Page 59 of EverGreene
No, Ever. You can’t be defeated unless you don’t fight back. And how better to fight back than to appear unbothered. I flipped to my contacts on my phone, found Loche’s number, hovered over the text option, then gave in and typed a message.
Hey. Count me in for Thanksgiving.
I hadn’t expected someone as cool, calm, and collected asLoche to be babysitting his phone, or to text someone back immediately after receiving a message, but we were living in unprecedented times, and he answered me back immediately.
Sounds great, Nevermore. I’ll text you all the details later.
“Well, Vinny, I’m officially a shitty mom, ditching you on Thanksgiving.” Like he normally did whenever I sat near his aquarium, Vinny had paddled to the side of the tank, watching me from behind the glass. I liked to think it was because he loved me like the bio mom he never met, but I knew it was actually because he was waiting for his automatic food dispenser to feed him.
I plucked the plastic container of freeze-dried crickets, mealworms, and river shrimp from the shelf under his aquarium, twisting the lid and sprinkling a dash of the medley of unfortunate insects into Vinny’s home like some reptilian DoorDash driver. It was a treat I gave him a couple of times each week, kind of like taking an actual human child out for ice cream, minus the screaming and stickiness.
When I reached back down to put away the container of food, I caught sight of the steno pad on the table, grabbed it, and flipped through the pages until I came to the notes V wrote. That handwriting. Every curve, angle, and arch of each letter was so precise and so…familiar? I studied V’s writing, struck with a strange sense that I’d seen this handwriting before. Careful not to rip the paper, I tore the page from the pad, folded it, and tucked it inside my tote bag, sensing I may be one step closer to finding the answer to the question of V’s identity.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Chapter 16
Loche
“You put paprika on the deviled eggs, right?” I asked, removing the pumpkin pie from the oven.
Nix rolled his eyes. “For the last time, yes, Loche. Yes, I did. I paprika’d the fuck out of those eggs. And before you ask me again, I also set the table, picked up all my dirty laundry from the floor in the bathroom, hid our gear so Ever won’t see it and discover your secret identity, and made sure there were no photos of Malachi and Cole in sight, so you won’t be forced to just come clean with her and tell her who you are. Because all of those are perfectly normal things to do when your girlfriend is coming over to your house for the first time.”
“Oh, that reminds me. I need to turn off my burner phone.”
Nix stood staring at me for a couple of blinks before saying, “Fucking hell, Loche, “ and returning to gather various condiments together to put out on the table, all while adorned in an apron with a cartoon likeness of Adam Sandler holding a turkey on a platter. Lyrics to “The Thanksgiving Song” weredisplayed above cartoon Adam Sandler’s head. As much as I wanted to argue, I knew he was right about everything.
A knock at our door sent my stomach tumbling to the floor. I set the pie down on a table that was already loaded with the food Nix and I had spent the better part of the day making. On my way to the door, I glanced in the mirror, fixing my hair and letting out a breath, reaching for the handle.
“Oh. Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from seeping into my voice. “How did you get up here without buzzing in first?”
“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, son,” she answered me, obviously having taken a smidgeon of offense to my less-than-enthusiastic tone. “I brought the rolls.” She held up a sad package of Hawaiian rolls, which I plucked from her fingers and took to the kitchen. “Your neighbor was walking out the front door as I was coming in and let me in. You may want to talk to them about that. For all he knew, I could be some mentally unstable person or some sort of stalker or something.”
“Yeah,” Nix said, looking over his shoulder at me with a smirk plastered across his face. “Wouldn’t it be terrible ifyouhad a stalker, Loche?”
I didn’t bother to suppress flashing my middle finger at Nix when my mom turned her back to take off her coat, a gesture he returned. In the kitchen, I opened the plastic package containing the rolls and removed each of them, positioning them on a plate and bringing them to the table.
“How are you doing, Mom?” Nix asked the woman who’d informally adopted him a little too enthusiastically, throwing his arms around her.
“This is the type of greeting I was expecting from my biological son,” she proclaimed to my brown-nosing best friend.
“Don’t worry about Loche. He’s just nervous that his girlfriend won’t think there’s enough paprika on the eggs and flip the table like one of those women on The Real Housewives of wherever.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said, shooting Nix a glare. Mom’s eyes widened with a renewed spark appearing on her face as the possibility of her one day having grandchildren was spontaneously resurrected from the grave in which it had been buried. “She’s my coworker. I invited her to have dinner with us because she has nowhere else to go.”
“And he has a crush on her.” Nix smiled mischievously, knowing that while Mom was in the room with us, he was safe from any retribution.
“That was very generous of you.” Mom eyed me expectantly as though expecting me to begin spilling all the dirty details of my and Ever’s non-relationship. “Doesn’t she have family?”
“Her family life is—complicated,” I answered, hoping that would be enough to keep her from asking any further questions.
“She’ll fit right in here, then.” Nix chuckled, taking out a glass jug of sweet tea, Ever’s beverage of choice outside of coffee, and placing it on the table.
“If you like her, why don’t you ask her out?” Mom asked, telling me that she wasn’t going to leave this dinner without learning everything she could find out about Ever. “Life is too short not to tell people how you feel.”
“In that case, Nix, you’re an asshole,” I said to my friend matter-of-factly, my eyes wandering to the clock on the wall. Ever was never known to be punctual, and the fact that it was still five minutes before the time I told her to be here should have been comforting, but there was always the thought that she might back out at the last minute. I pulled my phone frommy pocket and checked to see if I had missed any texts from her.
“Wow, you have it bad.” Nix watched me, amused.
