Page 9 of Until Tomorrow
“I’m going to irritate the hell out of you until you tell me, you know that, right?” Elliot took a sip of his coffee before giving me that stupid grin of his. It did things to my stomach that I wasn’t willing to admit out loud.
“I’m fully aware,” I murmured.
“Do you know how she’s doing?”There it was. The dreaded question I didn’t want to talk about.It’d always been Elliot and me until the day the Smiths took in Eva as a foster child. I was fascinated with her from the moment I met her, even after she punched me in the face twice. Once I won her over, she followed us everywhere. Elliot was as much her best friend as he was mine, which would make this whole thing a sticky mess.Or rather, a fucking disaster.
“Angry. Today’s the first time I’ve seen her in fourteen days, and she barely looked at me,” I said softly.Fourteen obscenely long days.“She’s shutting down.”
That worried me more than anything else. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it worried me. Eva didn’t deal with things. She just put them away in boxes, as she said. It was easier to pack it away and pretend the feelings weren’t there than to deal with them. She’d done it with her mother’s death, her father’s death, and a lot of the shit she’d gone through in foster care.
But no matter how hard she tried to shove things in boxes, they always crept up on her, and I’d been there for all of the fallouts in the past. I was trying hard not to obsess over how she’d handle this. It wouldn’t be pretty when it finally hit her.
“Don’t worry,” Elliot replied.Like that would happen.“I’ve got her.”
Chapter 08
Eva
“IstoleyouFruitLoops from the station house,” Elliot announced when I opened the door. “And I don’t know what’s more disturbing about that sentence: the fact that we even had them or that I stole them.”
“Both.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “Hi.”
“What do you want, Eli?” I asked with a sigh.
“I was coming to check on you, but from the look of you,” he gestured to all of me, “it’s obvious how well you’re doing.”
I glared up at his ridiculously tall self. Elliot was six-four, but that made him over a foot taller than me. The height difference meant I had to practically crane my head to make eye contact.
“Don’t give me that look, short stuff,” Elliot continued. “You haven’t showered in a few days at least, you have make-up smudged on your face, you’re wearing his clothes, and who knows how many cereal boxes I’m about to find when you let me in.”
“Who says I’m letting you in?” I grumped.
“My never-ending charm for one,” he teased. “But you look like you could use a friend, Eva.”
“Did he tell you everything?” I asked quietly. I had to know how much he knew.
“Nope.” He shook his head. “All he said was that he asked for a divorce. I’m not asking you to tell me anything. I just want to be there for you. Both of you.”
That made it so much harder to be mad at him.He didn’t know he was the whole damn reason Logan asked for a divorce. Well, part of the reason. I sighed in defeat. I couldn’t tell Elliot. I wouldn’t betray Logan like that.
“You’rehisbest friend,” I told him. “You should be there for him.”
I’d resigned myself to losing Elliot as a part of this divorce. How could he possibly stay friends with both of us? And I knew what he meant to Logan.
“Oh, come on, Evie,” Elliot said, his voice painfully gentle. “You know that you’re my family too. Just because I met him first doesn’t change that, no matter what happens.”
It would if he started dating my husband.But I couldn’t say that out loud either. I swiped the cereal box from him and grunted as I padded back to my living room. Elliot closed the door and followed, whistling as he took in the state of the apartment.
I’d moved all my stuff out of the bedroom. I couldn’t be around the remainder of Logan’s stuff. My clothes were strewn everywhere, the coffee table was shoved aside in favor of a makeshift bed out of blankets, and there were dozens of other little things tossed around.
“Evie,” he began slowly.
“Shut up,” I cut him off. I didn’t need his pity.
“Evie, there are four guest bedrooms upstairs,” Elliot continued anyway. I dropped onto the pile of blankets. “Sleep in one of them.”
“Guest bedroom number one has all of his tennis and golf stuff. Guest bedrooms two and three are full of random things from his brothers, for whenever they visit. And number four is your bedroom with pictures of him and shit in it,” I explained rather pathetically. I shoved a handful of cereal in my mouth and muttered, “The living room is neutral ground.”
