fourth or fifth time, we realized he wasn’t giving up. The guy couldn’t help it. He’d always been a bit of a dick.
And apparently he wasn’t staying either. Said the rain was depressing as hell and that hanging out with two couples was even worse. I knew he was not digging the fact that Link and I weren’t interested in getting loaded with him, and drinking seemed to be the only thing he liked to do these days.
After he ate a crap ton of eggs, he packed his stuff and took off for home. Said he’d catch up with us later, but I wasn’t so sure I’d see him before he left for Texas again. The guy was different. But then again, I guess we all were.
So, the way I saw it, Everly and I had a couple of choices.
We could stay in the cottage, maybe play cards (strip poker? not likely), and cuddle on the sofa while Link and Hailey disappeared into the other bedroom. And in the space of two hours, they’d disappeared at least three times.
Or we could head to Baton Rouge on our own.
We opted for Baton Rouge, because the thought of trying to act like we didn’t know what Hailey and Link were doing, while we kept busy doing everything but what Hailey and Link were doing, kind of sucked. We were taking it slow, and I was cool with that, but still, the cottage had paper-thin walls and our roommates weren’t exactly quiet.
Everly drove and I tried to ignore the tic behind my right eye and the dull headache that wouldn’t seem to go away. Wasn’t hard to do. She looked hot in a dress that showed just enough leg to get a guy thinking. Tight jeans or short shorts were great, but there was something about a girl wearing a dress that I liked.
By the time we reached Baton Rouge the rain had stopped, and we decided to eat dinner at an outdoor place on Front Street. It was family owned, and according to my parents, had the best Creole and Cajun food in the city, which is why I suggested it. Turns out Everly had never been to Baton Rouge.
After digging into a plate full of crawfish-stuffed beignets, I had to agree. The food was top-shelf, and the company, well, I could have stared into Everly’s eyes all night. I know. I was the guy in the chick flick. Sue me.
“What?” I asked, wiping the corner of my mouth as I settled back in my chair.
Everly shrugged and twirled the straw in her glass of soda, that slow smile creeping over her face. The one that made my stomach tighten. The one that made me think about lying in bed with her the night before.
“You sure can eat a lot,” she said softly.
“I’m a growing guy.” I laughed. “With a big appetite.” There it was. The blush I’d been waiting for.
“Good to know.” She tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “I, uh,” she said slowly, so slowly that her slight southern drawl was accented. “I’m just happy to be here with you. Away from Twin Oaks and everything.”
“Ditto.”
She smiled then, a full-on one-hundred-watt smile, and man, it felt like I’d just won the lottery. It was amazing that a smile could do that.
“Do you think this is weird?” she asked suddenly.
“Weird?” I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, and damn, but my head was starting to throb again.
“Us. I mean, I just didn’t think that we’d…that you and I…I’m…” Her cheeks flushed again and she blew that piece of hair back. It was humid and kept curling onto her face.
“You’re?” I reached over and tucked that piece of hair back where it belonged. I heard her breath catch. It was a soft sound, but it hit me hard, and I leaned back in my chair again, heart racing in that way that’s part excitement and part, I don’t know, fear?
“I’m not like the girls you’ve dated. I’m not…super outgoing or into big parties or clubs.” She made this noise, like she was frustrated. “What do you see in me, Trevor?”
I tossed my napkin. She really didn’t get it.
“What do you think I see?” I asked, because I was curious to know what was going on inside her head, even though the conversation had taken a sharp turn toward serious. Not usually my gig, but I wanted to know everything about the girl sitting across from me. Any guy looking at her would see someone with big blue eyes and an amazing mouth. He’d see rosy cheeks and hair that hung down her shoulders in dark, shiny ropes. He’d see a beautiful girl.
I saw a beautiful girl.
I wanted to know what was underneath all of that. I wanted to see it. To touch it. I wanted to be the guy she shared everything with. And maybe she was right. Maybe that was weird, considering we’d only been together for a few weeks.
But I also think that you can be with someone forever and not really know them. Not really love the parts that matter. (Did I really just use the word love?) A lot of guys get caught up in the physical stuff. I mean, we’re guys. We’re wired for that shit. Heck, most of the time it’s all we think about when we see a girl. Getting laid and moving on to the next good time.
But this was different, and Everly Jenkins had somehow burrowed underneath my skin. She was like an invisible tattoo, and I wanted to show her off to the world.
She took a sip of her soda and exhaled.
“Truth?” she asked. “You really want to know what I think you see?”
“Truth.”
“I think you see a girl who might be a bit of a challenge.”
“Challenge?” Okay. That wasn’t what I’d expected.
“Sure. I live in the perfect house, with the perfect family. God, we even have a white picket fence. Some kids think I’m a snob. Other’s think I’m driven to get straight As, to be the best at everything.”
“You got straight As?” I was trying to joke, but she didn’t take the bait. In fact, her eyes got darker, like she was angry.
“I know what they say about me, Trevor. A lot of guys think it would be cool to nail the pastor’s daughter, and a lot more think that because I’m a pastor’s daughter, I must be a raving sex maniac. So guys are either scared to approach me or they’re in my face, and not in a good way.”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“You’re wrong.”
I waited a beat, because I needed to get this right. I needed for her to know. It was just hard, making the right words come out sometimes. And that damn tic was getting worse.
“I see you, Everly. The real you. The one that no one else gets to see. She’s beautiful and she’s sad and when she thinks no one can see her, she’s kind of broken. I get that.”
She blinked, her eyes wide and shiny. “No one has ever said anything like that to me before.”
“It’s because you’ve never let them.” I scooped up my napkin, fingers nervous now. “Why is that?”
“Why is what?”
“You dated that guy, Jason what’s-his-face, for a while, but other than him, I don’t remember seeing you around with anyone.”
“Trevor, you didn’t know I existed until this summer.”
“Wrong again. So damn wrong.”
She looked surprised at that. “But we’ve barely talked since grade school.”
“Everly. Come on. Twin Oaks is a small town. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. Tell me you didn’t think I was a stuck-up snob. Tell me that you weren’t dreading spending every day with me at the library. Tell me you didn’t think it would be a total drag.”
She kinda had me there. “Truth?”
“Absolutely. Truth,” she replied.
“You’ve never been part of my crowd, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. And I’m not…” Okay, this was getting personal, but hell, we were in the middle of something that felt big. I had to be honest. “I’m not the guy I used to be. I’m not one hundred percent. Not after the accident, and that’s been kind of hard to deal with.” I was quiet for a few moments. “I was nervous to be around you because I thought you would think I was just another loser, you know? Some metalhead with scrambled brains and looking at a road leading nowhere. Not even Nathan knows…”
Her hand crept across the table, and she covered my fist. She was warm. And soft.
And when I glanced up, the look in her eyes took my breath away. Like literally. I couldn’t breathe.
That’s what this girl did to me.
“What doesn’t Nathan know?” she asked. It took a bit for me to push away the lump in my throat. For me to be brave enough to share. I don’t think I’d ever been this freaked out by a conversation before.
“For as long as I can remember, music has been everything to me, Everly. Everything. It kind of defined who I was. Who I want to be. And I’m scared. Nathan’s expecting me to come to New York this fall, and I don’t think I have what it takes anymore.” I looked away, chest tight. “Jesus, I haven’t played in front of anyone since our last gig. I’m afraid to, because I screw up. A lot. I forget things. Play the wrong notes, screw up the lyrics. It really sucks to be seventeen and to know that the one thing you’re good at, that thing that is your dream, is gone.”
“Then maybe you need to find some new ones,” she said so softly that it took a moment for her words to sink in.
“But what if I don’t want a new one? What if I can’t get past this?”
She stared at me for so long that my vision began to blur and that annoying tic in the back of my head began to press in hard.
Everly pushed her chair back and stepped around the table until she was beside me. Until she was kneeling on the floor. Again, this girl surprised me. We were in the middle of a restaurant.
“Then make it work,” she said, reaching for me.
I met her halfway, her mouth close to mine. “When you say that, it sounds easy,” I murmured.
Her hands were on either side of my face, and I couldn’t look anywhere other than into her eyes.
“It kind of is, Trevor. You have two choices. You can accept the way things are without trying to change them, or you can do everything that you have to do to get to where you want to be. Where you’re meant to be. It might be a different version of what you wanted, but that’s okay. We’re kids. We’re supposed to adapt.” Her mouth grazed mine. “I’ll help you,” she whispered.
I would have scooped her into my arms and kissed her until I couldn’t breathe, but someone cleared their throat and Everly began to giggle. She looked up at the waiter, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. For one perfect moment I saw the girl who completed me.
But then her expression wavered, and she slowly stood up, her eyes on the street behind me.
“Everly?” I followed her gaze, but there were so many people in the street heading down to the river for the fireworks that I wasn’t sure who she was looking at.
“Everly?” I asked again, standing up beside her.
“I…I have to go,” she said hoarsely.
What?
I barely had time to drop enough cash on the table to cover our bill and follow her out into the crowded street. By then, big fat drops of water were falling from the sky, the kind that splashed back up at you when they hit the ground. Everly was just ahead of me, and when she glanced back, I saw what was inside her. I saw it clear as day.
Hurt. Confusion. And fear.
It was the part of her that was broken, and it made me crazy to know that someone was responsible for it. I glanced at the hundreds of people around us with only one question in my head. Who could it possibly be?