Tilly
It wasn’t so obvious, at first.
Or maybe it was.
Or maybe that was hindsight talking.
But Evie was pulling away.
It shouldn’t have bothered Tilly. It really shouldn’t. But waking up with her after the night at the hospital, being there for Evie, had filled Tilly with a wanting, something stronger than she’d ever felt. Something she’d been ignoring. She just…wanted.
But Evie was doing the opposite and drifting further away. The first few days, as she recovered, Tilly figured she was tired and worried. Then she went back to work and Tilly couldn’t deny it anymore.
One day, she woke up early to start emailing with a client on the east coast. Tilly sat on the couch with her laptop, steaming coffee on the table. An extra cup sat next to hers, waiting for Evie.
Who stumbled out not much later, dressed for work, hair done and bag on her shoulder.
Tilly looked up from the tweets she was drafting for a different client, smiling. “Hey, I made you a coffee.”
Evie paused between the kitchen and the lounge room, blinking.
She was always so sleepy for early shifts.
“Oh, uh, thanks. But I really have to get going. I have an early meeting with Rob.” She stepped forward, hiking her bag up onto her shoulder.
“I can put it in a takeaway cup for you.” Tilly was already standing, reaching forward to put her laptop on the coffee table and grab the cup.
“Thanks, but he’s grabbing me breakfast for the meeting. Work breakfast.” Evie was all but dashing for the door. She paused when she reached it, hand resting on the handle. With a smile over her shoulder, she said, “Have a good day.”
“Supermarket trip this afternoon?”
Evie was pulling the door open. “I’m heading to my mum’s after my shift, and I’ll have dinner there too.”
“Oh, okay. Have a good day.”
“Bye.”
“See you—” Tilly trailed off as the door shut, before looking at the two coffees, still so hot steam rose even in the heated air. “Tonight,” she finished, out loud, into the empty place.
Her email pinged, and she launched herself at her laptop. Anything to not think about the weirdness of that.
So she went to the supermarket alone, and bought all the things to make homemade pizza one night, and those burgers Evie still had a craving for. She added ginger biscuits, because Evie apparently now had an obsession with them.
Evie didn’t come home until long after Tilly went to bed.
The next day, Evie was at least there for dinner. But she was in her room the entire time Tilly cooked, and Tilly ended up putting music on while she chopped vegetables to pile on the pizzas, needing something to fill the silence. They sat on the couch to watch a series while munching on slices, and the awkwardness slid between them no matter how much Tilly tried to will it away.
“Thanks for dinner,” Evie said. She got out of her chair and took their plates to the kitchen.
Tilly followed her. “I can do the dishes.”
Evie’s back was to her as she stood at the sink, plates clashing and water running. “Don’t be absurd, you shopped and cooked.”
Tilly hovered, unsure what to say. Finally, she went back to the couch.
Evie said goodnight from the kitchen and went to bed, leaving Tilly on the couch and staring at the menu on TV, aching for Evie to come back and sit beside her. To throw her feet over her lap. To smile at her.
Anything.
A few days later, while at the café, working, Tilly sent a text to Sean, Cal, and Evie. She’d finished up a huge project and wanted to take them all out for dinner to celebrate. Sean and Cal answered immediately. As the day wore on, she checked her phone more and more frequently, to the point the manager gave her a stern look, but one that was a little puzzled.
Tilly never had her phone out at work.
Finally, as her shift was ending, Evie replied that she was covering a sleep shift, so wouldn’t be able to.
Any other day better for you? Tilly tapped out furiously, sweating in the windowless back room where the employees kept their bags. She stared at her phone, waiting for an answer.
Finally, one came:
This is a really busy week, go out tonight and celebrate! Enjoy and congratulations! Proud of you.
Tilly took a deep breath, pulled her apron off, jammed her phone in her bag, and went out to dinner with Sean and Cal later that night.
She gave up, for the rest of the week, beyond the odd attempt at home to share dinner or watch TV.
So Tilly just kept hanging out with Cal, and saw Sean.
Mostly, she missed Evie.
“If New Zealand wins this one, I may cry,” Cal said. They lay sprawled on his and Sean’s couch, eyes glued to the test match on the screen.
Tilly had been with them all day watching the cricket, and Sean had left in disgust to go rowing. Which had made both Tilly and Cal ask him what was the difference between being into one sport or the other. He’d left quickly.
“Right?” Tilly groaned as she watched the screen, the crowd groaning on the speakers along with her. “Bowled out? That was fast.”
Cal looked like they were considering throwing their popcorn at the screen, but instead piled it into their mouth, chewing vigorously. “Not that I’m not loving the extra time with you recently,” they said, “but why aren’t you with Evie? You’ve been with me almost all your spare time the last week or so.”
Tilly looked back to the screen, perfectly still, as if moving would give away her feelings. “She’s, you know, working a lot at the moment. Now she’s feeling completely better after the scare at the hospital, she’s right back into it.”
“Sounds like Evie.” Cal cleared their throat. “But she’d normally still have time for you?”
“She’s busy. She’s had some work dinners, and she’s tired too. Going to bed early. It’s normal. We watched a movie together last night.”
And had sat on opposite ends of the couch.
“I’m sure she’s just exhausted—my sister slept non-stop when she was pregnant.”
Tilly threw them a grateful look. “I’m sure.”
“Wanna read Reddit stories and weigh in whether or not what the people did was awful?”
She perked up. “Do I ever, this game is depressing.”
It gave her something else to think about, if nothing else.
But it was impossible to think about something else. She half-listened to Cal read out stories to be judged, her thoughts going around and around.
Because there had been a shift in Evie’s body language. A distance had wormed its way between them that Tilly didn’t know how to push back against.
Or even if she should.
And Tilly didn’t want to talk about it.
For years, she’d been running. It was what she knew.
At least, that’s what it looked like to others.
But she didn’t feel as if she ran. She simply disappeared for a while. She tried hard to be a good friend before she was gone. It felt less like she was abandoning people when she left, if she did. And she always, always came back.
To her life in Perth. To university, at first. Then to her various jobs. To Sean. To Cal, too, these days.
To Evie.
Because that was her life here. When she picked up a casual job, she made friends there. But they were always impermanent, fickle. Tilly was there for Sean and Evie, and that was enough for her.
Even if she left them sometimes.
It wasn’t running away when she always had the intention to come back. That wasn’t running. It was taking a break. A breath. A moment. It was doing something that was, at first, necessary.
Now, though, she felt like maybe it was a habit. A safety net. An excuse to avoid taking on life. To avoid growing up. To punish herself, because, really, what she ran to, then away from, was punishing herself for what she did. For what she had to live with.
But did she deserve it?
* * *
“Tilly?”
“Hm?” She turned her head from the ocean, the gently rolling waves, and Sean nudged her with his shoulder.
“You were far away.”
She let herself lean against the weight of him, taking a deep breath of salty air as she did so. The sun was sinking into the horizon, and she didn’t want to miss the moment it was gone completely: taken by a part of the world so far away from them. It was easier to look at it. Because those words she’d thrown away from herself, that she’d stopped herself from telling Evie. That she’d decided weren’t hers to say anymore: those words? They weren’t gone. They were bubbling up. And she couldn’t look at Sean while they did, even as the deep burn of his stare was on her, barely inches away as he studied her face.
“I was going to tell her. That was why I came back this time.”
The words slipped out the moment the last visible curve of the sun was swallowed by the void beyond, taking all the oxygen with it. As if the entire world froze the moment Tilly, for the first time in her life, laid the truth bare.
“Tell her what?” Sean asked. His voice was soft. He knew what. The knowledge was in the heavy timbre of his voice, in the slight hush to his words, and he didn’t even glance at the deep burnt orange of the sky, but stared at her as if he’d been waiting for this.
Tilly’s lower lip quivered a little and she pressed them together to try and make it stop. Her arms, wrapped around the knees pulled to her chest, tightened of their own accord and the waves continued to roll on the sand as deep, dark blue over their heads creeping forward to overtake the final remnants of sunset that clung to the sky in streaks.
“I was going to tell her,” she said, her voice low; low enough to hold a secret, “that I was in love with her.”
She knew he’d been waiting for it. But she heard his breath catch, anyway. The waves crashed gently, barely a swell to send them breaking over the beach. The night crept even further over them now the sun was gone, that orange now a deep, rich red.
“You were?” he whispered.
“I was.” Her arms were aching with how tight she was clinging to herself. “I had it planned. I was going to tell her I’d always loved her. Always…” Her voice cracked, and she rolled her eyes at herself. “Always been in love with her. Because how can I not be?” She laughed, silently, barely a sound. “How can I not be?” Sean was so still next to her, and she couldn’t look at him. Not yet. “I finally let myself acknowledge it. Really, you know? Let myself know that I was in love with her and had always been and once I did that, it was impossible to bury back down. And I… I was on the bus, coming back. And I—all I wanted was to see her. And I didn’t want to disappear anymore. I didn’t know if I could promise it. But I could promise I’d come back, you know? I always come back, Sean. To you, to all of this. But mostly to her. And she’s always… She’s always here. And I thought, maybe, this could be what she’d want. That maybe, we could build something from that. That maybe she was in love with me too and that I—or you—couldn’t decide for her that the mess I am is too much for her. We couldn’t decide that. She could.” She sucked in a breath, the words having come out in a rush. They’d started slow, like a puncture, a small leak. But that broke and there they were, laid bare, there for Sean to hear. For herself. No longer a silent thought she tried to sink. “Because Evie is just… She’s in my blood.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“Because Evie can decide to take me for the mess I am. To be in for me possibly leaving sometimes, even if I wanted to try and stop. But a baby? That wasn’t… That wasn’t part of it. That kid deserves present parents.”
It took everything in her, but she turned her head and met his gaze, inches from her own. His eyes were wide and deep and dark, and wet. Her lip quivered again, and he met her eyes stubbornly.
“Oh, Tilly.” His wet gaze brimmed over, and she watched a tear track down his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
Sean was her conscience. He was the impatience with her choices. He was the frustration with her leaving. He was understanding, even when she did just that. He was so many things. He was accountability in a restaurant, and protectiveness of Evie, and the one to call Tilly on all her shit.
And all of that was so much easier than being sympathetic for a love that filled her chest and could choke her. Love that seemed complicated before when it was two adults, but now was so much more complicated. Love should always be selfless, in theory. But it wasn’t. It also came with a dash of selfishness, a need to have that person close because it soothed every part of you. But now, Tilly had to be selfless for Evie and this baby that was on its way into the world.
“It’s so, so hard to ignore again, now I’ve really felt it,” she said. “And now, I’m too late. I’m too late, and she’s pulling away. And I’m too late.”
He leaned forward and she dropped her forehead against his, both their eyes squeezed shut, the sky a blaze of colour beyond them.
“I’m sorry.”
And he meant it.
* * *
It was strange, after that conversation with Sean, to go home and to be so emotionally drained and not share it with Evie. Even if she’d wanted to, Evie was at work late, covering for a carer who was sick. So Tilly ate spaghetti on her own and went to bed early, blinking up at the ceiling of the spare room. Headlights eventually washed over the wall through the curtains when Evie’s car rumbled into the driveway. The door opened and closed. The hallway light flooded under Tilly’s door as Evie moved through the house. The fridge clanked open and shut. The sink ran in the kitchen. The shower ran.
Evie moved through the house, alone, and Tilly would normally join at some point. Ask about her day. Be a part of her evening routine.
Not tonight.
After a while, footsteps paused outside Tilly’s door, a shadow cast under the yellow light still coming from under it. Tilly sat up, staring at it: willing for it to open, or knuckles to softly rap on the wood, or Evie’s voice to softly say her name like a question. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped.
It was a full minute.
She opened her eyes as the light switched off and Evie’s door closed a moment later.
Loneliness, unlike anything she’d ever felt, welled up in her chest and Tilly lay back down to blink at the ceiling.
She could message some of the people she worked with, see if they wanted to catch up. Her hand twitched towards her phone, but she’d already given up on the idea. She didn’t want to hang out with anyone else.
She was often away from Evie. In a different bed, a different house. A different town. A different state. Right now, she was only a wall away, and Tilly had never missed her as much as she did right then.
In her chest, her heart thudded over and over, too hard, too loud. Tilly put her hand over it, clenched her fingers so her shirt bunched up, and stared up at that damn ceiling, wondering why, after years of ignoring her feelings for Evie, now it felt like there was a void opening up inside her and swallowing her whole.