Seven Days in June(44)

They shared a quiet look. Eva turned away first.

“I meant the writing,” she emphasized.

“I can’t make words do what I want them to do anymore.” He sounded resigned.

Eva set her coffee down. “It’s like those cases where people suffer major head trauma, slip into a coma, and wake up speaking a different language. I’d imagine that’s what it’s like. Writing sober for the first time.”

“Yeah,” said Shane, mulling this over. Then he let out a small, mirthless chuckle. “It’s exactly like that. Like I woke up one day and didn’t know English. I’m trying to write in a language I no longer speak.” Then he said, “I can’t write sober. I haven’t said that out loud till now.”

Eva leaned back, and they were almost shoulder to shoulder. “Not that I ever watched any footage of you over the years”—she smiled at him—“but you never seemed messy drunk. Just sleepy.”

“God, is this about the NAACP Awards?”

“I’m just saying, you hid it well.”

“Acting sober is an art,” he explained. “The trick is to say very little and be very still. And if you do that too well, sleep inevitably happens.”

“I read somewhere,” started Eva, “that on movie sets, actors spin around in circles before shooting drunk scenes. So they’re dizzy and off-balance.”

“Smart,” he said, swirling the ice in his coffee again—a twinkly, soothing sound. “You know what extras in crowd scenes do to look like they’re mid-conversation? They repeat ‘peas and carrots’ over and over. But gesticulate, like they’re really saying shit.”

“Is that true?” She nudged him with her shoulder. “Act mad.”

Scrunching up his handsome features into a menacing scowl, he mouthed, Peas and carrots, peas and carrots. He looked like a furious golden retriever.

Eva burst out laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“Shane Hall, you’re not scary anymore.”

“I know. I put the ‘hug’ in ‘thug.’”

They both giggled, until they’d forgotten what was funny. Eventually, they lapsed into comfortable silence, enjoying the sun. When Shane’s phone dinged, he lazily glanced down and saw it was from Ty. A selfie of his round, smiling face next to a cute girl with braids, both holding ice-cream cones.

Today is perfect, he thought, damn near giddily. Everything’s perfect.

“I can’t get over how much lighter you are now,” said Eva, taking in his expression. “Can I ask you how you stopped? Was it AA?”

Shane thought about this, folding his straw wrapper into a tiny square.

“Nah, I hated AA. The endless sharing and group therapy. All to figure out why you drink. I’ve always known why, and it never stopped me. I got sober ’cause I wanted to. It was stop or die.” He turned to look at her. “I’m too narcissistic to die.”

“Huh. You sure therapy didn’t work?”

Shane was on the verge of a retort, and then he got distracted by the sun glinting off her bare arms. His eyes traveled across her skin—no longer scarred, but scattered with delicate black tattoos. A half-moon; the Louisiana state symbol; a feather; someone’s birth date etched into a dreamy, flower-strewn vine encircling her wrist. Her art was a beautiful distraction.

You’d never know what was underneath.

“How’d you stop, Genevieve?”

“Eva,” she said softly.

“I know,” he said after a pause. “It’s hard for me to say.”

“It’s okay,” she said, and it was. “After…us, I went to a mandatory psychiatric center, for self-harm.”

“Your mom sent you?”

“No, the police,” she said, offering no more information. “At the center, I found out that cutting was a reaction to feeling helpless. The only time I felt control.” She ran her hand up and down her left arm, as if protecting it from searing memories. “Before that I thought of it as a divine ritual. Mayans believed that at birth, the gods gift humans with blood—so you cut yourself to give it back. Like a spiritual cleansing.”

“You ever miss it?” asked Shane.

“Sometimes,” she admitted in a slight voice. “Usually in the shower. I miss the sting when the water hit my cuts. Pretty sick, huh?”

“Not to me,” he said, with no judgment at all. Eva sank into this energy, relaxing a bit, thankful for it.

“I don’t miss drinking,” he continued. “But I do miss having a crutch. At first, I’d look at sober people like, damn, y’all really out here feeling everything?”

“Yeah. I miss having a way to mute it all.”

“I miss vices.”

In silence, they sat shoulder to shoulder, inches apart, bodies mirroring each other—but not touching.

“You’re still wearing the ring,” he said.

She didn’t realize he’d been looking at her. Heart fluttering, Eva held up her hand, squinting at her old cameo ring in the sun. “It makes me feel protected—I don’t know why. Do you have anything like that? Like, a security blanket?”

“No.” Shane looked out into the street. “No, not anymore.”