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She grinned up at me and said, “Nah, give her a minute to cool down. She’ll be right back.”
I nodded but kept looking out the front door anyway.
“Nick?” Giselle said from the couch. I glanced down. “This is all really nice of you. She’s just overwhelmed right now. Nobody takes care of her. Eve does everything for everyone. But nobody ever helps her. Ever.”
I could see Giselle’s eyes start to get glassy. She meant what she said about her friend. It was obvious how much she loved Eve.
And knowing that nobody in the world had Eve’s back made me more than angry.
She deserved everything.
The baby was asleep,and Giselle and I had cleaned up and put the leftovers away.
Rachel and Beatrice worked like horses to move their things from the old dressers to the new. They helped each other out and I thought that was a nice thing to see. Nobody had to instruct them to do it.
They just did it and worked until they were all moved in.
I’d gotten hugs from Beatrice and a genuine, “Thanks, Nick. That was really cool of you,” from Rachel.
I counted that as a win.
Giselle got after them to finish their homework, and that was what they’d been doing—hopefully—for the last hour in their rooms.
There was still no sign of Eve.
“Should I go look for her?” I asked again, not paying attention to the annoying reality show that Giselle had on.
She yawned and looked over at me. “She’ll be fine. I’m going to tell the girls to shower and go to bed. Then Dani and I’ll take off. Thanks for the supper,” she said, standing up, “and the entertainment.” Giselle laughed to herself the whole way up the stairs.
An hour after Giselle left, I heard a key in the front door, and it opened. Eve walked in, not gazing in my direction. She chucked her keys on the side table and stormed up the stairs.
A door slammed, and I heard the water go on. I settled back into the couch and finished watching the news.
Once the water stopped, I heard a door open, then another one slam shut.
I turned off the tv and went upstairs to shower.
There wasn’t much for towels, but I grabbed a fairly threadbare one and headed out the door to Eve’s room.
A faint light shone under her door.
The girls’ rooms down the hall were dark and quiet.
I carefully opened Eve’s door and saw her sitting up, reading. She didn’t comment as I wandered around to the side of the bed and slid in.
“I don’t remember inviting you for a sleepover,” she said, her voice low with a tinge of meanness to it. She still didn’t look at me.
“That’s okay, I invited myself,” I said, feeling a smile form on my lips.
“I think it’s best if you leave now.”
The smile dropped off my face. I pulled the book out of her hands, chucked it to the floor, and yanked her down beside me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” she said in a whispered yell. “I was reading that.”
“We need to talk,” I said, looking down into her angry eyes.
Her eyes widened and she said, “Oh, now we need to talk? What about when you were ordering thousands of dollars worth of furniture? Did we not need to talk then?” She tried to push me away with her hands, but I held her close to me.
