Page 75 of Hot and Bothered
I’d thought he had. Maybe I’d been wrong.
Maybe Evan didn’t care about me as much as I cared about him.
I’d begun to hope, begun to wish, that maybe Evan had come to love me.
Now all that wishing and hoping was splintering in the deepest parts of my heart.
If Evan didn’t trust me or care enough about me to share something this important, maybe I’d been wrong about everything between us.
Maybe Evan wasn’t my happily-ever-after.
28
Igot up early, almost forgetting Evan wasn’t in bed next to me for a brief moment. I found a text from him telling me that after making sure his mom and Christie were going to be okay for the day, he would go straight to Sin and Tonic for his shift.
Giving us no time to talk through what had happened last night.
That seemed to be Evan’s way of dealing with arguments. By not dealing with them at all. It was always the silent treatment with him.
Like Reagan had said — both of us lacked healthy communication skills.
I frowned down at the phone in my one hand as I crammed a piece of toast into my mouth with the other. I kept re-reading it, hoping to catch some clue as to Evan’s state of mind that morning.
Was he sorry he’d snapped at me? Chagrined at what he’d said? Pissed off at me for interfering?
All I’d wanted to do was be there for Evan. Instead, it had blown up in my face.
He couldn’t avoid me forever, though. We had a shift together at Sin and Tonic.
But when I got to the bar for my afternoon shift, Mason immediately took my elbow and ushered me into the back office.
“I’m swamped in paperwork over here,” he said urgently. “Do you mind looking at some of the numbers again? You did a great job last time, and I just don’t have the brain space to do it myself.”
He really trusted me with this stuff. It was heartwarming and distressing at the same time. It felt good to have someone trust me with something this important, but knowing that he put his faith in me only made me anxious, knowing that I couldn’t let him down.
“Sure,” I told him. “I’ll take a look.”
That was how I ended up in the office for most of the night. Score one point for Evan — he barely had to speak two words to me the entire first half of our shift.
Usually, I wouldn’t have minded being left alone with spreadsheets. But this time, the numbers were indecipherable. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the paperwork. A pit of despair began to yawn open in my stomach. Mason believed in me, but I was in way over my head. The previous times must have been a fluke. Nothing was making any kind of sense.
I came out to take a break when the anxiety grew too strong. I helped Lizzy with the tables and took the opportunity to quench my thirst — with water, not alcohol — and munch on the bar snacks.
I did manage to spot Evan during a lull in the clamoring of customers. The undersides of his eyes were dark and bruised. There was an anxious twitch in his left eyebrow, and his lips were pale and bloodless. The sight of him was enough to distract me from my own angst and doubts.
“Hey,” I said carefully as I approached the bar where he was wiping down the sticky counter. “How’s your mom doing?”
“Fine,” he said curtly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“From the way Christie and you were acting, she was in a bad state yesterday,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure she’s doing okay.”
Evan’s ramrod straight back eased a bit.
“It’ll take a while for the meds to kick back in, but she knows we’re going to keep an eye on her and make sure she’s taking them.” A frown line appeared between his brows. “Christie hates the feeling of forcing our mom to do something against her will, so I’ll probably be visiting every day for the next while just to make sure.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I can’t imagine how hard this whole thing must be.”
Evan shrugged listlessly. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”
