Page 27 of Just for December

‘Oh,’ Duke says. ‘That’s horrible. I’m sorry you’re part of the Shit Dad Club too.’

Evie turns her back so she’s no longer facing the view, but leaning against the wall instead. She crosses her feet at the ankles and stuffs her hands in her pockets.

‘Should we get T-shirts made, or …?’ she jokes, and when they lock eyes it’s loaded. It really is a special kind of club, Evie thinks. You don’t know unless you know. ‘You seem remarkably well adjusted anyway,’ she adds. ‘So my compliments to your therapist.’

‘Ha.’ Duke smiles. ‘I’ll be sure to let Phoebe know.’

‘Phoebe?’ echoes Evie. ‘That doesn’t sound like a therapist name. Patrice, or Monica. Those are therapists’ names.’

‘Jonathan.’

‘Jonathan!’ exclaims Evie. ‘Yes. Maybe they should get a name change with their diplomas. I’d trust a Jonathan. Although, jeez, I don’t know how they do it, listening to everyone’s whining all day. I’d throw myself out of a window. Shall we walk? I’m freezing my nuts off.’

They decide to see if there’s a path back down to the main town at the opposite end of the opening to where they came, each emboldened by the other to explore.

‘So therapist is off the list of alternate careers for you I take it?’ Dukes enquires, as they find a very dimly lit passageway that could take them to exactly where they need to be, or end in their untimely mutual deaths by way of an axe-murderer in the shadows.

‘At this point, I am absolutely unemployable,’ Evie quips. ‘Who’s gonna give a job to a woman likely to use it as plot?’

‘Do I need to be careful what I say?’ Duke asks over his shoulder. He’s leading the way. Evie strains in the dark to get a good look at his ass before she’s really aware of what she’s doing. She catches herself. Why is she looking? It’s not like she’s into him or anything.

‘Always.’ She laughs. ‘I can make no guarantees.’

‘Duly noted.’ Duke chuckles, and Evie feels the need to clarify.

‘For the record,’ she tells him, ‘I am absolutely serious. There are two things as a writer that I know to be true. One is that even if you, as the author, don’t believe a thing yourcharacter says, people will assume that it is your truth and act accordingly. If your protagonist thinkslive, laugh, lovesigns are basic, everyone assumes you think they are basic too, and by extension that you’re an uppity bitch. If your antihero hates olives and thinks anyone serving them at a party must have been born without taste buds, nobody will ever offer you a pitted kalamata ever again. Very few people can separate the book from the author, and it pisses meoff.’

Duke chuckles again, and it’s not lost on Evie that she’s on a bit of a roll with making him laugh. It does something to her chest, the notion of amusing him.

‘What’s the second thing?’ he asks.

‘That I don’t mean to be a magpie or pick over the carcasses of stories that belong to other people, but it just sort of … happens. I write about humans, and also interact with humans on a daily basis. Well …’ She reconsiders this. ‘Mostly daily basis.’ There are stretches of time when she’s on deadline where she stays home, unshowered, only pausing to let the dog out into the backyard. But besides that, she does find it helpful to write in coffee shops, listening in to the conversations of others, or lingering in the locker room after a weights class, eavesdropping on small talk.

‘My seventh-grade crush once made an appearance in a novel, and I only realised I’d been imagining him as a grown-up and using all his characteristicsafterthe book was published. The mannerisms of my hairdresser, I’ve used them before too. The bad behaviour of exes …’

He turns around at this. ‘What about fake exes?’ he asks. ‘When our fauxmance is a nomance, are you going to write about it?’

Evie rolls her eyes. ‘Be wary of the man who directly asks if you’re going to write about him,’ she says, but she means it good-naturedly. It’s her way of saying no. Honestly, not if she can help it. It’s too embarrassing. Something tells her that saying as much won’t go down well with him though, so she doesn’t.

‘What about you? Any unlived lives?’

They’re back down on the flatter terrain of the main city now. Right as Evie wonders what the time is – it’s too much effort to pull off her gloves and unzip the top part of her coat to retrieve her phone – a church bell strikes with three tolls. Three a.m. She’s been walking for hours.

‘For a while I thought I might do something in science – I love working out how and why things work. But I didn’t qualify for a bursary at uni because technically our household income was too high, even though … well, Mum drinks. Please don’t tell anyone because I don’t want anything in the papers about it. I asked for this life; she didn’t. But yeah. In theory we were this mother-and-son middle-class family, so on paper I didn’t need any help, but behind closed doors she was barely functional, mismanaged all her cash, all her bills, things like that. It was my secondary-school drama teacher who said I could try auditioning, see if I could get some cash-in-hand gigs as an extra for a couple of projects she knew were local. And it all started from there. As soon as it clicked that you can make a living from saying stuff on camera – like, come on, let’s be honest, how is that real? – I didn’t want to do anything else. Mum seemed to drink less for a little bit after my first appearance on this BBC show, as the friend of the main guy. I had maybe ninety seconds of screentime over four episodes but it’s the first time she acted like she was proud of me. Sorry. I’m talking a lot, aren’t I? Always did love a monologue.’

Evie can tell he suddenly feels awkward about how much he’s revealed, so she doesn’t press him. The small back streets give way to wider roads, guiding them back to the centre, the lights making the damp cobbles glisten and ever so slightly slippery.

‘Gah!’ Evie shrieks, as she skids on a stone. She rights herself sheepishly. ‘Spot the attention seeker,’ she jokes. ‘Sorry. I was literally just about to say that I am enjoying your monologue. I feel honoured that you trust me. Because you can. I know what I said earlier, but I can be a vault when I need to be.’ She motions locking her lips and throwing away the key, and he sniggers.

‘I absolutely believe you,’ he says. ‘Thousands wouldn’t.’

Evie gives a fake beam and flutters her eyelashes.

‘To round off my sad tale,’ he continues, and they’re walking closer to each other now; there’s room to meander side by side. If they were on the clock as fake lovers Evie would be tempted to slip her hand into his. He has big hands, she’s noticed, with long thick fingers and perfectly rounded, short nails. ‘Surprise! It didn’t last. But Christ, I think I’ve dedicated my whole career to trying to impress her enough to get her to stop drinking again. Surprise number two: it has, so far, been a complete and utter waste of my time.’

‘Duke …’ Evie says, softly, stopping. She touches his arm, and he looks down at it, then back up at her. She forgets what she was going to say. It doesn’t seem fair that he has to hold in so much pain. At least Evie’s mom doted on herwhilst she still could – although maybe that makes it worse. If she’d be an awful mother, it might not hurt so much to lose her. As it stands, it feels like a death without a body to bury. Sometimes Evie wonders, in the absolute dead of night, if she isn’t just waiting for her mother to die, so they can both be released from purgatory.

They’re stood still now, Evie and Duke, and she hasn’t taken her hand off his arm. She can’t be sure who has instigated the lack of distance between them, but the gap has closed. They’re maybe a hand’s width apart, and she didn’t realise the depth of his eyes before, how they tell so many stories without a word. She could melt into those eyes. She could do nothing else for many more days except look into those eyes. Is that too much? She doesn’t care. He’sbeautiful.Not handsome. Beautiful. And she’s misjudged him. She assumed he had it all, this fancy actor in the lead role of her book’s movie, assumed that cartoon birds dressed him and his pavements were paved with gold. She’s been unfair. Even with the fake-dating – it seems to be causing him pain, somehow. She can see that now. It’s just another role required of him by others.

---