Evie looked at him as Caleb lowly sang, still focused on the road.
She rubbed his leg, and they looked at one another. As if they knew each other’s very thought patterns, needs, wishes, and dreams, they both sang softly along.
Caleb removed a hand from the steering wheel and rested it on hers. Their fingers slowly curled into one another.
Hot dogs, sodas, nachos, oh my!Evie thought. She huddled against Caleb, as the game was loud, busy, chaotic, and hectic. People were everywhere, and the echoing of the announcers and music that played during the breaks were loud. Everything was loud. There was movement everywhere, and Olivia had a tenacity to be hyperactive, and Zack was demanding of his dad. She didn’t know how he did it.
Already before halftime, she wanted to go home where it was quiet, calm, peaceful, and easy. She was having a good time in a way, but she had been so depressed and ridden with her manic episodes that she didn’t know how to function in a situation like that anymore.
She reached for her phone to have some sort of an escape from the noise and chaos of the stadium with people stomping, smoking, whistling, screaming, yelling, spilling popcorn. It was all nuts to her. Over the last six years, her tolerance for football games vanished. As she looked at her phone, she was desperate for someone to text with to take her mind out of it. And it hit her how alone she was. Even with Caleb, she felt alone all over again. Evie rubbed her face in frustration at herself. Was that not enough for her?
No. She needed something quiet then. A friend that she could tell how stressful that situation was. How badly she wanted to go home but felt awful about it. As she scrolled through her contacts, she had no one.
Being with Caleb, Evie was going to have to become a part of a life that wasn’t hers and meet new people she didn’t know and build new friendships. She didn’t have a problem making new friends, but it all was just too much to handle that she was truly alone. Who would she have to gush to about Caleb? They were dating, and she didn’t have anyone at all to giggle about it to. No girlfriend, no family member,nothing. Not even a coworker. She got to talk to Myla about it, but Myla and her hadn’t grown that close yet.
Telling Caleb she needed to use the bathroom, she went out somewhere quieter and composed herself near the concessions.
She hated herself. When was her mind going to finally be satisfied with something and not find somethingnewto be upset about? She hated the women in town. They were so loud, conniving, untrustworthy, and bitchy. Sarah was nice, but Sarah and Evie weren’t really that close. They’d only known each other for two years, and they only met about a handful of times. Not to mention, Sarah could be a little bit conservative, even more so than Evie. How she wished she and Missy didn’t go their separate ways. If Missy were to have ever straightened up or grown up, it wouldn’t’ve been a problem.
The Chiefs won, and the drive back home was as loud as it was on the way there. Yes, it was great on the waythere, but on the way back, Olivia had started to get fussy, Zack started to get moody with wanting to eat somewhere when Caleb wanted to wait until they got home, and Evie…
She wanted togohome.
The din of the stadium had exhausted her mental threshold, and fatigue seeped into her body, marinating her bones with a toxic sludge. All she wanted to do was go home and be warm and quiet in her bed with a good book, and it broke her apart.
Caleb never took her home. He took a different exit to Highway 42 and Evie didn’t even want todareask him to take her home.
You can do this, Evie. Fight through it. You’re new to this. It’s like the first day on the job. You’ll be okay. Take the trail one step at a time.
As the truck rode up the long gravel driveway however, Evie slowly pulled herself forward and looked. She saw the horses.
Coming up a hill where pastures were wet and dead, the beautiful sunset cast a fiery halo behind a large and beautiful home. Wood fencing trailed all over, and to the right she saw the small herd of horses grazing. Trees of glimmering wet bark birthed their wiry branches high into the sky in several random areas, and a dog rose to its paws on the front porch.
Evie’s breath left her body as she gasped, “Caleb…”
“Do you like it?”
“This is,” she stammered looking at the horses again, “your house?”
“Yep! It’s beautiful at night. Wait till you see the big pond in the back!”
“You have a pond, too? It’s beautiful!”
“Sure do!”
Olivia chirped, “Daddy, when we come home from school tomorrow, can I go riding with Evie?”
Evie smiled. She sat back and relaxed. It was her paradise. And to hear that little girl wanting to spend time with her? Double paradise.
Caleb looked in his review mirror to his little girl. “Absolutely!”
Then it all hit her so hard that it heightened her senses, and she could’ve screamed. Inside, she screamed as hard as she could.
Evie realized how much she had been stuck in the past. She never healed from her parents’ death, her pawpaw’s, in a way losing her brothers, and moving all over the place trying to find where she belonged.
Maybe she could belong there.
She wanted change but was afraid of it. Afraid of a new norm because she longed for things in her life to be the way they were before her family fell apart. But perhaps God had sent her a new family. A new home. A new place to belong. It obviously wasn’t going to be easy to adapt, but she had to try. She wanted to try.
