Page 19 of No Kind of Hero
Gracie smiled again, and Beth asked Evan, “Do you think I could hold her a while?” That was clearly about the only holding that would be going on here, and anyway, she wanted to.
Something that was probably amusement tugged at the corner of Evan’s mouth. “I guess you’d better. If we’re going to start burning it down, I need to get my measurements done and this paint bought.”
She had to laugh. “Are we bad at this or what?”
“No,” he said, the burn back in his eyes. “We’re good at it. We always were.” And she may have lost her breath again.
But that was why, after he’d handed Gracie over, he was measuring walls with that total Evan-concentration, then writing numbers in the little spiral notebook he pulled from his back pocket. Beth decided to take Gracie on an exploratory walk around the theater, and she may have rubbed her cheek against the top of the baby’s duck-down hair along the way just to feel it, and to inhale that powdery baby scent too.
Why did you always long to hold a baby for yourself? And why should she want to hold Evan’s so much when she wasn’t hers?
The lobby didn’t smell like popcorn anymore, which made her a little sad. She’d been here too many times to count, starting with Disney movies where she’d duck down behind the seats when the wolves or the scary ladies showed up. Birthdays with friends, special mother-daughter outings, high-school “hanging out” that had turned into almost-dates, exciting and frustrating and imperfect.
And then that night. The look on Evan’s face when she’d hurried through the doors into the popcorn-scented warmth. She’d been breathless, her cheeks stinging with cold. He’d been wearing a soft, blue-checked flannel shirt that matched his eyes. He’d pushed off the wall to come meet her, and her heart had felt like it would beat straight out of her chest.
When she’d called Dakota today after Evan hadn’t been home—after trying and failing to think up a plausible reason why she wanted to know, so she’d just asked—she’d barely been able to believe he washere.Like it was meant to be, except that she didn’t believe in “meant to be.”
Nine years ago. That was a long time. The day she’d come home for Christmas during senior year, and he’d been there. The last person she’d have expected to see.
“I can’t believe we’re painting the house over Christmas,” her mother had said that day. December nineteenth. Not that Beth remembered it or anything. She’d looked at Evan, then away, and then looked at him again to find him looking at her, as still as always. “But there you go,” her mother went on, “when your painter drops your job at the last minute and you’re this desperately shabby, what’s the alternative? I couldn’t have held our party at all in the state we were in, not without someverycreative decorating.”
The house hadn’t seemed in danger of being condemned when Beth had been home for Thanksgiving, and the attendees at her parents’ annual Christmas-Almost-Eve party probably wouldn’t have refused to set foot in such a miserable hovel, but Beth didn’t say that. She needed to say something else. Her mother was standing there talking like Evan was the . . . the furniture. Surely that wasn’t right, even though Evan, after those initial moments, had resumed the work with the roller that was restoring her mother’s soaring lakeside living room to pure white perfection. As if he were used to being ignored, or, more likely, wasn’t all that interested.
“Hi, Evan,” Beth said, even though the sight of him had made her breathless and self-conscious. “I didn’t know you were, uh, painting. Oh, I’m Beth. Uh, Beth Schaefer.”
“I know who you are,” he said gravely, only the lightening in his eyes and a barely perceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth betraying what she somehow knew was amusement. “And everybody needs a job, I guess.”
Beth felt the telltale color rising up her neck. Of course he’d know who she was. She was standing in her parents’ living room dragging a suitcase behind her.
“Evan’s working with Russell Matthews now,” Michelle Schaefer said, her social poise steamrolling right over the awkward moment. “We’re certainly pleased that he was available. There’s so little time left before the public rooms need to be ready.”
Another twitch of Evan’s mouth, and Beth heard the same thing he had.So get back to work.He said, “Nice to see you, Beth,” dipped the roller into the pan again, turned his back to them, and did it. Like he’d never been a star. Like he’d put that dream away.
He’d been three years ahead of her in high school, and all contradiction. Seeming older than the others, like he knew who he was and he didn’t need to convince anybody of anything. He was Riley Matthews’ best friend, and Riley was different from everybody else, too. Dark-eyed, intense, whipcord-lean and strong all the way through, like his sister Dakota, and in the Army now. Beth saw him around sometimes when he was on leave, his eyes more watchful than ever, and all of him looking ready to leap into action in a heartbeat, making you wonder what he’d seen and done to look that way.
Evan was different. Big, quiet, and patient, all control and self-possession. And yes, every freshman girl who hadn’t had a crush on somebody more predictable, some golden boy, had probably had a thing for one of them. Because Riley always carried that edge of danger, and Evan? Evan was a star, but a different kind than the other high-school heroes. A dark star.
She’d read about dark stars that year, and the idea had seemed so romantic, so appealing. Born when the universe was young, and with a gravitational pull so strong, they trapped the light within them. That was Evan. She fancied she could see that light, that silver core, even though he was all shadow and silence on the surface. And still—a star.
It had been bitterly cold the winter of her freshman year, but she’d gone to every home football game all the same, sitting in the stands in what had felt like every layer of winter clothing she possessed. She’d watched the team on its way to the state championship, and then she’d watched them win it.
Evan wasn’t the quarterback, and he never scored a single touchdown, because he was on the defense. He was never flashy anywhere at all until he took the field, but then? He was something.
A strong safety, they called it, and “strong” was the word. What Evan did was get to the ball carrier and tackle. Hard. He did that well enough, though, to bring the scouts around. And when he got the football scholarship to the University of Washington and the quarterback went to the University of Idaho? It was clearer than ever who the real star was.
There was bad blood there, and not just from football. Something to do with Riley, and with Dakota, Beth vaguely knew. There were whispers and giggles, low conversations among the guys, and wherever Dakota went that spring, Riley or Evan would show up. Beth had thought Evan was dating Dakota, and had tried not to be jealous, because she liked her Biology partner. Dakota was as strong as Riley, almost as strong as Evan, and she was willing to dissect every part of the frog without any of the little screams and shudders other girls indulged in. Which made her right for Evan. Obviously.
Sophomore year came around, though, as years did, Evan was making his bruising tackles for the Huskies at the University of Washington, and Beth had other crushes, then actual boyfriends, and life went on. The next time she was aware of him, he’d suffered some kind of injury during the last game of the season his junior year, and it was a shame because the scouts from the Portland Devils and the Seattle Seahawks had both been watching. It was the talk of the town for a day, and then it wasn’t. That was her senior year of high school, when she was headed to the University of Washington herself. Where she never saw Evan, he wasn’t listed on the football team’s roster, and none of her new friends cared about football anyway.
After that, she’d lost track entirely. Until she’d walked into her parents’ house and seen him looking at her like he saw all the way inside.
“I came here to meet your dad for our first date,” she told Gracie now as they examined the framed posters in the dusty lobby, relics of those last weeks before the theater had finally closed its doors four or five years back. “He didn’t do ‘hanging out,’ not like other guys. He wasn’t scared to call it what it was. He wasn’t scared of anything, and I loved that so much about him. I loved that it was a date and he made sure I knew it. The movie was about the worst possible choice, all those chases and explosions, but I didn’t care. I would have gone anywhere he’d asked me that night. He’s pretty special, isn’t he?”
Gracie smiled again, grabbed Beth’s braid, and tugged at it, and Beth snuggled her close and let herself remember.
Blood Diamond.The oddest of Christmas movies, but the only show in town. And when Evan had asked her, she’d said yes without a second thought. Well, she’dhada second thought. She’d said, “I’ll meet you there,” and hadn’t missed the searching look he’d given her. But he hadn’t pushed it. Then.
He’d never even held her hand, and she was in the midst of work on her honors thesis, writing to a deadline, waiting on four law school applications and half-hoping that she wouldn’t get in so she could spend a year . . . picking apples or something. That was part of the reason for the attraction, she was sure. She’d felt overwhelmed by life, swallowed up, her essence floating away from her, and Evan had grounded her.
