(A Promise of Presence)

NOW

(Evan)

I looked into her coffee mug. There was a small white gathering at the top of the tan liquid. I always thought she put too much creamer in her coffee. I never understood it. But that was Dena. I ran my middle finger around the rim of the mug. Then I rubbed my chin.

I heard the shower running. The pipes went through the kitchen and the walls were super thin. When you turned the water on and off the pipes rattled and shook the wall. When the water ran it sounded like a rumbling hiss from inside the walls.

It just showed how old the house was, like everything in the town. On the outskirts, developers had been buying up land from the old heads and knocking down the trees, flattening it all out, and were building new developments. The kind where the same thing was built a hundred times over and the prices were just low enough to convince people they could afford it. The heart of the town was left to age and rot, with the exception of the occasional person who thought they could buy low, fix it up, and sell high, thanks to reality television. But I knew it wasn’t that fucking easy at all. I dealt with that nonsense at the shop with Uncle Davey. People forever asked us if the shop was like the ones on TV. Uncle Davey had no clue what reality television was so I fielded the questions when they came up. I told everyone it was exactly like on TV. Our lives were scripted, the projects predetermined, and we got paid by the episode that was filmed.

Smart ass, I know.

I grabbed Dena’s mug and walked into the kitchen. I rinsed both our mugs out and put them upside down on a sunflower towel. I looked out the kitchen window to the porch and the backyard.

What the fuck are you doing, Evan?

That was a question I couldn’t answer.

I had gotten what I wanted for so long. A stolen kiss from Dena. Grabbing those precious curves of hers and pulling her in. Our lips touching, flirting, kissing. My tongue gently tasting her tongue, a sweetness rippling through me, battling the devil that had kept control for years. We’d been on a collision course since the day we met. And the timing was always a fucking mess. Including that kiss.

The way she pulled and walked away.

She thought I was kissing her because of her damn sister. Because her sister was gone. Because I was sad. Because I wanted to get laid… why? Because that’s what you did when someone close to you died? Or did she think I was hoping she’d be vulnerable?

“Fuck,” I growled.

I pushed from the counter.

I realized the water had turned off.

If it wasn’t bad enough to picture Dena in the shower with the water hitting her sweet skin, now I imagined her standing there with a towel in her hand. Pressing it against her body. With one hand. Her other hand pulling at her hair, squeezing out the leftover water from the shower.

I was driving myself crazy.

So I left the kitchen and grabbed a chair. I spun it around and sat down.

My phone started to ring - Uncle Davey calling me.

“Shit,” I whispered.

I got him a cell phone last year and he’d probably made three calls with it. All three to me.

“Uncle Davey,” I said.

“Evan? Hullo?”

“I’m here,” I said. “You okay?”

“Evan. It’s your uncle.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know who it is.”

“Hullo. Evan. Where are you?”

“I’m at the… the funeral was yesterday.”

“Right,” he said. “Listen. Uh, Jimmy called. He wanted to talk to you about another two deals. He said he was sending a spreadsheet. How the fuck do I get that?”

I smiled. “Uncle Davey, I’ll take care of it. It’s a proposal from him to us. We review it and respond.”

“Huh?”

“He emailed it to us.”

“Email? Jesus Christ. You know, in my day, if you wanted to make a deal, you came to see the person.”

“Uncle Davey, Jimmy lives in Arizona.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Yeah.”

“I’ll call Jimmy,” I said. “Okay? I’ll let him know I’m out of town but I’ll go through the proposal.”

“Yeah,” Uncle Davey shouted. “Yeah. Okay. Hey, Winston hurt his shoulder yesterday.”

“I’ll be back soon.”

I rolled my eyes again. The guy that told me to leave now wanted me back. Again, it was his subtle way of saying he loved me.

“See you later, Evan,” he said and hung up on me.

I looked at the phone in my hand and shook my head.

“Evan?”

I looked up and there she was.

Dena.

Adena.

My Dena.

Standing in jeans that had holes in the knees. A white t-shirt that looked perfect on her. I never met a woman who could do so little to herself and be so fucking beautiful. Her hair wet, dark, curly. No makeup on her face.

My chest tightened.

I wanted to stand up but couldn’t.

I was trapped.

Trapped in her stare. Trapped in her beauty.

It was my worst fear.

She had spent years trying to save Anna…

… and now, in some fucked up way, I wanted her to save me.

* * *

I caught my breath a few seconds later. In those fleeting seconds I pictured her walking to me. My hands sliding around to the small of her back. Pulling her forward and down, smelling her clean skin. Her soap. Her shampoo. A freshness that flirted with innocence. The kind of shit that would make the devil inside me growl with a deep need.

But Dena just stood there.

When I regained feeling in my legs, I stood up and turned the chair back around.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m here,” I said. “I didn’t come to just bail.”

Dena sighed. “Evan…”

“There’s about a million things I could say right now, Dena. A million more I should have said. No matter what I say to you it’s going to come out wrong. It’s going to sound like I’m feeling pity for you for what happened.”

“So then why are you here?”

I stepped toward her. I reached for her, skipping everywhere my hand wanted to go first and softly touched her cheek. My thumb teased at the corner of her mouth. The mouth I had been kissing just a little while ago.

“Because me being here means more than anything I could say,” I whispered. “You expect me to walk out that door and leave you, but I’m not going to do that.”

“There’s nothing here for you, Evan. You have a life somewhere else.”

“I know,” I said. “But you’re wrong.”

“With what?”

“There is something here for me, Dena. You.”

She reached up and grabbed my hand. Both of her hands to my one hand and she still couldn’t cover my entire hand. Fuck, that drove me wild. That turned me on so much.

“Emotions are high right now,” Dena said. “We’re all thinking about every moment that leads to this. Regret. Doubt. Hurt.”

“No,” I said. “You’re wrong again. I’m not thinking about anything but you. Just like I always did. I just never told you that.”

“Evan… stop…”

“Stop what? The truth? What are you worried about? Losing your freedom again?”

Dena laughed. A crying kind of laugh. “I never had freedom. I still don’t. I never will. But if I show up and smile, it confuses everyone. Enough that they leave me alone.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone, Dena,” I said.

“Evan, you have no idea…”

“Then give me an idea. I want to know everything about you. Not her. You.”

Dena shook her head. “I came downstairs to hopefully find this house empty. So I could eat and go to work.”

“Right. Where do you work?”

“A bakery, Evan. I complete the dream of someone else. My dream. For someone else. So tell me again how I have freedom?”

I swallowed hard. This was not everything I had pictured. But in some way, this was exactly why I didn’t want to come back, right? Because of this. Dena being so fucking smart and beautiful. Knowing the right thing to do, which was kicking my ass to the curb. Because I spent years dealing with her sister. And Dena would never fully understand everything that happened or why.

There was nothing I could say.

My presence wasn’t even good enough for her.

What else could I give her?

So I took my hand away from her. I rubbed my face and made the mistake of using that same hand. I could smell Dena on my skin.

“I guess I’m due back at the shop anyway,” I said. “Uncle Davey called while you were upstairs. He can’t open an email and read a spreadsheet.”

Dena nodded. “I’m glad you came, Evan. Seriously. No matter the history, it was good to see you. To see everyone together again like that. It’s going to take time to figure out not having her around, you know? No more getting nervous after midnight. No more Tommy calling me to say that he found her sleeping on a bench. No more bailing her out. You know, Evan, you think I would maybe think I should have gotten the keys to her car from her, right? But I don’t think that at all. Maybe it was…”

I made my move again. I slipped my hand around the small of her back and pressed my body to hers. We collided and she gasped. She looked up at me, eyes wide, mouth open, her lips already quivering.

She didn’t push me away. She didn’t slap me.

I lowered my head down until our foreheads touched.

“Dena,” I whispered. “You never did a thing wrong. You never thought the wrong thing. You never did the wrong thing. You loved her unconditionally and did all you could to protect her. There wasn’t a day or a second that went by that I didn’t see that.”

“Evan…”

Goddamn, when she whispered my name…

I sucked in a breath and it was now my turn to do the right thing. To stop thinking the wrong thing. To show my unconditional love to Dena and protect her… by leaving.

I broke away from her and made a move toward the door.

I didn’t look back.

I didn’t want her to see the tears in my eyes.