***
It was rare that I slept in late. It was almost noon one Saturday when the sound of a rock hitting my window woke me up. At first, I thought it was my imagination. But by the second hit, my heart jumped, and my body followed.
I opened the door to find her standing in the morning sunlight. It seemed like maybe I was still in the middle of a dream. “Evangeline?” Rubbing my eyes to make sure I wasn’t imagining her, I stepped to the side as she entered.
“I knocked on your door first, but you didn’t answer.”
“I had the air conditioning on; I must have not heard it.”
“I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”
“It’s more than okay.”
Her eyes dropped down to my bare abs and then back up to my face. The instant euphoria I felt was a little disturbing to me, how hard and easily I fell right back in. My brain kept reminding me that this was the same girl who’d abandoned me. My heart spoke louder, though, reminding me that she was also the same girl who fell victim to a set of horrible circumstances beyond our control, the same girl I loved with every inch of my soul. The heart always won when it came to Evangeline, and it was beating in celebration to see her there in the flesh. My abandonment issues would have to take a back seat for now.
Her question snapped me out of my thoughts. “Are you okay?”
I’d been daydreaming while taking her in. My unwavering physical attraction to her never ceased to amaze me. Just the smell of her was making my dick hard. My body never reacted to anyone the way it did to Evangeline. I shouldn’t have been thinking about how long it would take before I could bury myself inside of her again. It was all I could think about; that I needed her more than I needed or wanted anything—that I needed to get her away from that so-called man she referred to as a husband.
I needed to bring her home.
“Does he know you’re here?”
“No.”
“You ran away?” The irony of that question didn’t escape me.
“No. Dean was called away for a family emergency. His mother is not doing well. It’s rare that he goes anywhere, so I took advantage and borrowed my friend’s SUV again.”
“Will he give you trouble?”
“He won’t know. He’s coming back on Monday. I’ll just make sure I’m home by Sunday night. It’s a risk, but I needed to see you. It was time.”
“I’m glad you decided to come, but I worry about you. I can’t wrap my head around why the fuck you’re still with him. I lose sleep at night over it.”
“I already explained that leaving him needs to happen a certain way.”
“I’ll protect you. Don’t you know that?”
My gut told me there was something she wasn’t saying; it was eating away at me.
Why the fuck does this dude have so much power over you?
“Can we please not talk about him? I just need a break from it all.”
“Alright.”
For now.
She walked over to my couch and curled into it, letting out a huge breath. “It feels so good to be back here.”
Then you never should have left.
I had to bite my tongue so often around her. It was really easy to lose control of my emotions, but I didn’t want this short amount of time with her to be filled with drama. If the goal was to rebuild our relationship, I had to curb my own selfish need to push guilt.
Recently, I’d accepted the fact that Evangeline could pretty much rip out my heart, stomp on it, then feed it to me, and I’d still hand it back to her. She owned it.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I can make you something.”
“Starving. But let me cook for you. I make a mean breakfast. Do you have eggs and stuff like that?”
“Yeah. I just went shopping.”
Evangeline wasted no time getting to work in the kitchen, whisking eggs, popping bread in the toaster, frying bacon. A tightness in my chest developed as I watched her looking so domestic in my house. It was a side of her I never got to experience. It felt so good having her here.
At one point, she’d just placed the scrambled eggs onto our plates when she opened the cupboard.
I walked over to help her. “What do you need?”
“Do you have salt?”
“It should be in there.”
She was shuffling through things then suddenly stopped. She was holding the box of Pop Tarts. “These are dated from over five years ago. Are these the same ones you had the last time I was here?”
I looked into her eyes and whispered, “Yeah.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s there not to understand?”
“You never threw them away…”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t. Stupid, right? Like somehow having them was going to make you magically come back?”
The sadness in her eyes cut through me. I didn’t mean for her to find them.
She shocked the shit out of me when she suddenly opened one of the individual packages and began stuffing her mouth with the stale pastry.
“What are you doing? Are you fucking crazy? Those are just artifacts. They’re not meant to be eaten.”
“You’re right. I should have been here…to eat these with you,” she said with her mouth full. Her eyes were filling with tears as she chewed.
“I didn’t keep them so you could sicken yourself with them five years later!”
“If that happens, I deserve it. I’m a bad person. You have no idea. I—”
“Evangeline, stop.” I took the box, threw it in the trash and pulled her into me. “You don’t deserve botulism.” I laughed.
When she cracked a slight smile at my comment, I added, “Well, maybe you deserve to get the shits.”
She smacked me lightly in the chest, and we both had a good laugh. The toast had burned. The eggs were cold. None of it mattered, because she was safe in my arms.
“I ruin everything,” she said. “I can’t even make you breakfast without ruining it.”
I held her closer. “I’m glad it burned.”
She pulled back. “Why?”
I grimaced. “Because now I get to take you out. In fact, I think we should stay out for the entire day.”
“What do you want to do?”
An idea suddenly came to me. “Stay here.”
I went to my room and returned with a piece of paper.
“That time in the barn shortly after I moved in…you listed your dreams to me. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“I came back here that night and wrote them down as best as I could remember them. At the time, I didn’t really understand why remembering them was so important to me. I later realized it was because I wanted to help you make them come true and because many of them were my own dreams.” I showed her my handwritten list.
To be independent
To experience love without settling
To be loved back
To make a difference in the world
To be comfortable in her own skin
To make love in the rain
Skydive
To have no regrets
To be true to herself
“If my calculations are correct, you’ve achieved most of these except for the last three.”
“How so?”
“Well, you’re independent from your family. At least, you work and make your own money. You’ve experienced love. You’ve definitely been loved back. You’ve made a difference in my life. You take off your clothes in public. If that’s not being comfortable in your own skin, I don’t know what is!”
We both chuckled. It felt so good to laugh with her.
My voice lowered. “You’ve made love in the rain. I was there.”
“Yes, you were.”
“But the last three: skydiving, living with no regrets and being true to yourself…those I still need to help you with. We can start with the easiest.”
***
Evangeline made it down before me. At
least, I hoped to heaven she did.
There was a loud popping noise when the instructor pulled the handle to activate the parachute. Skydiving seemed like a piece of cake compared to the past year of my life. It was strange, but I wasn’t as scared as I thought I might be to jump out of that plane; my life experiences as of late had toughened me up that way.
The relief that came over me when the parachute opened was euphoric. Everything slowed down dramatically. Slowly descending and floating in the air, I let myself relax. The ground was rapidly approaching.
I ended up landing on my ass.
Evangeline was running toward me with a huge smile on her face. “That was freaking amazing! Oh my God!”
“Was it everything you hoped for?”
“The greatest adrenaline rush I've ever experienced. I can’t wait to do it again.”
I kissed her forehead. “We both needed this.”
Later, after we calmed down and returned to my truck, her face was still red with excitement when she turned to me. “What are we doing now?”
“You want more? We could go bungee jumping.”
“You’re not serious?”
I laughed. “Actually, I thought we could have dinner at Addy’s. I know she wants to see you.”
“I would really love that,” she said, looking more relaxed than I’d probably ever seen her. Life shouldn’t have been as complicated as ours was up until now. All I ever wanted was to make her happy. For today, at least, I’d succeeded.
After I called Addy to let her know we’d be bringing dinner over, Evangeline and I returned to my house to clean up. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the shower running, thinking about how incredibly good it felt having her here, knowing she was away from him.
She emerged from the bathroom with her hair wet, running my hairbrush through the long strands. She’d changed into a red dress that hugged her curves. A pair of matching flip flop wedges made her shapely legs look even longer.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and truly didn’t know how I was going to possibly let her go back to Wichita.
I couldn’t let her go back to him.
Evangeline must have been able to read my inner thoughts by the look on my face as I gazed at her. She stopped brushing and walked over to me. “I don’t want to go back.”
Sitting on the bed, I leaned my head gently into her stomach as she pulled me into her and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Stay.” When I spoke into the material of her dress, her body quivered.
“How can I?”
“You don’t need to ever go back there. We’ll serve him with a letter, send someone for your things, or I can go with you when you break the news to him.”
She shook her head as if to rule out that last option.
“There are things you don’t understand, Sevin, things I haven’t told you.”
“Do you really think there is anything at this point that could fucking shock me? I didn’t know if you were even alive. Anything is still a step up from thinking you might have been dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Evangeline backed away and started to pace.
I got up and put my hands on her shoulders to stop her. “What exactly will he do? Because I’ll fucking fight him to the bone for you. You only ended up with him anyway because you were running from me. You don’t belong there.”
“I was very lost when he came into my life. He feels that I owe him for a lot. All I want is to stay with you, but he won’t let me go that easily.”
Her fear was palpable. I didn’t want to ruin our day by pushing her to tell me everything. She was clearly upset. I decided to back off for now despite my mind racing to think of ways to get her to consider never going back to Wichita.
“Let’s just have a nice dinner at Addy’s, okay?”
She wiped her eyes and smiled. “Okay.”
***
After stopping at the market, we prepared a spaghetti dinner at Addy’s, insisting our hostess not lift a finger. The small kitchen was filled with the smell of fresh basil and garlic bread baking in the oven. The tense mood from earlier had transformed into a comfortable camaraderie again as Evangeline and I cooked side-by-side, sipping wine and stealing glances at one another.
It was the first time everyone I cared about sat down for a meal together.
Luke passed Evangeline the salad. “So, Addy’s told me lots of stories about the days when you used to sneak over here and work at the garage.”
“Yeah…it was my favorite place in the world. She taught me a lot about fixing cars, but more about life in general.”
He looked over at Addy affectionately. “I hear that. I’ve learned a lot from this woman, too.”
“Well, thank you, baby.” She turned to Evangeline. “Vangie was probably better and faster than most of the men who’d been mechanics half their lives.”
“I used to dream about taking the business over. You know that.”
I put my hand on Evangeline’s arm. “Maybe you can still do it.”
“There’s no business to take over anymore,” Addy said.
“Sure, there is. All of the foundational stuff is still locked up in the shop. We’d just need to be creative, come up with a business plan. We’d rename it and do a grand reopening.”
Addy slapped the table. “We’ll call it the GAY-rage, paint it in rainbows. People around here would love that,” she said sarcastically.
“I’m all for that, Mama,” Luke said as he high-fived her.
I slammed my drink down. “Will you two be serious for five seconds? Why not try to get it back up and running?”
Addy shook her head. “Because there was a reason I shut it down in the first place.”
“Didn’t you say that for a while you had to temporarily turn people away when Marty and Jermaine took other jobs? It was only after they left that business really slowed because those customers you turned away found other mechanics and never came back.”
“That’s true. Yes.”
“I bet if you had the right staff, you could start it up again.”
My life had been too hectic over the past several years to really come up with a plan to help Addy get back on her feet. Now that I had a little more time on my hands, I was getting pumped to be able to help her. The fact that this endeavor might lure Evangeline back to Dodge City was an added benefit. Addy had no clue that Evangeline was working as an exotic dancer. Evangeline preferred she not know, and I didn’t betray her trust.
Evangeline was being awfully quiet, just looking back and forth between everyone. The conversation turned serious once Addy actually conceded that I was making some sense. She agreed to let me at least develop a business plan for her and said she’d consider reopening the shop.
At one point, Evangeline got up from the table, looking upset.
When she took a long time returning from the bathroom, I got up and knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Open the door.”
When she slowly opened it, her eyes were red.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
“What’s wrong? I thought we were having a good night.”
“We were. Nothing is wrong. That’s the problem. Everything is too perfect. This dinner. The talk about reopening the shop. The way you’ve been looking at me tonight like I never caused you all that pain…God, Sevin.”
I grabbed a tissue and wiped her eyes. “I haven’t forgotten the pain of you leaving or the broken heart you left me with. But you’re also the only one who can heal it. There might have been times when I thought I hated you. But the fact is, I could never hate you more than I love you. You’re the love of my life.”
“I love you so much. That’s why I can’t forgive myself.”
“You’re punishing yourself by staying with that trailer trash. This is your home. We can go to Wichita tonight and get your stuff before he comes back.”
She was shaking. “There’s somethin
g you don’t know. You will hate me, Sevin.”
Placing my hands on her shoulders to still her body, I said, “Please stop being cryptic. Tell me what the fuck happened!” Immediately regretting my tone, I took a deep breath.
Addy interrupted us. “Everything alright in here?” She took one look at Evangeline’s face and knew the answer. “Vangie, what’s going on?”
Evangeline was coming apart. Whatever it was she was keeping from me had slowly been eating away at her and was now totally consuming her. We needed to be alone, and I needed to get her to open up to me on her own without forcing it.
“I think I’m having a nervous breakdown, Addy.”
“I think it’s better if I take her home.”
Addy looked surprised. “To Wichita?”
“No. I said home. To my house.”
Evangeline nodded in agreement. She and Addy hugged, and we promised to call in the morning.
The ride back to my place was quiet. Evangeline rested her head against the seat. I wasn’t going to try to drag anything out of her tonight because she could have very easily just gotten in her SUV and left if I upset her enough. I didn’t want her driving in this condition and was still set on her never going back at all. I needed to make her feel safe tonight and make her believe that nothing she could tell me would change how I felt about her.
She’d run away and had been on her own for a long time before she met that weasel Dean; anything could have happened to her. My imagination was running wild. The theories running through my mind were making me sick to my stomach. I needed to let go of my own insecurities, make her my priority tonight.
Her black hair was splattered across my throw pillow as she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes.
“We don’t need to talk about it tonight. It’s been a long day. But I need to know everything that happened while you were away…when you’re ready to tell me.”
Her eyes reflected a deep sadness as she simply looked at me without saying anything before closing her eyes once again.
Rubbing her arm gently, I said, “I want you to take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.”