Morgan's friend has tan skin, buttery and sun-kissed. Like she'd been baked in its rays with clouds for a sun bed. A mane of dark tresses that cascade beyond her shoulders and all about her. Water-coloured eyes, angled and feline. Arched brows, trim and thick. A sculpted nose and lips perfectly plump. High cheekbones and full cheeks, fuller with her each and every smile. A smile that steals gazes. A smile that'd stolen his. Her perfume is sickly sweet, which Eve can't help but find ironic because she'd always been described as so. Yet every time she'd skated by and left her no choice but to inhale it, her stomach clenched and she'd fought the nausea that overcame her.
All night, she'd watched her.
She'd watched him watch her.
A look she'd never seen upon Jahseh, but she quickly accepted she could owe to nothing other than desire. Clipped glances, and that all too familiar purse-lipped frown. Eve wonders if he knows how obvious he is. Eve wonders if she'd been just as obvious. But as she watches Morgan's friend bundle into the arms of her faux fur coat, wavering in front of her with an ethereal glow, even beneath the pub's subpar lighting, a smile that could cure cancer smeared across her perfect face, she figures there couldn't have been anything obvious about it.
"It was nice to meet you, Eve."
She almost winces at her words, she feels them like bullets on skin.
"You too, Ana."
As Eve watches her go, she regrets her evening. She regrets her stupid dress, the stupid effort she'd put into her stupid makeup. Her stupid being here. When Carrington had suggested they end the week with drinks up the road with all their colleagues, she never thought she'd regret inviting Jahseh and Sullivan and Morgan. Nor did she figure she'd have to regret telling Morgan to bring a friend. But now, as she cowers in her sorry corner of the pub, watching Morgan walk her friend to her car, across the room from this sweet boy she'd caught herself head over heels for, she wishes she hadn't bothered. She wishes she were anywhere but here.
"Eve."
She forces her gaze from Jahseh and towards Carrington, who stalls beside her with a pathetic sympathy.
"Hm?"
"You like him."
Eve nods, "Mhm."
She and Carrington watch as Jahseh rises from his seat alongside Sullivan. And as they too make their way towards the door, words can't begin to describe the sapping plummet in her belly. Her heart flurries in the worst of ways, like it was fighting to break from her chest and chase after him.
"Does he know you like him?"
Eve shakes her head, "Mm."
"So tell him." Carrington adjusts herself, she takes a gentle finger to Eve's curled fringe, tucking it away from her face so she can fully gauge her friend's distraught. "There's no way he doesn't like you, too."
"Okay."
Eve doesn't think twice before she rises too. She starts towards the door, leaving a shellshocked Carrington gaping in her wake. Because of all the women she'd come to know in her life, never had she met one as balls first as this.
"Wait! I didn't mean now!"
Eve is beyond her earshot before she can do anything about it.
Outside, where the sky looms in its deepest shade of blue and the cold needles goosebumps all along her arms, Eve catches sight of Morgan and Ana as they round the corner out of sight. Just before the pub, Sullivan and Jahseh linger around their cars. Their conversation is fickle and lighthearted, but it slurs and then altogether ceases at Eve's approach. There's a look on her face and Eve knows it, because Sullivan's head tilts at her and his eyes narrow with this humbling concern.
"You alright?" He prods.
The air about them doubles in its weight, and it all goes from hairy to hairier.
"Yeah. Can I talk to Jahseh? Only for a minute."
Sullivan glances between the two, nods, and strolls in the direction his girlfriend had stumbled off in.
Jahseh stands a little straighter. He buries his hands a little deeper in his pockets and closes the gap between them with a wilful step towards her. Eve doesn't want to think anything of it, but how can she not? His brows furrow with regard and his eyes flit all about her face, like he can read her anxiety before she can spell it out for him.
"Are you okay?"
Eve nods, "Are you okay? You've barely said two words to me all night."
Something tics on his face, as if he hadn't realised. Or perhaps he hadn't expected her to. She takes a moment to watch him as he watches her.
Eve can't remember the last time she was as sure of anything as she is of him. Jahseh and all of himself he'd given to her. A tenderness she'd yearned for since the ground had been stolen from beneath her very feet. There's something raw about the way he stares at her, talks to her, cares for her. She can't bring herself to take him for what he's convinced the world that he is. There's nothing truthful about that glare, his rough words and the armour of his hostility. And she knows it now. She knows it in the softened plunge in his note when he speaks to her. In his outright selflessness, in the warmth of his gaze. She knows it in their breakfast dates, in his impromptu visits to The Link, in the furniture stood tall throughout her flat and the brakes his hands had worked into her car. She knows it in that trailer in Thistlebrook. Something about the two of them somehow becoming one felt right. It's meant to be. She's sure of it, as sure as anything.
When she realises he won't speak first, Eve continues.
"I met you guys' friend. Ana. She seems sweet."
The words taste like acid, withering the buds along her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she says them. The feelings soars down the walls of her throat and fizzles along the lining of her stomach as he rolls his eyes.
Her sureness doesn't falter.
She's sure of this.
"Sheâ"
"I like you, Jahseh. A lot. Romantically, I mean."
Jahseh's face falls all the flatter. She hates it. It's the first time since she'd come to know him that the sight of his face does something uncomfortable to her gut. And just like that, all that certainty wilts to ash. The awful height she'd built herself up to crumbles beneath the heft of his silence and that soulful rhythm to her heartbeat thuds a little differently in her chest. Practically a ruckus in her ears.
"I... I like you, Jah. You've been so good to me, and Iâ"
"Nah."
"Huh?"
"Nah. No, Eve. Just... Stop."
Eve flinches.
With a mind of its own, she feels her entire body take a trembling step away from him. But the step alone sets a hundred miles between them. And he was right back in his coat of indifference and she was somewhere else. Far, far away, where vulnerability and humiliation meant nothing and she was safe. Where the look on his face can't hurt her as it's hurting her in this moment.
"Oh."
Jahseh stares at her now as he's never stared at her before, and she wonders whether he'd ever stared at anyone else this way. If he'd dare stare at Ana this way. And suddenly, that nausea comes hurtling back, a lot less figuratively and a lot more like its spiralling about her stomach so it can projectile out of her mouth.
She takes another step away from him, and then another. Then she turns altogether and walks away, well past the pub.
"Eve!"
She can't bring herself to face him. Eve focuses on her feet and her balance between them as she walks the narrow trail back towards Southmere. At the sound of heavy footsteps, she glances over her shoulder. Sullivan frowns back, slowing at her side. He looks her over, his brows twitch downwards. Then he sighs, throws an arm around her shoulder and walks her home. Among their silence, she can tell he's working overtime to understand what had just happened. Eve doesn't know why, it's simple maths really.
Certain things were never meant to be.
A double update? Wrote both of these today, rate me. As in, finished 25 and jumped rightttt into 26, but only 'cause I've been wanting to write it for a while.
This stung a lot. My heart broke a little bit for poor Eve, that girl cannot catch a break for nothing!
Thoughts on Ana? The girl didn't even do anything, lol. Do we think there's something to know there between her and Jahseh?
Jahseh rejected our girl in the WORST way. He basically said brush, LOL. Why do we think that is? Will he try and make it right or stand on business?
MY POOR EVE. MY SHAYLAAAA. Nah, I have to take a minute after this 'cause it actually stung. With the song as well? Bye.
Sullivan being a good friend to Eve, aww. Big brother vibes.
There's just too many emotions here, gonna go cry.
See ya lataaaaaaaaaa x
(Forgive me.)