One Sweet Day

by Elle Tyler

  She glanced away and tried to change the subject. “I wondered about what he told everyone about me, when I wasn’t in class. Did he say I died?”

  “He didn’t say anything, actually,” I replied. “And when I asked him, his only reply was forcing me to endure a cadaver dissection.”

  “How is that a bad thing? Students beg for that chance.”

  “Not this student.” I laughed.

  She smiled but looked toward the window. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, dug around in a dead man’s back for you, topolina. Played with his kidneys. Won’t find too many men so brave. Keep that in mind.”

  She looked back at me. “How many times did you nearly barf, Brave Man?”

  “I don’t want to spend my time with you discussing dead bodies and puke. Tell me something you did when we were apart. Show me your smile, Everly Anne.”

  She smiled. “I went to church.”

  “Where do you attend? Maybe I could pick you up one Sunday after service.”

  “You wouldn’t go with me to church?”

  I made a right turn. “You know I have issues with religion.”

  “This might come as a surprise, but so do I,” she said.

  “Sorry, I thought you said you went to church.”

  Everly sighed. “Sometimes you have very glib definitions of things, Callum Andrew. It’s my number-two pet peeve.”

  I laughed. “I have a very good idea what number one might be.”

  “Yeah, being a doctor dims a little of your shine, but it's okay. I'm still hopeful I can fix that.”

  “I like being a doctor,” I lied, “but good luck with your polishing, Everly.”

  “I don't want you to quit being a doctor. I want you to be the right kind of doctor.”

  I glanced at her. “Can we go back to your non-religious church-going experiences? I'm very interested in knowing how a person who doesn't believe in God tolerates being preached to about God.”

  “I do believe in God. I believe in God wholeheartedly. I just don't ascribe to any particular belief system.”

  “So, like, a free spirit? Is that what you’re saying?” I frowned.

  “I believe in the word of God. I believe the place I choose to worship shouldn’t need a donation plate or murals, or stained-glass windows. I don’t like the mockery of it all. I don’t like turning faith into a social event. If I choose to hold ‘church’ at your family’s dinner table or on a train ride or right here in this Chevy, what should it matter?”

  I grinned. “Might I point out you have mocked my doctor-hood since the day ‘twas revealed.”

  She shrugged. “I'm younger than you, so I get to make more mistakes. It's written.”

  I stared in the rear-view because, if I looked at her, I would have kissed her. “It's written,” I echoed. “Forty-eight.”

  “What?”

  “Keeping count.”

  “Whatever.” She sighed. “I'll do my best to knock off mocking your career as a doctor if you don't mock my faith.”

  “With the small exception of trying not to kill Logan, I haven't uttered a single prayer since I was twelve years old, Everly Anne. You might want to sit a little farther away, if you don't want God to see you are friends with such a sinner.”

  “Or maybe God wanted me to bring a little faith into your life.”

  I pulled into the diner and parked. “I'm not a big fan of Bible-thumpers. Believe whatever you’d like about God or Buddha or whomever, but just don’t go preaching to me. I got enough of that shit from Marta growing up. I don’t have a desire to get right with God when He’s decided to get so very wrong with me, Everly Anne.”

  “Has He wronged you?” she doubted.

  “Hasn’t He? And hasn’t He wronged you? What? You’re accepting of being born motherless? You can still pray and believe an all-loving, all-seeing God is looking after you? You—the girl who can’t have more than one free day to live like she desires—you believe in a just God?”

  Everly Anne put her hand on my cheek. “I believe you’re a privileged man who was given a gift for caring for those who need it most, Callum Andrew. What has been done to your heart is not in vain. Tell me, if you grew up without the harsh, inconvenient reality of your beloved mother’s death, would you have the same tenderness in your heart as you do today? Would you even see a girl like me and wonder about my quietness? Or would you be too busy being too privileged, too gifted, too doted-upon, and only find yourself alongside the glory of a woman who can satisfy your momentary hunger but never quench your infinite thirst?”

  She took a breath. “I am a girl who would have grown up just as privileged as you, had I been born with a mother and without this condition. My father would have most definitely encouraged me to focus on nothing but school. I would have been pushed into becoming a doctor like him. I would have been denied doing the normal things of children growing up—dating, slumber parties, trouble. I might have had Christmases and birthdays due to that mother, but I would have led a life just as controlled and orchestrated as the one I live now. The mercy of all of that is this moment right now. I am here with you, singing my rebel song, doing my very best to quench you when you are thirsty, because this God I believe in, who I have faith in, has bestowed me this one beautiful thing amidst all the heartache. And best of all, He has given me the eyes to see its glory.”

  I took her hand into mine. “You think I’m blind about how lucky I am to have found you?”

  “I think you’re foolish if you believe you’re the one who found me or orchestrated your life in some manner that led up to this. If you honestly believe all of this rests on your shoulders, Callum Andrew, I am sad for you.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I watched Julep die. She was faithful. She was good. She never harmed anyone. Where was her moment of beauty, Everly Anne? Where was her glory?”

  She took her hand from mine and palmed my chest. “You have a song in your heart, too, yes? What does it sing? You told me once, remember?”

  “I’ve told you many things.”

  She nodded and removed her hand. “Your denial is in yourself, Callum Andrew, not with God. He’s given you a song. You have chosen not to sing.”

  I nodded, feeling bristled by her words. “Well, I am an academic scholar, not fuckin’ Pavarotti.”

  Everly shook her head as she reached for the door handle. “You wanna look into your academic world and only see God in yourself, fine. That’s your choice. But I’m going to keep believing in this great somethingness because there is already too much in my life that amounts to nothing.”

  ***

  The hostess shoved a gnawed number-two pencil through her hair before she asked, “How many?”

  “Just the two of us, please,” I replied.

  But Everly corrected me. “Three.” The hostess paused mid-reach for menus. “Oh, two menus will be fine,” she told her. “The third person is his alter ego, and they can share a menu.” Everly whispered, “He thinks he's God.”

  I resisted the urge to smile. “Fifty.”

  The hostess glanced between us, but I shook my head, leaving the woman to declare New York was home to two more nut-jobs. Well... three.

  “Lynne will be ya servah,” she told us as we huddled into a rose-colored booth covered in thick clear plastic. “I'll get ya drink ordah, if ya ready.” She tapped her order pad.

  Everly looked over the menu as she asked, “Did you bring your God-complex Visa?”

  I tried not to smile at her. Tried. “I never leave home without it.”

  Her face soured. “So I feared.” She looked at the hostess, who was growing more annoyed by the minute. “I'll have two vanilla milkshakes.”

  “And fah you, handsome?”

  “I'll have orange juice. God will have coffee.”

  “It'll be right ovah.”

  When I looked over, Everly finally smiled. “What?”

  She peeked up from the menu. “I like how you say ‘coffee.’ You
're usually pretty good at hiding your accent, but some words give you away.”

  “I don't have an accent. I'm from New York. You have the accent, Georgia peach.”

  She laughed. “I think it's your Rs. You have trouble smoothing out the Rs.”

  “Coffee doesn't have an R, Everrrrly Anne.”

  “It doesn't have a Y either, but you give it one when you say it.”

  I thought about it for a moment, sounding it out in my head. “If I get rid of the Y, I'll just sound like I'm from Boston, and hell no if that's gonna happen.”

  “Try it.”

  “Coyfee.” She smiled. I left out the Y. “Cahfee.”

  “Okay-okay,” Everly decided. “I like New York Callum better. You win.”

  As we waited for drinks, Everly asked, “Can I wear your class ring?”

  “It'll be too big for you, but sure.” I dropped it in her palm.

  After an inspection, she told me, “Hmm, I thought couples inscribed love mementos in wedding rings.”

  “Suffering from A-M-N-E-S-I-A? It's a class ring.”

  Everly flipped the band around to hide the blue stone. “Looks like a wedding band to me.”

  The waitress, Lynne, interrupted as she set our drinks down. “Are we ready to order?”

  “Ladies first,” I said.

  “Oh, no.” Everly shook her head. “I would never order before God. You go right ahead, Almighty One.”

  “What happened to our deal? Can we drop this already?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  We stared at one another until Lynne all but turned and left. “Sorry, we're ready, ma'am,” Everly said. “I'll need three strips of bacon.” She flashed the ring. “We were just married, and we're celebrating our consummation via bacon.”

  Lynne shrugged. “Sounds like a good plan ta me.”

  Everly finally smiled like she meant it, and I didn't want the sourness to return, so I played along.

  “Could you recommend anything on this menu as good as my beautiful wife?”

  “I hear the steak dinner is a real winner.”

  “Then I'll keep my streak going and stick with winners.”

  “Be right up.” Lynne left us alone.

  Everly handed me back the ring. “Divorced before we even got served celebratory bacon. My ego, my poor God-rivaling ego.”

  She was quiet, too damn quiet.

  “Tell me a truth,” I suggested. “No codes, no metaphors. Just something completely honest, Everly Anne.”

  “Are we speaking as if we have never had one free day together?” she asked.

  “Rules apply to us now,” I said. “So, yeah, I suppose that’s the way it goes.”

  “A truth.” She thought. “I'm very curious about sex.”

  “You just earned an extra ten points.”

  “I’m scared of what my curiosity might lead me to, however. I mean I’m not even very comfortable giving Truscott a hug. I wasn’t really shown much affection, so it’s a little awkward for me. Plus I can’t really be close to anyone for a long time, thanks to the whole overheating-easily plague. Not sure how all that sex business would work.”

  My heart burned, but I kept my voice steady. “You don’t want to hug Truscott, but you want to have sex with him? Color me confused, Everly Anne.”

  “You can want something and still fear it. And I didn’t say anything about sleeping with Truscott. I’m only explaining that my friend hugging me feels weird, so it’s hard to imagine doing more with someone I want to be with... like that.”

  Lynne dropped off our food, and, of course, Everly ignored her bacon but went right for the two milkshakes, shoving a straw in each one to double-sip. I sliced off a bite of steak and held my fork out.

  “How would I seduce you into tasting my steak?”

  “Are you being metaphoric?”

  “I’d like to meet and thank whoever on the G-train groomed you into this girl who opts for sex jokes.”

  She smiled and took another long pull of her milkshakes. “I have just as many fears about putting your meat into my mouth as I do about sex, Callum.” She sputter-laughed, which made a little ice cream fly to the table. “I wasn’t even trying that time, I swear.”

  I wiped the table and laughed at her. “There’s another dirty joke in here about spitting white stuff from your mouth, but I’d like to believe you’re still too pure and innocent to understand, so please don’t ruin it for me.”

  I wiped her chin, and her smile stayed in place as she looked down to her glasses. “You remember what I said about being the girl who can’t feel pain?”

  “No, I forgot all about it,” I ribbed.

  “It’s not exactly part of my condition, but it’s kind of a side-effect. Not being able to know when food is too hot or if I’m biting off my tongue or lips. Well, that kind of screws with my mind when I eat. I used to be able to work through it, but one day it just took over.” She closed her eyes for a second. “That word really does lick boots, doesn’t it?”

  I smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m planning to abolish it as soon as your father finds out we’re seeing each other again and makes me want to give up my current career path.”

  She searched my eyes. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” And I had heard. But the version my father had told was much worse, and I didn’t want to replay it in my mind.

  I took my fork and slid the steak off, cut it to a miniscule-sized bite and then offered it again. “I heard you, Everly Anne.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Just try.”

  “Great. You double-doomed me.”

  “No, it’s your chance to make the word good again. Go ahead. Prove my fuckin’ myth wrong.”

  She leaned on her elbows and surrounded the bite with her lips. I looked down to my plate and ate my food so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. She was still moving her jaw, slow and unsure, when I glanced up. I kept eating and let her work it out. When I looked up again, she was back to sucking down milkshake.

  “As much ice-cream as you consume, I’m shocked you’re this skinny.”

  “It’s the only thing I can handle eating,” she explained. “And I need as many calories and fat as I can get or Timothy is gonna put a tube in my stomach again.”

  “Well, you’re gonna need more than fat and calories to stay healthy. And ice cream isn’t going to provide that.”

  She soured her lips. “Now you sound like him.”

  “Sorry. I just …” I had to start over, without doom. “I care about you.”

  She played with her straw, dunking it in and out of the glass. “Well, you don’t have to—they have all those bases covered.”

  We sat quietly for a few moments, until she asked, “Have you been with a lot of girls?”

  “Is five a lot?”

  “I think it seems all right.” She swirled her straw in the half-empty cup. “Were any of them your girlfriend?”

  “My only ‘girlfriend’ was a self-appointed redhead in the third grade who filled my Valentine’s-Day shoebox with cards and lollipops.”

  Everly laughed around her straw. “No high school sweetheart?”

  I reached for my wallet. “My heart was a little locked up in high school, topolina.”

  Her face fell. “Are you scared of being in love?”

  “In it? No. There’s nothing scary about loving someone.”

  “What about losing them?” she asked, keeping her eyes on mine.

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  Everly busied herself by finishing off her milkshakes. While I waited for Lynne to drop off our bill, she said, “I liked what your friend Nick called me in Montauk.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He called me ‘Callum’s girl’ and then Tatum chimed in and repeated it as if it were true. It wasn’t the title, but... the assumption. Like that’s what we looked like together.”

  I searched her face. “You have a bad habit of sending me all the wrong signals, Everly Anne.” />
  She pushed her empty glass aside and folded her hands near mine. “I told you, it’s possible to want something and still be fearful.”

  I slid my hands over hers until our fingers interlocked.

  “It would be okay,” I admitted.

  “What would be okay?”

  “People assuming you’re my girl. It would be okay with me.”

  “That’s all?” She frowned. “Just okay?”

  “Maybe I need a ride with Merriam-Webster before we have this talk.”

  “I’d say so, Callum Andrew.”

  Lynne tried to drop off our check, but Everly stopped her. “I’m sorry, we’ll need two separate bills, please. I am very clearly not his girlfriend, even if he’s okay with someone assuming we’re a perfect match.”

  I shook my head as I stared at her grin. “I thought you were my Breakfast Wife? I thought we were celebrating consummation via bacon?”

  “Now, now, Doctor,” she said. “You’re confusing yourself with God again.”

  “Everly Anne.”

  “Callum Andrew.”

  “I adore you no less than sixty different ways.”

  After we climbed into my dad’s Chevy, I leaned over to kiss her, but she put her fingers on my mouth to stop me.

  “Don’t. Please.”

  “Why not? Are you still angry at me about the God argument? I’m sorry.” I kissed her hand. “Please let me kiss you. You don’t know how much I’ve thought about kissing you since Montauk, Everly Anne.”

  “It’s not the argument,” she said quietly.

  My nerves bundled. I sat back into my seat. “Do you not feel the same, anymore, Everly Anne?”

  She was quiet. I started the car.

  “It hurts,” she whispered, looking out the passenger window. “Not seeing you hurts.”

  “I know.” I touched her hair. “But I don’t know what to do, topolina. My father thinks I should slay Timothy, and Tatum thinks I should bake him fuckin’ cookies and kiss his ass or something.”

  She looked at me. “What do you think?”

  I shrugged with a groan. “I think this is fucked up. That’s what I think, Everly Anne. I adore you, I’d never purposely hurt you, and yet somehow I’m still wrong. How do I work with that? What do I do to get your father to let go of you?”