Page 47 of For Eva

I rubbed my skin and instinctively opened my mouth, creamy crab on full display. “Ow.”

He recoiled against the concrete perimeter of the roof where we’d gone to smoke our joint and polish off nearly every item on the menu from Top China in Cleveland, Ohio.

“Fucking gross, Eva.”

I forced the food down my throat and chuckled. “You shouldn’t have hit me then, jackass.”

“You owe me a fucking crab rangoon.” He flicked his lighter against the tip of a Marlboro. “Whatever city we’re in next, you’re buying.”

“Ooh, that’s Columbus. They’re totally out of rangoon. Massive shortage. Don’t you watch the news?” I pinched my lips together to keep from laughing. “Hmm…as angry as you look, I can tell this is the first you’re hearing of it.”

I kept my eyes locked on his as the muscles in his cheeks twitched, and we both doubled over with laughter until a tap on my back caused me to jerk my head up. “What?”

Eric sucked on his cigarette, exhaling a stream of smoke into the warm night air. “What’s that tattoo on your back? What’s it mean?”

“Oh,” I said, turning my chin against my collarbone to glance back at the ink peeking around the strap of my tank top. “It saystopolina. Little mouse ininglese. My mom…she used to call me that.”

“A mouse?” The wind whipped a piece of hair in front of his face, and he flicked it away. “That’s a weird thing to call a kid.”

“In Italian it’s, like, a term of endearment. She would say‘Aaaaava, tu sei la mia topolina.’That’s actually how you’re supposed to pronounce my name, but Americans kept saying Eeeeeva, so we just gave up.”

“Your mom’s Italian?”

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, a kaleidoscope of fuzzy shapes hurtling through my brain.

“Earth to Eva.”

I let my hands fall to my lap, and the wave of green triangles slowly fizzled into Eric’s face. “Well, shewasItalian.”

“Is she all of a sudden not Italian anymore? Did she come down with a sudden case of German? Or French?” He sputtered and collapsed onto himself once again.

I twisted my lips and titled my head back to the sky. All the stars had been blotted out by the lights from the city. “More like a sudden case of dead.”

“Oh shit, Eva.”

I squinted at the hazy gray above me, searching for at least one tiny ball of light to remind me of the beach in Mexico where I’d last dreamed of her. A plane roared overhead, the lights on the tips of its wings blinking at me, and I decided that would have to do. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

Was it, though? Was nearly eight years a long time when it came to someone disappearing from your life? From this world?

Eric cleared his throat. “How’d she…”

“Car wreck,” I said, bringing my gaze to him. “Some guy ran a red light and crashed into us. Then she died. And I didn’t.”

“Fuck, you were with her?”

“Yeah. I was the reason we were driving on that street. At that time. At all, really.”

He leaned back and stretched his denim-covered legs, crossing them at the ankles. “What do you mean ‘the reason’?”

I drew in a deep breath. “I was knocked up, and I didn’t wanna be. She was driving me home from the doctor and then…crash.”

“Shit. Was it Danny’s?”

“Yeah.” My eyes flicked across his face as he chewed his lip and nodded.

“Well,” he said finally. “You shouldn’t think it was your fault. Because it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know. Maybe a part of me will always believe it was.” I placed a cigarette between my lips, and Eric flicked his lighter in front of me. “I know a part of me will always believe my dad thinks it was.”

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