The Arrangement (14 page)

“The good life?” Evie spat, her cup making a ringing noise as she slammed it onto the table. “Does that ‘good life’ include my parents’ money? Does it really matter if I’m there? Or if this relationship is what God wants? Do you truly care about being with me or only my parents’ money? My heart is completely tied up in this, Ben. I’m in love with you, but you only seem concerned about our plan and keeping the money flowing. You don’t care about anything but making your life easier.”

Evie’s hands trembled as she finally put into words the emotions she’d battled for weeks. Eli was right. She had to decide. Would she follow her way or God’s way? And if she chose God’s way, how would she go about finding out which way his way led?

Ben licked his lips. “You’ve never mentioned God before now. We’ve both managed quite well without worrying whether or not God wants something. Do you think he has some grand plan mapped out for us? What if he’s up in heaven watching us run like hamsters on a wheel? Forget what Whatly said, Evie. He only wants you, that’s all. Besides, do you think he would believe God intended for you to be together if he knew about all the lies you’ve told him? What will he say when he finds out you are still with me?”

Evie wanted to deny all the allegations Ben threw at her. She wanted him to shut up. She wanted to run out of the restaurant. From the corner of her eye she noticed the few other diners around them beginning to stare. She wanted to think calmly and rationally again. Ben tugged at her emotions. He wanted life easy. Who was she kidding? She wanted life easy, too. Why had Eli gotten to her? Why did she worry so much about whether or not God intended for her to be with Ben or Eli or someone else entirely?

Centered around God…centered around you…
Eli’s words rammed into her thoughts like a goat into a fence shaking and jerking her mind until she wondered if she would lose her train of thought completely.

“You’re going to have to decide, Evie, if you are still with me or not.” Ben looked straight at her, his eyes stormy, his mouth a thin line. “Call me when you are ready to work this out.”

Evie watched him pay their tab and walk into the sun-drenched parking lot. She opened her mouth as he climbed into a new, full-sized truck and drove away. How could he refuse to live a little less elaborately so they could be together but then buy a brand-new truck? Did she rank below a truck on his list of priorities? She grabbed her purse from the booth and stomped out of the restaurant.

For an hour she drove aimlessly through town. She considered finding a quiet booth in the coffee shop downtown but dismissed it at the sight of the crowded parking lot. Exhausted, she finally chose the campus library. The only reason anyone came to the library was for peace and quiet, exactly the atmosphere she wanted. She sifted through the paper and textbooks scattered in her car and finally found the research paper she had postponed. She tucked an extra pen in her purse and shuffled toward the building.

She made two laps around the library until she found a secluded table next to the magazine archives. Immersed in her research of archived election articles, she barely noticed the hours tick by until her stomach growled loudly about midafternoon. She stacked the magazines on top of one another and lugged them to the copier at the front of the building. Just as she finished copying the articles, she heard a voice behind her.

“Evie?”

She swiveled to face a slender woman with shoulder-length dark hair and bangs cut straight across her forehead. “Hi, Brooke,” she said quietly before turning back to the copier.

“I saw you at church last weekend and meant to speak,” Brooke continued, her voice steady and pleasant. She moved to the side of the copier.

“Really? I didn’t realize you still went to church there,” Evie answered as she flipped through the pages of the magazine in her hand to the page she had marked. Tears stung her eyes as it fell open to a page emblazoned with a picture of Eli and his dad. She quickly continued flipping.

“I usually go to a college church here in town, but I had gone home to visit my folks. I hadn’t seen you in a while. Weren’t you with Eli Wheatly?”

Evie’s face jerked from the magazine to Brooke’s face. Through her tears she saw only genuine interest in place of the jealousy and cattiness she came to expect from many of her friends. “Yeah, kind of,” she mumbled as she looked down to the copier again. She rubbed one hand over her eyes before her coins clinked again as she sent the machine whirling into action.

Brooke waited to speak until the noise subsided. “Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” She sighed.

“I’ve really missed seeing you at church. You should come to Sunday school at Southern Heights next Sunday. We usually have breakfast and some great discussion.” Brooke paused. “Maybe it would help with whatever is bothering you.”

Evie stacked her papers together, afraid to open her mouth or look back at Brooke. As she picked up the pile, a magazine in the middle slipped and the whole pile cascaded onto the floor. She breathed hard as she bent to pick them up again. Brooke helped her stack them back together. Evie’s tears left wet spatters on the cover of her binder. Brooke took a stack of magazines and led Evie to an abandoned table.

“I know we haven’t been close friends in several years, but we once spent almost every spare minute together. I don’t know why we grew apart when we moved to college, and it doesn’t matter. But something’s obviously bothering you. So why don’t you try me?” Brooke offered.

“Why do you even care?” Evie’s voice wobbled.

Brooke touched her arm. “Because we are friends, and no amount of time can change that. Something about the look on your face says you are searching for someone to confide in. You know you can trust me.”

Evie flipped her pen through her fingers. As teenagers she and Brooke both attended the same church youth group and, as Brooke reminded her, they spent many hours talking on the phone, going to movies, and out to eat with a small, core group of friends. Brooke always had a knack for seeing the good in people. She could not remember ever hearing Brooke break someone’s confidence.

She could barely remember why they lost touch. They attended the same college but sometime during freshman year, Evie became more involved with her sorority—a sorority to which Brooke did not belong. Before she knew it, she and Ben were dating, which left even less time for Brooke. She winced as she remembered ignoring Brooke’s calls and avoiding her.

“Brooke, I—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“What do you mean?” Brooke prompted slowly, patiently.

“Life was going so well, and now it’s all messed up.” Her explanation made no more sense than her first statement. How could she explain the last few weeks to Brooke? What would Brooke think of her if she confided the whole truth? The secrecy burned a hole in her spirit like a hot iron to a delicate sweater. Confused about how exactly to start her confession, Evie asked a question instead. “Do you really think God is interested in who we date or what we do, as long as we don’t do anything really bad?”

“Evie, you know the answer to that question. When we were in the youth group, you were so passionate about God’s will for your life. You kept saying God needed strong Christians in politics. You wanted to be one of those people. What changed your mind?”

“Ben.” The name flipped off the end of Evie’s tongue. “He was so enthusiastic and passionate about life. He didn’t seem to need God to have purpose and happiness.”

“What about now?” Brooke’s eyes shone with concern. “Is he still happy? What is his purpose?”

Evie considered her questions. Did Ben really have a purpose? Ben wanted to finish college, convince her parents he could be a suitable husband, and then make enough money so they could live comfortably. The whole plan revolved around Ben.

She shifted gears uncomfortably. What about Eli’s purpose? During their first real conversation over coffee, he lamented a client’s decision to leave loads of money to a grandchild instead of helping even one or two needy college students. He gave up Washington life to search for God’s will. And he was willing to remain only friends with her if God led that direction.

“He wasn’t very happy this morning,” she muttered. Evie tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Lately his purpose seems pretty focused on himself. Maybe his focus has always been on himself.”

“And what is your purpose?” Brooke’s quiet question cut through the confusion and refocused Evie’s thoughts on herself and her future.

“I don’t know.” For the first time in weeks, her mind was clear.

“Maybe you need to find that purpose again, Evie, before you start filling up your life with other people’s purposes. If you have no purpose, you’ll get lost in Ben’s purpose, which you just said is pretty selfish. Do you want your purpose to be lifting up Ben, or lifting up God?”

Evie knew the answer. Anyone who had ever entered a church or heard a word about Jesus or God knew he out-ranked any human. “Eli said something very similar,” said Evie with a wry smile.

“Really?”

Evie had replayed his words so many times that day she didn’t even have to think before reciting them for Brooke. “He said, ‘
Eventually you will have to choose which kind of life you want. Either you want a life centered around God and the things he wants for you, or you want a life centered around you and what you want for yourself.’
So how do I know which way God wants me to go?”

Ben had already rejected God’s way. She could not stay with him and follow God, too. But what about Eli? How would she know, or how would he know, if God intended for them to be together?

“Well, I guess you have to look at the way Ben is encouraging you to go and the way Eli is encouraging you to go and then pray about it.”

“How do I compare two people and two directions that are so different?”

“You don’t compare them to each other, you compare them to God’s direction,” Brooke explained.

“Like, how?” Evie slouched back in her chair. She felt like she was going in circles.

“Let’s start with Eli. You said he told you that you would have to decide whether you wanted a God-centered life or an Evie-centered life, right?”

Evie nodded.

“That’s biblical. The Bible says we cannot serve two masters. The actual Scripture talks about money, but it can apply to anything. If you love money, or a boyfriend, or work more than God, you can’t follow those things and God, too.” Brooke propped her chin on her folded hands. “It’s like trying to go right and left at the same time.”

“Okay, so we’ve proved Eli is encouraging me to do things God’s way. How do we decide about Ben?” Evie felt nauseated. She had no Scriptures to back up her suspicions, but she felt almost certain Ben couldn’t be leading her in a God-centered direction when he had no interest in God at all.

“First you have to talk a little about the direction Ben wants you to go. What are some of the things he wants you to do?”

The moment of truth had arrived. Only Evie and Ben knew about their plan to hide their relationship and lie to her parents. Did she dare reveal that plan to someone else? Could she trust Brooke to keep her secret? Brooke knew Evie’s parents. Would she call them? Would her conscience require her to spill the truth, no matter what it cost Evie? Did she really want to know what Brooke thought about their plan?

“We’re not really supposed to be seeing each other,” Evie admitted. “My parents don’t think he’s good enough. So we told them we broke up even though we are still together. But it’s just until we can graduate and support ourselves and prove to them he is good enough for me. We’ll tell them the truth eventually.” The plan sounded silly once she laid it out for someone else to see.

Evie finally made eye contact. “Lying isn’t really a God direction, is it?” she whispered, answering before Brooke had a chance to condemn her.

Brooke unfolded her hands and laid one on top of Evie’s hands. “No, but you already knew that,” she said in reply. “So what’s holding you there if you know it’s wrong?”

The sudden touch of Brooke’s warm hand on hers shocked Evie. “I-I thought I loved him.”

“But now you don’t know?”

“It’s all about the money. That’s why my parents don’t think he’s good enough, because he doesn’t have very much money. And he doesn’t want them to know we are still together because they will stop paying for all my stuff. I guess I wonder why, if we love each other, we can’t live without all this stuff. Is my Beemer and sorority and tuition more important to me than he is?” The questions plaguing Evie for weeks tumbled into the quiet air of the library.

“Are you going to tell them?” Evie finally asked when her heart rate stopped charging.

“No,” Brooke said with a breathy laugh. “It sounds like there won’t be much to tell anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Evie asked.

“Well, you said you weren’t sure you really loved Ben. So why would you stay with him and lie to your parents if you don’t love him? Besides that, I don’t even have to tell you that lying about anything isn’t a God direction. You knew that when you told me. You just needed to hear yourself say it.”

“But what makes you think any of that matters?” Evie bristled at Brooke’s assumption that she knew what Evie would do even before Evie decided to do it.

“Because you asked about whether or not God really cares about our direction. You brought up the two opposite directions two people want you to go. You wanted to know how to know a God direction and an Evie direction. You want to go the God way, even though you know it will be hard. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have spilled this whole saga to someone you haven’t been close to in years.”

“See what I mean? Everything was going so great, but now it’s a big mess. Even if Ben and I break up, there’s no guarantee anything will work out with Eli or even that I want anything to work out with Eli. Do I lose one boyfriend over the idea of someone better out there?”

“Yes.”

Evie jerked her head back to Brooke. “You honestly believe God cares about who we date, don’t you? You believe someone better exists?”