𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐘 • Neil Perry

Chapter 7

EVELYN spent her evening reading in the library. It was something she was beginning to do more frequently. And she didn't just read books of any kind. She read poetry. She had gained a new eye for poetics and she intended to use it.

Today she used it on Emily Dickinson, a female poet that made Evelyn see and adore poetry in a new way. She was similar to that of Keats sometimes and Whitman thematically in her exploration of death, nature and immortality. But she was also entirely dissimilar to anything Evelyn had read about love.

There was a haunting secrecy to her writing, too. She exposed herself so honestly, that the risk in it felt so obvious and thrilling. But the richest thing about Dickinson was what her writing showed Evelyn about poetry and the truest significance of it. Poems did something books could never do—not at a medium she had seen herself anyhow. Poems captured emotions she didn't know she was feeling and articulated them with rhetoric that extracted those feelings from her soul.

Reading prose was a state of reaction. Reading poetry was a state of self-exploration and rebirth.

"What do you know?" Ginny said, drawing Evelyn away from her self-indulgence. She sat opposed her across the table, whilst the tables around them remained mostly unoccupied. "I should've bet money on it."

Evelyn's eyebrows drew together. "With who?"

"Martha," Ginny answered.

Evelyn scoffed at the mention of her roommate. They were like two repelling magnets. "Your mistake was assuming she cares."

"She cares," Ginny asserted. "Maybe not in a nurturing way, but more of a curious way." A nosey way, Evelyn knew was what Ginny really meant. "You have to give her a little credit, you can be intimidating."

"That's bullshit," Evelyn uttered softly. "Are you intimidated by me?"

"Of course not, but... I could see how other people would be."

"Then that's their problem." Evelyn paid the matter no attention more and returned to her reading. She could feel Ginny's eyes boring into her face, but she simply ignored it in the hopes that she would leave her be.

That was merely a pipe dream.

"What's up with all the poetry lately?" Ginny asked.

"I wanted to try something new."

"So it has nothing to do with Neil?"

Evelyn hid her hesitation well enough. "No."

"Then I must be imagining things," Ginny pushed sceptically.

"Pretty much."

"And that would include all the looks and indiscreet smiles during rehearsals?"

Evelyn rolled her eyes and gave in to Ginny's smug smile. "We've met twice." The brunette's eyes immediately bulged from her skull. "That's it."

"Where?"

"The lake near Welton and my house."

"What?" Ginny chuckled disbelievingly. "How have you kept this from me?"

"I haven't been keeping anything from you," Evelyn responded gently. "When you say it like that, it makes it sound like a secret."

"Well it'd be easier not to talk about it like it's a secret if you didn't treat it like a secret," Ginny retorted. But her teasing simmered out of her system and sincerely, she said, "He's really nice."

"I know," Evelyn responded, blushing.

"I'm happy for you," Ginny said, and Evelyn couldn't shake the warm smile crawling on her face.