Page 27 of Home Sweet Home

Evie hadn’t expected this. It was a step up from being a waitress. The salary wouldn’t be huge, but it was better than what she made now, enough to create a cushion.

An image flashed through Evie’s head. She saw herself at seventeen as she got off the bus, her mom waiting on the front porch, unable to contain her excitement, clutching the big white Butler University envelope in her hands. Evie had known what it was before she even opened it.

“I can’t say how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Evie said. “But can I take some time to think about it?”

Joe smiled. “Of course. Take all the time you need. But know if you want the job, it’s yours.”

* * *

Evie’s anxietyrose with the gas meter, every tick up asking for a penny she didn’t have. She tried to calm herself by visualizing the check for three thousand dollars in her kitchen drawer, the one she hadn’t cashed yet, but after six years of filling her tank only on Fridays and only after checking her bank account at least three times, the panic was Pavlovian.

Evie turned over Joe’s offer, wondering why she wasn’t happier. She had been desperate for a way to make more money, and Joe had handed her one. Waitressing wasn’t the worst job in the world. It paid the bills, mostly. She liked working with her best friend every day. On busy shifts, which were more common than slow ones, eight hours passed in what felt like ten minutes. But when customers brushed against her ass and tried to make it seem like it was an accident or when she got home with every ounce of energy drained from her body, she would sink down into an armchair, stare at nothing in particular, and wonder how much longer she could manage it.

Evie looked up as if the answer to her problems were written up there. The sky was blanketed in gray clouds, so dark she wouldn’t have guessed it was three in the afternoon. Rain was coming. She picked up her phone to dial West, but it buzzed in her hand.

Tucking the phone between her shoulder and her ear, she lifted the pump out of her car and put it back on the rack. “I was just about to call you.”

“Looking like rain,” West said. “Let’s do some conditioning inside instead of risking the field.”

“We could use the high school gym. I’ll make a few calls.”

After a phone call to Hope, the custodian of Creek Water High, and an email to the boys with the new practice plan, Evie pulled up in the empty parking lot of the school, Josh in the passenger seat with a Tupperware of cookies on his lap. She’d whipped up two dozen the night before, way too many for the two of them, and she didn’t want them to go stale.

While Evie waited for the rest of the boys to show up, she went to the library. The printer chugged, printing permission slips for the away game at Bend. She trailed her hands along a shelf of books. Her time there felt so long ago. She’d checked out stacks of books and thumbed through the pages, curled up in the corner.

The gym was alive when Evie stepped in, permission slips in hand. She wrinkled her nose at the smell, like someone had plugged in a dirty-sock-scented air freshener. Weights rattled the floor. Hail pelted the windows, crashing against the glass so hard, Evie was sure the little pellets would shatter the panes into a million pieces.

“Press upwards,” West said, his outstretched fingers hovering below the bar of the bench press. “Don’t worry. I got you.”

Oliver looked at the bar, his face pinched in concentration. He tried to straighten his arms, but they started to shake, and the bar didn’t budge. After a few seconds, he collapsed onto the bench and stared at the ceiling. “I can’t do it.”

“You can.” West lifted the weights off and carried them to the rack as if they were pieces of paper. He grabbed two smaller weights and fitted them on the bar. “Remember your anime friend? Try this.”

Oliver stared up at the bar for a long time, cheeks puffed out, before he stretched out his shaking arms and pressed up. The bar rose off the rack, only a few inches for a few seconds before clattering back down, but when Oliver sat up, he smiled.

“Nice effort,” West said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Now get some water.”

Oliver scampered off to the water fountain. Evie had drunk from that water fountain a few times in her day. It was lukewarm and tasted like rotten eggs.

“Admiring the view?” West asked.

She hadn’t been looking, but she was now. West’s tank top displayed the contours of his arm, hard and chiseled, like Michelangelo’sDavid, except real flesh and bone, not marble. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face, and she was unsure why since she was indoors and cold air pumped through the vents. “Bus is set up. We leave at three. Everyone needs to fill out one of these.”

West grabbed a permission slip and chuckled. “Used to always forget to get these signed.”

“Never would have guessed,” Evie said.

“Let’s just say I got very good at forging my mom’s signature.” He craned his neck toward the Tupperware in Evie’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Cookies. They’re for the—”

In one quick motion, West lifted the top off the Tupperware and swiped a cookie. The entire cookie was gone in two seconds flat. Before she could protest, he’d scarfed down another.

“Mmm,” he said, crumbs falling out of his mouth. “These are good.”

West still couldn’t control himself around her baked goods. She pretended to be mad, but she liked the look on his face when he tasted what she’d made more than she would have ever admitted, even under the threat of death. Her heartbeat picked up speed as she watched him. Evie snapped the lid back on the Tupperware. “They’re for the boys. And don’t they defeat the purpose of being here in the first place?”

“Two cookies won’t undo all this, Peach,” he said with a grin, and she kept her eyes focused on his face, wanting to avoid him thinking she was checking him out. His eyes found hers, and after a few seconds, they narrowed.

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