“Where’s your car?”
Eva turned to find Lily by her elbow. “You think I’d leave my Mercedes parked here for nearly a week?”
“My car was perfectly fine.”
Eva glanced toward Lily’s beat-up Corolla. “Your car isn’t one many people would want to steal.”
“Ouch.” Lily placed a hand over her heart. “That hurts. Now I’m not going to offer you a ride.”
“You were going to offer me a ride?”
Lily shrugged. “Sure. I’m driving that way anyway—I need to pick up Hades from my parents. But if you’d prefer an Uber, then by all means…”
Lily’s eyes settled on her face, and Eva swallowed. She’d said they needed to talk, but she hadn’t expected it to be right then.
“I…okay.” What was the harm, when Eva was already this far down the rabbit hole? “Seeing as you didn’t kill me last time.”
“I am an excellent driver.” Lily dragged her suitcase over to her car, and Eva eyed the dent in the rear bumper with a critical eye.
“Are you?”
“That was not my fault,” Lily said, noticing the path of Eva’s gaze.
“Hmm.”
Lily opened the trunk and turned expectantly toward Eva. Glancing at her suitcase, Eva knew this was her last chance to back out, to put a stop to this thing between them once and for all.
She lifted the case into the trunk and walked around to the passenger door of Lily’s car. A few feet away, some of the kids and teachers from the trip were gathered, but as she slipped inside, Eva didn’t care what they thought.
Lily was the only one who mattered, and, suddenly, admitting it didn’t feel like defeat. Instead, it felt like comfort, like a warm embrace, like the start of something new.
Chapter 23
Lily kept sneaking glances overat Eva, unable to believe she was sitting in her passenger seat.
“You cleaned,” Eva said, buckling her seatbelt as Lily pulled out of her parking spot. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“I’m not a slob, you know. I’m just not a neat-freak like you.”
“Please, I’ve seen your bathroom counters. They’re a mess.”
“So there’s not a single product left out in your bathroom?” Lily didn’t try to hide her smile. “Actually, I bet there’s not. Do you have a filing system? Oh! And a label-maker?” Lily snuck a glance at Eva out of the corner of her eye—the clenched jaw and sour look on her face gave her away. “You totally have a label-maker.”
“Like I told you before—there’s nothing wrong with having everything in its place.”
“Because you hate chaos,” Lily remembered, and Eva nodded. “You never answered me last time. Is that what you think I am?”
“Chaotic is certainly a good description of the way you make me feel.”
Lily tightened her hands on the steering wheel, because she never thought she’d get this. Never thought she and Eva would ever be able to have an honest conversation, to break down the barriers separating them, and talk the way they should have done a long time ago.
How much time might they have saved? How much pain, if they’d have been ready to lay it all on the line sooner?
“Chaotic in a good way?”
“In an…unfamiliar way. I told you I didn’t want to get hurt again.”
Lily remembered the drunken conversation at Christmas, annoyed by her family’s pressing.
