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Who: Evan Finch & Jack Jung.
When: Saturday, September 9, ~3:00 PM.
Where: By the lake.
What: Jack and Evan finish a conversation.
Warnings: None.
Jack taps his coffee cup against the picnic table roughly in time with the bobbing of his leg—he’s not aware of either action, instead looking down at his watch. Nearly three.
His nervous, pent-up energy is not the fault of his coffee; he opted for a decaf, and he got Evan the same. It’s Evan, actually, that has him checking over his shoulder every now and again, glancing down at his watch, staring out absently at the pond but not really seeing it, repeat. Evan, or more specifically, whether she listened to his voicemail and will be arriving to talk. Or if she deleted it, and he’ll have spent an afternoon waiting for someone who never had any intention of showing up. He’s prepared for the latter, it’s just the waiting that gets to him.
She’s late. Not on purpose–because she’s been fighting with the geese. They understand that there’s a dome over the station, but the instinct to fly south has them fighting amongst themselves. She’s been seated in the grass, watching the goslings as they shed their baby fluff and learn to fly at all. Sylvia had a late clutch, to the dismay of the flock, and her children are late bloomers.
Evan approaches the picnic table with the energy of someone wearing lead boots. It’s a slow walk, mostly to avoid the few, brave goslings who continue to race between her feet until Roberta’s threatening honk has them tearing back home in a hurry. She sits, not across from him, but at the edge, one leg in, one leg out–poised to run.
Her face, however, is a serene mask of calm. In her left hand, she holds a tiny toad. It hops onto the picnic table, looks around, pees, and hops back into her palm. “What can I do for you, Jack?”
He snorts at the little toad, one eyebrow raised. Evan is not the most forthcoming person with her emotions. Sometimes, Jack thinks, she lets her animals emote for her. He remembers Scrap staring down Rory at the engagement party when Evan wouldn't look at him. So the dot that the toad has left on the picnic table, that might have been left intentionally.
But he's not deterred. Jack slides the other decaf over to Evan, noting the arrangement of her legs and the lightly tense way she's holding herself, poised to run. She is a lot like his sister, after all.
"You can have some coffee to start. It's decaf, don't worry." He peers through the top of his cup, finds it more than halfway empty. "You're all over the place lately, huh? Europe, parties, bathrooms at parties. I heard you booked it out of the last party pretty fast. Had somewhere else to be after?"
(Where Evan is not very forthcoming with her emotions, Jack is not very forthcoming with his meaning. He's taking them the long way around, circuitously weaving them around what he perceives as blunt obstacles, to get to what he really wants to say.)
She sets the coffee to the side. Instead, she holds her hands out on the table to let the toad hop between them. She’s only just met this one, hasn’t even learned his name yet, but he’s enjoying the view from the picnic table and it gives her something to focus on.
“Sal’s sink was flooding,” she explains, her tone bland and uninterested. “We didn’t want it to ruin his apartment.” She lifts her eyes then, to stare at him. Challenging him. “You don’t think a waning party is more important than Sal’s apartment being demolished, do you?” The toad, too, looks at Jack before swiping a gnat off of the table.
“That’s interesting,” Jack replies. He’s challenging her right back, but he does so mildly, acquiescing to the blunt force of her stare. It’s not about winning or outdoing Evan in how uninterested they can make themselves sound. He would like for her to know it hurts him when she lies—what a funny way to treat someone you say you love. “My memory from the party isn’t that great, but some things are coming back. Like Sal saying it was your sink that was flooding.”
She can’t help herself from flinching at this mention. Keeping her face neutral, she shrugs. “Thankfully, he was mistaken about my sink. Scrap turned on the faucet and Max Too turned it off.” The toad, bored, hops off of the table and begins the ascent toward her shoulders. “I hate to be blunt, but I’m very busy today. What can I help you with, Jack?” Her tone never shifts from neutrality. It’s certainly not warm or familial. It’s a locked door. As easily as she had let him in, she could leave him out.
Jack understands the evenness of her tone, that it means locking him out. This, perhaps more than anything else Evan has done, reminds him of his sister.
When he was younger, he used to wonder if something was wrong with him, some inherent unpleasantness that made it easy for his sister to drop him and let him go. As he got older, he found dwelling on that made him unpleasant, and that people liked him better if he laughed easily and smiled. With Evan, he feels a stirring of that teenage melancholy—he wants to ask, don’t I get a little grace? If I stumble, do I deserve to be shut out? These would be genuine questions if he voiced them out loud, as he’s not sure.
Jack looks down, suddenly exhausted by the absurdity of Evan’s white lies and the effort it takes to maintain tepid neutrality. “I just wanted to show you something.” Slowly, he pushes his hand across the table, palm upturned, and waits to see if she’ll take it.
Jack so rarely touches people that it takes her a moment to process his outstretched hand as something to interact with. Her brow furrows in confusion. Her mask slips enough to show concern, worry, and a touch of fear, too. For both of them.
The frog is climbing into her hair, distracting, as she decides whether this option is one she’ll take. If she’s ready to apologize for how childish she’s been yet or move on with everything and pretend that they don’t need each other.
Her bottom lip gives her away as it trembles before she slides herself fully into the table and gently lays her palm against his.
He shows Evan herself, the night she asked him for help with Bandit. They didn’t know each other that well back then—Jack’s perception of her was as a hard-headed someone who had to be coaxed into picking her battles and working nicely with others, cajoled into resting and eating and finding time to do her laundry. The mole pups had been a sore point, but the more Jack thought about it, about Evan’s point of view, the more he realized she was demonstrating something precious. Advocating for the voiceless, caring for them, doing the right thing, whatever that may be—it’s not meant to be easy or pleasant. It makes people uncomfortable, frustrates them, makes them shake their heads at you and talk about you behind your back. Everything worked out with the pups in the end, but from that, Jack learned Evan is much stronger than she looks, in so many ways. Lonely, too.
And unlike his sister, for he never got to learn about the kind of person Jules grew up to be. He only knew her as just as afraid as he’d been, children perpetually reacting to things beyond their control, flinching at raised voices.
All these thoughts are layered atop his memory of Evan cradling Bandit in her sweater. Moths drifted lazily through the flood-lighting overhead, softly ochre, and the tendrils of Evan’s hair curling slightly in the humidity looked like a halo. He’s thought a lot about it and now he’s sure: he sees Evan for who she is, as herself.
Jack pulls his hand away. “I do love you, Evan,” he says, seriously. Then, with a hint of a smile: “Platonically, because I’m married and stuff.”
Evan’s hand rests palm down on the table as she considers what he’s shown her. Herself. How he sees her—in a capacity she’s never seen before. Her heart feels like it’s been whipped in one direction and then thrown back in the opposite. She inhales deeply and then exhales audibly.
“Give me your hand back,” she says, wiggling her fingers a little, hoping to be convincing despite the creeping purple flush she knows she curled around her eyes and settled in her cheeks. “I want to show you something, too.”
Cautiously, he reaches back out to her—now he lays his palm flat against hers. Their minds connect again, sharing the same space. Jack is still thinking of Evan holding Bandit. “If you start to show me a flooding sink,” he jokes, “I’m pulling my hand away.”
“If you pull your hand away, I’ll let Bandit bite you.”
Evan doesn’t show him a flooded sink. She shows him her home. Her very first. Three older brothers who were catered to for their every wish and whim. The disapproving stare of her mother. The way the light went out of her father’s eyes once her uncle disappeared. She shows him how lonely it is to be the only one left. How her mother never once offered anything when she was sick except confirmation that she was going to school no matter what.
She shows him empty bleachers from school graduation where her family should have been. The way she was scorned when she joined the station because she was petite and new—assigned to tasks because she was a woman and they thought she wouldn’t speak up. How much harder she had to work. How hard she had to fight for significance.
Then there was Sal. Coming and going. Sal at her parents’ funeral protecting her from people with prying questions. Standing between her and her brothers before he left again.
It’s a blurry landscape of loneliness as she moved place to place, town to town, working with animals but forgoing people.
She shows him how she sees him. He seems exhausted. It’s hot and late, but he’s shown up. She shows him the twinge of pain on his face when he has to deal with something out of his comfort zone. It’s lightning fast, but it’s there and she can see it.
Then it’s eggs. Pepsi. The slippers and the way he smiles at her like she has some value to him. She shows him listening to her in a way no one else has. How he’s flipped her life upside down with his attention where her life has been cocooned in neglect. She shows him his expression in as many circumstances as she can imagine until that night when his face had changed so much. She reminds him of his tone, how he’d carefully spoken to her in a way that she knew he wanted her to go.
It’s there, an undercurrent, a question—is she at fault for all the people who have left? Who won’t stay? Is she pushing everyone away? It’s fear at being left for good by him. Her new family. The person who’s just started to heal the places where her heart has been cracked beyond repair.
It’s Evan who slides their hands apart this time. “I’m tired of being hurt,” she says.
Jack is quiet, repeating in his head all she’s shown him of her loneliness. Finally, he replies: “I can’t promise that I’ll never hurt you again.” His expression is earnest but gentle. “I think that’s kind of the point.”
He reaches out with one finger, one small brush of contact so he can share what he’s thinking. Love is the thing that might leave you. When you love someone, you’re asking to be hurt—literally, you’re opening yourself up and saying ‘This is yours now.’ You just hope you won’t be hurt. I think that’s why some people go crazy over love or shut themselves away to try and avoid it. And those questions you have, I can’t answer them, I don’t know. But when someone loves you back, they do so, knowingly or unknowingly, with a responsibility not to hurt you.
He thinks now of Evan’s face as she tears into eggs and toast, sobbing because Liminal vines have unearthed old memories and feelings he doesn’t yet understand, running her fingers over embroidered Golden Retrievers, setting a bottle of Pepsi on his bathroom counter because he’s sick.
“I know, at least.”
Her jaw works as she chews on the words she wants to say. She looks at the paint-chipped table, then a small, white butterfly flapping its wings in the wind behind him. A squabble with the geese draws her attention from him entirely. Evan picks at the table, drawing chips from beside a hastily scribbled ‘Jason waz here’.
“Why do you—“ She clears her throat and tries again. “I have only ever wanted—“ Again, she stumbles over her words.
“What that was—it felt like what I thought family would be like. I used to dream that my brothers would wake up and get over themselves. Maybe I wanted it so badly that I manifested it in you, Jack. Maybe I pushed you into a role you were never meant to fill.” She lets her gaze drift toward his face. “I want you to be part of my life. But I don’t think I can handle being pushed out of yours.”
"Evan." Jack tilts his head. "There are going to be things I say and do that'll make you feel like I'm pushing you out—I can't help it. What happened in the bathroom, I'd just been really sick, I couldn't respond the way you wanted me to. That was, I don't know, a failure on my part, but that's bound to happen." He tries to speak softly, so she understands he's not pushing her out even with these words. "Sometimes I won't know that I'm doing something that makes you feel that way. Like I know now that inviting you to the party threw you, and I'll work on being better at thinking about how you might feel before I spring things on you. But in return, could we try talking things out before you start telling me you're flying to Norway?"
“Finland,” she corrects, though she really can’t remember by this point what she’s said and who she’s actually told.
On some level, this feels like being scolded. But maybe, she thinks, that’s what his love looks like. She’s asked for it–she’s invited him into her life to take this role. She can’t condemn him for the boundaries he’s set and the explanations he’s given.
She picks further at the chipping paint and then brushes it away. The toad, bored again, hops from her hair to the table and then directly in front of Jack. “I haven’t been part of your life for very long,” she starts slowly, still thinking as she slowly processes the words she’s saying. “I don’t expect to be part of it forever either.” People grow apart. He knows it. She knows it. They’re familiar with leaving and being left. “I’m grateful for the time that you give to me. I just–” She heaves a sigh. “I’m jealous of you. It’s like so dumb. I’m happy that you and Annie are Jack & Annie. Like so happy! You have no idea how happy I am for you. I could probably get birds to carry hearts made out of flowers to follow you around.”
Evan takes to combing her hair with her fingers now. She bites at the soft flesh in the corner of her mouth before continuing. “I don’t feel comfortable barging in on you anymore. I don’t–” She breaks off for a second, still finding the right words to say. “I’m not into you—like, you’re great, I’m just–” She shrugs. “And Annie’s great, but like–” She waves a hand as if to stir the words in the air to chase them away.
“I took advantage of your attention. Then I made a mess of everything because I felt–” She has no idea how to finish this. No idea how to spit out her reality without feeling extra small and selfish. “You didn’t even ask for help moving. You were just gone. Moved and throwing a party. And you know I can’t bake. That’s like the most important part and you set us both up to fail.”
Jacks laughs. "I didn't even help with moving. I put things in boxes and Annie carried everything on her back." He watches Evan run her fingers through her hair agitatedly; it'd be nice just to hold her hand and stop her nervous movement without having to think of anything at all.
"And I know you can't bake, but you told me you've been watching YouTube videos on cake decorating and wanted to learn." Evan's loneliness runs deep, Jack thinks, studying her. It will not be resolved by him, a brother pulled from a dream, or an uncle recovered from a lost future, or even a friend who lies to get you out of parties. Evan will need all of them and more, it seems, but—
He reaches out to pull her hand away from her hair, setting it back down gently on the table, thinking, You're not selfish. He doesn’t need to be in her head to know her thoughts, not when they are so plainly telegraphed in the way she bites her left cheek and struggles with her words. And he disagrees with her assessment of herself; he thinks it's only human, wanting many hands to hold you. As all this runs between them, Jack says out loud, "I don't mind failing if it's with you."
Evan looks startled, her eyes open wide despite the continually creeping purple in her cheeks. He’s constantly trying to build her up as she tears herself down. She tilts her head, sighing, as she watches him before she finally nods. “I know that now.”
Standing quickly, she finds herself at his side and leaning into him to wrap her arms around his shoulders. She doesn’t mean to cry, but she can’t help the tears that fall, the ones that won’t be hastily wiped away. She holds him tightly, saying nothing, until the oppressive, overwhelming guilt subsides into some semblance of peace.
Evan steps back and swipes at her cheeks before offering something of a choked laugh. “You’re my family now,” she says. “Maker of eggs, giver of hugs. If I introduce you as my brother to people, you have to go along with it.”
Jack is startled, caught off guard by her hug—but it’s okay, he’s only thinking of her. Awkwardly, he reaches up to pat her on the back and leans away to get a better look at her once she releases him. She’s crying but she looks happy, a little less lonely, at least for now.
“I guess that’s fine,” he laughs. Jack has a wad of napkins from the cafe stuffed in his back pocket; he extracts one and offers it to her. “Can I also use the sink excuse when you need to bail on a party, or do brothers have to use a different home utility?”
Again, she laughs, using his offered napkin to wipe her face. It’s folded and deposited into her own back pocket. Even so, she continues to wipe at her face, wishing the show of emotion would disappear as quickly as it appeared. “You absolutely can. Just burst right into the room and announce that anything is flooded. Sal’s the one who decided on that.” She sniffs and smiles at him. “Thank you, Jack. For everything. And for putting up with my bullshit.”
He shakes his head to let her know he disagrees with her self-assessment, but he doesn’t fight her on it too hard. It’s something to build up to, after exchanging I-love-yous, learning how to cook eggs and do laundry, and figuring out how to decorate cakes together—Maslow’s hierarchy of helping Evan to see and love herself the way he does, however he can. “Okay, now for the actually important thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
Jack drags her coffee cup back across the table toward her and fixes Evan with an expectant look, although the corners of his mouth are curled up, slightly wry. “Tell me if you don’t taste something a little cinnamony? Do you think the cafe is previewing fall flavors?”
When: Saturday, September 9, ~3:00 PM.
Where: By the lake.
What: Jack and Evan finish a conversation.
Warnings: None.
Jack taps his coffee cup against the picnic table roughly in time with the bobbing of his leg—he’s not aware of either action, instead looking down at his watch. Nearly three.
His nervous, pent-up energy is not the fault of his coffee; he opted for a decaf, and he got Evan the same. It’s Evan, actually, that has him checking over his shoulder every now and again, glancing down at his watch, staring out absently at the pond but not really seeing it, repeat. Evan, or more specifically, whether she listened to his voicemail and will be arriving to talk. Or if she deleted it, and he’ll have spent an afternoon waiting for someone who never had any intention of showing up. He’s prepared for the latter, it’s just the waiting that gets to him.
She’s late. Not on purpose–because she’s been fighting with the geese. They understand that there’s a dome over the station, but the instinct to fly south has them fighting amongst themselves. She’s been seated in the grass, watching the goslings as they shed their baby fluff and learn to fly at all. Sylvia had a late clutch, to the dismay of the flock, and her children are late bloomers.
Evan approaches the picnic table with the energy of someone wearing lead boots. It’s a slow walk, mostly to avoid the few, brave goslings who continue to race between her feet until Roberta’s threatening honk has them tearing back home in a hurry. She sits, not across from him, but at the edge, one leg in, one leg out–poised to run.
Her face, however, is a serene mask of calm. In her left hand, she holds a tiny toad. It hops onto the picnic table, looks around, pees, and hops back into her palm. “What can I do for you, Jack?”
He snorts at the little toad, one eyebrow raised. Evan is not the most forthcoming person with her emotions. Sometimes, Jack thinks, she lets her animals emote for her. He remembers Scrap staring down Rory at the engagement party when Evan wouldn't look at him. So the dot that the toad has left on the picnic table, that might have been left intentionally.
But he's not deterred. Jack slides the other decaf over to Evan, noting the arrangement of her legs and the lightly tense way she's holding herself, poised to run. She is a lot like his sister, after all.
"You can have some coffee to start. It's decaf, don't worry." He peers through the top of his cup, finds it more than halfway empty. "You're all over the place lately, huh? Europe, parties, bathrooms at parties. I heard you booked it out of the last party pretty fast. Had somewhere else to be after?"
(Where Evan is not very forthcoming with her emotions, Jack is not very forthcoming with his meaning. He's taking them the long way around, circuitously weaving them around what he perceives as blunt obstacles, to get to what he really wants to say.)
She sets the coffee to the side. Instead, she holds her hands out on the table to let the toad hop between them. She’s only just met this one, hasn’t even learned his name yet, but he’s enjoying the view from the picnic table and it gives her something to focus on.
“Sal’s sink was flooding,” she explains, her tone bland and uninterested. “We didn’t want it to ruin his apartment.” She lifts her eyes then, to stare at him. Challenging him. “You don’t think a waning party is more important than Sal’s apartment being demolished, do you?” The toad, too, looks at Jack before swiping a gnat off of the table.
“That’s interesting,” Jack replies. He’s challenging her right back, but he does so mildly, acquiescing to the blunt force of her stare. It’s not about winning or outdoing Evan in how uninterested they can make themselves sound. He would like for her to know it hurts him when she lies—what a funny way to treat someone you say you love. “My memory from the party isn’t that great, but some things are coming back. Like Sal saying it was your sink that was flooding.”
She can’t help herself from flinching at this mention. Keeping her face neutral, she shrugs. “Thankfully, he was mistaken about my sink. Scrap turned on the faucet and Max Too turned it off.” The toad, bored, hops off of the table and begins the ascent toward her shoulders. “I hate to be blunt, but I’m very busy today. What can I help you with, Jack?” Her tone never shifts from neutrality. It’s certainly not warm or familial. It’s a locked door. As easily as she had let him in, she could leave him out.
Jack understands the evenness of her tone, that it means locking him out. This, perhaps more than anything else Evan has done, reminds him of his sister.
When he was younger, he used to wonder if something was wrong with him, some inherent unpleasantness that made it easy for his sister to drop him and let him go. As he got older, he found dwelling on that made him unpleasant, and that people liked him better if he laughed easily and smiled. With Evan, he feels a stirring of that teenage melancholy—he wants to ask, don’t I get a little grace? If I stumble, do I deserve to be shut out? These would be genuine questions if he voiced them out loud, as he’s not sure.
Jack looks down, suddenly exhausted by the absurdity of Evan’s white lies and the effort it takes to maintain tepid neutrality. “I just wanted to show you something.” Slowly, he pushes his hand across the table, palm upturned, and waits to see if she’ll take it.
Jack so rarely touches people that it takes her a moment to process his outstretched hand as something to interact with. Her brow furrows in confusion. Her mask slips enough to show concern, worry, and a touch of fear, too. For both of them.
The frog is climbing into her hair, distracting, as she decides whether this option is one she’ll take. If she’s ready to apologize for how childish she’s been yet or move on with everything and pretend that they don’t need each other.
Her bottom lip gives her away as it trembles before she slides herself fully into the table and gently lays her palm against his.
He shows Evan herself, the night she asked him for help with Bandit. They didn’t know each other that well back then—Jack’s perception of her was as a hard-headed someone who had to be coaxed into picking her battles and working nicely with others, cajoled into resting and eating and finding time to do her laundry. The mole pups had been a sore point, but the more Jack thought about it, about Evan’s point of view, the more he realized she was demonstrating something precious. Advocating for the voiceless, caring for them, doing the right thing, whatever that may be—it’s not meant to be easy or pleasant. It makes people uncomfortable, frustrates them, makes them shake their heads at you and talk about you behind your back. Everything worked out with the pups in the end, but from that, Jack learned Evan is much stronger than she looks, in so many ways. Lonely, too.
And unlike his sister, for he never got to learn about the kind of person Jules grew up to be. He only knew her as just as afraid as he’d been, children perpetually reacting to things beyond their control, flinching at raised voices.
All these thoughts are layered atop his memory of Evan cradling Bandit in her sweater. Moths drifted lazily through the flood-lighting overhead, softly ochre, and the tendrils of Evan’s hair curling slightly in the humidity looked like a halo. He’s thought a lot about it and now he’s sure: he sees Evan for who she is, as herself.
Jack pulls his hand away. “I do love you, Evan,” he says, seriously. Then, with a hint of a smile: “Platonically, because I’m married and stuff.”
Evan’s hand rests palm down on the table as she considers what he’s shown her. Herself. How he sees her—in a capacity she’s never seen before. Her heart feels like it’s been whipped in one direction and then thrown back in the opposite. She inhales deeply and then exhales audibly.
“Give me your hand back,” she says, wiggling her fingers a little, hoping to be convincing despite the creeping purple flush she knows she curled around her eyes and settled in her cheeks. “I want to show you something, too.”
Cautiously, he reaches back out to her—now he lays his palm flat against hers. Their minds connect again, sharing the same space. Jack is still thinking of Evan holding Bandit. “If you start to show me a flooding sink,” he jokes, “I’m pulling my hand away.”
“If you pull your hand away, I’ll let Bandit bite you.”
Evan doesn’t show him a flooded sink. She shows him her home. Her very first. Three older brothers who were catered to for their every wish and whim. The disapproving stare of her mother. The way the light went out of her father’s eyes once her uncle disappeared. She shows him how lonely it is to be the only one left. How her mother never once offered anything when she was sick except confirmation that she was going to school no matter what.
She shows him empty bleachers from school graduation where her family should have been. The way she was scorned when she joined the station because she was petite and new—assigned to tasks because she was a woman and they thought she wouldn’t speak up. How much harder she had to work. How hard she had to fight for significance.
Then there was Sal. Coming and going. Sal at her parents’ funeral protecting her from people with prying questions. Standing between her and her brothers before he left again.
It’s a blurry landscape of loneliness as she moved place to place, town to town, working with animals but forgoing people.
She shows him how she sees him. He seems exhausted. It’s hot and late, but he’s shown up. She shows him the twinge of pain on his face when he has to deal with something out of his comfort zone. It’s lightning fast, but it’s there and she can see it.
Then it’s eggs. Pepsi. The slippers and the way he smiles at her like she has some value to him. She shows him listening to her in a way no one else has. How he’s flipped her life upside down with his attention where her life has been cocooned in neglect. She shows him his expression in as many circumstances as she can imagine until that night when his face had changed so much. She reminds him of his tone, how he’d carefully spoken to her in a way that she knew he wanted her to go.
It’s there, an undercurrent, a question—is she at fault for all the people who have left? Who won’t stay? Is she pushing everyone away? It’s fear at being left for good by him. Her new family. The person who’s just started to heal the places where her heart has been cracked beyond repair.
It’s Evan who slides their hands apart this time. “I’m tired of being hurt,” she says.
Jack is quiet, repeating in his head all she’s shown him of her loneliness. Finally, he replies: “I can’t promise that I’ll never hurt you again.” His expression is earnest but gentle. “I think that’s kind of the point.”
He reaches out with one finger, one small brush of contact so he can share what he’s thinking. Love is the thing that might leave you. When you love someone, you’re asking to be hurt—literally, you’re opening yourself up and saying ‘This is yours now.’ You just hope you won’t be hurt. I think that’s why some people go crazy over love or shut themselves away to try and avoid it. And those questions you have, I can’t answer them, I don’t know. But when someone loves you back, they do so, knowingly or unknowingly, with a responsibility not to hurt you.
He thinks now of Evan’s face as she tears into eggs and toast, sobbing because Liminal vines have unearthed old memories and feelings he doesn’t yet understand, running her fingers over embroidered Golden Retrievers, setting a bottle of Pepsi on his bathroom counter because he’s sick.
“I know, at least.”
Her jaw works as she chews on the words she wants to say. She looks at the paint-chipped table, then a small, white butterfly flapping its wings in the wind behind him. A squabble with the geese draws her attention from him entirely. Evan picks at the table, drawing chips from beside a hastily scribbled ‘Jason waz here’.
“Why do you—“ She clears her throat and tries again. “I have only ever wanted—“ Again, she stumbles over her words.
“What that was—it felt like what I thought family would be like. I used to dream that my brothers would wake up and get over themselves. Maybe I wanted it so badly that I manifested it in you, Jack. Maybe I pushed you into a role you were never meant to fill.” She lets her gaze drift toward his face. “I want you to be part of my life. But I don’t think I can handle being pushed out of yours.”
"Evan." Jack tilts his head. "There are going to be things I say and do that'll make you feel like I'm pushing you out—I can't help it. What happened in the bathroom, I'd just been really sick, I couldn't respond the way you wanted me to. That was, I don't know, a failure on my part, but that's bound to happen." He tries to speak softly, so she understands he's not pushing her out even with these words. "Sometimes I won't know that I'm doing something that makes you feel that way. Like I know now that inviting you to the party threw you, and I'll work on being better at thinking about how you might feel before I spring things on you. But in return, could we try talking things out before you start telling me you're flying to Norway?"
“Finland,” she corrects, though she really can’t remember by this point what she’s said and who she’s actually told.
On some level, this feels like being scolded. But maybe, she thinks, that’s what his love looks like. She’s asked for it–she’s invited him into her life to take this role. She can’t condemn him for the boundaries he’s set and the explanations he’s given.
She picks further at the chipping paint and then brushes it away. The toad, bored again, hops from her hair to the table and then directly in front of Jack. “I haven’t been part of your life for very long,” she starts slowly, still thinking as she slowly processes the words she’s saying. “I don’t expect to be part of it forever either.” People grow apart. He knows it. She knows it. They’re familiar with leaving and being left. “I’m grateful for the time that you give to me. I just–” She heaves a sigh. “I’m jealous of you. It’s like so dumb. I’m happy that you and Annie are Jack & Annie. Like so happy! You have no idea how happy I am for you. I could probably get birds to carry hearts made out of flowers to follow you around.”
Evan takes to combing her hair with her fingers now. She bites at the soft flesh in the corner of her mouth before continuing. “I don’t feel comfortable barging in on you anymore. I don’t–” She breaks off for a second, still finding the right words to say. “I’m not into you—like, you’re great, I’m just–” She shrugs. “And Annie’s great, but like–” She waves a hand as if to stir the words in the air to chase them away.
“I took advantage of your attention. Then I made a mess of everything because I felt–” She has no idea how to finish this. No idea how to spit out her reality without feeling extra small and selfish. “You didn’t even ask for help moving. You were just gone. Moved and throwing a party. And you know I can’t bake. That’s like the most important part and you set us both up to fail.”
Jacks laughs. "I didn't even help with moving. I put things in boxes and Annie carried everything on her back." He watches Evan run her fingers through her hair agitatedly; it'd be nice just to hold her hand and stop her nervous movement without having to think of anything at all.
"And I know you can't bake, but you told me you've been watching YouTube videos on cake decorating and wanted to learn." Evan's loneliness runs deep, Jack thinks, studying her. It will not be resolved by him, a brother pulled from a dream, or an uncle recovered from a lost future, or even a friend who lies to get you out of parties. Evan will need all of them and more, it seems, but—
He reaches out to pull her hand away from her hair, setting it back down gently on the table, thinking, You're not selfish. He doesn’t need to be in her head to know her thoughts, not when they are so plainly telegraphed in the way she bites her left cheek and struggles with her words. And he disagrees with her assessment of herself; he thinks it's only human, wanting many hands to hold you. As all this runs between them, Jack says out loud, "I don't mind failing if it's with you."
Evan looks startled, her eyes open wide despite the continually creeping purple in her cheeks. He’s constantly trying to build her up as she tears herself down. She tilts her head, sighing, as she watches him before she finally nods. “I know that now.”
Standing quickly, she finds herself at his side and leaning into him to wrap her arms around his shoulders. She doesn’t mean to cry, but she can’t help the tears that fall, the ones that won’t be hastily wiped away. She holds him tightly, saying nothing, until the oppressive, overwhelming guilt subsides into some semblance of peace.
Evan steps back and swipes at her cheeks before offering something of a choked laugh. “You’re my family now,” she says. “Maker of eggs, giver of hugs. If I introduce you as my brother to people, you have to go along with it.”
Jack is startled, caught off guard by her hug—but it’s okay, he’s only thinking of her. Awkwardly, he reaches up to pat her on the back and leans away to get a better look at her once she releases him. She’s crying but she looks happy, a little less lonely, at least for now.
“I guess that’s fine,” he laughs. Jack has a wad of napkins from the cafe stuffed in his back pocket; he extracts one and offers it to her. “Can I also use the sink excuse when you need to bail on a party, or do brothers have to use a different home utility?”
Again, she laughs, using his offered napkin to wipe her face. It’s folded and deposited into her own back pocket. Even so, she continues to wipe at her face, wishing the show of emotion would disappear as quickly as it appeared. “You absolutely can. Just burst right into the room and announce that anything is flooded. Sal’s the one who decided on that.” She sniffs and smiles at him. “Thank you, Jack. For everything. And for putting up with my bullshit.”
He shakes his head to let her know he disagrees with her self-assessment, but he doesn’t fight her on it too hard. It’s something to build up to, after exchanging I-love-yous, learning how to cook eggs and do laundry, and figuring out how to decorate cakes together—Maslow’s hierarchy of helping Evan to see and love herself the way he does, however he can. “Okay, now for the actually important thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
Jack drags her coffee cup back across the table toward her and fixes Evan with an expectant look, although the corners of his mouth are curled up, slightly wry. “Tell me if you don’t taste something a little cinnamony? Do you think the cafe is previewing fall flavors?”
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