Page 13 of Friends with Benefits

It is a casual dagger to her heart.

“When?” she asks.

Grandma Pep winces, so the answer is soon.

“We close in a month.”

Okay.

A month, at least, gives Evie time to grieve, to process, to apartment hunt.

“But you need to be out for repairs by the end of next week.”

Shit.

Evie’s nose wrinkles, combating the panic tears threatening to surface. “You really could’ve called.”

“It was only just finalized this morning, Sweets.” Her grandmother applies gentle pressure to Evie’s shoulders, which have risen so high they nearly brush her earlobes. It does little to ease the tension. “A few offers fell through in escrow. We didn’t want to needlessly worry you.”

What the fuck isescrow? Evie is going to be sick. She retreats for the bathroom and hurls semi-digested matzo meal and her heart into the toilet, then moans, “What the fuck is this day?” to herself. Emotional whiplash makes her queasy. Shit really does happen in threes. FirstGinger, then Next in Foley, nowthis? Out by the end of next week? What will she do? Where will she live?

“Hey.” Theo’s knuckles rap on the door, his tenor soft with concern. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Stupid question. This is a lot, but we’ll figure it out. Okay?”

We.

Theo is here.

You are not alone.

Evie whispers this to herself again and again. Tries to forget that she has proven time and time again that she is a person who is easy to leave. She was five when Dr. David Bloom, an archaeologist, left for an excavation in Argentina. Chose his research over his daughters. Just twelve when Naomi took a beat in New York, where she met Jean-Paul. Chose a man over her daughters. It’s been only a year since Hanna took a production job in Atlanta, ending a three-year relationship and breaking Evie’s heart.

Everyone leaves, often sooner rather than later.

But Theo is the only person who left because she pushed him away, to New York, toward his dream. He’s also the only person who came back—and she’s terrified that any day he’s going to wake up andpoofback to his dream life.

“I already miss it,” Evie says.

“I know.”

She doesn’t have her dream life, but at least she came home every day to a place she loved.

Loved.

She’s already thinking about the bungalow in past tense—like how she thinks about dance, about Hanna, about her parents. Sheusedto dance. Shewasin love. Her parentsleft. Now? Shelovedthis bungalow. She winces over this latest shift from present to past, another end of an era. Evelyn Bloom has always hated endings.

Butoof, are they extra brutal when there’s no way to see them coming.

STELLA HOFFMAN’S DANCE ACADEMY, THIRD GRADE

Evie

Evie is just eight years old when she enters Stella Hoffman’s Dance Academy for the first time, her heart in her throat.

“Don’t be bashful, Evelyn,” Grandma Pep says, coaxing her to come out of hiding, to step out from the safety of being shielded by her grandmother’s legs and make eye contact with a stranger. “Miss Stella is a friend.”

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