The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (24 page)

“He also asks her the same thing right before the magic carpet ride,” I retort. “So what’s it going to be?”

“I’m not really dressed to go anywhere,” she says, looking down at her gym shorts and paint-splashed tshirt. Her hair is up in some kind of weird cinnamon-bun looking knot on top of her head, though a few strands have fallen out and are sticking to her neck in the July heat.

“Doesn’t matter. We’re not going anywhere fancy.”

“Well, all right.” She gestures vaguely. “Onward, I guess.”

I swallow. “Actually, this would be the part where you decide exactly how much you trust me, because we need to use your car. And I should probably drive.”

Evie studies me for a long moment, and then silently backtracks into the house, re-emerging with flip flops on her feet and the keys to her Lexus, which she passes to me.

I look down at them for a moment, surprised at how easily she gave them to me. “Right,” I say, and hope against hope this ends up being a magic carpet ride, not getting captured by the guards.

We get into the car and drive through Grandview, down past both my bridges and onward until we’re near the OSU campus. I pull the car into a small shopping center and park before looking over at Evie.

“What are we doing?” she asks, looking around the shopping center in confusion.

“We’re, uh, going in there,” I explain, and point at the spa in front of us.

Evie’s startled, “What?” is faint to my ears as I get out of the car and circle around, opening her door for her, though she doesn’t get out, only stares up at me.

“You’re getting a pedicure,” I tell her, and she continues to look at me blankly. “Your toes painted?” I try.

“I know what a pedicure is,” she snaps. “I just don’t understand why you think I need one. What are you trying to say? What’s wrong with my toes now? This one isn’t even chipped yet.”

“They’re the wrong color,” I say archly, and after just a moment, she catches my meaning, and her face goes white.

“
No
, Zeke,” she whispers, and just as quickly as she paled, her face flushes with indignation and her voice gets a lot louder. “I don’t want to. You don’t understand this… this hang up. You really don’t. I want to go home.”

She reaches for the keys I’m still holding but I grab her hand when she gets close and pull her from the car, though gently and without much force. She’s so small I barely need any, and since I caught her by surprise she pretty much tumbles out of the car. I take hold of her, though holding her hand, couple-style, so it doesn’t feel threatening, and nonetheless begin to pull her up to the spa and through the doors.

“I understand that you wanted help learning to stand on your own, and you asked me to help you. I understand that you can’t do that until you break away from Tony, and today, we’re going to work on that,” I say, glad she’s trying to fight it because my irritation helps me retain my focus and makes me more intent on following through.

“Zeke, don’t!” Just like when I tried to pull her out of the house when I found her cutting, she’s trying to plant her feet down so I can’t pull her along. The concrete is smooth, however, and her flip flops do nothing whatsoever to stop her. I pull the door open and give her a small push inside, then quickly step in myself so I’m blocking the door and any possibility of escape.

“Hello,” the receptionist says pleasantly, as though I didn’t just toss a girl inside. I have to give her kudos for her straight face. “How can I help you today?”

I put a hand on the small of Evie’s back and push her forward to the desk, giving the receptionist, a little old lady, my biggest smile. Evie doesn’t fight now that we have an audience, but she gives me a glare that could kill. I ignore her and put one hand down on the desk.

“She wants a pedicure,” I say without preamble. “Got anything for right now?”

“Actually.” Evie is clearly speaking through gritted teeth, though I don’t look down for fear of being skewered by her eyes. “I don’t. I have no desire nor need for a pedicure, but thank you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her trying to give the receptionist her own winning smile. I quickly flip the odds to my favor and move my arm so I’m hugging Evie against me in what appears to be an affectionate gesture, but also keeps Evie from running out, and smile even bigger at the receptionist and lean forward to whisper confidentially.

“Trying to throw my present back in my face,” I say. “Can you believe it? I’ve been saving for weeks to afford to take her to a fancy place like this, and she’s trying to say no because her feet are ticklish and she thinks I shouldn’t spend the money on her. But I have to. It’s my girl, you know?” I complete it by kissing the top of Evie’s hair—and take the moment to sniff her hair like its crack or something, cause I’m freaking insane—and the receptionist positively melts.

“Give me just a minute, honey. I’ll check with Lucy, I’m pretty sure she has some time before her next client.” She stands and crosses the room to dart into the actual spa, looking back at us a few times as she goes, her expression all pleased and secretive.

The minute she’s out of sight, Evie tears away from me, and I move so I’m standing in front of the door again. No way am I letting her out. It’s a matter of pride now. Evie doesn’t try to escape, though. She only runs her hands up and down her arms as though she’s freezing and begins pacing around the room.

“You’re playing dirty,” she says, but her voice is shaky and the humor falls flat.

A flash of real concern goes through me as I see she’s actually trembling a little bit, but I shake it off. She needs this, and the fact that she’s fighting it so hard reaffirms the fact.

“I don’t know any other way to play,” I finally reply, because it’s true.

The receptionist bustles back in, followed by a tall, blonde woman that reminds me of an older version of Tessa. Ugh. Maybe this is a bad idea. But she gives us a welcoming smile that’s much warmer than anything Tessa could summon up and I feel reassured.

Greetings are exchanged all around and we follow Lucy back into the spa, because Betty, the receptionist, told me I was welcome to go along and watch, along with a wink to send me on my way. Lucy heads for one of the giant spaceship-looking chairs along one wall and gestures toward a wall with racks and racks of nail polish bottles on them.

“Go ahead and pick a color before we get you started,” she invites.

“I’ll pick it,” I say instantly, and walk over and scan the racks as Evie waits by the pedicure chair, arms still folded and looking a little green. Actually she looks like she’s awaiting her turn at the gallows and I have to force myself to focus on picking the right color.

Finally, I find it and return to Evie’s side, pressing the bottle into her hand. “This one,” I say quietly, and she looks down at it, and her fingers tighten around the bottle and turn white.

“Zeke, don’t make me do this,” she whispers, clutching herself even tighter. “Please.”

I pretend not to hear and just pry the bottle out of her hands and hand it to Lucy, who is looking at us expectantly. “This one, for sure,” I say, and Lucy smiles when she looks at the color, the hottest of hot pinks. It will practically look 3D on Evie’s toes.

“I love this color,” Lucy gushes, and gestures for Evie to get up into the chair, which Evie does with a great air of wounded dignity. “We have to keep three bottles on hand, everyone wants it during the summertime.”

I’ve never seen a pedicure before, but suffice to say it seems to be just paying sixty dollars for people to slather a lot of weird looking shit all over your feet, rub them up a bit, and then finally paint your toes. All stuff you could do yourself. And the only part that seemed semi-nice, the foot massage, Evie requested to skip. I could tell by the shocked look on Lucy’s face, probably mirrored on my own, that no one asked to skip that part. Not ever.

Evie is silent throughout the whole thing, though I chatter with Lucy simply because she doesn’t stop talking and I feel rude not to answer. And if I’m being honest with myself, something I usually try to avoid at all costs, I’m trying to distract myself from noticing how Evie is reacting. I can handle Evie’s anger. I’m even getting better at handling her tears; I’ve come to realize that when she cries, really all she wants is a hug and some reassuring pats on the back, and boom. That’s generally the end of it. Got it under control.

But this… this is different. Evie doesn’t speak, not once. She sits stiffly in the chair, her hands on the arms and nails dug deep in the leather. Lucy tells her repeatedly that she can relax, and I feel bad because she’s concerned it’s something to do with her, keeps asking if the water is too hot, if she needs to be gentler, if any of the creams or whatever are burning Evie’s skin. To all of which Evie only gives a small shake of her head but still doesn’t speak.

Her lips are pursed so tightly they disappear, and her face is paler than I have ever seen it, even when I found her in her dad’s office, her arm cut up, hidden from the world for days and having barely eaten. She looks ready to vomit, and I’m holding my breath as Lucy applies the second coat of polish, hoping that Evie can hold it together for just a few more minutes.

Apparently, she can’t, because as Lucy screws the top back on the bottle of the pink polish, Evie finally speaks, her voice quiet and strangled. “Do you… do you think we could skip the top coat? I can do it myself, I just, I really, really need to go.”

Lucy looks up, startled, but Evie has already climbed down from the chair and is fleeing the room without a backward glance.

“But… her shoes!” Lucy says in confusion, holding up Evie’s flip flops and gesturing with them lamely.

I take the shoes from her, withdraw my wallet and pull out more than enough cash, stuffing it into her hand. “Here, keep the tip, sorry about all this. I gotta go get her.” And I dash off through the spa, ignoring the startled glances and the shout of a question from Betty as I push through the doors.

Evie is outside in front of the car, arms wrapped around herself as she looks over at me, her eyes big and wounded looking. All of the sudden I feel like the world’s biggest ass, the way she’s staring at me as though I’ve betrayed her.

“Evie,” I begin, not sure where I’m going. I don’t want to apologize, because I still think she needs to get over this, but I feel like I’ve stabbed her or something, she looks so freaked out.

“Can you just take me home?” she asks, before I can find the right words. “Please, just take me home.”

“Okay,” I say quickly, before she can start hyperventilating, because I can see how quickly her chest is rising and falling, and her face is getting paler by the second. “Okay, let’s go. Into the car.”

I pull out the keys and unlock the doors, opening Evie’s for her as she slips in, and then I hand her the shoes she left inside. She takes them with a quiet thanks, but doesn’t even put them on. She only holds them in her lap and then stares down at her feet, at the pristine, perfectly painted toes.

For the first time it occurs to me that Evie is right; I really don’t understand this. Not any of it.

But damned if I’m not going to, or die trying.

Evangeline

66

I stare at my stupid toes the whole way home, trying to calm myself. Zeke probably thinks that I’m not even trying, that I’m only resisting and not giving any effort to this, but the truth is that I
am
trying as hard as I can to take some enjoyment in the defiance of Tony. But I can’t. It’s even worse than the time I spontaneously had my toes painted before the appointment with Dr. Gottlieb. At least then I took savage pleasure at the idea of Tony being unable to say a word. It was only a whole day afterward that I relapsed, that the guilt came over me and I had to take it off.

Now, though, maybe because Zeke pushed me or maybe because I’m just getting worse, I need to get the polish off, and soon. I can’t stand it. It feels like it’s burning me, and the whole time I was sitting in the chair at the spa, knowing what was about to be put on my feet, I was picturing how Tony would have retaliated if he had seen it. My ribs are throbbing, ghost-pain that shouldn’t be there but is so real to me, so excruciating that my eyes are stinging with tears.

My breathing is ragged and uneven, and I can feel that airy sensation beginning to take over. Shit.
Damn
, I don’t
want
this! It’s the first time that having Zeke around hasn’t calmed me, hasn’t made me effortlessly stay in the present, and I worry that I’m getting worse, even worse than when I was cutting.

Dirty. I feel dirty, covered with dirt and blood and stained all over my body. I look down at my toes again, at the bright, flashy color and feel that it’s too much, too bright. I feel like the slut Tony always accused me of being, dirty and unwanted and sitting here in a car with another boy, someone that isn’t Tony.
Dirty
. I discreetly wipe at my skin, rub my hands up and down my arms as though trying to warm myself, but really I want to wipe off the dirty feeling, even though I know I can’t.

I look again at my toes, blinding me with their bright color and I know that’s the root of the problem.
Off
. I have to get it off. Tony would hate it. If he were here, if he were still awake and I did this, defied him by getting them painted pink again, he would probably break my arm, if he didn’t kill me first. I lean forward a little bit, my breath coming even quicker, the pain in my ribs eclipsing all else as it flashes red-hot for a moment.