Page 61 of Hot and Bothered
“You’ll get it,” Evan said confidently.
“I hope so.” Christie gnawed on her bottom lip. “There’s an in-person interview as part of the selection process. It’s a few hours away. I asked Mom—” She stopped. When she continued speaking, it was in a quiet murmur. “She said she would drive me.”
Evan took in a sharp breath.
“I can always take you,” he said.
“She promised she would.” Christie’s voice was low.
“You know you can’t always—”
“She’s trying, okay? Christie interrupted. “Things are getting better.”
“Then why are you here now and not there with her?” Evan asked.
Christie snapped back at him, but her voice was too low for me to hear this time. Evan’s response was equally quiet.
I felt guilty for having listened to their whole conversation, and now that they were speaking in low tones I didn’t try to make out what they were saying.
I went back to concentrating on my book to leave them to catch up privately. But still, I couldn’t help but replay the conversation in my head.
There had a be a reason Christie was staying with us for a few days.
23
Despite my guilt over listening in on Evan and his sister, I’d learned more about his life in that one overheard conversation than I had in the entire time I’d known him.
His sister was a bright young woman who clearly cared about their mom, but something was off. Driving your daughter to a scholarship interview was a totally normal thing to do, but something about their mom’s offer had agitated them. Christie said their mom was trying and things, whatever those might be, were getting better. Evan didn’t seem convinced.
If everything had been normal between me and Evan I might have outright asked him about it, but things were so strained between us it didn’t seem like a good idea. And I definitely didn’t want him realizing I’d heard what they’d been talking about. Reading his messages was bad enough. Purposely eavesdropping was even worse.
When Evan and his sister finished snacking and talking, they left the kitchen and came into the living room. I made sure my nose was buried in the book. Christie took a seat on one of the available armchairs, settling in comfortably for the time being. That left Evan to share the sofa with me. He sat on the opposite side, leaving the middle space between us free.
Before, whenever we lounged in the living room we always sat together, with his arm around my shoulder or waist and me snuggling up next to him. Having this distance between us, as minuscule as it was, was like a dagger to my chest.
If Christie thought there was anything odd about the two of us sitting so far apart, she didn’t comment on it.
“Evan tells me you’ve been modeling for him?” Christie asked me, making small talk.
“Just the once,” I said. “He needed a reference model for an odd pose.”
“Odd how?” Christie asked.
I waited for Evan to answer. He could explain his artistic process better than I could.
But he stayed silent. It was unlike him. He was always so sociable. But now he simply leaned against the arm of the sofa, looking off to the side.
“Evan was drawing a kickass girl killing a dragon,” I said. “I used the broom as a sword.”
Christie laughed.
“I would have loved to see that,” she said.
Was Evan still so upset he didn’t even want to engage in conversation with me in the room? Or perhaps he was distracted by something else. Maybe talking about his mom was enough to rattle him.
There had to be a reason Evan never talked about his mom, after all. He had never even brought up his sister with me. They clearly got along well. It wasn’t like he was estranged from his family. So why did he so rarely mention them? Why was he always so tightlipped when it came to… anything about himself, really? The only thing I could recall was our conversation about birthdays. He’d said his mom used to throw him a party for his school friends when he was young. It had been a throwaway comment. He hadn’t followed up with any details. In fact, as far as I could remember, he had turned the conversation back around on me.
It seemed as if that was what he always did. He would rather talk about me than about himself.
