Everly After Read online

  He crouches down, his hand hovering above my head as if he’ll die at my touch. I want to throw up or disappear. I want to be invisible.

  Except, in the back of my mind, I think that I might want to kiss him. I wonder if his lips are what I’m missing. With his lips on mine, I might be able to pull myself back together.

  But he goes ahead and touches me and ruins everything.

  Beckett

  I have no fucking clue what just happened.

  Her nervous laugh is unhinged, a broken shard of what’s considered normal. I’m stuck, my hand suspended above her face, afraid that if I touch her, I’m going to change something between us. It all goes back to that night on the roof. I wonder whether she would have jumped if I had never crashed her private party. If she really meant what she’d said that night or if she’s like the girl lying on my floor now, laughing while she falls apart.

  I lift my shirt to her head to stop the bleeding. Again. She’ll ruin my whole fucking wardrobe if I know her long enough. She’s shivering, her bloodshot eyes glazed over.

  “Why are you here?” I’m so fucking pissed that she’s here, bleeding onto my shirt, crashing into my life.

  Tears well up in her eyes until I panic and press the shirt tighter against her head. Some part of me still wants to wrap my arms around her, cover her up.

  When our eyes meet, she fumbles with the sunglasses on her head. “I’m sorry.” Her words are slurred. I wonder if it’s from her fall or whatever she has in her system. “I’m leaving. I’ll leave. I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I don’t think you should move.” Her temple is bright red, and she has a bruise that’s swelling. I peel back my shirt, and her cut is still bleeding. “You might need stitches.”

  “I’m fine.” Everly tries to sit up but falls back on a sigh. “I’m fine,” she repeats in a soft whisper.

  The color drains from her face. I pick her up before she can make an even bigger mess and bring her to the shower. She throws up for a few minutes, hunched over on her hands and knees. I hold back her hair and wait, naming off every other place I’d rather be than stuck in my bathroom with a puking party girl. I get twelve shitty places on my list before she goes quiet. I roll my head over the wall and watch her bowed figure pressed into the corner of my shower. The world suddenly seems poised to swallow her up.

  “Feel better?” I ask.

  Everly gives a small nod, blowing out a breath as she rests her forehead against my shower wall. “I’m fine.” Her voice is louder than it should be, echoing around us. That tiny, disjointed laugh bubbles past her lips, and she sinks back onto the floor opposite me. She clutches her sunglasses as if, with them, she’s invisible.

  “Right,” I grumble. “Whatever you say.” I prop her against the sink cabinet and wet a towel to clean off her face. “But you’re wrong.” Everly drops her sunglasses and looks at me, her eyebrows stretched high. “You’re a mess.” She laughs again and knocks her head back against the cabinet. “You’re going to knock yourself out, Everly.”

  “That’d be great,” she mumbles.

  I only sort of agree. I don’t want to deal with her anymore, but she’s gotten under my skin. There’s no point in lying about that any longer.

  “I’m tired.” She yawns and stretches until her body goes slack again. “I’m so tired.”

  “It’s not a good idea to sleep with a concussion.”

  “I don’t have a—” She doesn’t attempt to say it. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding all over my shirt. Again.”

  “Stop using your shirts to clean—” She hiccups. “—me up.”

  “I would if you stopped hurting yourself, pet.”

  Her features pull tight, like she’s going to yell, but then it fades. Everly stares back at me blankly, shutting me out.

  I stand and wash the cloth in the sink, ignoring her as she crawls over the floor, back into the living room. She doesn’t want to be seen, and I don’t want to face what’s going on with this strange, broken girl.

  “I’m leaving,” she announces again. She tries to pile everything back inside her purse, but her hands are trembling too badly. Jewelry tumbles out and spills all over my living room floor. She bends down to pick it up, but she weaves and stumbles, grabbing the table before she takes another nasty spill.

  This girl is a fucking nightmare.

  I storm to my front door and yank it open. “This isn’t another room, Everly,” I say, waving my arm outside. “It’s Paris. You can’t leave. You’re not even dressed.” I drop my arm, my body a tense bundle of nerves. I can’t let her undo me. “You’re staying here until I know you’re not going to black the fuck out.”

  She cringes when I slam the door shut, and I feel like the biggest asshole in the world. I don’t want to scare her. I don’t mean…

  I clench my hands and breathe, coming up with another three shitty places I’d rather be before I help her onto the couch. I pull off her sunglasses even as she fights to keep them.

  “You can stay.” I lower my voice so I don’t sound like a cranky dickhead. “For a while. Until morning at least.”

  She nods, looking at me again as if she’s behind a glass wall. I can see her, but only the solid parts. Not what’s in her head. That’s what I want to know. I need to understand what she’s thinking, why she has to come into my life and haunt me, follow me around as if I have to repent for something I’ve done.

  She bites her bottom lip until it bleeds, assessing me as if I’m the one who sold her out. I’m not. I don’t know who did, but she’s not a secret anymore. Nadine couldn’t be happier to discover she’d hired a scandal-prone American heiress to wait tables at the café. Everly means euros to Nadine.

  I don’t care. I don’t have time for a socialite or the damn café I never wanted. Those are distractions. What I care about is getting my fucking job back. I don’t belong in France. I belong in war zones, covering unrests and uprisings, reporting on the uglier side of humanity. I need deadlines and stress, the uncertainty of each day. Nothing made me feel more alive than the threat of no tomorrow.

  I should tell her I know about the photos of her that are going viral, except I think it’ll only make tonight worse. Instead, I tell her I’ll be outside for a few minutes.

  My heart hammers against my chest as I sink onto the steps and drop my head in my hands. The sounds of Paris do nothing to stop the image of her empty eyes staring back at me, nothing to erase the ringing in my ears like I’m back in that hellish desert. I clench my head tighter and breathe.

  I’m in Paris, in Paris, in Paris.

  I sit there on the steps and wait until the cool spring night pricks my skin. With Everly around, it seems like I wait a lot.

  Otis Redding is playing when I step back inside, feeling a little more pulled together and a lot less angry with the world. The old vinyl wobbles around the record player, stuffing up my apartment with his familiar voice. My aunt played him a lot late at night when I first started living with her. For a while, I hated it because it reminded me of what happened to my mother. How I bounced around foster homes until my father’s sister stepped up and took me in because my father was in jail.

  In this moment, though, it’s different. The way his voice breaks mirrors the sadness here—how Everly is sprawled out over my couch, her blonde hair fanned around her in messy waves.

  I should have gotten her ice or something when she fell. Instead, I yelled at her for being ridiculous for wanting to leave. I don’t blame her for that. I’m a fucking asshole.

  She’s kicked off the quilt, so I cover her again. “Are you asleep?” I ask.

  A sleepy smile pulls at her lips, and I can’t help the laugh that escapes through mine. I settle into the chair opposite and spend the night waking her up until I know she’s okay. When the sky begins to lighten with morning, I go to my bedroom. For reasons I don’t understand, I lock the door and crash face-first onto my bed, letting exhaustion get the best of me for once, ignorin
g the bottle of sleeping pills on my nightstand.

  Everly

  I remember panic attacks and Otis Redding. Blue eyes and a gentle touch. And then I feel the rest of the damage.

  I suck in a breath, bringing my fingers to the giant bump above my temple. It feels as if I took a cue from the Kool-Aid Man and crashed through a brick wall. My throat burns, my stomach is sour, and my body aches. Everything feels like it’s falling apart, and I remember that it sort of did last night.

  In front of Beckett.

  My eyes snap open once I piece together that I’m still at his apartment. I can’t remember if I have to work today. I think I did yesterday, except I never made it in because… I stop my thoughts there, blocking out the other night. I can’t go into work like this, like a half-dressed hooker. Well, I could, but if Nadine didn’t appreciate Gucci, she wasn’t going to appreciate this fashion statement, either.

  I wrap the quilt around me and slowly push off the couch, testing my legs before I rush off and knock my teeth out.

  His apartment is like a time capsule from the ‘70s. The furniture is mid-century, the walls a whitish-gray, and the few furnishings around—like an upholstered chair and curtains—are olive and gold. There’re stacks of books overflowing onto the floor from a wall-length bookcase. It’s just as impressive as the record collection I found last night, piled high on a puke-green curio. There aren’t any pictures, nothing revealing that Beckett actually lives here, which I think is weird.

  His door is closed, so I slip into the kitchen and get a glass of water. One glass isn’t enough, so I keep refilling it until my stomach is full and my mouth doesn’t feel like the Sahara.

  I should leave, but I don’t have much of anything to leave in. I guess I wasn’t thinking ahead. As usual.

  I tread into the bathroom and flick on the light, stopping short when I notice a washcloth on the counter, stained with blood. My blood. The bathroom smells like bleach, and I think I sort of remember why. I remember Beckett holding back my hair and his hands cupping my face. I remember the smell of soap, the warmth of his fingers against my clammy skin. I remember him looking down at me as if I was broken, his shirt pressed against my head. The head I split open because I needed to get away from myself so badly that I had another panic attack.

  I think I should at least say goodbye after ruining his night. I should, but I hesitate with my hand above his doorknob like a moron because I’m suddenly afraid to see him. It would be easier to sneak away, but he’s not a guy I can leave behind since I’ll probably run into him at work. Because it’s just my luck to have him live above the place, for him to be sleeping with my boss.

  I can do this. I can act like an adult for two seconds. I hold my breath and knock on his door. He doesn’t answer. I feel lightheaded, holding my breath as if I’m driving through a long tunnel. The only difference is that, in a tunnel, you eventually come through the other side and breathe again, but Beckett isn’t opening his door. I rattle his doorknob, growing angrier that I can’t get in, that he won’t open the door so I can say goodbye. I need to say goodbye. It’s a compulsion now. I know I messed up, and I don’t want him to think of me this way, this cliché of a messed-up girl. I need to thank him for not leaving me out on his doorstep like any other person would have done. No one likes a sloppy drunk. I don’t think anyone likes a drunk girl suffering from panic attacks, either. Or people who split their heads open and bleed over everything. Apparently, Beckett has a higher tolerance than most.

  His door whips open, and he’s wrestling on a worn shirt, his jeans slung low around his hips, and I’m left staring, forgetting what I was so obsessed with a moment ago. He pokes his head through the top before the fabric slides down and covers his abs. His very perfect abs.

  “Bloody hell. Your face…”

  I force myself to look at him. His eyes are sleepy, but his voice is rough like he never slept. I tilt my head, puzzling together the difference, but as soon as I do, I understand what he means. My fucking head is going to explode. I pull the quilt tighter around me, a shiver chasing up my bare legs.

  “Do you need something?” he asks.

  I had something to tell him, but I’m too caught up in his eyes to figure out what I needed to say. It’s not just because he’s hot. It’s something else entirely. There’s concern on his face, and it’s a look I’m not used to. My chest tightens.

  “Everly?” He braces his hand against the doorframe. I notice a tattoo on the underside of his bicep, but I can’t make it out entirely. “Do you have amnesia?”

  I burst out laughing, feeling foolish. I drop my forehead into my hand, forgetting the giant slash over my temple, and hiss at the pain. “No,” I choke out. I look up at him, my eyes burning from the throbbing, and sigh, dropping my shoulders in a small shrug. “Sorry.”

  He yawns and opens his eyes wide as if he’s forcing himself to not fall back asleep. “That’s…good then.”

  “Thank you,” I rush out. The awkward between us is rising to unbearable levels. It’s time I leave before I mess up this guy’s life any more. “You know, for…” I wave my hand at my face and then around, as if that sums up my visit.

  “You want some ice?” He points to my head, ignoring my thanks. I suppose I deserve that, too. Maybe I’m not convincing enough. I’ve never needed to apologize for much before now.

  For the first time ever, my go-to response fails, and I swallow back: I’m fine.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?”

  I search for something to say, anything to fill the space between us, because I sort of want to walk closer until his arms wrap around me, and that can’t happen. I’m not sure why I want it to happen, but at least I know that it can’t. It won’t.

  “It’s just a bruise.”

  Beckett ruffles his hair, and in the morning light, it glows gold instead of its usual ashy brown. His eyes narrow, studying me the way he did that first night. The skin around them crinkles, crowding his face with laugh lines. You can’t have laugh lines unless you’re happy, and his face is as etched as any I’ve encountered before. Maybe because I don’t know many happy people. Maybe because the ones I do know have fillers injected in their face to erase the lines, even if it makes them look empty.

  Beckett drops his hand from the door and straightens. I’m not sure what to say, but I should say something. “I’m leaving. I think. I just—”

  “Not yet.”

  I can’t figure this guy out. He seems to hate me most of the time, but the rest of the time…

  Beckett backs into his room, holding up his hand for me to wait. I pull the quilt tighter until I realize I might start ripping out the fragile seams. I stand in the doorway, sure that he doesn’t want me in his bedroom, but it grabs my attention because it’s not like the rest of the apartment. There are books and papers everywhere. Pictures are taped to the wall, and a calendar is full of red marker. Old cameras are stuffed wherever there’s space. But it’s the words—the ink. There’s so much it that it’s as if I’ve fallen into the pages of a worn paperback. Printed pages are stacked high; others are taped to the wall and scattered on the floor. Beckett lives in a dictionary.

  He picks up a big backpack from the corner, the kind you see college kids hauling across Europe when they’re finding themselves. He tosses out more books with dog-eared pages and stuffs a red pen in his mouth as he throws collared shirts over his shoulder and fishes to the bottom.

  “I remembered I have this.” Beckett holds a small bag up in the air. “It’s a first aid kit.”

  I back up a step and shake my head, the panic pooling in the pit of my stomach. I can deal with my own mess. I don’t need him. I only want to say goodbye.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Whatever you say, Everly.” Beckett doesn’t let me retreat. He steers me into the bathroom. My protest dies away when his hands grip my waist, warm and steady. He hauls me up onto the bathroom sink, never stepping away. “I’m not asking you to marry me, so keep your wig o
n.”

  I can’t help it then. I smile.

  Beckett

  Everly likes the word just.

  It’s just a scratch, just a split head. I’m sure she thinks she’s just a girl who just lives, and it pisses me off. In writing, that word is filler, something you search for and destroy when revising. It’s unnecessary and clogs up pacing. I think that’s the only reason I don’t listen. I know she doesn’t mean it.

  I drag her into the bathroom instead. If she can come crashing into my life, then I can make sure she doesn’t leave with a cracked skull. Seems like a fair trade.

  She’s smiling back at me, even with a bruise as purple as a fucking grape across the left side of her face. It’s yellow toward the edges, and there’s a bloody gash above her temple a few inches long.

  I hate that she brushes it off like it’s not a problem—and she doesn’t want to be one, either. I mean, it’s not her fault I don’t want to get involved with anyone. It’s not her fault I feel this strange connection to her whenever we’re in the same room. Hell, I was fucking dreaming about her when she knocked on my door like the world was ending. It’s not her fault. It’s mine.

  I smile back, then look down at the kit in my hands to avoid her eyes. She’s so quiet, so watchful. There’s no hiding with her. It makes me uncomfortable. I clear my throat and unzip the bag, shuffling through until I locate the alcohol wipes and liquid stitches.

  “Are you a doctor or something?” Her breath is hot my neck. I back up a step, not sure how I ended up so close.

  Even bruised, she has the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I fight back the urge to run my fingers over her skin, to wipe away the pain. “Want me to be?”

  “Smooth.” Everly laughs, and I’m back standing between her legs, as if she has an invisible tether around my waist, always drawing me back in.

  I think about telling her the truth, but keep quiet and rip open the alcohol packet instead. Its assaulting smell mixes with the bleach I used earlier to clean the bathroom. It feels and smells sterile in here, as empty as the smile she’s fighting to keep on her face for me.