Evan
I definitely should have seen coming, two stand out: my family falling embarrassingly in love with Sophie, and the holiday going far too fast.
On the first day of the holiday, when Sophie arrived with her backpack and her tidy appearance, I could tell that she was very nervous. Mom and Dad, clearly having shouldered the responsibility of making up for my horrible behaviour, were overzealous in their welcoming. They showed Sophie to the guest room, poured her coffee and plied her with food. I barely got to even speak to her that day—Mom and Dad basically spent the rest of the day giving her what I can only describe as a very friendly yet thorough pseudo-job interview.
They asked her about school, her qualifications, her university applications, Harvard. I could tell that they really liked her—how could they not? Adults always love Sophie. She’s smart, well-spoken, earnest. Mom especially was excited at the prospect of a potential future fellow Harvard alumnus, and after dinner, she and Sophie stay at the kitchen island for ages, picking at a box of French macarons and chatting endlessly about university.
That evening, I can’t concentrate on anything, and I’m peering into the kitchen from around the doorway, wondering when I can finally get Sophie to myself, when Adele’s voice pipes up over my shoulder.
“How on earth did you get this girl to be friends with you, Ev? She’s far too good for you.”
I turn around to glare at her, ready to respond defensively, then I realise that she’s totally right. I sigh, my shoulders slumping. “Honestly, I have no idea. She really is.”
“Don’t be so negative.” Dad’s voice interrupts. He pops up behind Adele. “You’re amazing in many ways, Evan. You’re open-minded, optimistic, friendly and kind. You just need to do a better job of showing this girl how amazing you can be, because so far it doesn’t sound as though you’ve made the best impression.”
“Well, he’s not going to get much of a chance to do that,” Adele says, lowering her voice as she peers around the doorway and into the kitchen. “I think Mom might be in love with her—good luck competing with that.”
She’s not even exaggerating. The next few days, Sophie spends most of her time with Mom and Adele: they go out shopping, for coffee and meals, constantly chatting with her. After dinner, Sophie plays both Mom and Dad at chess—they apparently both used to be in their university chess clubs and get all nostalgic about it. I didn’t even know that. It’s not until Thursday comes and both Mom and Dad are forced to attend online meetings for work that I finally get a moment completely alone with Sophie.
We’re both in the kitchen having a late breakfast. The weather is nicer now, and she’s wearing a plain black t-shirt tucked into baggy corduroy pants. Her hair is loose and gleams like polished wood on her shoulders, a plain black elastic band around her wrist. She’s wearing tiny flicks of eyeliner at the corner of her eyes, and that’s it. It’s a simple look, but in the lazy golden sunrays, she looks so pretty it makes my chest hurt.
“Are you having a good time?” I ask, heaping bacon onto her plate before taking a seat across from her at the kitchen island.
She nods. “Your family is really, really nice.”
I grin. “I know.” My smile falters a little, and I add. “I hope you didn’t think they were going to be dicks just because I was. They’re just much better than I am.”
Sophie tucks her hair behind one ear and bites into a crispy slice of bacon. “Yes… your mom made sure to explain to me how disappointed she was when she heard about some of the things you did and that she raised you better than that and that it isn’t reflective of who you can be as a person.”
I sit, completely frozen, staring at her in shock. “She said all that?”
“All that.” Sophie gazes at me for a second, then her serious face breaks into a grin—a really cute grin, a little goofy. “Honestly, your family is amazing. You’re very lucky.”
I swallow hard, gathering my courage. “Sophie.”
She stiffens a little, her eyes go wide. She looks like a deer in headlights. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry, for… well, for everything, really.”
Her cheeks darken, she looks down. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No, but I do, don’t I? I’m so sorry. I never should have stopped being friends with you in Year 9. And I shouldn’t have been such an arsehole to you all these years. And I definitely shouldn’t have ratted you out about your job.”
She stares at me with her wide, dark eyes, and it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. The only indication of emotion from her is the dark pink flush in her cheeks, and the way she’s worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
“You don’t have to worry about that anyway,” she ends up saying with a light smile. “Your mum’s offered me a summer job in her company.”
I stare at her, shocked even though I really shouldn’t be. “She has?”
Sophie nods, a little smugly. “Mm-hm.”
I lean forward. “Wait. Which office?”
“She said I can go to her office in London or New York.”
My heart feels both really heavy and light enough to float away. I wait for her to say more, but she’s simply buttering a slice of toast with small, tidy movements of her knife. “Well? Which one are you thinking?”
She shrugs. “Obviously London.”
“Where would you stay?”
“I’m not sure.”
I wait a moment, trying to make sure my tone is casual when I speak next. “You know, if you want to work in the New York office, my aunt lives in New Haven…”
She gives me a blank look, biting into her slice of toast. Butter gleams on her lips and she licks it off when she notices me looking. I continue quickly. “Well, New Haven isn’t too far from Boston.”
Her slice of toast stops halfway between the table and her mouth. She raises her eyebrows. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if you wanted, you could work at my mom’s office in New York, and stay at my aunt’s house over the summer, and we could go visit Boston. You know. See Harvard before you start there in the fall.”
“We?” she says, her smoky voice low.
I meet her gaze and don’t look away. “Why not?”
She’s the first to look away. “How do you know if Harvard even accepted me?”
“How could they not?”
“How could who not what?” Adele says, gliding into the kitchen in a pair of pink pyjamas with her hair in unnecessarily dramatic rollers.
“Nothing,” Sophie says quietly, looking down.
“Do you think Sophie should come stay at Aunt Amelia’s house this summer? She’s going to be working at Mom’s office.”
“Oh, the New York office?” Adele says brightly, sitting next to Sophie. “I’ll actually also be in New York—I’m spending the summer there with Cedric. We could totally show you around. And if you’re staying at Aunt Ame’s house, we’ll come stay there for a bit too. Ugh, Sophie, she has such a good pool, and the summer in New Haven is actually gorgeous, not like a British summer—no offence.”
Sophie smiles. “None taken. You’re very kind, but I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You really wouldn’the intruding,” Adele says, pouring herself some orange juice. “Her house is massive, and she spends half her time visiting her friends in the Hamptons anyway. You should definitely stay. We can take you to parties! Actual American house parties.”
She leans closer to Sophie and lowers her tone conspiratorially. “You know, you’d be so popular with the boys. Your sexy voice and sexy accent combined would be game over.”
Sophie’s face goes bright pink and I clear my throat loudly. Adele winks at Sophie and whispers loudly. “We’ll go without Evan so he can’t cockblock you.”
I throw the strawberry jelly lid at her and she dodges it with a loud “Ew!”
I do my best to keep Adele away from Sophie for the rest of the week—unsuccessfully. It’s not until Saturday that I finally have some more time alone with Sophie. Mom, Dad and Adele have gone out to watch some corny movie, and Sophie and I spend the evening in the living room, playing chess.
“I didn’t know you could play,” Sophie says, watching me set up the board.
“Mom and Dad taught me, but I never took to it. I suck at thinking long-term and end up making a bunch of mistakes that bite me in the ass later.”
Sophie gives me the most comical dead-pan expression. “You do, do you?”
“Oh, ha ha. You’re so funny, Sophie. Like, the funniest person I know.”
“I probably am, as well,” she says. “Do you want to start? You might need the advantage.”
“At this point, I’ll take whatever advantage I can get.”
We’re sitting at the little chess table in the reading nook. The sun is just setting outside, lingering rays of pink sunlight fall across the table, shiny particles of dust floating in the slices of light. When Sophie leans forward to move one of her pieces, she crosses the path of one of the sunrays, and it makes her dark hair shine like rubies.
She’s very serious and overly competitive, given her clear advantage over me. My mind drifts idly back to the last time we played a game together, the Trivial Pursuit board, Sophie’s tipsy encouragements, and of course—
“Don’t do it,” says Sophie in a low voice.
I turn to give her a surprised look. “Do what?”
“Think about what you’re definitely thinking about.”
“What? How can you possibly tell?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re gazing out of the window and have an expression on your face like some lovelorn girl in a period drama. It’s all very Anne Elliot pining for Captain Wentworth.”
I glare at her. “I’m not pi—” I stop, sigh. “Well, how can I not think about it? Don’t you think about it?”
“Right now, you should be thinking about my bishop and what that means for your knight.”
“My knight?” I glance at the board, realise she’s just trying to deflect and look back up at her. “Forget about my knight for a second. My knight hasn’t noticed your bishop because he’s probably thinking about kissing your queen and having really hot sex with her. Does your queen think about that?”
“My queen has more important things to think about,” Sophie says with a serene smile.
I lean forward, narrowing my eyes. “You’re telling me you’ve not been thinking about it?”
She waves a hand, though her cheeks are a little flushed. “It’s just sex, Evan.”
“Just sex? What kind of a life are you secretly living for what we do to be just sex?”
Now she leans forward, and her eyes narrow, and her lips curl in a sarcastic smile. “Oh please, Evan. Look me in the eyes and tell me you haven’t fucked dozens of girls exactly the same way.”
“Definitely not the same way, are you crazy? Besides, it’s not like—” Instead of defending myself, I realise she just handed me something to get her with. I tilt my head. “Wait a second. Are you… jealous?”
She laughs, a low, scratchy sound that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “You have no idea just how jealous.”
My heart skips a beat, my throat suddenly feels a little tight. “Really?”
“No,” she says, moving her bishop and knocking my knight off the board. “Check.”
But I’m too invested in this line of questioning to even acknowledge the chessboard. I watch her face intently, looking for signs of the truth to reveal themselves on her pretty face. “You’re lying.”
She shakes her head and speaks with a little smirk. “Is it so hard to believe I might want more for myself than hooking up with a rich boy in his dad’s expensive cars—or whatever it is you do?”
I sit back in my chair with a shrug “We don’t have to hook up in my dad’s expensive cars, Sophie. We have options, you know. We can hook up in my dad’s expensive jacuzzi.”
For a second, Sophie just looks at me. Then she raises an eyebrow. “You have a jacuzzi? You never said that.”
“Yeah, we have a jacuzzi.” I laugh. “Wait—that actually worked?”
She shrugs. “I’m literally cold all the time. Of course it worked.”
I narrow my eyes, trying to work out whether she’s being sarcastic, which is always impossible to tell with her. “Really?”
She nods, perfectly earnest. “Really.”
Sophie
Evan’s house definitely felt like a mistake at the time. But I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be careful, trying to do the right thing, that doing something I want somehow always ends up feeling like a mistake.
So I guess, in the end, I make a lot of mistakes while staying at Evan’s house. Mistakes like accepting his mum’s generous offer to intern at her publishing company, or agreeing to his sister’s offer to take me to real American house parties over the summer.
Mistakes like sitting in Evan’s jacuzzi with him knowing full well any amount of nudity between us can only end one way. Mistakes like relaxing a little too much under the silvery lights of the jacuzzi, and oversharing about this year and my parents and my hopes and dreams.
Mistakes like noticing the droplets of water tracing the muscles of Evan’s arms and chest, and the way his wet hair curls around his temples and neck. Noticing his hooded gaze, the blue of his eyes, bluer in the pretty lights. Letting Evan touch my hand, lace his fingers through mine, pull me closer.
In the blur of steam and bubbles and low music, all the mistakes merge into one mistake.
A slow, dream-like mistake, where Evan draws me gently to him, and whispers in my ear, in a low, broken voice, how much he likes me, how much he wants me. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, and because I’m straddling his lap, I can tell that the sweet, dirty things he’s murmuring in my ears are all true.
For someone so blunt and artless, Evan is capable of devastating tenderness.
That tenderness glows in everything he does: the way he sweeps the hair from my face with a slow caress, the way he traces wet, lingering kisses up my neck, the way he wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me to him in an irresistible embrace.
Kissing his open mouth is definitely a mistake, right? But a delicious, delirious mistake, because Evan’s kisses are wet and deep, and my body arches against his, beyond my control.
It’s a mistake to make out with Evan in his jacuzzi, but I’m saved from my mistake when his family returns home and we both make a hasty, shameful retreat to our respective rooms.
Except I double-down later that night when I sneak into his bedroom and lie on his bed and let him push up my top so he can run his hands up my waist, across my ribcage and over my breasts. His fingers brush over my nipples until they become hard and so sensitive he has to cover my mouth with one hand when he leans down to drag his tongue over them.
Wanting Evan so much definitely is a mistake, but I never want to not feel the way he makes me feel. Like my entire body is hot with pleasure, like he’s the sun that sets every inch of my body on fire.
For all the things Evan is terrible at, I always assumed being good at sports was how he compensated, but I was wrong. Evan compensates with his lips and tongue and his gentle, cruel fingers. Evan compensates until I’m suffocating my moans into his pillow and my thighs are trembling uncontrollably and I come against his mouth in deep, shuddering waves of pleasure.
This is a mistake I’ve made before—why do I keep making it?
Because of him. Because of Evan Knight and the way he looks at me, like I’m the most important thing in the world.
After that, there are a lot of other mistakes. Kissing his wet mouth and listening to him murmur “I love you” over and over against my shoulder while he fucks me long and slow and agonising. He comes with a low, rough sigh, and we lie together, trembling and panting. Later, we tiptoe into his bathroom with embarrassed giggles, and clean up in between giddy kisses.
When I sneak back into the guestroom, I lie in bed still shivering all over. I close my eyes, thinking about how wildly irresponsible I’ve been when a realisation dawns upon me.
This is the first time this year I’ve not felt paralysed by fear or worry.
