AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Listen, I—” One of the birds flirts with the seeds during her pause. “I should be telling you to stay away from Emerson. It wasn’t consensual. He kept you against your will.”
“You should tell me that. What do you actually think?”
Eva sighs. The first tiny bird flits down from the sky, and as it lands in her palms, her whole face lights up. Joy, on my sister’s face, despite how hard this conversation is. Despite everything. She really didn’t expect the birds to come to her.
I hold my breath. The bird pecks at the seeds, and its friend comes down to join it. I wish I could take a picture. I’ll have to settle for the memory. Eva, happy.
Her smile fades, slowly, like she’s coming back to earth.
“The first time I fell in love was with an older man.” Her words are so deliberate that I know she’s practiced them in her head. I’ve done that too. For my Confirmation and school and all those other times I had to stand in front of people and not screw it up. I wasn’t brave like her, though. I didn’t practice the personal things. I tried to paint them away.
No. Eva’s done more than practice. She told someone. It was Leo.
She has her own life to worry about. Her own heartbreak. Leo’s face was chalk-white when he said that to me. He’d had pills and alcohol, enough to make him slump over on his desk. I thought he was dead. It took that level of disconnect for him to hint at Eva’s secret. Even then, he didn’t give her up.
The realization feels like raw canvas beneath my fingertips. Buzzing, almost.
“I shouldn’t have been with him.” Eva’s sure of herself. “He was wrong for me in every way. Forbidden. I should have known better than to fall in love with him. But I did anyway.”
“What happened?”
“It was a disaster.” The last of her smile disappears. “I got hurt. Other people had already been hurt. That’s why you have to know.” Her eyes snap to mine. “You have to know who’s watching you. What their motives are. Otherwise, you can end up with someone who’s wrong for you.”
“Why was it so wrong? Why is it wrong to be with the person you love?”
“This is coming out all wrong.” The birds don’t mind Eva’s voice. “What I’m trying to say is that the relationship I had was…” She searches for the word for several beats. “It was imbalanced. He was older. He had a lot of power over me. I wanted to be able to ignore it, but you can’t. And I shouldn’t have. I should have paid more attention before I let myself fall in love.”
“You couldn’t control that.” I couldn’t help falling for Emerson.
“Maybe not,” she says softly. “But if I’d known certain things about him, I might have been able to stop it.”
“Known what?”
“He was using me to get back at someone.”
The air in the courtyard crystallizes. It feels like the moment a work in progress becomes a painting. When all the details leave behind their separate shapes and become the whole.
What I’d give to be an oblivious bird. “Was he married?”
She looks at me, and the answer is written on her face.
There should be a limit to the amount of times a person’s heart can break. My throat shouldn’t be able to squeeze this tight. The way Eva fell in love makes perfect, awful sense.
“By the time I knew, it was too late.” The birds fly up and away, abandoning the seeds for the sky. “I was in love. And worse, he was in love with me, too. It took him a long time to let go.”
“But he did let go, eventually.”
“Yes.” Eva hesitates. “I broke things off. I told him to leave me alone. I said I wanted to be done with him, but I didn’t. And I’ve been confused about it ever since. Hurt by it ever since. It doesn’t become less painful, Daph. That’s the point I’m trying to make. It wasn’t entirely consensual.”
“The sex?”
“No. The fact that I lost my heart to him. I never agreed to give up so much of myself. I never agreed to think about him for years afterward.” Eva pats her hands on her jacket, then folds her arms close to her belly. “I don’t want you to be hurt for years. That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Emerson didn’t hurt me. It wasn’t like that. He’s not using me.”
“Are you sure?”
A chilly breeze skates across the collar of my jacket, lifting my hair. It’s a clean, cold wind, but there’s a hint of spring in it. A cloud rolls across the sun, softening the light.
