Page 54 of In The Weeds
“Do you not care if we win?”
“Nova.” I stir some honey into my mug. “Please believe me when I say that I could not care any less about your chances at winning.”
She sucks in a deep breath and pauses. I can hear her devious little mind plotting on the other end of the phone. “Alright, well,” she sighs, a gust of breath. She’s probably sitting cross-legged in her tattoo studio, a sketchpad open on her lap. “I’m sure it will be fine. Mom will be disappointed you aren’t there, but you can always visit her another time.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Went right for the kill-shot, didn’t you?”
She snickers. “I play to win the game, big brother.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Tell Evelyn I say hi.”
I toss my phone on the counter with a clatter and shuffle back into the living room, kettle in hand. I top off Evelyn’s mug and collapse back against the couch with a sigh, her feet automatically digging under my thigh. They’re still cold and I consider getting back up for a thick pair of my socks. Maybe the ones she stole three days ago that she thinks I don’t know about.
She watches me over the top of her mug, blowing gently on the steam. Comet lets out a content purr and jumps onto my lap, twitching her tail at my hip before settling into a furry little heap across my knees.
“What are you avoiding?”
“Hm?” I can’t think when she looks like that, my flannel over one shoulder and her bottom lip at the edge of the mug.
“You said you’re not going. What won’t you be attending?”
I drop my eyes and busy myself with a frayed edge of the blanket. “Trivia night at the bar.”
“Did Carter ban you or something?”
I snort. I’d like to see him try. “No.”
“It sounds like fun,” she says as she takes a sip from her mug, brown eyes fixed on me. Her voice has more of a rasp to it than usual, a huskiness that has me shifting in my seat and remembering what it was like to hear that voice in bed. Now that she has color back in her cheeks and I’m less frantic with worry, I find myself considering the stretch of smooth brown skin of her shoulder. How soft she felt with my arms around her. Her nose in my neck and her hands curled around me.
She holds my stare and waits. I pack those thoughts away.
“I don’t—” I break off and consider not finishing my sentence. But she prods me with her toes and I sigh. “I don’t like going into town.”
“I’ve gathered that.” Another sip. “You go grocery shopping in the middle of the night.”
Not the … middle of the night. I usually wait until half an hour before the shop closes, when I know they’ve restocked the strawberry jam and the fudge cookies. The store is almost always empty and I don’t have to talk to anyone over cans of soup.
Social anxiety. Sound sensitivity. Fancy terms for my general discomfort around other people. My parents sent me to a therapist when I was ten years old, overwhelmed by all the noise around me. The worst of it was in school, when I couldn’t get the damn noise to … stop. All the chatter around me felt like the worst sort of buzz under my skin, settling into a deep ache that pounded like a metronome through every inch of my body.
I couldn’t focus. I could barely speak. It was miserable.
“Beckett?”
Evelyn touches the top of my knee lightly, guiding my attention back from the table to her open and eager face. It’s the part I like best about her, I think, her curiosity and kindness. Her desire to help where she can, however she can.
When she says something, she really means it.
She frowns at me and I wish I could swipe at it with my thumb. Make everything a little bit easier for her. Be half as good at this as she is. A shiver slides down the smooth line of her neck and I reach forward to adjust the blanket higher. I think I’ve got a heated blanket around here somewhere. An extra quilt or two in my room.
My knuckles brush her throat and she shivers again, a little shimmy of her shoulders and a clench of her jaw.
“Still cold?”
She shakes her head, a dazed smile kicking up the corner of her mouth. I feel her gaze like a touch on my skin, dancing down my cheek and cupping at my jaw. “I’m okay,” she finally says. She wiggles down further in her blankets. “Is it people?”
I hum, distracted again by her hands around the mug. Her nails are a pale pink. The same color as sand on a beach. A perfectly ripe peach, sitting pretty on a tree branch. “What?”
