Chapter five：only Eva
2038 Words
London · Bloomsbury
December 16, 2024 — 22:30
Three days later.
Eva lay stretched across his sofa, her legs resting on his knees, the television remote loosely held in her hand. The television was on, though neither of them watched it.
He was reading.
She had been reading as well—yet the book The Timeless Way of Building now lay face-down upon her stomach, while she had been staring at the ceiling for nearly ten minutes.
She was thinking about something.
Over the past three days, they had done many ordinary things.
They went grocery shopping together. He pushed the cart while she tossed items into it. Whenever she said, “Let’s get this,” he simply reached for it and placed it inside without asking why. Only at the checkout did she realize he had remembered every detail. She liked sour flavors, so he bought limes. She drank coffee without sugar in the morning, so he picked whole milk—because once she had mentioned she preferred coffee with a richer taste.
They walked home together from Russell Square to his apartment. What should have been a twenty-minute walk stretched into fifty, because every time they passed beneath a streetlamp he would pause to tell her what the neighborhood once had been. In the nineteenth century this had been a slaughterhouse district; during the war it had been bombed flat; the ugly apartment blocks dated from the 1970s reconstruction. She listened, discovering a London she had never known before.
They watched a film together. She chose an old one—Brief Encounter. Halfway through, she fell asleep. When she woke, she found her head resting on his shoulder, his arm loosely around her back. The film had already ended, the credits rolling silently on the screen. He had not moved; he simply sat there, waiting.
For three days she accepted no assignments.
Cherry’s messages she read but did not answer.
Claire’s messages—the client who had hired her—she deleted outright.
She had not even allowed herself to consider what would happen next.
She simply remained here.
In this place where he existed.
Living, for once, like an ordinary person.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, closing his book.
“I was thinking…” She hesitated. “About the men from before.”
He looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
“The men I tested,” she said. “They said many things. Some promised they would divorce their spouses for me. Some said they had never met anyone like me. Some swore I was the only one for them.”
She smiled faintly.
“One hundred and twenty-one men. The same script every time. Only the names changed, the setting changed, the season changed.”
He listened without interrupting.
“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, setting the remote down and sitting upright, “whether love simply cannot withstand scrutiny. Place someone beneath a microscope long enough, and you will always find a fracture. I was merely the one holding the microscope.”
“Have you examined me?” he asked.
Eva looked at him.
“No,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid to.”
“Why?”
“Because—”
She stopped.
Because if she looked and discovered he was just like the others—what then?
Because if he were genuine, she would not know how to live with something real?
Because—she had already fallen in love with him. Too sudden to prepare, too quickly to defend herself, too late to leave herself a way out.
“Because I don’t want to know the answer,” she said.
He reached out and took her hand.
His hand was warm—dry, steady—just as it had been that day in the warehouse.
“Then I’ll tell you the answer,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m not like the men you met before.”
“How do you know? Perhaps you’re simply a better actor than they were.”
He smiled.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But I possess something they never did.”
“What?”
“I don’t need anything from you.”
Eva froze.
“Do you understand?” he continued softly. “Those men loved you because you made them feel extraordinary. They needed you to confirm their worth. Their love was a kind of demand.”
His fingers tightened around hers.
“I’m different. There’s nothing I require you to prove. I don’t need you to love me. I don’t need you to stay. I don’t need you to become anything else.”
He met her gaze steadily.
“You are already yourself.”
Eva looked at him.
Her eyes began to sting.
For six years she had heard countless declarations of love. Every one of them had been spoken to obtain something from her. Every one carried the same unspoken message: Give me.
Only this one asked for nothing.
It simply told her: You already are.
“If you speak like that…” she began, her voice trembling slightly, “…it’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because I might fall in love with you. Truly.”
He lowered his gaze to their joined hands, gently spreading her fingers apart before closing them again on his own.
“That would be good,” he said.
Eva could not hold it back any longer.
Tears slipped from her eyes.
She had not cried in a very long time. Six years? Longer, perhaps? She could no longer remember. In her line of work, tears were a weapon—never genuine. But now they came without warning, without reason, without design.
He lifted his head and saw that she was crying.
He said nothing.
He simply drew her toward him and held her.
His embrace was warm as well—steady, dependable. Like the man himself: someone who would not vanish without warning, would not change overnight, would not wake the next morning and say, “I’m sorry, what I said last night no longer counts.”
Eva buried her face in his shoulder.
She remembered being fifteen, sitting alone on the church steps after her mother’s funeral. An elderly woman had walked past and asked if she was cold. Eva had shaken her head. The woman had not left; she simply stood there for a while, keeping her silent company. Eventually, the woman departed. Eva did not feel any better for it, yet that night, before sleep claimed her, she recalled the woman’s silhouette and thought, suddenly, that perhaps there were still people in this world who wanted nothing from you—who merely happened to pass by, noticed that you were cold, and chose to stand beside you for a while.
“Liam,” she murmured, her voice muffled against him.
“Hmm?”
“Do you know what ordinary people do when they’re together?”
“What do they do?”
“They argue. They fall into cold silences. They wound one another. They say cruel things. Then they make up. And after that, they argue again.”
He laughed softly, the vibration of his chest reaching her cheek.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
“Then why stay together at all?”
Eva considered the question.
“Because—after the argument, they can still reconcile. Because after cruel words are spoken, they can still regret them. Because no matter how deeply they hurt each other, when morning comes, and they open their eyes, the other person is still there.”
He fell silent.
After a long while, he said, “Then shall we try?”
Eva lifted her head and looked at him.
“Try what?”
“Try the things ordinary people do,” he said. “Argue. Go cold. Make up. Wake the next morning—and still be there.”
Eva studied his eyes.
Gray. Veined with fine lines. Slightly fractured.
She remembered the eyes she had seen in those one hundred and twenty-onemissions—greedy eyes, hypocritical ones, evasive ones, eyes swollen with self-righteous sentiment. Not a single pair had ever looked at her like this.
Like an ordinary person would.
“Alright,” she said.
He smiled again. This time it was no longer the pale sun of winter. It was the warmth of spring.
The atmosphere grew subtly charged. His fingertips brushed lightly across the curve of Eva’s cheek, pausing to kiss the small tear-shaped mole beneath her eye. Then they exchanged a quiet smile, as though they had long been lovers who understood one another without words.
Outside, London lay beneath the rain. It tapped against the glass in a fine, even rhythm, like a gentle knocking at the window.
Eva answered him with a deep kiss. “In weather this intimate,” she murmured, “we ought to do something.”
She slipped off her top and settled onto his lap, slender fingers threading through his hair as she drew his head against her. He did not restrain himself. For three long years he had imagined moments like this—dreamed of them, cursed them, endured the hollow solitude of nights when no one truly came to his side. And now the woman before him—beautiful, sensual—kissed him with all her strength: his lips, his earlobe, the hollow of his collarbone, then lower, across his chest, his abdomen, and further still…
He stopped her gently. “Your pleasure comes first.”
He ran a hand through her hair and guided her back against the sofa. It was soft, and she sank into it. He kissed her deeply, his hands exploring every inch of her skin with patience and tenderness. He was gentle—attentive in the way a man is who understands what a woman truly desires.
A soft, breathless sound escaped Eva’s lips near his ear. Encouraged, he moved more urgently, his hands gliding down to the curve of her hips, firm and supple beneath his palms, before sliding along the length of her thighs. His breathing grew heavier, yet his focus remained on her, on the quiet intensity of the moment unfolding between them.
When at last he could restrain himself no longer, he joined himself to her. Both of them gave voice to a low, satisfied sound.
He braced himself above her, muscles in his arms and abdomen taut with movement, veins standing out beneath his skin. He looked into Eva’s eyes as he moved with her, again and again, until she reached the trembling crest of release.
Eva rose from the sofa, standing before him without a thread of clothing. His gaze never left her. She settled once more into his lap, this time with her back against his chest.
Gathering her long hair over one shoulder, she turned her head and kissed him.
“Take me,” she whispered.
Her arms looped behind his neck as her body moved slowly against his. He answered her instinctively, his hands lifting to cradle her breasts, fingers brushing lightly over her n*****s.
“Yes… just like that,” Eva gasped, a cry unlike any she had uttered before escaping her lips. She loved this closeness, this position, the way he kissed her as they moved together.
She reached another peak, heat gathering between her thighs, the rhythm of their bodies growing wetter, more urgent. Not long after, Liam followed, and when it was over he drew her tightly into his arms once more, holding her there for a long, lingering time.
After an indeterminate while, her phone began to vibrate inside her bag.
She knew who it would be. Cherry. Or Claire. Or something else calling her back to the life waiting beyond this room.
But in this moment, she did not want to look.
She only wanted to stay here with him—listening to the rain, counting the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, living for a little while as an ordinary person might.
Even if it lasted only a single night.
Even if tomorrow morning everything changed.
At least tonight, she was Eva—only Eva.
But tomorrow?
She did not know.
- Writer
