“No pressure,” Eve assured him. “What about school? How’s that going?”
Brendan gave a listless shrug. He’d registered for two spring-term classes at ECC—Accounting Basics and Intro to Political Science—but he hardly ever talked about them, and claimed to do all his homework in the library, which supposedly explained why he never had any studying to do at home.
“It’s kinda boring, to be honest.”
“What is? The textbooks? The professors?”
“I dunno,” he mumbled. “The whole place. It’s like I’m back in high school, just with all the losers. The ones who weren’t smart enough to get into a real college.”
And whose choice was that? Eve wanted to ask him.
“It’s not a bad school,” she said. “I had a great class there last semester. The professor was excellent, and some of the other students were really smart.”
Brendan looked up from his plate. His face was blank, but she could sense some hostility in it nonetheless.
“I know. You only told me a hundred times.”
He was probably right about that, Eve realized. And guilt-tripping him wasn’t going to help. That had never worked with Brendan.
“You know who I saw at the supermarket?” she said. “Becca’s mom. I guess Becca’s got her heart set on Tulane.”
“Am I supposed to care?”
“She was your girlfriend. I just thought—”
“I’m done with Becca,” he said.
Eve was curious about their breakup, and its role in his disastrous fall semester. It seemed like an important missing piece of the puzzle.
“What happened to you two? Did you have a fight or something?”
“Not really.” Brendan shrugged. “We just . . . I don’t know. We never got along that great.”
“Well,” Eve said. “You weren’t very nice to her.”
“Me?” Brendan looked offended. “What did I do?”
Eve had been waiting for this opening for a long time.
“Remember the day you left for college?” she began. “When Becca came over to say goodbye?”
Brendan gave a cautious nod, but before she get could any further, her phone emitted a loud chirp, alerting her to an incoming message.
“Somebody just texted you,” Brendan said. He seemed grateful for the interruption.
Eve felt a warm blush spreading across her face. The phone was lying facedown on the table, right next to her plate. She wanted to pick it up, but she couldn’t, not if it was Julian.
“Aren’t you gonna check?” he asked.
Luckily, it was just a harmless group text from Peggy—a picture of her next-door neighbors’ chocolate lab puppy with a slipper in its mouth—so she didn’t have to lie. She showed Brendan the puppy, and replied with a heart emoji. Her phone chirped again almost immediately; it was Jane, adding a photo of her late and much-loved beagle to the thread.
R.I.P. Horace, Eve wrote. He was a sweet dog.
By the time she looked up, Brendan was already at the sink. He rinsed his plate, and stuck it in the dishwasher.
“Good dinner,” he said, and then he was gone.
*
Julian didn’t text her at all on Sunday night. Eve tried to tell herself she was relieved, that he’d finally gotten the message implicit in her silence, but she couldn’t stop checking her phone, and had an unusually hard time falling asleep.
Monday’s silence was even worse. She wondered if something was wrong—if she should maybe give him a call, make sure he wasn’t sick or depressed—but the clearer part of her mind understood that this was exactly the reaction he was hoping for. They were in a battle of wills now, and Eve just needed to hold out for a little while longer, until the window of opportunity closed, and they could both get on with their lives.
Stay strong, she told herself. Don’t do anything stupid.
She followed this wise counsel until about eleven thirty that night, when she slipped out of bed and tiptoed downstairs in her nightgown and slippers. After a brief stop in the kitchen, she grabbed a fleece from the coat rack and pulled it on as she headed out to the van.
The back streets of Haddington were desolate at that hour, uninhabited except for a lone coyote prowling on Lorimer Road. It was scrawny and dejected-looking, all ribs and tail. The animal stared forlornly at Eve as she passed, as if it would have appreciated a ride across town.
She’d only been to Julian’s house once before, on the night she drove him home from Barry’s bar. It was a nice place, a brick-fronted ranch with a picture window and a wide front lawn. All the lights were off.
The garage door was open, just like he’d promised, but Eve parked in front of the house, right behind the Volvo. Leaving the engine running, she grabbed a small, red-and-white picnic cooler off the passenger seat and carried it across the lawn and up the steps to the front door. The cooler had two Tupperware containers inside—one with leftover pork, the other with potatoes—along with an ice pack and a post-it note telling him to have a great day. She left it on the welcome mat, where he’d be sure to find it in the morning.
*
Eve struggled at the bowling alley on Tuesday, regressing from an unspectacular 98 in the first game to a truly abysmal 77 in the second. Her teammates patted her on the back, telling her that she would bounce back next time, because everyone had bad days and you never stayed down for long.
“I hope so,” Eve said. “I don’t think I can do much worse.”
As the afternoon wore on, she found herself glancing at her phone with embarrassing frequency, and feeling deeply resentful of Julian. How could you not acknowledge a gift of food left on your doorstep? It seemed a little rude, and totally unlike him (more like something Brendan would do, now that she thought about it). She wondered if her original intuition had been right—maybe Julian was sick and bedridden. Or maybe he’d left the house through the garage, and hadn’t even noticed the cooler, though that seemed unlikely, given the location of the Volvo. Unless he’d gone out on his skateboard; that was another possibility to consider. She kept on telling herself that she had better things to think about, but her mind refused to believe it.
The mystery was resolved that evening, when she got home from work and found the picnic cooler resting on her welcome mat. It seemed like a sweet, thoughtful gesture until she slid back the lid and saw that the food was still there, untouched inside the Tupperware. Even her post-it note had been returned, its banality and fake good cheer impossible to miss now that it was directed back at her: Have a great day!
She hadn’t meant to offend him. She’d thought of the food as a peace offering, a clever way of breaking her silence—letting him know that he was on her mind—without actually saying anything that would get her into trouble. But to him—she could see it so clearly now—it had been a taunt. She’d walked right up to his front door—so close, right there—but hadn’t gone inside. She’d withheld herself, and given him some greasy leftovers instead. No wonder he was upset.
My bad, she thought.
*