Evvie Drake Starts Over

by Linda Holmes

  “Very wise, very wise,” he said. “Have you ever transcribed dirty talk?”

  “I don’t know what you consider ‘dirty,’ ” she said. “I transcribed an interview with a guy who was studying the female orgasm, but he had a way of making it sound like a…like a red wine.”

  “Hm. Tell me more.”

  “I’m not sure he was exactly a scientist. He had all these descriptive words for, you know, orgasms. He called different ones ‘hearty’ and ‘vibrant’ or ‘light’ and ‘superficial.’ ”

  “With oaky undertones,” he said.

  “Right? It was very odd to me. But I wrote it all down. Weirdos are gonna weirdo. They’re part of the job.”

  “I bet you read a lot when you were a kid,” Dean said, tilting his head a bit and, she was sure, picturing her as a funny little nerd, which she had, after all, been.

  “I did,” she said. “But to be honest, my other big thing was the radio. My dad was out fishing six days a week for a lot of the year. He’d be gone from maybe five in the morning until dinner. Including all summer when I wasn’t in school. And once my mom left, that meant I was by myself a lot. We didn’t have cable, and we didn’t get very good reception, so I didn’t watch a lot of TV. I loved the radio, though. I didn’t even listen to things that were that good. I’d listen to this medical advice show, and people would call in and ask about things I didn’t know anything about, like bunions or goiters. I remember asking my dad what tennis elbow was when I was maybe ten, and he didn’t know either. I just listened, even if I didn’t really understand. Which is why, by the way, when I was in sixth grade, I wrote a story about a girl named Chlamydia. None of it meant anything to me, but every time there was a new person on the radio talking, it was like they could say anything. Anything could happen. There was a psychologist who would talk about grieving or divorce, which I thought was totally interesting but didn’t get. And I listened to a lot of news. All this public affairs stuff, local news. I liked hearing people talk.”

  “And you still do,” he said.

  “I never thought about it that way, but yes, I guess so. And I learn a lot. When…well, when I lived in California, I transcribed exam review sessions for this guy who was studying aging skin. I practically bathed in sunscreen for the next five years.”

  “Well, your skin looks good to me.”

  She squirmed, and then she frowned. “I’m normal, you know. I hope you’re not expecting that I’m secretly an actress or a surfer under here.”

  “Evvie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know who you are. I have for sure given some thought to what’s under there, but I do not wish you were an actress or a surfer.”

  “Have you dated a normal person before?”

  “You mean ever?” he said. “Yes. Of course. I have dated a good number of what I think you would consider ‘normal people.’ Google might not know about them, though. But you’re right that I’ve dated some women who are better known in the last few years.”

  “Is there a rule that once you’re famous, you can only date people who are also famous?”

  “There is not,” he said slowly. “It’s more like…once I was a public person, it got harder being around a lot of people who weren’t. That makes me sound like such a jerk—it’s not because I was so cool or awesome or anything. It’s just because it was weird being the only person there who everybody knew about. Once you can’t walk into a room and assume people don’t know who you are or what you do, it’s easier if everybody else is in the same position. I didn’t like being in rooms where somebody would ask eight people in a row what they do and then say, ‘Well, I know who you are.’ So the way it worked out, even though I’d rather have been, I don’t know, hanging out with friends and watching TV, I’d wind up at a vodka launch party. And at a vodka launch party, you meet a particular kind of a person.”

  Evvie leaned forward. “A what party?”

  “You know. ‘We’re debuting our new, whatever, peanut butter vodka, and we’re having a party at some club that’s going to be dark and loud as fuck, and everybody’s going to be screaming in each other’s ears, and it will take ten minutes to get a drink at the bar and you’ll be behind some walking wad of grease trying to sell a screenplay, but the good news is that all your booze is free as long as you drink our new vodka, which probably tastes like Mr. Peanut’s back sweat.’ ”

  “Is there really peanut butter vodka?”

  “If there isn’t, it’s not because it’s too stupid for somebody to launch with a party.”

  “I think of parties as a good thing. That doesn’t seem to be your experience.”

  “In, I think, 2014,” he said, “I went to a St. Patrick’s Day party in a warehouse that was so crowded that a woman poured an entire green beer down my back. I’ll bet whatever you were doing up here was a lot more fun than that.”

  Evvie looked at the ceiling, trying to remember. “I think in March 2014, we were negotiating the bill for my dad’s back surgery so he could keep his house.”

  It was quiet. Dean put down his glass. He put one hand on his chest. “I am an asshole. I’m sorry.”

  “You are not,” she said, reaching over and resting her hand on his wrist. “That wasn’t fair.” She sat back up. “We’ve just lived differently. I mean, I’m not particularly glamorous, Dean. This is…” She looked down at herself. “This is about as good as I get.”

  “Are you trying to talk me out of being into you?” Dean asked, fixing her with a stare. “Because it’s not going to work. I’m very into you right now. Very.”

  Buuuuuuuh. “Good,” she managed to say.

  “Speaking of which.” He produced from his pocket a key on a ring with a round brass tag. He laid it down on the table. “This is for Room 208, which is upstairs.”

  Evvie leaned forward to look at the key but didn’t touch it. “Wow, a real key. I thought everybody used plastic cards now. Very classy.” She didn’t know if she was supposed to say more. “I bet it’s nice.”

  “Well, that’s not for you,” Dean said. “I’m in 208.” He reached into his pocket again. He slid another key onto the table. “This is 204. Across the hall.”

  Evvie raised her eyebrows. “You got separate rooms,” she said. “You’re serious. You seriously got separate rooms.”

  His eyes flicked around the restaurant, and he fidgeted with his key. “I—I get that we’re not nineteen or anything,” he said. “But I figure I’ll hang out, and I’ll wait. And, you know. Consider yourself invited over.”

  She looked at a strand of his hair that curled against his ear. “You got separate rooms,” she repeated.

  “It seemed like it was going to be slick when I first thought of it,” he muttered toward the table, and then he looked back up at her. “Now I’m not sure. This feels like a weak move. Is this a weak move? This is a weak move, right?”

  Evvie picked up her key and turned it over in her hand. “No, I think it’s hot.”

  They looked directly at each other, and Evvie briefly considered grabbing both keys off the table, hooking her fingers through Dean’s belt loops, and dragging him upstairs so fast that he’d still be holding his wineglass when she ripped his shirt off. But just then, the waitress reappeared, and she realized that neither of them had given a moment of thought to what they were going to eat.

  EVENTUALLY, THEY ORDERED, AND THEY ate, and the place got a little bit more crowded. Evvie avoided anything with too much garlic, out of courtesy. After Dean paid the check, they sat and stared at the keys that were on the table. He reached out and pulled 208 toward himself. She did the same with 204. “You go up,” he said, “and I’ll bring your bag in from the car, okay?”

  “Deal,” Evvie said. There was a wide staircase that went to the second floor, and her room was a few steps from the top of it. The lock clunked open satisfyingly,
and she swung the door open. A king bed, a dresser, a TV on the wall, and a desk with a vase of roses. She went and lay on the bed, not even slipping off her black flats. She waited to be uncertain, but she was just twitchy, jumpy, waiting for him to knock.

  And then he did. “Oh, hello,” she said as he extended her bag toward her. “Thank you very much. Excellent service.”

  He looked around her room. “Very nice.”

  “Thank you for the flowers.”

  “I know they’re a cliché.”

  “For good reason.” As he stood in her doorway, she was struck once again by how tall he was. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “I know,” he said. “But now it’s going to be very exciting for me when you knock on my door in a few minutes.”

  “You seem confident.”

  He leaned down until he was only maybe an inch from her. His eyes are as green as a spring leaf flitted across her mind, unbidden and brutally corny and completely true, as he looked lazily at her mouth. “I’m…an optimist.”

  She went up on her toes to kiss him and then looked up and down the hall. “I’m not going to make out with you in the hallway,” she said, “because people will stare at us. Now you get over there. And don’t fall asleep.”

  “You have to believe me, Ev. I’m not going to fall asleep.” He pulled away from her and disappeared into the room across the hall, and she closed her door.

  In the bathroom, Evvie brushed her hair. As she leaned into the mirror and reached up to swipe a speck of something off her cheek, she saw the glint of her rings. Her simple gold band and her diamond solitaire had rarely budged since her wedding. When she tugged on them, they eased over her knuckle and left a ghost stripe across her finger. For a minute she looked down at her hand, her own plain hand, looking like it had when she was eighteen, give or take fifteen years of sun. She set the rings on the vanity and slipped off her shoes. Barefoot, she opened her door and sneaked across the empty hall to 208. She knocked twice.

  “Who is it?”

  “You know who it is.”

  “What’s the password?”

  “Advice and consent.”

  There was a pause. Then, through a grin she could hear in his voice, he said, “It’s open.”

  She went into the room and closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it. Dean was sitting on the bed in his white T-shirt and jeans, with his back against the headboard and his bare feet stretched out in front of him. “Hi there,” she said.

  “Oh, hello, nice to see you,” he said.

  She grinned and moved fast, crawling up onto the bed beside him and wrapping her arms around his neck, kissing him in a way that made her feel greedy and great. She couldn’t count the times she’d managed to touch his shoulder, his back, his elbow, his hip—all innocent in theory, but all because she wanted this, this very thing. She slid her hand up under his shirt and he obligingly peeled it right off, demonstrating nothing if not a dexterity that made her instantly grateful for the otherwise kind-of-boring world of professional sports. His fingers crept under the edge of her sweater, but then he paused. He pulled back from her, slightly out of breath, and gazed into her eyes. “What?” she asked. A beat, then another. He kept looking at her. Suddenly, she clapped her hand down on his bare shoulder so hard that it sounded like a slap. “Oh!” she said. “Go. Yes. Go, definitely. Definitely, go.”

  He smiled, looking almost shy, and she helped unbutton the sweater and push it back off her shoulders until it fell. He picked up her hand, and he looked down at her fingers, at the ghost stripe, which he kissed. When he let go, she reached out and rested her hand on his right shoulder, where he always rubbed it like it hurt. She let it rest there, then drew her hand down his arm until their fingers tangled together.

  When she would think about it later—and she did—it was like someone had spliced together a second or two of a movie at a time, perfectly clear but disjointed and maybe not in order. He had kissed the palm of her hand at one point, which had surprised her. She had pulled off the last of her clothes awkwardly, lying on her back, getting her foot stuck in the leg of her jeans and yanking at them while he teased her: “Get back here. You can leave that if you want. I can work around it.”

  “This is going to go slower if you make me laugh.”

  Evvie had expected to be self-conscious, feeling air and breath on all of her skin, knowing he was mapping her for the first time, but she wasn’t. She managed to keep her mind inside her body for once. Maybe even briefly subservient to it.

  She could remember she heard herself gasp, and that she reached up to wipe sweat off his forehead. She remembered seeing her hair slide across his bare shoulder. Eagerness bred clumsiness: she got him in the thigh with her knee, he accidentally elbowed her in the stomach, and when he did, she laughed and he kissed her brow bone.

  “Is your stomach gurgling?” “Did you crack your knuckle?” “Do you have enough room?” “Are you okay?” “Definitely okay.”

  It was different, that was for sure.

  * * *

  —

  She never messed up the sheets in 204. They fell asleep, and when they found they were both awake at three in the morning, they lay with their faces inches apart and whispered about a dream she’d had about Halls of Power. She said she was cold, and he found his T-shirt and gave it to her. He smoothed her hair, and they dozed off.

  She woke up again a little after five thirty, and she turned over to find Dean flat on his back, dead asleep, visible by the slivers of streetlights coming in through the slats in the blinds. She would not be one of those women who watched someone sleep, she thought. It was creepy. So she closed her eyes and listened instead to the inhale and the exhale, the trading of air for air without effort. She synced her breath to it, and she went back to sleep.

  * * *

  —

  The next time she opened her eyes, it was light outside and he was awake, staring at the ceiling. She stretched, and he turned to look at her. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she said, sitting up in bed to lean toward her toes and stretch out her back. He scratched lightly between her shoulder blades.

  “Did you sleep okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He extended his arm behind her, and she curled up and settled back down, resting on his chest with her arm across his ridiculous abs. It was not a terrible place to lie down, all things considered.

  “So,” she finally said.

  “So.” He picked up her hand that was resting on his tattoo and idly played with her fingers.

  “I think I hurt my hip,” she said.

  “Seriously?” He froze. “Are you okay?”

  “No, no.” She laughed. “I’m fine, stop. It’s just…have you ever worked out with a new trainer?”

  He looked at her. “I don’t know how I feel about you forgetting I was a professional athlete at this particular moment.”

  “Good point,” she said. “Anyway, I think it’s like that.”

  “It’s absolutely not like that. What gym are you going to?”

  “I’ve been working out alone, mostly, if you get my drift.”

  “Well,” he said, throwing an arm over her, “I appreciate you leaving it all on the field. I hope it was worth it.”

  “Yes, completely worth it,” she said. She looked gravely into his eyes. “Hearty, with oaky undertones.” They laughed in their barely awake hoarse voices, and she kissed him on the shoulder. “What time is it?”

  He checked his phone. “8:27.”

  “So, what now?”

  “Checkout time is eleven,” he said. “I need a shower. They have breakfast downstairs, I think.”

  Evvie turned her head to look at him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Ah,” Dean said.

  “I mean, I’m not trying to start a status convers
ation. No big status conversations before everybody’s got their clothes on and had coffee—I feel like that’s a good rule. I’m just not sure even where you want to sleep tomorrow and stuff like that, that’s all I mean.”

  There was a pause. It might have been the longest pause ever, she thought. It felt like tides went in and out, planes took off and landed, buildings were built before he talked. “I like you a lot,” he said.

  “Well, good, I like you a lot, too.”

  “And you live here, and I live in New York.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve got to admit, I haven’t thought about it much farther ahead than that.”

  “Sure,” she said. What does being completely chill sound like when you don’t have any pants on? She sat up and swiveled around so she was lying back on her pillow. “I do think it might be better if we kept it between us.”

  “You don’t want to tell Andy.”

  “I don’t want to tell anybody. You’re not staying. And my dad and Kell and Andy and whoever, if they know all this, they’ll think that you’re staying, or that I’m leaving. I think it’s…better to skip it all. Besides, right now, there’s not anything to tell except, you know, this. It’s not like you’re my prom date.”

  “I could bring you a corsage next time.”

  “Hey, don’t make promises you’re not going to keep.” She stretched her arms straight up in the air. “I have weird fingers. Do you see how they’re crooked?”

  He scooted his head over next to hers on the pillow. “They look like fingers.”

  She folded her arms back over her body. “You don’t know what it’s like being a mortal.”

  “Hey, you should see inside my elbow. It looks like everything looks at the beginning of WALL-E.”

  “WALL-E the cartoon?”

  “Yeah, when the whole world is trash and bent metal and beat-up shit. That’s what the inside of pitchers’ elbows looks like. I had an MRI once and the doctor said, ‘I have good news and bad news, and the good news is that your bones are still attached everywhere they’re supposed to be attached. The bad news is everything else.’ ”