CHAPTER THREE - The Night Out
1042 Words
It was April's idea. It was always April's idea.
Five days, Eva had been in New Ville. Five days of job applications and long showers and relearning what it felt like to move through a space without measuring the temperature of someone else's mood first.
It was good. It was necessary.
But April had watched her carefully over those five days, the way you watch someone who is healing and knows it but needs a push anyway.
"We're going out," April announced on Friday evening, already dressed, already decided. "And before you say anything, yes, you are coming; no, you cannot stay home with tea and your thoughts, and I will physically remove the tea from your hands if I have to."
Eva looked at her. "I wasn't even going to say anything."
"You had the face."
"I don't have a face."
"Eva. You had the face."
April threw a dress onto the couch beside her. Dark green, simple, the kind of thing that required no effort and somehow looked like it did.
"Wear that. We leave in forty minutes."
They arrived at a club that was loud yet inviting; the atmosphere was cool. Eva just stood, trying to make herself feel different. She observed the press of bodies as she could feel the beats of what was playing inside her with different body smells, the heat contributing to it with spilled drinks. She hadn't been in a place like this for as long as she could remember. Somewhere designed entirely for the purpose of forgetting, at least temporarily, whatever you had walked in carrying.
She could work with that. April materialized beside her with two drinks and a look that said she had already assessed the entire room.
"Okay," she said, pressing a glass into Eva's hand. "First drink is for arriving. The second drink is for dancing. The third drink is for whatever happens after dancing."
"Nothing is happening after dancing."
"That's what the third drink is for." April smiled and pulled her toward the dance floor.
For the first hour, Eva was stiff in the way of someone who had forgotten how to take up space for themselves. She moved carefully, self-consciously, too aware of her own body.
April pretended not to notice and kept dancing beside her with the complete unself-consciousness of a woman entirely at home in herself, and slowly, a song at a time, a drink at a time, Eva began to remember.
She remembered that she had a body that was hers. That she had a laugh that came easily when she let it. That she had always loved dancing before she stopped doing things purely because she loved them.
By the second hour, she had stopped thinking about Cedar Falls entirely.
April leaned in close to say something in her ear, and Eva laughed and spun, and when she turned back toward the room, her eyes moved across it the way eyes do when they are not looking for anything in particular.
And found him anyway. He was standing against the far wall. Not performing, not scanning the room with the hungry calculation of someone working up courage.
Just still. Stillness that was felt even without having to do anything or announce itself.
His dark hair falling to one side of his face and a jawline architecturally setting up his face. And eyes that were already on her.
Blue. Blue that would glow in the dark and possibly be impossible to ignore, the kind that made her think of the blue sea of things beneath the surface. She looked away at first.
Reached for her drink.
Looked back.
He had not moved.
Had not looked away. There was nothing aggressive in it, no smirk, no performative confidence. Just a steadiness that she felt, inexplicably, somewhere below her ribs.
The music shifted. April said something she didn't catch.
When she looked again, he was gone from the wall.
She found him at the bar ten minutes later, or he found her, the geography of it unclear in the way these things always are.
He stood beside her and signalled the bartender without crowding her space, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
Eva looked straight ahead. She was aware of him just the same way you are aware of something different in a place; she didn't have to look at him directly to feel the warmth.
"Dancing like you only remembered it was something you enjoyed doing after a long while doing it," he said.
Now she turns facing him. Up close, the blue eyes were worse but better in a good way.
"Is that a compliment?"
"It was an observation." The corner of his mouth moved, but not quite a smile. "Now here comes the compliment, honestly? That is the realest thing I've seen all night."
Now getting her attention, Eva looks at him, not for a moment but actually stares, which was something she's been avoiding from people in order not to be seen back.
He didn't look away like he was enjoying the view; he just looked back with the utmost calmness and waited.
"Eva," she said.
"Lukas."
The bartender served his drink, but he didn't move and kept his gaze on her.
"You came here to forget something," he said. Not a question.
"Doesn't everyone?"
"No." He considered this. "Some people come here to find something."
Eva turned that over quietly.
Around them, the club continued its noise and heat and motion, indifferent and endless.
However, there was an odd area of silence here at the bar that resembled something's eye.
"And where do you belong?" she asked.
After staring at her for a moment, there it was, but she missed it; she missed the recognition that was going to answer the question. It resembled recognition. Like someone who had just experienced something he wasn't expecting and didn't know how to handle it.
He responded, "I'm not sure yet."
Eva grabbed her drink. She could feel the night, the music, and the club's warmth encircling this brief, quiet moment between two strangers.
The moon appeared from behind its clouds outside, someplace beyond the city, the commotion, and the walls, which were full and silent, watching.
But neither of them noticed.
- Writer
