Evvie Drake Starts Over(10)

She nodded, noticing the freckles on the back of his wrist.

Oh, stop it.





A FEW DAYS LATER, EVVIE WAS stuffing the second notice on her electric bill into her kitchen drawer when she heard a bang from the apartment. She went and knocked, and Dean opened the door wide. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Evvie said. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “sorry about the noise. Knocked a box off the counter. It’s never the box with the sheets in it, you know? It’s always whatever will make it sound the most like you tried to murder a robot by throwing it down a couple of flights of stairs.”

Evvie laughed. “Are you settling in okay? I wasn’t sure I’d told you how to open the windows.”

“Oh, no, you did, they’re open, I’ve got a breeze going. You want to come in? I’m unpacking. I got lucky at your thrift store. I got furniture, I got dishes, I got my grilled cheese pan.”

Evvie peeked inside. “You didn’t get a bed.”

“It’s on the way. Diane told me a used mattress might give me bedbugs.”

“Smart lady. I’d be happy to put you in the guest room until it gets here.”

   “Nah,” he said. “I’ve slept in airplane seats with guys who were spitting tobacco the whole time, I can make it a couple more days bunking with Andy. I’m pretty sure Lilly wants me back tonight anyway to look at some sketches of a superhero she invented. Her dad told her I like Batman.”

She stepped into the apartment, which was so different with anything in it. Even boxes made it breathe differently, and he had set up a pair of big, comfortable-looking club chairs sort of facing each other. “Batman, huh? You’re one of those guys.”

“Yeah. I sneaked around at Comic-Con in San Diego in costume a few years ago. Full thing, big cowl over my face. Missed a couple of days of practice and got fined, but it was worth it.”

“Because?”

He stopped unpacking. “I’d never been. I’d always wanted to go. I saw a guy in a picture who was decked out like Boba Fett—you know, from Star Wars?”

“I know who Boba Fett is.”

“Anyway, I figured Comic-Con was the one place I could wear a mask and still blend in. Probably the most normal I got to be that year, walking around in a superhero costume.”

She smiled. “Maybe that’s why Bruce Wayne did it.”

He laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, it looks like Esther’s Attic treated you right,” she said. “I haven’t bought anything over there in forever, but she’s amazing. Diane, not Esther. Esther’s been dead since I was in high school. But Diane can tell you who gave her everything she has in that store. I was about to buy a sweater from her once when she told me that my dentist brought it over with a pile of his mother’s stuff from when they moved her into a home. I couldn’t do it. I figured it was bad enough I was drawn to an old-lady sweater without literally buying an old lady’s sweater.”

“She says nice things about you.” He looked up from his unpacking. “She promised you would be a very nice landlady. She put her hand over her heart when she said your name and everything.”

Evvie sighed. “Uch. I bet. A lot of people will tell you how nice I am, which mostly means they feel very, very sorry for me and they’re very worried about where they’re going to find a new doctor.”

   “She said you were a trouper.”

“Yes, that sounds like something she would say.”

“I met her dog.”

“Ah, Ziggy.”

“Yeah. She said he’s a…fluffernutter or something? Scared the hell out of me. I thought he was stuffed, and then he started walking toward me. I think I almost screamed.”

“He’s a miniature goldendoodle. At Christmas, he wears antlers. On St. Patrick’s Day, he wears a hat with a buckle on it.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Town treat you well otherwise?”

“Yeah. I like it. It’s nice and quiet. It’s, uh…”

“Quaint? Fishy?”

“White. It’s very, very white.”

“Oh,” Evvie said. “You noticed that, huh? You know, Maine is the whitest state in the country. Oldest, too. Freezing cold in the winter, full of tourists in the summer. On the plus side: lobster.”

“What do people do for fun?”

“Sometimes the kids from the high school throw bricks through the windows of our deserted shoe factory.” She paused. “Is that not what you meant by ‘fun’?”

He smiled and set a blender on the counter. “It seems like nobody gives a shit about baseball, which is helpful.”

Evvie laughed as she dropped into one of the chairs and inspected the upholstery on the arm. “That is not true. They don’t care about major league baseball. But they care intensely about baseball, I promise.”

He frowned. “Really?”

“You are in the home territory of the Calcasset Claws,” she said. He looked at her, puzzled, and she held up her fingers in a sideways V. He just stared. “You didn’t see ‘Go Claws’? Esther’s has one in the window, I think.”

   “Oh,” he said. “Right, that’s what that was. Hey, you want a water?”