Page 7 of For Eva

“That wasonetime.”

He tilted his head and smirked. “Really? Because I also remember one night when your parents were literally in the next room and you—”

“Fine,” I conceded, cutting him off before my face turned the color of the red leather on the bench. “Two times.”

“Pretty sure it was more than that.” He stubbed his cigarette out in the glass ashtray, exhaling one final stream of smoke. “But you were nice, too, Eva. And considering you haven’t gotten that biker to body slam me, I’m guessing you still are.”

I shrugged as I finished off my vodka cran, trying to slow my racing pulse. “Place isn’t closed yet. Still plenty of time.”

Danny laughed and took a sip of his beer. “Hey, that reminds me. Remember the time we snuck into that bar over in Rockford? Summer before senior year? And I spilled my drink on that huge biker dude, and he was about to fucking flatten me?”

I brushed my hand across his knee, feeling an instant jolt of electricity that made me wish I hadn’t touched him. “Oh my God, how could I forget? I thought we were both gonna die.”

“He shoved me so hard I fell backward. But then you stepped in front of me and shoved him back, and he was so fucking shocked he just stood there.”

I nodded. “And then you grabbed me and got us the hell out of there.”

“Yep. And we went to Denny’s, and I bought you that ring out of the gumball machine for saving my life.”

He smiled at me. Not the grin or the smirk he’d been flashing all night, but a genuine smile that filled his eyes with warmth. I smiled back, remembering the bent gold band topped with a five carat plastic ruby. I wasn’t going to tell him I’d kept that ring until it eventually got lost during one of my apartment moves in college. I supposed I’d held on to it to remind myself there was a time when things hadn’t been so heavy. When almost getting my ass kicked in a bar was the scariest thing I could ever imagine happening. But even that wasn’t so scary I couldn’t stuff my face with pancakes and laugh about it afterward.

The corners of his mouth fell, but the tenderness in his eyes remained. “If I bought you another one, would you believe me when I say how sorry I am for what I did?”

And that was it. That was the moment the calm, cool, and collected act I’d committed to fell apart. That one memory, that onesorryI didn’t even know if he meant, grabbed the pulls and revealed the person behind the curtain was not, in fact, the Great and Powerful Oz. Instead, she was a twenty-three-year-old woman who’d never been able to fix what had broken inside her when she was a seventeen-year-old girl.

I didn’t know if he noticed. I didn’t know if he saw my face soften and my body begin to melt into itself. Butsomethinghappened. A shift between us. A moment of understanding. And then he spoke.

“Do you wanna get out of he—”

“Yes.”

Denise’s eyes burned into me, and the tip of her pointed heel assaulted my shin under the table.

I avoided her glare and quickly grabbed my purse, pulling out my credit card and tossing it in front of her. “We’re going, everything’s on me.”

She shoved the card back into my hand before we both scooted out of the booth. “Eva and I need to go to the bathroom for a second.”

Matt looked up at us, squinting with confusion. Danny averted his eyes and rubbed his chin.

“I don’t have to go to the bathroom,” I said, a tense smile plastered on my face.

“You sure about that?”

“Yep, I’m sure.”

Denise wrapped her arms around me, pretending to hug me goodbye. “What the fuck are you doing, Eva?” she hissed into my ear.

“It’s fine, Denise.”

“This wasn’t your plan.”

“I know, but I came up with a new one.”

“That guy’s a motherfucker, Eva. Remember the conversation we had, like, two hours ago? Remember how he made you feel? What he did to you?”

“Yeah, but I can make him regret things even more if I sleep with him. Show him what he’s been missing out on.” This was actually not my new plan, but I decided to throw it out there anyway to see if Denise would buy it. To see ifIwould buy it.

“You’re drunk, Eva.”

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