Page 157 of Someone Like Me
This is my Evie. Emotional. Mystical. Spiritual. She wants closure and peace and harmony and all that shit. I wish I could give it to her, but I fucking can’t. The temptation to drop to my knees and beg her to tell her family to go to hell is almost more than I can bear.
I blow a breath out my nose. “Evie, it’s all I’ve got.” This is both lie and truth. What I have for her, if I let it loose, would be like an avalanche. A fucking landslide that could wipe us both away. So the only truth I can give her is my control. My control is all I’ve got.
“Drew,” she says, her chin quivering. “I love you.” Tears flood her eyes again, and I’m ready to cave.
Fuck me.
Fuck control.
Fuck it all.
I’m about to kiss her like the sun is set to explode and we’re the only things left to light the sky. Tell her that her family can’t have her because she’s mine now, and I’ll never give her back. Tell her my sole purpose on this earth is to love her and I’ll do it always whether she wants me or not.
I’m tearing through my own chains, just leaning in toward her, when the sound of my phone ringing grabs me back from the edge.
I lock eyes with Evie for a weighty moment. The floor in the hall creaks. I whip my head toward the sound, but no one’s there. My phone rings again.
Ripping myself away from Evie, I reach for my phone. Annie. I answer.
“Yeah?”
“Drew?” Her voice is tight. Steady. Unbroken. But tight.
Grandma.
“I’m here.”
“Oh Jesus. It’s time. The nurses say it won’t be long now,” she says in a rush. She’s talking fast. Trying not to let the fear and sadness leach into her voice. Because she’s my sister through and through. “Can you come?”
“I’ll be there.” I back toward the door as I speak. “On my way.”
Evie hasn’t taken her eyes off me. They’re wide. Worried. Full of pain. Full of love. Love I’ll never get to keep.
“I’m sorry, Evie.” I’m apologizing for not losing control. For not giving in to how much I feel. I’m apologizing for not being the kind of man she would do anything to keep. I’m sorry for all the anguish loving me is causing her. Because I know she loves me. I know it hurts. And I’m apologizing because I know I don’t deserve any of it. “Goodbye.”
I’d give anything to be numb.
It’s nearly midnight. Grandma Quincy is gone. And we were all there. My aunts and uncles. Annie. Most of my cousins. Even a few of their children. We stood around her bed like a wreath of progeny. Ma was there, too, standing so far to my left I couldn’t see her. I stayed between Annie and Aunt Josie, who both clutched me by the arm as if I’d escape.
As if I had anywhere else to go.
And I’m a piece of shit. I should have been thinking about Grandma and everything she’s ever done for me. Feeling the loss of her. But the loss I feel, the one that overwhelms everything else, is Evie.
Besides, the still body that breathed its last breath encircled by all of us wasn’t Grandma. I can’t help but think that the essence of her was already embracing Grandpa Pete. And Anthony. And everyone else she’d wished to be reunited with.
I have Evie to thank for that. For even the possibility it might be so.
“Evie.”
I’m driving alone in Grandma’s Buick, and there’s no one else to hear me say her name, so I say it again. And again.
“Why now, Evie?”
I’m crushed. Pulverized. But I’m not angry. I’m not bitter. She was never mine to keep. But I will keep her.
“You’re mine, Evie.” I tell the night, and there’s nothing but shadows and the glow of street lamps on South College Road to hear the catch in my voice. “Everything you are, everything you gave me I’ll keep.”
And then I hit the brakes, swerving just in time to miss the dark shape that darts in front of the car. Glancing in the rearview, I see no one’s behind me, so I stop and scan the side of the road.
