A plastic water bottle hit the side of Eva’s foot as Lily pulled her Corolla out of its parking space.
“Sorry about the mess.” Lily looked sheepish, ducking her head and hiding her flaming cheeks behind her hair. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Eva waved a hand, because the fine layer of dust on the dashboard was the least of her worries. She could still hear Angela’s frantic voice in her ear—“your mother’s had a fall, I think she hit her head, and her ankle doesn’t look good”—adrenaline making her heart pound, and Eva wished Lily would put her damn foot down.
A distraction. Eva needed a distraction so she didn’t think about head injuries or surgeries or long-term complications or—
“I’ve seen your desk,” Eva said, glancing at Lily out of the corner of her eye. “This doesn’t come as much of a surprise.”
“My desk isn’t that messy.”
“It is compared to mine.”
“Anyone’s would be a mess compared to yours. You do know a desk is for storing things, right? The world won’t end if there’s one piece of paper not in a drawer.”
This, Eva could do, this easy kind of back-and-forth banter only Lily seemed to be able to illicit. Eva felt the tremble in her hands lessen as Lily pulled onto the highway. “There’s nothing wrong with order. With having everything in its rightful place, if the alternative is chaos.”
“Is that what you think I am?” Lily’s gaze darted toward Eva before back to the road. “Chaos?”
Okay, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
“I think you’re a lot of things,” Eva said instead. “A giant pain in my ass, for one.”
“You know, I don’t get what I’ve done to make you hate me.” Lily’s hands were tight on the steering wheel, her knuckles flashing white. “So I got in your way on my first day and then tried to talk to you at lunch. Is that really all I did wrong?”
Eva sighed, watching the trees flash by the window and wondering if she should have waited for an Uber after all. She and Lily never had done well in enclosed spaces, and there was no option for Eva to escape unless she wanted to ruin her sweater by rolling out of the passenger door and onto the road.
But Lily was doing her a favor, even after Eva had been horrible to her earlier in the week, so maybe she owed her a sliver of honesty.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Eva said, refusing to take her eyes from the window. “I’d have acted the same with anyone else.”
“You don’t, though. You don’t argue with anyone else. You don’t—”
“Kiss anyone else outside bars at Christmas parties?” Eva supplied.
“So, why me?”
Now, there was a question Eva wished she had the answer to. “I don’t know. Maybe because no one else has ever bitten back before. Not the way you do.”
“Oh, so you can give it but you can’t take it?”
“Something like that.”
Lily was quiet for a while, the only sound the terrible pop song on the radio. Eva would never understand how people could listen to that noise.
“We could get along, you know, you and I.” Lily looked straight ahead, her jaw clenched like she was wondering if this was such a good idea. “If you’d let it happen.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“But aren’t you tired of all this back and forth, arguing all the time?”
“No. It keeps me on my toes.” It kept Lily from getting too close; kept Eva from doing something she couldn’t take back. “But I suppose it’s not exactly professional.”
“Right. So how about a truce.”
“A truce?” Eva pursed her lips, mulling it over. “Are you going to be less irritating?”
“Only if you’re less annoying.”
