𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐘 • Neil Perry

Chapter 9

IT didn't matter if she had done what was right—Evelyn felt disgusting. She didn't feel like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She felt a weight pulling her down to her knees and demanding her to repent. Had she been religious like her grandparents, she may have been tempted.

But instead, she sat at the table of a local diner not far into town, and stirred her banana milkshake with a straw. Nina Simone gently played, and Evelyn was one of the few people in the diner to hear it. There were the waitresses of course, and then at least three tables of people. Evelyn hadn't been paying attention well enough to count.

It was late, and somehow even darker than when she arrived at Chet's house no more than an hour ago from now. She just needed somewhere to go. She didn't want to sit by the lake because with it steadily nearing winter, the air was much more crisp these days—especially at night. She didn't want to go back to Henley Hall; she didn't want the curious eyes of her peers, and even more so, she didn't want the judgmental eyes of her roommate.

The diner had warmth and the comfort of not being alone whilst being exactly alone. It had music. Music she needed to hear more than anything. Music she had learnt to appreciate as poetry now, more so than rhyming words with a soft melody.

The thought of poetry coerced her to slip out the folded page from the coat she was wearing. She had almost forgot she had put it there until then, but staring at the words along the crinkled page felt like the warm hug she didn't know she needed.

But, boy, did she need Neil and know it. She needed him just as badly as her lungs needed air to breathe.

"Excuse me, miss?"

Evelyn pulled her eyes away from the page and found a man staring from the neighbouring booth before her. He had short, dark hair and age to him that was neither old nor young. And he wore a corduroy blazer of a forest green that reminded her of a sophisticated velvet couch, and a shirt with a maroon tie underneath.

He next asked her something she wasn't prepared to hear with the cadence of a warm embrace: "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she lied pathetically, and the tilt of his head was enough to communicate that he didn't believe her.

But nevertheless he asked, "Would you like to talk about it?"

She had heard the expression about the ease found in talking to a stranger, but she felt too embarrassed. Perhaps sitting in this booth alone was a way to wallow in her own self-pity, but she couldn't let this nice man endure that. So, she shook her head.

"Well," he said, offering her a smile, "if you change your mind, the offer's always on the table and my ears are always on either side of my head."

And Evelyn couldn't help but smile, too.

Then he proceeded to do whatever it was he had been doing before. Evelyn couldn't see what was on his table, but by the way his arm moved and his eyes ran from side to side, she deducted that he had been writing. He wrote for some time, too, before he paused once and rose his coffee cup to his lips.

Then he put it down and continued again. She knew she was staring, but she couldn't help it. On a Friday night he was sat here. Had he no wife, no children or home to better spend his evening with? He seemed kind enough to have those things.

So, suddenly, with her curiosity getting the better of her, she found herself asking, "What are you writing?"

He met her gaze and replied, "A letter to my wife. She lives in London."

"How come?"

"I taught there for several years. But recently there was an opening at the school I once attended myself, and I felt it was only fitting of my shoes."