Everly After

by Rebecca Paula

  “Fucking hell, Beckett. I didn’t mean it like that. You know I miss her, too.” He bends down, rips the paper bag out from beneath my head, crumples it up, and tosses it at my face. “I’m only on leave for a few more weeks. I should go to London, see my mum and sis.”

  I don’t like to think of what Ollie so casually calls “the funeral mess.” It’s one thing to know your aunt’s dying of cancer, but another altogether when you finally lose her and are left alone in the world. And to find this out when you can’t do anything, when you’re helpless and stuck in another country, is extra-shitty. I should have been in Paris taking care of her. I should have been at the hospital with her when things started getting bad, not half way around the world.

  I can’t fix that now, though.

  If I had my way, I’d be back on assignment, suffering in the fickle weather of Afghanistan or some other hellish spot in the Middle East. I could lose myself in my work, then, like I’ve been losing myself in writing my book. It’s the only way I’ve passed my time in Paris. Other than Everly. I guess I’m losing myself in her now as well. Or was, at least.

  I guess I’ll get back to that novel, another fruitless pursuit. Like I’m going to write the next breakout masterpiece. As if I have something important to say to the world.

  I stand and push past Ollie, ignoring the smug look on his face that says he knows I’m thinking about Everly. Of course he knows. He’s the one who dragged me out of my room last night and insisted we go out, that the only cure for a broken heart is to get smashed.

  I might be an overachiever, but I only managed to check off one of those things last night. For the record, a hangover does nothing for a broken heart. Which is a problem because that means what I feel toward Everly isn’t going to be easily fixed.

  I shuffle into the kitchen, blocking out his fucking nagging voice. I don’t care about the chit he picked up last night or what happened to the one he tried to push on me, either. I brace my arms on the counter, faced with a sink full of dirty dishes, defeated. I should probably wash them. I should tidy up my flat. I should do laundry and function like a normal adult. I’ve been on my own long enough to get my shit together and not let things fall apart. I’m better than this.

  Ollie strolls in with a glass of Pepto and some aspirin and shoves them at me. “Here.”

  I narrow my eyes at the guy who’s been my best mate for years and let him hold onto his supposed cure. It’s a nice effort but not the right fix, either. I just need some grease in my stomach. Maybe some coffee. I turn to the refrigerator and grab eggs and bacon, then fuss with the overpriced coffeemaker Nadine gave me when I returned a few months ago. I think it was a gesture, a way of saying sorry, but coffee won’t make up for what I’ve lost. Just like Pepto won’t fix how I’m feeling now. Just like struggling to tame the story swelling inside me won’t put my life back together.

  “At least you didn’t shag her and then find all this out.”

  I haven’t found anything out except that she’s involved with a fucking junkie. That she is more than wild, more than a girl who’s set on exploring the world. She’s lost, living off time that will run out soon if she doesn’t wake up and realize what she’s doing. I’ve made plenty of mistakes—fuck, Everly’s probably one of them—but I’ve realized she’s still the girl who’s flirting with pushing off that ledge.

  I stop from smashing the egg over the frying pan. I like my scrambled eggs without eggshells. “Yeah.” I feel like I have to agree with him, even if I don’t. “Why are you here exactly?”

  “You don’t need the drama.”

  I don’t need a lot of things, including Ollie grilling me on my lack of a love life. He doesn’t have the best track record himself. Namely, a broken engagement that’s still largely unresolved because he’s too much of a chicken shit to win Gemma back.

  “I have nowhere else to be.”

  I crack an egg, transfixed on the way it sizzles from translucent to white. “Not with the girl you brought back from the bar?”

  “Oh, I kicked her out of my place as soon as we were done.”

  I crack the second egg and toss the shell into the trash. I scramble them up with the back of a fork. “How hospitable.”

  “You know my rule—no breakfast.”

  There was only ever one exception to that pigheaded rule. If I was feeling a little more like myself, I would point that out—that he’s wasting time here in Paris when he could be trying to win back the only girl meant for him. But I can’t shake this mood—it’s black and blacker, deep down to the pit of my stomach. I can’t get her out of my mind.

  I can’t fucking breathe.

  “Are you hungry?” I ask.

  Ollie rifles through a cabinet and pulls out a half-empty bottle of gin with a greedy smile. “Fuck yes.” He doesn’t bother pouring it into the glass; he just drinks straight from the bottle. “Good hair of the dog,” he says, coughing it down. He holds the bottle out to me. “Forget her, mate. You don’t need someone as broken and crazy as her. You’ve got your own shit to deal with.”

  Is Everly broken? Sure, but so am I. We aren’t crazy, no matter what everyone thinks. We’re simply learning to live after losing pieces of ourselves. That’s the thing with getting older—parts of you wear off and sometimes they don’t come back. Sometimes you break into pieces, and everyone around you carries on like they haven’t suffered the same growing pains. But it’s a lie.

  Finding Everly made me realize that everyone has their pieces, everyone is trying to pull themselves together and grow, learn how to pretend to be an adult. Some deal with it better than others.

  The bacon crisps up in the pan, the edges blackened, and I’m pretty sure I’ve overcooked the eggs to taste worse than plastic. My attempt at coffee backfires when I pour a cup and see the grounds floating at the top. I forgot the stupid filter again.

  I shove my plate across the counter toward Ollie, burying my face in my hands. “Have at it.”

  His mumbled thanks is lost against my defeated groan as I trudge into my bedroom and throw off my other shoe. It ricochets off the wall and collides with a tower of books. They spill out onto my floor, next to the heaps of clothes that need to be cleaned. Tomorrow. I’ll deal with it all tomorrow.

  I flop down onto the bed and bury my head under the pillow, biting back a long string of fucks I want to yell. Tomorrow I have to do something or I might finally have that nervous breakdown everyone is waiting for me to have.

  Everly

  I spend the majority of the day pacing my apartment, trying to read, trying to smoke, trying to focus on anything other than Hudson and the shitty words he said to me after he came back to his own a day ago. Or maybe three.

  Shit, I can’t remember again.

  I hear the front door shut from my bedroom.

  “Everly?” Beckett calls out.

  I take another long drag of my cigarette and nervously tap my mouth with my tomato-red nails. I have to face him sooner or later. I need to end this or let it crush me.

  I was getting better before Hudson kissed me at the café. He’s going to kill me if I keep him in my life, even if I don’t mind sometimes. But that’s the part that scares me.

  With Hudson, I live like I don’t want tomorrow to come, but there’s still a part of me that’s screaming to go on, begging for me to try. Pleading with me that, if I stay, I can figure myself out and be normal. At least with Beckett, there’s the smallest sliver of me that’s not dark anymore, that believes there can be good in others, that I might stand a chance of winning the battle against myself.

  I shut my eyes and try to remember more than the words that have been nagging at my chest. I can’t.

  I can’t remember a good enough reason for Beckett to leave me alone in that club. I guess we’re even.

  It’s been a long string of hours since then, until I sobered up in my bed, sick to my stomach and ready to claw at the walls. Hudson was around because he’s always the wreckage that remains when my lif
e falls apart.

  “Everly?”

  I hear a thud on my counter, and I wonder what he’s brought me. Food, maybe. I haven’t eaten since… I can’t remember that, either. I’m not sure I’m hungry.

  I stand planted in my room, days away in my mind, until he repeats my name yet again, this time from the doorway of my bedroom.

  “You should lock your door.”

  “I should do a lot of things.” I force a smile and take another drag on my cigarette. “But I thought I had locked it,” I add weakly, pulling myself away from the window to walk past him into the living room. I grind my cigarette out in the ashtray on the coffee table and glance toward the counter.

  No food, just a bag of… I point, my eyebrows raised, but immediately drop my hand when it starts to tremble.

  “I thought you could use some books.”

  “I travel light,” I snap, rushing into the kitchen and uncorking another bottle of wine. I shake out the tremor in my hand and pull on the corkscrew until it pops and I can smell the biting acid of a well-rounded, albeit cheap, merlot. “And I have some fashion magazines.” Or did. They might be in the trash. The apartment was basically a hazard when I finally sobered up. It took a while to scrub away the wrongs.

  Beckett nods, then strides over to the open balcony. He’s dressed in a hooded sweatshirt today and jeans that have a hole in the back pocket. His pair of Chucks are so worn in they aren’t exactly black anymore. His hair is standing up as though he’s forgotten to brush it, and there’s heavy stubble on his cheeks—a light gold over his tanned skin.

  He looks so good, so right, standing here with me. He’s not even doing anything—nothing except making my day.

  “But thanks,” I add, feeling like I owe him an apology for walking in on a bad mood. “Wine?”

  He turns around and leans against the old metal railing, crossing his legs at his ankles, his arms around his middle. He’s brave to do it. I don’t trust anything not to break in this place.

  “No.” He gives me a sad smile and glances back down at the floor, his eyes tracing the herringbone pattern as if he’s plotting the steps needed to escape me.

  I gulp my wine, hearing the clinking of the empty glass before I realize I’m in the middle of pouring a second.

  Beckett is making small talk, but only the stupid words Hudson said to me before I left are ringing in my mind. I love you. They’re stuck on repeat like a bad Lifetime movie playing over and over, and I can’t find the remote to change the channel. He gave me a ticket to Italy that’s still sitting on the counter where I left it. It’s like a paper grenade. I hate him for even giving it to me, for thinking I would spend the summer with him on his family’s yacht in Capri.

  I watch Beckett’s mouth move, his voice lost to the screaming inside my head. I force myself to walk around and tidy my apartment and light another cigarette as he settles onto the couch.

  And still: I love you. I love you. I love you.

  It’s matched with a chorus of my own: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

  “You’ve moved that stack of books seven times now,” Beckett says. “They’re fine there, yeah?”

  Hudson’s not here, but he might as well be. I can feel him watching from the couch, a satisfied smile on his face as I fall apart at his empty promise. It’s what he’s wanted all along—company to his own twisted end. He can’t get what he wants, so he thinks dragging me down with him will be enough to make him happy.

  “You’re making me dizzy. Breathe, Everly.”

  I grab the wine bottle and try to pour another glass, but it’s empty. The smoldering cigarette in my hand has burned down to a pathetic stub. I really should quit again. I flick it into my empty sink and bury my head in my arms on the counter.

  “Sorry, I’m just…” I can’t find the right words, so my voice drops off. I look up and blink through the wetness on my eyelashes. “I’m just…” I try to smile, to pretend I am that perfectly happy girl I wish I was, but I think I only end up grimacing. “How are you?”

  “The truth?”

  A dry laugh scrapes against my throat, my eyes stinging. It always comes back to the truth. “Yes.”

  He shifts over the couch cushion, meeting my gaze. He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it. He does it again and finally says dejectedly, “Well, I’m rubbish, pet.”

  I sniff back the rest of my tears, staring back at the echo of how I feel.

  He rubs his forehead and sighs, suddenly shy after his confession. “Want to go for a drive? Leave the city for the afternoon?”

  With the last possible breath I can squeeze out of my suffocating apartment, I say yes.

  Beckett

  Everly sighs as I downshift, racing past the outskirts of Paris. The magical charm of the city center has faded to the more mundane buildings of ordinary life. I have an idea of where to drive, but honestly, I don’t care where we go as long as it’s out of the city and I can drive fast.

  I should be driving us to my aunt’s place in Étretat. There are things that need to be packed up, sold, or stored until my life settles. I only returned to France after Afghanistan because I have a responsibility to my aunt’s estate after her death. I think she was doing me a favor by leaving the café and chateau to me in her will. I wish it meant something more than money, but honestly, I don’t want to be stuck in a place I never considered home. And I don’t want to ruin my time with Everly dealing with that sad business. Even if I think she’d like the quiet there, the beautiful beach, the greenness of everything.

  Instead, we drive east.

  I glance over to see if she’s worried that I’m flying by the other cars on the motorway, but she’s riffling through her purse, undeterred.

  She’s not wearing glitter or a party dress, opting instead for a simple, fitted white T-shirt, a pair of skinny jeans, and some beat-up leopard flats. I half-expected her to agree to come with me wearing heels and hot pink lipstick, but today it’s the simple version of Everly. I’m not fooled. She’s as complicated this way as she is when she’s dressed up in fancy labels.

  I shift again, the old car rattling in protest. It’s been ages since I’ve driven this piece of shit. I’m not sure it’s even fit to drive, but it’s running for now at least. I should try to sell it, or parts of it, before I leave. It’s a waste sitting in the garage. I’d let Nadine use it, but I think she’d crash it now just to spite me. Better off selling it for sure.

  Everly tips her head back and pushes on her large sunglasses. The sun flashes through the car, the warm spring air floating around us through the cracked window. She’s holding something in her hand, her feet braced on the faded dashboard. I have my phone hooked up to the speakers, playing some random mix I haven’t listened to in months. The Arctic Monkeys sound like shit through the busted speakers, but at least it fills up the car with distractions so we don’t need to talk.

  I watch out of the corner of my eye as she slips off her flats and starts to paint her toenails, the pungent acetone smell wafting around me. One slow stroke at a time, her toes are painted red to match her fingers. She moves as if she’s not in a car racing down the motorway, and suddenly I don’t want to race anymore. I’m an asshole to do it. I slow down and keep sneaking glances at her. I wish I’d brought a camera along. I want to remember this. Remember how at peace she is in the passenger seat beside me. The wind tussles her hair, and her perfume wraps around me, intoxicating and warm.

  Everly catches me watching. Color rises to her cheeks, and then her shoulders drop. I don’t want to lose her yet. I barely saw her today.

  “I like that color,” I say lamely. I mean, I don’t care what color her nails are, but I’m not sure what else to say.

  That does it, though. It brings a smile to her face. She rotates the balls of her feet over the dashboard in a quick dance, admiring her work. “Hmm.”

  My hands twist over the wheel as I look back to the road, my palms clammy. There’s something soothing about gaining distance from the
city, watching the cars go by, moving forward. I’ve felt so stuck lately, held back as the rest of the world barrels past me, that the wind whipping in the open car window feels like it’s filling up my lungs for the first time in weeks.

  It took four days to change my life: the day my father murdered my mother, the day I had a gun held to my head when I was kidnapped in Afghanistan, the day I found out my aunt died, and the day I met Everly. Three of those days happened in the past two months. Nothing is the same now, not even me.

  It’s going to take a lot of driving to wrap my head around it, a lot of unknown destinations to fill up everything I’ve lost.

  I stop at a small market and buy some things for lunch. Everly frowns and sags against the passenger door, as though she thinks I’ve driven her an hour to stop in a tiny village for some day-old quiche. She grabs the bottled water I hand her and takes a sip, then sinks back down in the seat as I throw the car into reverse.

  “Let’s just drive.”

  I take my hand off the back of her seat and fight the urge to twist my fingers in her hair. I drop my hand to rest on the console instead and nod.

  “Let’s be quiet, too. I just want…”

  She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to with me. I get it.

  We drive until the graffiti-covered overpasses fade to fields waking up with spring, which fade to forests on the N4. Eventually, we reach Lake Der-Chantecoq. I hike us out to a small outlet overlooking the marshy lake, quiet and away from the other visitors walking the paths curving around the water.

  “They had to flood three villages to make this lake,” I say because I’m an idiot. I’m sure this is exactly what she wants to hear—the developmental plans of the French Water Commission. “They took a church apart and rebuilt it piece by piece.”

  She locks her hands behind her back and circles around me as I throw down the ratty quilt I’ve brought along. She scuffs up the dirt, sending clouds of dust into the air. I never pegged her for an outdoor type of girl so I’m not sure what she’s doing. As usual.

  I unpack the bag of lunch items I bought and hand Everly a sandwich. I think she’s going to refuse it, but she tears it out of my hand and takes a giant bite. She makes the most fucking amazing sound in the back of her throat. I bite back a groan. This girl.