She shrugs. “I want to. And I don’t.”
“Eva. You have to do it.”
“Like you have to do yours?”
I blink at her. I never told her how conflicted I feel about my own audition, my own future. I guess I didn’t have to.
Scooting closer, I lace our fingers together. “We shouldn’t have to feel guilty about being happy. Should we?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Do you feel guilty when you’re with me?”
She rests her head on my shoulder, and her voice goes soft around the edges. “Sometimes, yeah. But not because of you. It’s just weird feeling happy about anything. But my mom would’ve loved you. Or maybe she does love you.”
“Do you believe in heaven? Or . . . I don’t know. Life after death?”
She lifts her head, gaze fixed on the ocean. “It’s a nice thought. But, honestly? Not really. Still, I think I believe in something, because it doesn’t feel like Mom’s just . . . nothing, you know? It feels like she’s still here. Or maybe it’s just here.” She taps on her chest a few times. Even when her hand stills, she keeps it settled over her heart, her eyes on the black ocean pressed against the black sky.
The briny wind clings to us, tossing our hair together, our scents, our breaths. I take the hand she has against her chest and link it with mine, transferring it to just above my own heart. I squeeze and she squeezes back. As it turns out, I’m starting to suspect that I can commit to someone, I can fall in love. At least I think I can, because I don’t believe someone incapable of love could feel as terrified and relieved and excited as I feel right now just sitting here, holding Eva’s hand.
“I want you to know something,” I say to her as I pick up my own spoon and take a bite of peanut butter.
“What?”
A million butterflies zing through my stomach, but I need her to know because Jay never knew anything.
“You’re . . . you’re really important to me,” I say, forcing my eyes on hers. “More important than any guy I’ve ever been with.”
She tilts her head at me, a smile flashing across her mouth, there and then gone. “Because I’m a girl?”
I shake my head. I know that’s not it. I mean, I love that she’s a girl. I love her smooth skin and the soft curves under my fingertips when we kiss, the way my mouth can slide from her lips to her neck with nothing to slow me down, but that’s only her body. I liked Jay’s body too, how his arms seemed to swallow me, the way he smelled, the flat plane of his chest where I would lay my head, that little V where his hips met his pelvis. I like it all in different ways and for different reasons. But those are just details for my hands and eyes. This—?this pull toward Eva—has nothing to do with what I can see or smell or touch. It’s something more, almost animal and instinctual, buried so deep inside my chest, I feel it like blood flowing through my veins.
I’m not sure how to say all this. It’s all so overwhelming. Suddenly I feel shy, unsure, a fourteen-year-old me wondering if I can really take another girl’s hand.
“Hey.” Eva squeezes my fingers and a small smile curls over my mouth—?I already am holding her hand.
So I tell her the truth. “You’re important to me because you’re Eva.”
Her smile widens. She grabs the neckline of my T-shirt and pulls me closer and closer until our mouths collide.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M JOLTED AWAKE AT GOD KNOWS what time. I don’t have to work today, which means I can avoid Luca, and I sure as hell don’t want to wade through Chopin after staying up with Eva until nearly three a.m. the night before. I’d planned to sleep and sleep and then sleep some more.
Hurricane Maggie has other plans.
She blasts into my room, mascara streaks running down her cheeks, but her eyes are still rimmed in black, which makes me think she hasn’t washed her face in a couple days. I rub my own eyes, wondering if sleep is just clouding my vision. Nope. Her face is a mess, her hair stringy and greasy-looking, and her white tank top has a smear of something that looks like raspberry jam. She looks like absolute crap.
“Get up,” she says, throwing my covers back.
“What’s going on?”
“We have to go.” She opens my closet and digs around, emerging with the empty boxes she unpacked only a couple weeks ago.
“What? Why?” I slide off the bed, but I feel paralyzed as I watch her open my drawers and start throwing clothes in the boxes. This is all too familiar. The last time we lived with one of her boyfriends, she lasted three weeks and we hightailed it out of there in the middle of the night. I thought she’d last at least a month this time, especially since it’s pretty clear Pete isn’t a bad guy. Poor judgment, maybe, but not a bad guy.
“We just do,” she says, pulling the sheets off my bed. “I’m not going to stay here another minute with someone who doesn’t trust me.”
