4: 4
Eight years without seeing him, and still, being near him made me feel safe.
He got me into the car, where he'd already set out the iced latte and snacks I loved, and I could eat as sloppily as I pleased without a shred of shame.
Back with John, if crumbs got left in his car, he'd sneer and call me a pig.
Yet in the posts Sophie put up afterward, there was John, doting on her, tearing open snack bags for her one after another.
I couldn't hold it in any longer. My eyes went red, and the tears just came.
Jim wiped them away slowly, every word soft with tenderness.
"Once we leave this time, we're never coming back. I'll protect you for the rest of my life."
I said nothing. I just let him pull me in, feeling his stubble brush lightly across my forehead.
He took me to his villa in Southport and thoughtfully gave me the master bedroom.
I settled in and started to wash up, and then Jim knocked at the door.
I opened it to find a cup of warm, fragrant milk.
"In college, when we walked every evening, you always wanted a cup of hot milk."
I nodded hard and drank the whole thing in one go, not wasting a single drop.
He laughed and ruffled my hair.
"All right, get some rest. Give me a few days to wrap things up here, and I'll take you home."
I went back to bed, and in my dreams the past came drifting back, all of it, Jim and John and me.
Jim and I had been classmates. When we were young and first learning what it meant to like someone, the two of us had quietly fallen for each other.
His grades were excellent. He was one of those campus stars, the top student everyone knew about, and the school picked him to go study abroad.
We both understood chances like this didn't come twice. Turn it down and it was gone for good.
But he didn't want to go, because of me. And when that so-called fan club of his on campus found out, they came after me without letting up.
At first I could take it. It was only small torments, things that made daily life harder.
Then it got worse. They put dead rats in my food and scattered nails on my bed.
All of that I could endure. But during finals, they banded together and accused me of cheating.
A slip of paper drifted down by my foot, and just like that I was ruled a cheater.
At a moment when almost no one would speak for me, John stood up and said I'd been framed.
The dean's face darkened, and he demanded proof. So John, risking the same punishment, said with no expression at all,
"During the exam, I was watching Evelyn Bennett the whole time. I can guarantee she didn't cheat."
Every teacher was stunned. He went on,
"I like Evelyn. That's why I kept watching her. The writing on that paper is ugly. There's no way it's hers."
That was when I learned that this quiet, reserved boy had loved me in silence for a long time.
Back then I thought maybe John suited me better. So I parted from Jim, and stayed with John, all the way until now.
The past really was beautiful. It was just that reality couldn't hold up against the wear of the years.
The next morning, the moment I woke, a phone call from a friend back home wouldn't leave me alone.
The second I picked up, a coworker was shrieking, asking where I was.
It turned out John, seeing me leave, had insisted on chasing after me without a license. He'd flipped several cars on the road, and now the cops had him in custody, and he was losing his mind down at the station.
Abroad, he couldn't reach a single person. I was the only one who could bail him out.
In the photos she sent, John was unshaven, the buttons on his vest done up one row off.
He had a death grip on the collar of a foreign cop, like he was interrogating him about something.
My friend's voice was all helplessness.
"He's hysterical right now, and he can't understand a word of Southport's language, so he got into it with the cops. He wants you to come back."
"He keeps saying you have to come back, or he won't go home!"
For a moment I had nothing to say, no idea where to even start. All I could tell her was that I wasn't going to see him.
The last photo was Sophie clinging tight to John, and John slowly calming, the rage draining out of him.
She said, "Evie, we all know you're the one who's been John's girlfriend for eight years. Can you really just watch someone snatch your boyfriend away?"
Seeing the two of them so intimate, there wasn't a trace of hurt in me. Only a tired resignation.
Because deep down, I never wanted to hear another word about the two of them.
I wrote back, "A worn-out shoe someone's already broken in, there's nothing to feel bad about. And I'm not a dog, standing guard over a pile of crap so no one else can have it."
I didn't reply to my friend again. I pulled the SIM card out of my phone and tossed it aside.
All of it, every bit of the past, should just dissolve back into memory where it belonged.
Jim didn't seem in any rush to head back. He kept taking me around, place to place.
Under his care, all the exhaustion in my body and mind was swept clean away, like I was back to the way I'd been fresh out of college.
Plenty of old friends who saw me kept asking what high-tech secret I'd used to grow younger instead of older.
I said nothing. I only looked slowly over at Jim and, with complete sincerity, said,
"Thank you."
He didn't answer. He just pulled me in and held me tight.
That evening, Jim was tied up with something and stayed busy. I ordered delivery to the villa, and it was taking forever to arrive.
I was just about to call and ask when the doorbell rang.
I hurried to open it, and there was a huge bouquet right in my face, white lilies, my favorite.
The person on the other side was John.
The smile froze on my face the moment I saw him, and without a second thought I moved to shut the door.
I never expected he'd be bailed out this fast.
As if he sensed what I meant to do, he jammed the flowers into the doorway at once, his long fingers clamping down hard on the gap.
His eyes had gone red.
"Evelyn Bennett, I never thought you'd be this cruel, changing your number and all!"
