“You never told me your name.”
She bares her teeth, then blurts, “Evie. Do you want to pick a table?”
Only a few of the two dozen or more tables are occupied. Sunday night is apparently not as conducive to late night munchies as the rest of the weekend.
I choose one by the window, screening out the glare of lighting to check the car, then standing as Evie brings the laden tray across. The paper takeaway bag goes on the seat next to her. The rest of her meal is the same as mine.
It should feel awkward, but it’s nice. There’s a strange sensation in my hands and I flick my fingers, trying to get rid of the subtle vibration. When she reaches for a straw for her drink, our hands brush and I snatch mine away, the static shock sinking into my skin, adding another layer of buzz. Hurt flashes in her eyes.
It’s not you, it’s me.
But I’m not into apologising to strangers. I’m not into apologising to friends, for that matter.
I fish the gherkin from my burger and see her eyes fix on it. “You want it?” She nods, carefully picking it from my fingers and putting it straight into her mouth, sucking the juice off her thumb while I stare, strange sensations swirling inside me.
There are a few other people dotted about the tables, lending a low hum of conversation to the otherwise silent space. A mechanical voice calls out something from the drive-thru window and the sole staff member on the counter hums underneath his breath.
Her colouring is so pretty, pale skin flushed with rose, contrasting the fire in her hair, the sparkling green of her wide-set eyes, crisp emerald and rich pounamu. The dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones match to the ginger of her long lashes and scruffy eyebrows. The makeup she wore to darken them is mostly gone, wiped away with the tears from the smoke.
From the gun you shoved in her mouth, more likely.
But I blink that memory away.
Now she’s doused with light, what I see most of all is her resemblance to my sister. Not just the tones but the wariness, the fidgeting, the way she scrunches her nose as she glances around.
Enough similarities to make my chest ache.
I put the burger down again, only one bite taken, chasing it with a sip of cola. The silence adds to the weight building behind my sternum until I have to break it.
“Is that who you were buying for?” I ask, nodding to the paper bag beside her. “Your brother.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking.” She scowls at the table, shoving half a dozen fries into her mouth and chewing furiously. The burger is already gone. Her drink is near empty.
I’m only a bite into my meal and she’s practically out the door.
And my gaze sweeps across her torso, paying more attention this time to her hunched shoulders, her jutting collarbones, her skeletal arms.
Not thin. Scrawny.
I push my fries towards her, something large clogging my throat so I wouldn’t be able to eat even if I wanted them. “What is it like, then?”
But she shakes her head, the second batch of fries disappearing in singles and pairs rather than the largergroupings. Her free hand keeps snaking out to pat the parcel beside her, to make sure it’s still there.
A sensation builds, a powerful urge to give her something, more than a few bucks’ worth of cheap food. I rub the back of my neck, jiggling my leg to work off the tension twisting through me. Tension that came out ofnowhere.
“If I tell you, can I have them?” Her eyes dart around the room, judging the potential audience for anything more descriptive, settling on, “What I paid for?”
She locks eyes with me and it’s like there’s a force sparking between us. Something electric and energising and alive.
I cut my eyes away to break it, my fingers tapping a drumbeat on the table. “Sure.”
“It’s just a maintenance dose until we can afford to get him back into treatment.”
I nod, angling my head forward so she can’t see what I’m thinking.
After years of listening to my sister’s addiction talking, every excuse sounds the same. Treatment always starts tomorrow. Recovery is too hard an endeavour to undertake sober. The rules don’t apply because… because… because…
On and on and on until one day her brother walks into her room to find she’s never getting clean, she’s never going to become the person she could have been because she’s dead.
