Page 85 of Green Flag
“Get your cute little ass down here, Everly.”
She was in the seat next to me, no less than five minutes later.
“My ass is not little, thank you,” she argued. “I train my fat ass every week.” She necked the shot. “And you’ll remember, you’ve had your dirty little paws all over my ass. So, you tell me, is it small?”
It wasn’t the greeting I expected, but a breath of fresh air. She wasn’t treating me like some fragile, decrepit version of myself that couldn’t function.
“Also, that video was so awful, I actually cackled so loudly, I think I gave myself the ick.” She pulled her phone out of her pyjama pocket. “But look what it’s become.”
She unlocked her phone to show my winking face had become her screensaver.
“No, no, no,” I laughed, reaching for it as she pulled it back. “You’ve got to delete that right now.”
“I think it’s more believable actually. Our relationship, I mean. Cute little inside jokes.”
My background was just the simple grey one it had come with. She rolled her eyes and took a selfie, lowering the shoulder of her silk pyjama top. “There.”
“Why don’t you laugh more?”
She frowned. “Huh? You’re meant to say I’m beautiful.”
“You are, but why don’t you laugh more?”
She shrugged.
“You do that often,” I pestered. “You stop laughing halfway through.”
“Maybe your jokes just aren’t that funny.”
I spent more than half my time around her laughing and every other second trying to get her to laugh. That wasn’t true.
“Someone used to take the mickey out of my laugh,” she sighed. My hands balled into fists, imagining who thissomeonemight be. Pedro. “They said it was too extreme. Like I was trying too hard and drawing attention to myself. I am aware that my laugh is… er, not the same as everyone else’s. It’s a bit much.”
“I love it,” I admitted. “I try to get you to laugh all the time.”
“You’re doing such a poor job,” she sighed and took a sip of the pina colada I had ordered for her. “You hardly get a smile out of me most days.”
This is what I’d needed. Her.
She didn’t act as if I was breakable.
“I don’t know about that,” I said and gestured to my new phone screen. “That’s a beautiful smile if ever I’ve seen one.”
She laughed. “There you are, being the best again. I’m glad you’re here.”
I breathed in deeply. “So am I.”
“The trailer feeling a bit lonely?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Ces checks on me almost every hour, though. I had to get out of there.”
“He adores you.”
I took a gulp of my drink. Ces had been tiptoeing around me all afternoon with the most pitying smiles. He was trying his best. “Yeah, a bit too much.”
“He cares about you. He’s not on his own either.”
I knew that. It was part of the reason I couldn’t do it much longer.
