Try hard, p.23
Try Hard, page 23
“Not a fan?”
“It’s not that. Yours look beautiful.” I hesitated, the conversation with Tanika and Kim demanding my attention. “You look beautiful.”
I wasn’t one for being forward with things like that—hadn’t been one for any kind of flirting for a long time now, but it was true. Eve had always been the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and that was only amplified when she was holding me over her, my hair falling down around her face like a curtain.
Eve Archer was not someone who blushed readily, but there was no denying the way a delicate pink bloomed across her cheeks and nose. Of course she blushed like someone from a gorgeous illustration.
Slowly, she moved one of her hands and brushed her fingers over my cheek. She was so careful with me, so soft and gentle, so… adoring. When she looked at me that way, it didn’t seem impossible that Tanika and Kim might have been right. It still didn’t make any sense to me—Eve Archer had been the best, most interesting girl at our school. Eve as an adult had, impossibly, only improved. There was no world in which I could comprehend her wanting me, but it was there, in her eyes, that she did.
She watched her own hand as it glided up over my ear and into my hair. My whole body shook, and it had nothing to do with the weight I was holding on my arms. I didn’t think she’d mind if I stopped holding myself up and simply lay on top of her, but that still felt like too much. If we were doing this thing—any part of it—I need to go slowly.
“Does me telling you you’re beautiful feel okay?” she whispered, watching me intently.
I frowned. There was no way she’d figured that out. “What?”
She smiled a little sadly, as if she understood completely. “You don’t like it when people comment on your physicality.”
It felt like the bed had dropped out from under me. My voice came out rougher than I was expecting or intending. “How could you know that?”
“Ophelia,” she breathed, the word feeling like a novel all its own with how much meaning she conveyed through it. “I’ve been paying attention to you.”
“Nobody ever notices that.”
“Then they haven’t been paying enough attention. They haven’t been seeing you, only who they want you to be.”
She was cracking my soul open. I could barely breathe for it.
The last time I couldn’t breathe around someone I was dating—not that Eve and I were dating—it was dangerous, painful. I was being broken down. Not with her, though.
How was it that she saw through the carefully crafted façade I’d worked so hard on?
“I like who you are,” she said, looking straight into my eyes, and not a word of it was a lie.
She really had just been paying attention. She didn’t need me to be the person she’d created in her mind. It would have been easily done. We’d known each other years ago, she could have held onto her expectations of who that girl had become—who she should have become—just like everyone else I’d been this close with. But she didn’t. She was seeing me.
I adjusted my stance, settling into her side again before I started crying under her penetrating, knowing gaze. I’d heard it said a million times that to be seen and understood, to be known, was the greatest gift. I hadn’t thought I’d get that, didn’t think it was possible. I kept people at a distance, worked hard to seem unbothered by the world around me because I couldn’t let anyone hurt me again. And, underneath, I realised now, I’d thought that was what I deserved. That, if I’d let someone in romantically again, I deserved to be coerced and judged. That I was broken and ignoring how I felt was my punishment for that.
I hated that my brain still felt that way. I’d tried so hard to get past all that. But, of course, it was never so easy.
“Ophelia?” Eve asked, holding me tight.
I nodded. “You’re right. I don’t usually like it when people compliment me physically.”
She pressed a reassuring kiss to the top of my head. “That was the problem with Adnan earlier.”
It wasn’t a question. She just knew. I’d never been known before, not like this. “Yes. I mean, it’s not the only problem—I’m not interested in him—but the way he looked at me, his compliments… It’s only because I lost weight. He didn’t give a shit about me in school. And that’s fine, he wasn’t required to, but that kind of attraction isn’t safe. I had it held over me for so many years. And then I lost weight, and people are different now. The way they look at you, the way they treat you… It makes me sick sometimes, like all I’m worth is this thin body—take up less space, be who we want you to be. ‘If you’d been like that before, I wouldn’t have had to hurt you.’”
Eve’s breath stuttered painfully. “Your ex said that to you.”
I nodded against her chest, holding back my tears as best I could.
Admitting it to her, finally voicing his words, felt like cutting one of the ties to him that still stung. I’d spent so much time trying to protect someone who hurt me—and for what? For him. The person who hurt me. I wasn’t sure he deserved that courtesy. He’d never given it to me.
She hugged me so tight it felt like she might break me, but it was exactly what I needed. I almost wanted her to press so hard she could absorb me into her being, where I could be strong and whole.
“Honestly,” I told her quietly, “I was never a huge fan of physical compliments when we were younger. Being a teenager with the kinds of curves I had then, well, I got a lot of gross, inappropriate comments from men. So, even before… everything, they always felt painfully loaded.”
“I’m sorry for everyone who ever hurt you, Ophelia. I wish I could go back and save you from all of it.”
I laughed a little wetly. “You were just a kid too. And you’ve had more than your fair share of gross comments.”
“Me deserving better doesn’t preclude you from deserving it too. Nor does it stop me from wanting to protect you.”
“You aren’t required to do that.”
“I know, but I care about you, just like you care about all of the inappropriate comments and exposure I get.”
“I guess I do wish I could protect you from that.”
“Right.” She brushed one hand through my hair, and I realised it had been a very long time since I’d last felt so truly safe. Sure, around my parents I was safe, in my home too, but this was safety with another person, with someone who cared to know the me I didn’t show the world.
If all the pieces I was putting together were correct, Eve Archer had been working on knowing the real me for over half her life.
“I’m sorry about Soph,” she said after a long moment. “I’ll talk to her before dinner tomorrow night.”
I shook my head, feeling the fabric of her shirt almost rough against my cheek. “That’s not necessary.”
“It is if she’s doing something that makes you uncomfortable.”
“I can handle it.”
“You shouldn’t have to.” She paused and I felt her heart racing in her chest. “Ophelia, I want you to feel safe and welcome here. I know you can handle those comments, but she shouldn’t even be saying them. I don’t want you to have to keep your guard up here.”
I laughed shakily. “I’ve known Sophie a long time. It’s not my first experience with her… approach.”
“Jesus Christ. I guess I’m not surprised by the confirmation that she was just as bold with you back then.”
“I think she might have been worse, actually.”
Eve groaned. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I will get her to stop.”
“Eve,” I said, lifting my head to look at her, unbothered if she saw the tears and emotion in my eyes, “I can handle Sophie’s comments.”
Her gaze softened as she took in my face, as if just seeing me soothed something inside of her. “I’ve seen the way your body locks down, the way your expression changes. I can see how much you hate it and how it hurts you.”
“It’s tolerable. I know Sophie doesn’t mean anything by it, and, to her credit, I definitely know it’s not about how much I weigh.”
Eve’s face twisted to something repulsed which I knew was her trying not to think about her little sister boldly and brashly coming onto me. “Well, I suppose there’s that. But still. I don’t want her hitting on my…”
I saw the way her eyes flashed wider as she realised where she was going with that sentence. More surprising was the way I wanted her to finish it. I wanted to know exactly what she wanted me to be, exactly what I was to her. I hated people coming onto me. I hated the way people imagined me being theirs. Not with Eve, though. Perhaps because I’d spent over twenty years wanting to be hers. Perhaps because, two decades later, here we were, seeing each other for exactly who we were, and fitting perfectly together.
“I think I wouldn’t mind if you complimented me. Physically.” My voice was uncertain, but I knew it wouldn’t feel the same with Eve as it did with everyone else.
She stared at me with wide eyes. “You don’t have to say that. You don’t have to give me something you think I want if it’s going to hurt you. I want to meet you where you are, to give you what you actually want.”
Eve Archer was the most beautiful person in the world—in every sense that word had ever meant or would ever mean.
I smiled at her, and I wasn’t sure that all the unshed tears were those of sadness anymore. “Tanika and Kim said something tonight.”
“About the way you look?” she asked urgently, her body locking down, arms tightening around me.
“No, not that. They said you liked me, back in school.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip, looking momentarily at the way we were tangled together in her bed. “I did. I do.”
My breath caught. Even having finally convinced myself it was a possibility wasn’t enough to stop the force of her admitting it—especially with her answering my unasked question, too. She’d probably heard the hope singing in my words, my touch. Evidently, Eve paid attention to me.
“What’s that expression about?” she asked, amused when I couldn’t seem to find my voice.
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“I just… why?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t really make sense to me.”
She reached up to trace two of her fingertips across my forehead and down my cheek, brushing lightly against my hair with the back of her hand. “There’s not a single thing about you that I’d change. There never has been. To me, you’ve always been like sunlight, like oxygen.”
My heart raced too quickly for me to catch my breath. How was it possible that she thought about me that way? She’d always been the sun. “But—”
“No buts. Not a single thing. I mean that.”
“I’m… mean.”
She barked a laugh, taking my face between her hands. “You are not. I told you, I’ve been paying attention. You are many things, Ophelia Pendrick, but mean has never been one of them.”
“Plenty of people think I am.”
“They don’t know you like I do.” She grimaced. “Or they don’t have the capacity to respect and appreciate a woman who won’t behave the exact way they believe she should.”
I shook my head, looking down at her lying on soft white sheets. Without thinking it through, I reached out to trace a finger along her jaw, simultaneously soft and square. “You’ve always been able to do so much better than me.”
“I beg to differ,” she spluttered, frowning up at me. “Teenage me found the best woman in the world and never forgot her for a second.”
None of this made sense, and yet, it made perfect sense. I didn’t know what she’d seen in me, but she was describing exactly how I’d always felt about her.
She watched me through narrowed, speculative eyes. “After we left for uni, I called my mum in tears, talking about how I’d missed my shot with you and didn’t know how to handle that.”
“Eve…” My heart ached for her. I’d enjoyed my time at uni, but there was no denying that it had been an adjustment that felt lonely and scary in the beginning. And there was no denying how I’d felt the exact same way about her. Though, I’d never thought I’d had a chance in the first place.
She smiled gently. “I’m sure I was also crying about… feeling alone in the world, my whole life changing, suddenly being a very small fish in a very big pond, but I missed you so much. I missed seeing you every day, missed the way you’d look at me sometimes.”
I felt a blush creeping up my neck. “If you noticed the way I looked at you, you must have known how I felt about you.”
“I never thought I stood a chance.”
“How?”
She took a steadying breath, looking dazzled in a way I couldn’t comprehend coming from looking at me. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. Even when we were kids, the way you understood things, the way you looked at them and sailed through school was ridiculously intimidating.”
“We were in the same classes. You were every bit as smart.”
“I was not—am not. That school was a small pond and you didn’t belong there. You were radiant and intelligent in a way I always knew would take you far from that place.”
“Says the literal rugby star.”
She laughed and ran one of her hands up and down my back in a way that raised goosebumps on my whole body. “I’m not going to lie and pretend I don’t know I’m a good rugby player, but that felt like nothing compared to what you could do. That was one thing. You were electrifying in every single class we shared. It blew my mind how someone could be so good at so many things. And then… there was the way your laughter—rare though it was—lit up the whole world. It still does. The way you cared so deeply about things. The patience you had in hearing your friends out no matter what they were talking about.”
I laughed through growing tears. “Plenty of people think I’m short-tempered.”
“It’s okay if something makes you feel that way, that you aren’t willing to put up with people’s bullshit just to appease them. But I watched you listen to Tanika agonising for weeks over whether that guy in her IT class had been flirting with her, only for her to turn around one day and start the same agonising over someone else. You never stopped listening. You always cared.”
“It was important to her.”
“Exactly. And you knew that, and, in turn, I knew that about you. You were this artwork of complex, stunning humanity, and I was… a rugby player.”
“You have always been so much more than that.” I wanted, so badly, to tell her all the things I’d noticed about her, all the ways she’d been so much more than she’d ever realised, but my brain was humming over the fact that she’d complimented me in so many ways, so clearly painted the picture of teenage infatuation without once mentioning how I looked.
I didn’t think I’d ever been complimented so well, so honestly, or so much in the exact way I needed.
Eve chuckled. “If it gets you to like me, I’ll take whatever it is you think you see in me, but I absolutely will not stand by and let you think you don’t deserve me.”
“You just… without once commenting on…” My mind was a mess. Every part of me felt like it was buzzing and dizzy, but being out of control felt okay with her.
She smiled and her own eyes glistened in the lamplight with hopeful, emotional tears. “I could spend the rest of my life complimenting you, and I don’t need to comment on your body for that.”
“I really do think it might be okay from you.” I saw my fingers trembling against her jaw. My body wasn’t quite as sure as my brain wanted to be.
The slight furrowing of her brow told me Eve knew exactly what I was thinking. She sucked in a measured breath. “You’ll have to forgive me for being presumptuous, but I’m getting the impression you might like me too—”
“Yes.” I laughed at my unrestrained eagerness. I really was all over the place. But I didn’t want to take it back. She deserved to know how wonderful she was and how much I wanted her too. At some point, I’d find all the words to tell her, but, for now, I was going to let the eagerness do it for me. “I did then and I do now.”
A massive, incandescent smile took over her face, like she’d been waiting over twenty years to hear those words. I knew the feeling.
“You know,” she said happily, “if you’d asked me out back then, I’d have died right there at school.”
“Likewise.”
She looked at me like she enjoyed my brusque tone, like she saw through it to all of the emotion underneath. “I know this is complicated and loaded for you, but I’m here, and I don’t want to fuck up this second chance I’ve been given.”
“Me neither,” I whispered. “You know everyone already thinks we’re together.”
“I’m not going to lie, Ophelia, I have been doing nothing to prevent them from thinking that. You have no idea how wonderful it feels when people think I’m yours—I always have been, after all.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted to kiss someone who wasn’t her. The true desire to do so had faded before I’d managed to make it out of my last relationship—something I’d realised in the interim, brought into sharp relief by Eve’s return to my life. There had been nobody after him. However, Eve… I’d wanted so badly to kiss her when we were teenagers, and that desire was only more insistent now.
Still, that small, scarred part of me needed patience, even if I didn’t love that right now. It needed reassurance first.
“I like being yours,” I murmured. Only Eve Archer could make that something I enjoyed. After my ex’s need to possess me, to mold me, I’d sworn never again. But, with Eve, I wanted to be hers so badly it hurt. I knew she wouldn’t use it against me.
A tear leaked from her eye, running down her temple towards the bed. She looked inconceivably happy. “Anything you want, it’s yours. I’d give you the universe if I could.”
I laughed softly, shaking my head even though I knew I’d do the same for her. “I just need… to go slow. As if twenty-odd years to get here isn’t slow enough. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry when asking for what you need. Not ever. We can go as slow as you want.”
