“So, you’re an electrician?” I lift my glass of water and try to fake a smile. “That’s pretty cool.”
“It’s alright.” Toby – five feet, ten inches tall, with a baby-bottom smooth shave and sandy-ish blond hair – watches me over his single bottle of beer. He’s kind of cute, I suppose. His eyes are nice… I guess. “I wired up a beauty of a home this past week.”
“Yeah. Ben’s house. I know.” I smile. Because that’s what they say I have to do. “Ben is my friend, so I knew he needed the final work done upstairs.” For just a moment, my smile is genuine. Not because I’m on another date, with another set-up that my best friend insists on coordinating. But because I genuinely love my friends. Annoying tendencies and all. “I’m glad it’s finally done.” Stop talking about your other male friend! “Um… So, what do you do when you’re not being an electrician?”
“Oh.” His eyes flick to my right, his smile falters at my two-hundred pound dinner companion, but then he comes back to me. “Uh… I like to play guitar.”
“Oh yeah? Are you in a band?”
“I mean…” His smile takes on a distinctly arrogant slant. “The guys and I like to get together most weekends and make some noise.”
I rest my chin on my hand and pretend that I prefer being here, rather than curled up on my couch at home with my Great Dane, binge-watching Friends reruns. “Are you good? Do you do paid gigs and stuff, or is this an at-home thing?”
“It’s only at home right now.” He sniffs, like his admission hurts him. “And only when my mom isn’t watching her shows.”
“Oh.” His mom! “That’s cool. As long as you have fun, right? That’s all that matters.”
“He still lives at home with his mom!” I snatch the envelopes from my mailbox in the foyer of my five-floor apartment block, close the metal cube again, then I point toward the stairs for Galileo to trot ahead. “Evie! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“He’s nice!” she explodes with a laugh. “He’s sweet, he’s smart, he likes to bring his momma soup when she’s ill.”
“You’re making that up.” I start up my stairs with a shake of my head. “You didn’t even know he lives with his mom, so you have no clue he brings her soup.”
“Well, it’s a logical assumption, now that you told me he lives in her garage.”
“You suck at setups, Evie! You suck at it so bad that I might just spend the rest of my life living with my dog.”
“No, don’t give up hope yet. So what if—”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand.” I hit the second floor landing, and turn to keep ascending. “You assume I mean ‘Oh no, I have to be alone. The tragedy!’” I scoff. “What I actually mean is ‘Thank fuck, I get to live with my dog, and never again have to hear how the guy writes songs in his downtime, but he can’t practice them between the hours of noon and two, because that’s when his mother’s shows are on, and she tends to throw her shoes when he’s too noisy.’”
“You’re not even trying,” Evie grumbles.
Evelyn Kincaid was my every nightmare for most of my life. She’s a fighter, she’s loud, and for me, a girl who wanted only silence, she was terrifying. Her man, Ben, was her opposite in many ways. Or at least, he was able to switch the loud on and off. He was my one and only friend when I needed it, my hero when I needed one of those.
Now, I’m my own hero.
“You sent the last one packing, too,” Evie whines. “You go out and purposely look for their flaws.”
“He blew his nose at the table, Evelyn!”
“He had boogers! Everyone has boogers. It’s natural. Ben.” I imagine her moving across her living room. “Blow.”
I laugh at the image she paints in my mind, her snatching a tissue to prove a point.
“I need you to blow your nose, Sasquatch. Prove to Nora that it’s not a deal-breaker.”
“If he blows his nose while I’m on the phone, I’m hanging up,” I warn.
I turn at the top of the third flight and emerge onto my floor. There are two apartments per floor. A and B, and because I wanted a view of the street, I chose the fourth floor – it was the only A available when I was moving.
“Swear to god, Evie. If you catch that man’s boogers while I’m on the phone,