Evie
Tilly moved in.
Well, back in.
It was seamless, easy. A few boxes, a giant backpack, and she was there. But this time, she put her clothes in Evie’s room—their room, now—and slipped them, folded neatly, into the extra set of drawers they’d bought. She hung her new work jackets and nice shirts in the wardrobe in the space Evie had made for her. Like always with Tilly and her, everything slotted in like it had always been there.
The very few knick-knacks Tilly had weren’t left hidden in their room or, worse, in the boxes. She scattered them about the house. A photo of her family, quite recent, judging by Laura’s age, went on the shelf in the lounge room. A jar filled with shells sat next to it. Some books were placed on the bookshelf with Evie’s. A couple of mugs, mostly novelty, she put in the cupboard in the kitchen alongside Evie’s kitchenware.
With their kitchenware.
When she was finished, Tilly cooked her dinner in their kitchen, making delicious smelling baked fish while a breeze wafted through the back door. Sean came by, and laughed at their domesticity but couldn’t wipe the smile from his face the whole time. Outside, the sun washed the entire sky in a blazing summer-sunset orange that only Western Australia could manage, and Evie sipped her ice water. The breeze raised goosebumps on her arms. Sean shredded lettuce into a bowl and chuckled at something Tilly said. The baby kicked a pattern, and Evie put her hand right over the spot and wondered what it would be like when the baby would do that without Evie’s insides between them. When its little foot would press against her palm, yet barely be big enough to take up all the space within it.
It would feel like this, she thought.
Like everything coming together in this little kitchen with her best friends. Like a sunset that made the sky appear on fire, beautiful and stunning; fleeting, and a normal part of everything. It would be Tilly cooking for her and sending her shy smiles over her shoulder, cheeks pink from the heat of the oven: fragile and solid, all at the same time. It would be the future unrolling out in front of them: unknowable until she lived it, but still able to send excitement squirming up her spine.
Evie leaned back in her chair as they ate their fish outside, comfortable in the breeze that still blew, the sky now less orange and more red, fading into something burnt, then something blue-black. She gave a small shiver in the welcome cooler air, a break from the prickling heat of the last few never-ending months.
The winds had changed, the weather with it.
And maybe everything else, too.
Later, Tilly’s lips blazed over her skin and Evie’s fingers tugged at Tilly’s hair, every nerve alight. The bedroom was dark, and Evie closed her eyes to it and gave herself over to Tilly, to everything this was. It built in the tips of her toes, the ends of her fingers, from the base of her neck, along her spine, and culminated in her belly.
All of this: Tilly in their house and in their bed, and this feeling flooding over her body, and the baby that would be there soon, the family she was building among what she already had: it was everything, all she could have wanted.
When Tilly’s lips pressed against her trembling ones, nose brushing over Evie’s cheeks, breath warm and steady in Evie’s ear, all Evie could do was grin at the ceiling and throw a hand over her eyes as Tilly fell back into the mattress, a laugh escaping her because apparently, Evie just looked so besotted.
Because she was. Besotted with this life.
* * *
“But how long will you be gone?”
Evie passed Darren the salt. He stared at her and didn’t take it, so she waddled—because that was apparently how Evie walked now, according to Tilly, who got a pillow in the face when she’d said it—around him and put some in the sauce he was working on for his pasta. She put the shaker down and leaned against the bench top. He blinked at her, waiting for an answer.
“I plan to be off for six months.”
“That’s half a year.”
Stacy signed frantically from the other side of the table. “Did you say six months?”
Evie hadn’t seen Stacy walk in, otherwise she’d have signed the conversation from the start. “Yes,” Evie signed to her.
“That’s a long time,” Stacy signed.
“It will go very quickly,” Evie said aloud, and signed much more slowly. She’d decided she wanted to sign with the baby as much as she could, and she really needed to practise more. Tilly had started trying to learn with her.
“What if you don’t come back? Rahim didn’t come back when he had a baby.” Darren was looking at her so full of concern that Evie’s overly hormonal state immediately made her want to cry.
She was getting a better hold on the tearing up, but sometimes it happened no matter what she did. Luckily, she managed to bite this down. Tears at work were never a good thing, and they would definitely make Darren and Stacy even more concerned.
“Rahim decided to stay home with his little girl, but you saw him at the community day, remember?”
“His baby is cute,” Stacy signed.
“Being cute didn’t stop it being stupid that he’s gone,” Darren said.
“You know he’s planning to come back when Iman starts kindergarten,” Evie said, hands fumbling over the word for kindergarten.
Stacy laughed and came over, taking Evie’s hands and helping her curve her hand properly. “Thank you, Stacy.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That’s a long time away,” Darren said, as if there’d been no pause.
“It is. But remember when Rahim first started? You weren’t sure about him because he was new. And then he was your favourite. And you are friends with all the people who work with you now.”
Darren stirred his sauce carefully, mumbling to himself.
Evie wasn’t going to promise she would come back. She would be, she was sure. But you never knew, and it was best to not make false promises. They’d learned that when Rahim’s situation had changed and he’d had to stay home. They always used the word “plan” with their clients now. Making sure they knew things could change.
“When do you leave?” Stacy asked.
“Yeah, when?” Darren repeated.
“I have two more weeks until I start maternity leave,” she said. “Plenty of time.”
Both looked like they disagreed.
To be honest, so did Evie. That was soon.
So soon.
A baby would be here any minute.
When she got home, she found Tilly on the couch looking at her laptop screen blurrily.
“Hey,” Evie smiled, closing the door behind her.
Tilly looked up, eyes a little red. “Hi, you.”
Evie bent over the back of the couch as much as she could for a kiss, which wasn’t far, and Tilly pushed up on the couch to meet her. “Your eyes are red.”
Tilly rubbed at them, blinking even more as Evie dropped her bag and sat on the couch with a groaning sound she didn’t even know she could make. “Yeah, I was on my computer at work all day and then wanted to finish this project, so thought I’d keep going since you were on a later shift. There’s some soup on the stove if you’re hungry.”
“I ate with them, thanks. But I’ll probably be hungry in ten minutes anyway.”
Tilly snickered.
Evie pushed her foot into her calf.
Tilly snickered harder.
Evie pouted at her.
Tilly’s eyebrows rose. “You already want soup, don’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t before! But then you had to go and mention it and now I really do. With a big piece of—”
“Crusty white bread and butter. I know.”
Tilly put her laptop on the coffee table and got up.
“You’re the best,” Evie said.
“Want it here or the kitchen?”
The thought of heaving herself up again was too much effort. “Here.”
“Done.”
Within minutes, Tilly returned with a bowl of minestrone and a plate with bread slathered in butter.
“Yes,” Evie hissed.
Tilly just snorted and handed it to her, Evie settling onto the couch with her soup.
While Evie inhaled her soup, savouring the taste and enjoying what was, basically, chunks of butter on the bread, Tilly continued to tap away at her laptop, eyebrows scrunched up.
“Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”
“Got my lenses in,” Tilly replied, not looking up.
“Tilly…”
“That’s why my eyes are red, I know. Tomorrow will be glasses all day, don’t worry.” She flashed Evie a smile over the top of her screen. “Promise.”
“Fine.”
“How’s the little bean?”
“Kicking at my bladder every second.”
“Rude.”
“Must get it from Luke.”
“Obviously.”
Comfortable silence settled over them, the sounds of keys tapping and the clink of Evie’s spoon against her bowl.
Sometimes, it was hard to accept that this was reality, now. That Tilly was here, with her, and wouldn’t leave. But more than that; she was making Evie soup and kissing her and being there, not only as Tilly, her friend, but as Tilly, her girlfriend.
It made her giddy. So giddy she could wriggle with happiness.
“Why are you doing your happy wiggle? It’s just soup.”
Evie’s cheeks heated and she looked at Tilly, who was pressing her lips together to stop herself laughing at her. “There’s butter too, Tilly.”
“I should have known it was the butter.”
“It may have something to do with you,” Evie said.
Tilly’s entire face softened.
“But mostly the butter.”
“Knew it.” But there was a little smile on her lips, and pink high on her cheeks.
God, Evie loved her.
“How was your day?” Evie asked.
“Good. I, uh. I talked to my mum.”
Finally. Tilly had been putting it off and Evie hadn’t wanted to push her. “Yeah?”
“She, um… She agrees we should talk to Laura. Soon.”
Evie just nodded.
Tilly looked firmly at her screen, even though her fingers had frozen on the keyboard. “I think she deserves to know, now.”
A question bubbled up in Evie, one that had been there for a while, but Evie had resisted asking. Tilly was opening up on her own, bit by bit, and Evie was patient enough to wait to get all the information as it appeared. There was so much happening that letting things lie had been easy.
Tilly finally looked up from her screen, head cocking a little as she looked at Evie. “Ask whatever it is you’re thinking.”
So, Evie did. “Why—or, I guess, how—did you decide not to tell Laura?”
Tilly let out a long, slow breath, as if the question had stolen the air from her. After a second of consideration, she closed her laptop and put it on the coffee table, then pulled her knees to her chest, facing Evie on the couch. She wiggled her toes under Evie’s leg, and Evie leaned into her legs a little, arm on the back of the couch so they were close.
“Well,” Tilly said. Her lashes sent shadows over her cheeks, long and dark, and Evie wanted to run her fingers over those shadows, down her cheekbones, along the curve over her ear. She left her hands where they were though, and waited, like she would—had—for years, for Tilly to share with her.
But waiting years wasn’t a thing anymore.
Tilly swallowed, and spoke. “At the time, it seemed the easiest. The best. I want to say for Laura—who I was thinking of; I really did think it made the most sense. But also for me. Mostly, for me.” Tilly winced when she said it, as if admitting something shameful.
Evie ran her fingers over her knee reassuringly, but left the space for her to fill with her story, not with Evie’s thoughts. That could come. But she wanted to hear this. Wanted Tilly to share.
“I thought if I could give birth to her, then my parents took over and raised her, and we all didn’t talk about the fact that I was her mum—her biological mum… I thought it would be easier. That she would never have to know. That it wasn’t important. I was fifteen.” Tilly shrugged, almost helplessly, as if she didn’t know what else to say beyond that. “Mum and Dad suggested a few times that we shouldn’t hide it. So I, um—I begged them. I begged Mum. The idea of this baby knowing and feeling like I’d abandoned her… I didn’t know how life was meant to continue, with this kid knowing that. How could I leave, and live my life? Go to uni, or get a job…so I begged Mum.” Different shadows were on her face now: past memories, a kind of haunting, rather than objects blocking light. She stared at her knees, pulled up against her chest still. “I was stubborn, and really sure about it. I told her that if the baby was going to know, I didn’t know if I could leave them with my parents.” Her voice trembled and she looked up, eyes wet and deep and filled with regret. “I don’t know if I said that to make them agree, or because I meant it. I didn’t…didn’t mean to manipulate them into the decision I wanted. I was just so scared.”
Evie leaned in then, wrapped her arms around Tilly, hands barely reaching to her back with Tilly’s legs pulled up. “Of course you were scared. You were fifteen. You were pregnant. You did what you thought was best for you, and for the baby. That’s okay.” Evie spoke softly, forehead pressed above Tilly’s ear. “I’m thirty-one and I’m terrified. This, when I was fifteen? I would have done worse than beg my mum to keep things a secret.”
“I think now, that mum might have been right,” said Tilly. “At least she convinced me not to hide she was adopted. But maybe she was right about the rest. That Laura should have known from the start. Because we need to tell her now, and she’s going to feel betrayed. Lied to.”
“She will. And she’s allowed to. But also, she’s going to know that her base? Her foundation? Her family? None of that is really changing. She will have all that stability there still.”
Tilly bit her lip, nodding, uncertainty in the lines of her forehead.
“I can go with you?”
Tilly squeezed her hand. “As always, you’re the most incredible. But I think I have to go alone.”
“Then I’ll have my phone with me the whole time in case you need me.”
“The most incredible.”