“Well, I didn’t,” he said. “And I can’t anyway. We should have left it alone. It’s time for me to get on with my real goddamn life already.”
She looked around the kitchen. “I’m sorry if I misunderstood.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I should have known better.” He ran one hand through his hair. “I’m starving,” he said. He opened the refrigerator and swore under his breath, and just as Evvie realized what was about to happen, he set down the bottle of champagne she had chilled, right in front of her, hard enough that it rattled the table. “Please stop it with this.”
When he had disappeared into the apartment, she picked at the champagne label until it peeled away in sections, then she left the bottle on the table and went upstairs to lie down. All this, he had said, is over.
* * *
—
That night, once it was dark, Evvie wriggled into soft cotton jersey shorts and a gray T-shirt, and she shut off the lights in her bedroom. She went downstairs, stopping to stash the champagne in the back of a high cabinet, and she went to the apartment, where the door was standing half-open. She peeked in, and she saw Dean in bed, earbuds in, eyes on his iPad. All the lights were off but one, right next to him on the nightstand. She stood still until he looked up, smiled, took one little white earbud out, and extended it toward her. She crossed the room, feeling the quiet and the carpet under her bare feet. Dean lifted the sheets and the cotton blanket on her side of the bed, and she scooted in beside him.
He was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, and she slid in her earbud at the moment Indy got to Marion’s bar. Dean resettled the pillows behind his head so she could curl around his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ev,” he said into her ear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She turned a little to look at the curve of his jaw and the scar above his eye, and she said, “I’m sorry, too.”
“It was a hard trip. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
She shook her head. “No, I pushed, you’re right. I’m not at my best right now, either.”
“Probably no chance you called Andy while I was gone.”
She played with the charm around her neck. “No. I can’t say I did.”
“Or that he called you?”
She pulled on the chain. “I’m trying to give it some time to blow over.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said, resting her hand on his side.
“The night you guys had that fight, you said, ‘I should never have tried to be happy.’ What does that mean?”
What Eveleth hated the most about being drunk, and what she already hated the most about having been drunk that night, was all the things she barely remembered but knew were true. She had said this; she was sure of it. She had no idea why. And so she ran her hands over her hair and said, “I don’t—just a drunk thing, I guess?”
“You know, it’s been a week. More than a week. It’s not going to get any easier.”
She nodded. “I’m going to miss this kind of really depressing advice.”
He turned to her with his brow furrowed. “Am I leaving?”
“Aren’t you? It’s been almost a year. You said it yourself. It’s time to get on with everything. Your regular life. It is for me, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure about what? That fall is going to follow summer and that will be a year? Yes. Yes, I’m sure.” She put her hand flat against his chest, gave him a pat, and leaned back against his shoulder. She wasn’t magic, she couldn’t help, and he’d said it himself when he moved in: New York was where his life was. Might as well get on with it and not make it harder. It was going to be bad enough already.
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER DEAN got back from Connecticut, Evvie saw a cardboard box on the table in the apartment with a stack of books in it. This was the first sign that it was real. As July wore on, everything continued largely as it had been: they slept in his bed or hers, they pushed the windows wide open when it was cool enough, they read the news on their phones and binge-watched seasons of 30 Rock and Archer, eating takeout or spaghetti or burgers or something she improvised