Page 78 of Until Tomorrow
ELLIOT: Do you know how sad it is that I show up to visit my favorite feisty diva and she’s not here?
I debated letting him think I wasn’t home and just ignoring him. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to join me. But it was Elliot. If I couldn’t have a royal meltdown with Elliot, who could I have one with?
I’m in the basement.
ELLIOT: Are we murdering people down there? Hiding bodies? What am I walking into if I go down there?
I debated lying to make something up—maybe send him running in the other direction. But who was I kidding? It was Elliot. The weirder it was, the more it’d draw him in.
I don’t know.
ELLIOT: Are you okay?
I don’t know.
ELLIOT: Elliot to the rescue! Here I come… once I figure out where the hell your basement is…
Elevator down, take a left, then a right.
I stared around me helplessly as I waited for him to show up.
“The ease with which you could murder someone down here is astounding.” Elliot’s ridiculous commentary announced his arrival long before I saw him. “No cameras, low lighting, and so many storage units to hide bodies. It’s even stupidly cold down here to slow decay. It’s disturbing really.”
Swiveling on the floor, I stared up at him pathetically. Every ounce of humor disappeared from his face when he saw the tears.
“What’s going on, short stuff?” he asked gently. I said nothing as I watched him shuffle boxes around to sit next to me. “Talk to me, Eva.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out as I broke down crying again. Elliot was quick with the save, scooting closer to wrap his arms around me. He stroked my hair as I buried my face in his neck for comfort.
“This whole adulting thing is hard, isn’t it?” he whispered.
“How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Never lose yourself in everything,” I elaborated. “You’re always so sure of yourself. You’re always just… Elliot.”
“That’s because I never gave a fuck what anyone but you and Logan thought of me,” he said. “Within reason, obviously. I can’t have my boss knowing I practice my future stripper routine on the poles at the firehouse.”
I snorted and shook my head.
“But at the end of the day, I am who I am,” Elliot replied. “You can take me or leave me. The people who are going to love me will do so because I’m exactly who I am. They don’t need a censored, dumbed-down version of me. I am enough just like this. You two taught me that.”
“We did?” I frowned.When had we taught him that?
“Yeah. Through all my bullshit in life—being gay in a small town, almost failing out of high school, becoming a firefighter, my book shit—you two have never wavered. You just roll with it and keep supporting me. You’ve made me realize that shit is a standard relationship thing—any kind of real relationship. If you can’t take me as I am, you don’t deserve me.”
“Oh.”
“Tell me what’s bothering you, Evie. Please?” he asked. “I’m awful at this guessing game thing. It’s like… did you murder someone? I could see you murdering someone.”
“I think I murdered my younger self,” I admitted. I pulled away from him and wiped my face with my sleeve. The smudges of mascara on the edge of the fabric didn’t bode well for what I looked like.
“Ouch,” he replied. “That was darker than I expected. Is that why you’ve got all this stuff out?”
“I…”And I had to tailor this whole thing so he didn’t know about Rhett.“Logan found some doodles I did on a napkin recently, and… he got excited about them. More than I did. And he sent me art supplies and told me the world needs my art, but I don’t see it that way. I outgrew my art because… because…”
“Because it doesn’t fit with the rich magazine lifestyle you two made for yourselves?” he finished for me, leveling me with a look that told me exactly how he felt about the whole thing.
