I’d eventually be the best at something. But I’d been wrong. I didn’t hit the right emotional marks, and my memory issue was a problem, script-wise, and I was terrible at being told what to do. And then, on top of it all, there was the look.” She pressed her lips together and flicked a glance at Jacob because, well, this part was so excruciatingly awkward to speak about. Some people wanted to pretend they didn’t understand, as if her prettiness negated all the other things she was, and all the ways those other things didn’t fit in with society’s expectations.
Then there were the people who acted like it shouldn’t hurt, being rejected by the status quo like that. As if, because it came from a twisted place of inequality, it shouldn’t have any hold on her. Which was a nice idea in principle, but Eve found it mostly came from those who’d never been personally crushed by the weight of all that disapproval.
Jacob wasn’t reacting like one of those people, though. He was simply sitting quietly, watching in silence, letting her speak. Because he was like that, when it mattered. He was like that.
“The look,” she said again. “I didn’t have it. I was too fat and too dark and not entirely symmetrical, so I had to be the evil background character or the comedic relief or whatever. People told me to pay my dues and change things from the inside, and I saw others doing that. But I didn’t want to. And none of us should have to. So I left.
“And I think that was my first taste of failure. I didn’t entirely blame myself—I couldn’t, all things considered. But it was still so . . . bitter.” She could taste it now, on the tip of her tongue, a thousand flavors piled high—from all the classes she’d once escaped by fantasizing about her star-studded future, to the day she’d thrown her gnome costume at that uptight director and walked out. And even though the gnome thing gave her a little aftershock of satisfaction, it just wasn’t enough.
“I probably should’ve kept trying, somehow. It was what I really, really wanted, after all. But I was so exhausted. I loved it, but I was done.” And then the rest of her failures had started. “Being done meant going back to the real world. New A levels, university, choosing a career path. My parents were understanding and supportive, my sisters were always on my side, and I had—God, Jacob, I had every fucking option. Sometimes I feel ashamed, I had so much in front of me. And I didn’t want any of it. I couldn’t do any of it. I went back to school and I failed in a thousand different ways. My parents practically cheated my way into university but I failed my first year. And I’d tried, Jacob. I actually tried.”
She’d never told anyone that. She’d gotten her last coursework grade just before finals and accepted, once and for all, that even a perfect score couldn’t save her. All the hours at the library making her eyes bleed, all the desperate emails to professors clarifying this point or that point because she struggled to follow the lectures, it had been for nothing.
She’d tried and she’d failed. So she’d told her parents she was bored, and weathered their disapproval, and chosen a new course and tried again.
And failed, of course.
But she didn’t need to get into all that—even if she had a sneaking suspicion that she just had, that Jacob could read between her every line even if she stopped the pity party here. Which she fully intended to do. How had she gotten this far off the rails? He’d asked about her voice. She’d told him . . .
Everything.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asked. Except it didn’t sound like he was really asking; it sounded like he was giving her an opening to keep going, to talk more, to release the rest of the bottled-up poison inside her. To say things like, I think I’m only capable of fuckups and not-quite-enoughs, just to get it out there before it burned up her insides.
She was about to take that opening. She could feel the words crowding the tip of her tongue. But then something else came along: a memory of the way she’d felt that morning, serving a fluffy tomato omelet and having old Mr. Cafferty from the Rose Suite dimple up at her and