“You’re right. It should have been.” Tommy leaned forward, reaching for her hand and holding it tightly. “We messed up. We one hundred percent dropped the ball. No excuse or explanation will make what we did better, because neither of us stopped to ask, ‘Hey, is this really what Evie would want?’” He squeezed her hand gently.
“And you’re right again; wanting to apologize to you is to make us feel better and put the load back on your shoulders. If we apologize, it comes down to you forgiving us, and if you’re not ready to forgive, we shouldn’t make you listen to the apology. We just want to help you heal from our very thoughtless actions, because knowing you’re hurting because of us is tearing us up.”
“So please let us do something to show we understand we were wrong and prove to you that we want to make you happy,” Alex added imploringly.
“You’re once again making this about you guys feeling better, though.” She pointed out calmly. “I don’t want you to do anything. I don’t want big gestures, gifts, or anything like that. Just do better going forward.”
They seemed to realize she wasn’t going to give in and nodded resignedly. She told them to eat their food and watched, amused, as they obediently picked up pieces and began eating.
“Did you really spend four days at a retreat where they wouldn’t let you use technology?” Tommy asked suddenly, confusion creasing his forehead. Evie chuckled, knowing that was unfathomable to him.
“Yeah,” she nodded, sipping her water. “It was surprisingly pleasant not having to worry about messages, phone calls, and emails. They didn’t even have TVs, and the only music was relaxing piano songs or Tibetan chanting.”
“Sounds… nice.”
She could see neither Tommy nor Alex thought it sounded nice at all, but his question reminded her about her frozen phone, so rather than try to explain why it had actually been relaxing, she excused herself to grab it, brought it back out, and handed it to Tommy.
“It won’t even let me power it down and restart it.” She explained as he picked it up, frowned, and pressed the power and volume buttons to try to restart it. “I didn’t want to do a hard reset. I’ll lose anything that’s not backed up to the Helios drive.”
Tommy gave her a look that told her that might be exactly what had to happen. “Leave it with me for tonight. I might be able to go in through your account and save everything first.” Helooked it over carefully. “This is the Iris 3, it’s like five years old.” He shook his head, giving her an admonishing look. “You can walk into the store and take literally any phone you want right off the shelf at any time, and you’re still using the one I gave you for your twentieth birthday?”
“It still works, or it did, anyway.” She replied defensively as Alex started to laugh, and she kicked his shin lightly. “Hey, you’re part of the reason it stopped working, shut up.”
“Then you’re welcome?” He laughed, reaching down to rub the spot where she had kicked him. His phone beeped; he checked the notification and then gave her an apologetic look. “Since you said I couldn’t stay the night, I made other plans. Do you mind if I take off?”
“No, I need to talk to Tommy about a few things anyway.” She watched him wipe his mouth and stood to walk him out. At the door, he leaned down to kiss her, but she put her hand on his chest to stop him, glancing toward the dining room.
“Listen.” She said seriously. “I’m not going to change. If you can’t accept that I’m not interested in clubs and partying with you, then you need to seriously think about whether you want to be with me or not.”
He frowned, his eyes sweeping her face. “Are you saying you want to break up with me?”
“No,” she shook her head, slightly exasperated. “I’m saying if you want to stay with me, you have to accept that I’m not going to keep going to parties and clubs with you, and if you can’t, then we need to end things.”
“I want to stay together.” He responded instantly. “It’s not even a question.”
“It should be, though.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down to kiss him. “Please, take afew days to think it over, I mean, really think it over. Can you be happy if I’m staying home or spending time with other people while you go out partying all the time?”
He blew out a long breath and kissed her again. “I will, but I don’t think my answer will change.”
“That’s fine, just be sure.” She opened the door for him and watched as he got on the elevator, then went back to put the plates in the dishwasher. Tommy had vanished, and she figured he was using her computer in her office to log into her account and get her data off her phone.
Picking up the envelopes Fred had given her, she walked down the hall to her office and found Tommy exactly where she expected: sitting at her computer, her phone beside him as he tried to find a workaround.
“Any luck?”
Tommy shook his head, not looking away from the screen as she pulled the armchair from the corner to sit next to him. “Not yet. Luckily, you had synced your photos and downloads to upload automatically, but it looks like you saved your contacts to the phone, so they’re likely gone, and I won’t be able to transfer your apps or anything like that. If you’re not logged into accounts on them, you’ll lose whatever you had.” He rubbed his eyebrow briefly. “Nissa is going to grab you a new phone when she leaves the office for the night and drop it off.”
She watched his fingers fly across the keyboard for a moment, then looked at the time. “It’s almost eight-thirty. Why is she there so late?”
“There was an issue with Aaron’s op.” He responded absently. “He’s okay, but he was supposed to be back today, and he didn’t show up at the airport. Apparently, he got delayed atthe border over some paperwork, so she’s straightening that out for him.”
“Ah.” Evie nodded; that sort of thing had happened before, and she knew it wasn’t usually a big deal, just time-consuming. “I had a meeting with Fred today.” She showed him the envelope containing the information about the house in Winter Harbor. “Apparently, Della and Oscar purchased a vacation home there for me.”
That got his attention, and he stopped typing, turning to face her and taking the envelope. “Why would they have done that? You’ve never been there.”
“I was hoping you’d be able to explain, because I don’t understand at all.” She watched as he pulled the documents out, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“They bought you this house?” Tommy glanced at her, shaking his head. “I don’t understand either, because Mom and Dad used to rent it for a few weeks in the summer while I was growing up. Della and Oscar joined us sometimes, but to my knowledge, they never went there on their own.”
