“It didn’t seem relevant,” she said at last. “So I like to sing. You know that. What else is there?”
“You can’t tell me,” he said, “that it’s not important to you. When you sing like that. It has to be important to you.”
She knew what he meant. People had their things, right? You could be shitty at this or that, but everyone had at least one thing, and they loved their thing, and they were proud of their thing. She’d been proud of her thing, too, until she’d tried to make it her life and failed. Now it was just . . . there. Part of her, a pleasure, but a reminder, too, when she was in the worst of her moods.
Whatever Jacob read in her silence, or saw in her face, it made him shake his head and put a hand on her shoulder. That hand seemed so heavy, so hot, she was surprised it didn’t slide right through her bones like a knife through butter. “Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking. Don’t. There isn’t much that takes the smile out of you like this, so whatever’s on your mind can’t be good.”
His words were a soft and tender shock, bare of all sarcasm or dry critique, like he’d taken off his clothes just to show her his naked skin. Like maybe he was waiting for her to do the same.
Not that this topic was half so serious as her melodramatic mind always made it out to be. As proof of that fact—for him, for herself—she huffed a sigh and stared at the stars as she spoke. “I used to think I would perform. Always, you know? That it would be my future. Because I was so good—everyone swore I was good—so that had to be my destiny. But good isn’t all it takes. Especially when you look like me.”
“You look perfect,” he said, the words quick and razor-sharp with their certainty. They caught her unawares, like a flash of lightning in the dark. When she turned her head to look at him, he wasn’t blushing or figuring out how to take it back. He was watching her steadily, as if he’d known she’d instantly try to poke holes in his statement, and he refused to let her. “You look perfect,” he said again, each word falling like a petal onto a tranquil lake.
She smiled, then, because he deserved it. And a little bit because . . . well, because he seemed to mean it, which fluffed her up inside like cotton candy.
Jacob Wayne thought she was perfect.
And, beneath all the barbed-wire keep-your-distance ice-god bullshit, she thought there was no one sweeter in all the world than him.
“Thank you,” she said. “But you realize plenty of other people disagree.”
“I don’t give a fuck about other people.”
“Neither do I,” she said honestly. When it came to her appearance, Eve had long since learned that giving a shit about others’ opinions meant slipping under an ocean of negativity. So she’d decided a while back that she was beautiful, and her body was lovely, and she would accept no other judgment on the subject. “But I used to. Back when I wanted to be the star of the show so badly, I cared a lot. You see, I was always rather shit at school. I was slow on the uptake and I didn’t test well and my memory—let’s not even talk about it. So I told myself, you know, it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t meant for that sort of thing. I was meant to be a star. I got so convinced that I just stopped trying. I was never going to be smart like my sisters, and I was never going to need it, so I might as well give up.
“But then I finished secondary, and my parents sent me to a performing arts college, and I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t the best. I’d convinced myself I just had to wait, and I’d eventually be the best at something. But I’d been wrong. I didn’t hit the right emotional marks, and my memory issue was a problem, script-wise, and I was terrible at being told what to do. And then, on top of it all, there was the look.” She pressed her lips together and flicked a glance at Jacob because, well, this part was so excruciatingly awkward to speak about. Some people wanted to pretend they didn’t understand, as if her prettiness negated all the other things she was, and all the ways those other things didn’t fit in with society’s expectations.
Then there were the people who acted like it shouldn’t hurt, being rejected by the status quo like that. As if, because it came from a twisted place of inequality, it shouldn’t have any hold on her. Which was a nice idea in principle, but Eve found it mostly came from those who’d never been personally crushed by the weight of all that disapproval.
Jacob wasn’t reacting like one of those people, though. He was simply sitting quietly, watching in silence, letting her speak. Because he was like that, when it mattered. He was like that.
“The look,” she said again. “I didn’t have it. I was too fat and too dark and not entirely symmetrical, so I had to be the evil background character or the comedic relief or whatever. People told me to pay my dues and change things from the inside, and I saw others doing that. But I didn’t want to. And none of us should have to. So I left.
“And I think that was my first taste of failure. I didn’t entirely blame myself—I couldn’t, all things considered. But it was still so . . . bitter.” She could taste it now, on the tip of her tongue, a thousand flavors piled high—from all the classes she’d once escaped by fantasizing about her star-studded future, to the day she’d thrown her gnome costume at that uptight director and walked out. And even though the gnome thing gave her a little aftershock of satisfaction, it just wasn’t enough.
“I probably should’ve kept trying, somehow. It was what I really, really wanted, after all. But I was so exhausted. I loved it, but I was done.” And then the rest of her failures had started. “Being done meant going back to the real world. New A levels, university, choosing a career path. My parents were understanding and supportive, my sisters were always on my side, and I had—God, Jacob, I had every fucking option. Sometimes I feel ashamed, I had so much in front of me. And I didn’t want any of it. I couldn’t do any of it. I went back to school and I failed in a thousand different ways. My parents practically cheated my way into university but I failed my first year. And I’d tried, Jacob. I actually tried.”
She’d never told anyone that. She’d gotten her last coursework grade just before finals and accepted, once and for all, that even a perfect score couldn’t save her. All the hours at the library making her eyes bleed, all the desperate emails to professors clarifying this point or that point because she struggled to follow the lectures, it had been for nothing.
She’d tried and she’d failed. So she’d told her parents she was bored, and weathered their disapproval, and chosen a new course and tried again.
And failed, of course.
But she didn’t need to get into all that—even if she had a sneaking suspicion that she just had, that Jacob could read between her every line even if she stopped the pity party here. Which she fully intended to do. How had she gotten this far off the rails? He’d asked about her voice. She’d told him . . .
Everything.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asked. Except it didn’t sound like he was really asking; it sounded like he was giving her an opening to keep going, to talk more, to release the rest of the bottled-up poison inside her. To say things like, I think I’m only capable of fuckups and not-quite-enoughs, just to get it out there before it burned up her insides.