Page 2 of Hush Money
“So you know that guy I told you about?” she asks. Now, my stomach sinks. I clear my throat. Yeah, I remember. Some guy she started seeing at the start of the school year. She said it was casual. I don’t ask about him. I have never asked about any of them. I just wait until they are out of the picture.
“Tucker?” I ask coyly. She shoots me a look.
“Tanner,” she corrects me, both of us knowing damn well that I remembered his name. I nod. “Well, we’re still seeing each other. It actually got a little more serious throughout the year.” My stomach is churning. It doesn’t even feel like butterflies. It feels like…I don’t know. Bats? Like rabid bats flying around my stomach. “Well, he actually got a job lined up here in the city when we graduate.”
Now my stomach starts twisting.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
“Yeah,” she says. “He’s coming into town next month to start looking for places, and…I
think I’m going to go with him. Because…I think we are going to move in together.”
There it is.
Quite literally nothing could have prepared me for this.
I saw this day going so, so differently.
I feel all the breath shoot out of my lungs, and my head is spinning.
There’s a long, awkward pause as I turn to look out over the ocean.
Then, she breaks it.
“You gonna say anything?” she asks with a nervous giggle. I turn to her and smile.
“I’m happy for you, Eve,” I say with the fakest grin in the fucking world. She clears her throat, her eyes dropping down to her hands.
“You’re lying to me,” she says quietly. I swallow, my eyes darting back out to the sea. It’s not a question, and it’s not an accusation. It’s just a fact.
I clear my throat.
“What do you want me to say, Eve?” I whisper. She clears her throat again.
“I want you to say that you want to meet him,” she says. “That you want us to find a place. That you want me to be happy.”
I finally get the balls to look up at her.
“I always want you to be happy, Evie, and you know that,” I tell her. “But the rest…we’ve already established that you know when I’m lying. What would be the point?”
And then, I see something that makes my heart start to splinter in my chest.
Tears in her eyes. Caused by me. In all the years we’ve been friends, I have never once made her cry. And once, when I saw her mom make her cry when we were in high school, I swore to myself that I never would.
“I’m sorry, Eve, I just?—”
“Why are you being like this?” she asks me, her lip quivering now.Fuck me.
I slide my hand over top of hers, interlocking our fingers and lifting them off the blanket. I bring her hand to my lips and leave a soft kiss on it.
“You know why, Eve,” I whisper. She shakes her head, like she doesn’t believe me.
“No, I don’t,” she says. I sigh.
“Evie…” I say.
“But…you’ve never said anything. You just…I thought…” her voice trails off. She starts to cry, and I pull her into my chest. I stroke her long hair, letting her rest on me like she has so many times before.
