The skylit scape of the Gymnasium is this afternoon puzzled with twelve variants of sofa, arm to arm or otherwise face to face if you only lean past the abutting flatscreens walled a-tween them. There isn't a cushion left un-sat upon nor a sofa's limb to spare, in that and the riotous ballad of laughter and revelry and the occasional curse word she is quick to scold, Eve can self-assuredly repose against the wall and pat herself on the back for yet another programme graded successful.
"Evie baby."
A presence graces her own, acrylic tap dancing against a phone's screen and a blest draft of Kayali 81. Eve holds her gaze over the pandemonium a moment more, and then looks towards a grin-struck Carrington Banks who lingers uneasily, an unfamiliar and yet characteristically charming air about her. Her pin-straight lob tucked behind her ears, crow's feet striking beside squinted eyes, and the unmistakable allusion to some ulterior motive in the tilt of her head and the breadth of her smile.
"Carrington..." Eve drawls. She eyes the woman, who withstands both the intensity of her lour and fore-fronting suspicion. "ETA on the food?"
"Driver just left Dominoes, Carmelo's getting the plates."
Eve issues a curt nod, surveys the room yet again, but ultimately turns back to Carrington. She's witty and charming and overly capable at her jobâGeneral Manager and her dutiful second in commandâhot on her toes and typically spread thin. Eve believes Carrington may just well be the only other person as devoted to The Link as herself, and likes the fact. What she doesn't, is the rascally curl to her smile, more so now than usual.
Eve's own is wary and timid, "What?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing. You have a guest outside."
Carrington summons herself elsewhere, particularly the three boys mid chest-bump several inches too close to a TV. Eve watches after her with narrowed eyes, scans the room again, and then retreats towards the doubled doors and out into the hallway. She glances towards the dead end, its bolted fire exit and the slice of light that pours through it, and then the other way, where Jahseh seemingly awaits. The sun kisses every plane of his skin it's fateful to reach, a gentle sparkle to his eyes and the pearly whites of his quarter-worth smile.
"What are you wearing?"
Eve's stare vails to her jeans, and then to the Arsenal kit a size too large beset from her shoulders to the lows of her waist. The bun's worth of its material she'd swindled into a hairband and tucked up her back do little to hide the fact. "You don't like it? What do you think of Tottenham!"
Shit.
Jahseh snorts.
"What's going on?"
"It's the FIFA Face Off," Eve nods towards the Gymnasium. Jahseh ushers himself further from the wall to stare through the panels in the door. Too many kids and not enough bother to count them, huddled around sofas and TVs, armed with controllers and the fervent hankering for at least one win to take home under their belt. He makes a face, and in it Eve chooses only to dwell on his budding amusement.
"What you know about FIFA?"
"Not a damn thing. But they wanted it, so I made it happen," Eve shrugs. "You should've said you were stopping by."
Jahseh can't decide whether it's that natural light that pools about her silhouette and haloes her smile in a fiery orange, or rather the gentle sincerity in her 'FIFA Face Off', as boring to her as he's sure she finds it to be, but now more than ever, he's certain it'd take little to convince him Eve is an angel, heaven sent and all.
"I was in the area."
"You're always in the area."
The two somehow negate the fact Guerrero's is three roundabouts and a six minute drive away. The silence hangs.
"I'll come see about you later, yeah?"
"Stay."
Eve's bitten tongue is only after the fact, late and unruly, as she watches Jahseh's eyebrows tic and his softened features soften all the more, rather than that innate blanch right back into his shuck of antipathy that she's used to. Pursed lips and premeditated bout of rejection aside, Eve swallows her surprise as Jahseh glances towards his watch, shrugs and moves towards the door. You can see how unprepared she'd been for a yes by the falter in her steps and the unnatural size of her eyes, but in Jahseh only by the newfound cadence to his heartbeat and the upwelling where his stomach's supposed to be.
The two find some sense of security in that door, even after they're through and lingering on the other side, as if the further they get the deeper they'll sink till they're just one big puddle of nerves and crushes and smouldering passion.
Eve doesn't miss the shift in the room, the wave of eyes and dim in the chatter. Curiosity, apprehension, something she for some reason feels on the outside of. Jahseh's no fan of children, she knows that much, but it's only a matter of time before they take an interest to him. She knows that much, too. The tracksuit-ed, looming hunk of a man fastened to Eve's side like a gun in her holster, all but impossible to miss and undoubtedly a sight for the sorest of eyes.
"Come."
They dawdle towards a quieter corner of the room, where the kids are older and the scene more tame. Late teenagers, too old for excitement and much too sage to treat Jahseh as any more than a stranger, in more ways than Eve is yet to understand. At their approach, the three boys and a loitering Carrington let their conversation dowse to silence.
Akeem and Phoenix and Nathanâseventeen and sixteen and fourteenâtennis their gazes between Eve and Jahseh, and then Nathan's hungrily lowers to the watch bound to his wrist.
"You guys alright?" Eve smiles.
"We're fine," Carrington speaks for them all. Eve knows her teasing to come will be endless and draining. "Who's your friend?"
Jahseh and Eve share a look.
"This is Jahseh. Jahseh, this is Carrington. I think I've mentioned her." Jahseh nods. "And that's Akeemâ" a dark-skinned boy with a taper fade and a screwface much like his own, "âthat's Phoenix, or Nyxâ" an Asian boy with a buzzcut, glasses and a gnarly half sleeve, "âand that's Nathan."
At the mention of his name, Nathan uprights himself and his wandering eyes up to Eve and then to Jahseh, who deadpans at the boy and his rounded cheeks and his awestruck gaze. Jahseh doesn't have to wonder if the boys know his face, nor does he care to.
Instead, Phoenix plows into the silence, "Where you from?" and Akeem looks towards him as if he's gone mad. That's all the answer Jahseh needs.
"What's your own?" Eve laughs.
"Manners, guys," Carrington adds.
"You wanna sit?" Eve offers.
"I'll stand."
If he didn't know any better, Jahseh would've thought there were two magnets behind each of Nathan's eyes and one more screwed beneath the face of his watch, as he catches him staring. Again. Jahseh doesn't care for the thing, but he can only ignore the weight of his gaze for so long.
Jahseh says, "What?"
Phoenix takes an elbow to Nathan's side. "Sorry."
"How much is that?" Akeem nods towards the timepiece. Both Eve and Carrington's heads shake in humoured disappointment. Jahseh glances to the watch, and shrugs.
"Can I see it?" Nathan puts forth an open palm and five nimble fingers.
"I look stupid to you?"
Nathan purses his lips and withdraws. A laugh settles at the back of Eve's throat but she keeps it at bay. Walking Jahseh in here, watching him interact with these kids, felt awfully like a front-seat viewing right off the Discovery channel, the only thing missing were some slo-mo clips and a David Attenborough-esque monologue.
"Are you Eve's man?"
Eve isn't even sure who asks it, but her face grows hot as she squeaks out an "Oi!" or a "Shut it!" or some jumbled cocktail of the two. Then all four boys are staring towards her with quipped smiles. Just like that, something eases in Jahseh's posture. Not all the way, but enough to give Nathan some surge of confidence to say more.
"Bet you have loads," he nods towards the watch. Phoenix nods in agreement.
"Would you even miss it?" Akeem adds.
Jahseh notes their tones, that raw gambler's spunk, the controller that Akeem now places in the empty seat beside him. His chuckle rings in Eve's ears like a kiss to her lobes.
"Careful," Jahseh mutters.
"How many goals for that watch?" Nathan cheeses, he fiddles with the only other controller. "You ain't seeing man on FIFA, truly."
Eve is seconds from a tut and guiding Jahseh elsewhere, but his distaste for a room full of children is swift to be forgotten at the reedy whiff of a gamble.
Jahseh scoffs, "Two and it's yours." He tugs on his bottoms slightly, drops onto the couch and just like that, Eve has lost him to the all consuming world of FIFA. Phoenix at his left side and both Akeem and Nathan at his right, Jahseh slouches forwards, elbows casually on his knees and a smirk unstirred throughout their first twelve minute game, and then the next, and then the next.
"Is he?"
Eve glances towards Carrington, who folds her arms and raises her eyebrows, "What?"
"Is he your boyfriend?"
Eve only laughs, and knocks her shoulder into Carrington's in response.
After forty odd minutes, Eve takes the lapse in the day's festivities to steal Jahseh back. Carrington makes her rounds with paper plates and flags down the tables full of blue and red Dominoes boxes, the three boys, somewhat unfazed by their losses and quickly distracted by their empty bellies, scurry in tide with every other hungry kid in that room. Eve lets open the Gymanisum's fire exit and eventually, Southmere Lake's bank is littered with youth, rings of full mouths and full bellies, a ball volleyed a safe way's away from the water between a handful of boys, Carrington and a few stragglers with their crusts a-toss to the swans. Eve and Jahseh opt to stay back, a box of pizza between them on a shadowed bench. Out of the mix, but close enough to watch it.
There's something warm in Eve and something warm in Jahseh. Perhaps the sun and its gentle wrath, or maybe to Eve, the mental image of the space Jahseh had filled on that sofa with those boys. Like it was made to size. Or maybe to Jahseh, the fact that he's surrounded in that moment by Eve's goodness. The food in his hand, the building at his rear, the kids she'd fed and the smiles she'd given rise to.
"This is good, you know." Eve looks to Jahseh, and she nods as she eats. He scoffs, and nods towards the havoc. "This, not the food."
Her smile is shy and small. She leans back, lifts her feet from the floor and tucks them right up to her ass. She stares over her knees and into the distance. "You know what this is making me think of?"
"What?"
"How I messed up with Kamale," she mumbles. Jahseh frowns slightly. "I have the means to help people, you know? I should've helped him." Eve watches Akeem and Phoenix lob a ball back and forth, while Nathan hops about between them like a fish out of water. Jahseh watches Eve.
"Hm."
Some semblance of understanding befalls him. And it's only some but it's surely enough. Kamale needs help, Eve has the means to help him.
And Jahseh has the means to help them both.
Sun gon' shine on everything you do!
That song is just so them coded to me, I don't know I just find it so cute. Cured my writer's block, just spun it on repeat and got to work lmao.
Anyway, this short chapter crap is overstimulating to me now. No matter how much I try, I can't fit everything I want to fit into one chapter. But all my favourite books do it just fine, HOW? Like, ugh.
We know I can't hold water for shit so I'll say, I have a book in my drafts about Carrington. Will it ever see the light of day, we'll see.
Jahseh down so bad he's hanging with the kidssss? Damn.
Circling back to Kamale? How's Jahseh gonna 'help' if Kamale dropped the bag and then went AWOL?
Thoughts, feels, and opinionssss!
PSA: Chapter 17, I ended with "Long Live Naya" but changed to Tatum because I already used the name Naya earlier in the book and forgot, lols.