"Morgan."
"Hm?"
"I think I met someone."
Morgan, from her slouched comfort at one end of Eve's curved linen blend sofa, glances away from her luridly blinding Macbook screen. She mindlessly winds up her wrist, so the Echo Falls tornadoes about the belly of her wine glass till some tired joint clicks into its place. Her brows rise in patient waiting, the daze in Eve's drifting stare sparks a bud of curiosity which Eve is patently slow to satisfy, "What you talking about?"
Eve adjusts the lull of her head, she takes four fingers to the back of her screen and pulls shut her own laptop. A huff and a puff later, "There's this guy and he's, like, proper good looking. He doesn't even look real, but I can't tell if he's interested or not."
To Eve's ample dismay, she'd run herself half mad the last few days as she dwelled and withered on the two baby interactions she'd had with Jahseh, this winsome mystery of a man. She finds herself repeatedly stumbled by the fact her tally of beauty-defining adjectives still and all don't change the fact he's nothing but a stranger to herâjust Jahseh.
With a career like the one she's readily establishing for herself, shyness exceeds her budget. She may stumble upon her words and confront the odd moment of speechlessness, yet of all the men she's faced and along all their walks of life, never has anyone's reluctance to her friendly nature caused her a bother. With Jahseh, it shreds at her confidence like cheese to a grater. She crumbles beneath those stone-set eyes, but even so, she finds herself missing the twisted feeling.
She speaks and he grimaces, she smiles and he's almost repulsed, he meets her warmth with a cold shoulder, and against Eve's fattening attraction to him, she can't help but to feel silly about it.
Morgan takes a gentle sip from her drink, "Why wouldn't he be interested?"
"I've bumped into him twice now and he hasn't even asked me for my number," Eve stifles her whining, humble to the memory of Jahseh's disdain as he'd driven her home. "He gave me a lift and everything, didn't even talk to me." At this, Morgan's jaw spills shockingly ajar.
"Eve, you ain't in the countryside anymore. What you doing getting in a stranger's car?"
"Oh, he's not a stranger, he said he knows Sullivan," Eve's reassurance is pitiful, Morgan seemingly quells the urge to swat Eve's dismissive wave.
"Babe, everyone knows Sullivan. In fact, if someone's tryna lure you into their car with that, you're better off walking away," Morgan scolds. Eve nods, although the warning goes in one ear and right out the other. She straightens her posture and rolls her body weight further onto her side, till she's properly facing her friend.
"He works at the garage, though. Pulled my brakes out and everything, I almost proposed to him."
"Oh, you mean Jahseh."
Baselessly hopeful, Eve's eyebrows soar to a new height, "You know him?"
"That's Sullivan's little brother," Morgan informs her, then her head tilts and a suggestive smile displaces her former indifference. "You tryna be my sister in law?"
"Morgan, I just told you he's not interested. He literally looks at me like I'm stupid. I think he thinks I'm a bit slow," Eve tuts, she takes up a new height as she leans forward for her own glass of pink, roosting recklessly close to the edge of her coffee table.
"To be fair, I don't think you're understanding the state your car was in when you dropped it at the shop," Morgan twists up her face as she says. Eve only rolls her eyes, because she and Sullivan are still yet to let her forget it. For a moment, Morgan ponders the possibility. She aligns Jahseh's darkness with all the lustre that fixes itself unfailingly about Eve's very beingâshe's unsure whether to aid her friend's newfound interest or send her running. Morgan knows the Jahseh that has love for Morgan, who is she to vouch for his tenderness, for the supple quarters of his heart, when she's yet to see him unveil it to anyone other than Sullivan and herself? Morgan settles for a reassuring shake of her head, "Don't read too much into it, Jah's just like that."
Eve, unmoved, says, "You have to see it to get it, I'm telling you. He acts like I jar him, but he doesn't even know me."
"He gave you a lift, at least," Morgan offers up. "He don't give those out freely. Even when he picks me up on a night out, he never drops my girls off."
"That's mean," Eve frowns.
"He is mean, but he's being nice to you. Bet he's got a crush on you," Morgan teases, glass tipped towards Eve before she yields to another swig.
Eve grunts out a snort nowhere near ladylike, "Bet he doesn't. I tried to ask if he lives around here and he basically told me to do one."
"Maybe he felt like you was G-checking him."
"What's that? Like, stalking him?" Eve's frown sinks a tier lower. Morgan laughs, routined to the one time of many that Eve has found herself lost in translation. Morgan's urbanised lexis is a repeated culture shock to her.
"You're one of a kind, Eve. Honestly, I don't know how you've ended up in Abbey Wood of all places but you're a real breath of fresh air," Morgan simmers down. She offers her glass to Eve's, who kisses her own against it in a womanly slainte.
"Thanks... I think."
"I'll put in a good word for you," Morgan promises, before another sip that's sure to empty her cup. Eve watches the final slither of wine trickle over the rim and into Morgan's mouth, then she wanders off in search of their neglected bottle.
"I'll just keep admiring him from afar. He's honestly the most beautiful man I've ever seen," Eve clouds about the kitchen's island, two hands necklace the throat of the wine bottle and then she rests her chin uncomfortably atop it. "Some guy was tryna chirpse me and he wouldn't piss off, Jahseh literally looked at him and he legged it. He's so... Manly. They took one look at him and was pissin' themselves."
Unknowingly, Eve lays way for a thorough urban myth, a hundred chapters long and a hundred plot lines deep. If Morgan has any intention to map out the enigma of Jahseh's character, now is a sure time if ever to do so. There are a million pieces to the puzzle that is Jahseh, yet people use their tads and tittles to rope together half of a picture, and then bide by it. But what's a branch to a tree? What's a shard to a mosaic? What's a whisper to the real deal?
There's more to Jahseh than Jahseh, and Morgan knows she'd be no better than those gullible to his hearsay if she spun anything about him before got the chance to do so himself. No better than those that cross the road when they see him and grovel to putty at the mention of his name. Those by the likes of the same men Eve had watched him dispel with a look alone, as if his scalp was curried with snakes. If anything at all, Jahseh deserves the benefit of the doubt so, warily, Morgan decides to allow Eve the chance to give it to him.
Her elbow rests on the back of the couch as she watches Eve build castles in Spain, lost to her pie in the sky at the thought of Jahseh. A stranger to Eve, a brother to Morgan, a ghost story to each and every man who'd ever so much as toed the underbelly of the streets, those streets.
"Yeah, Jahseh and Sullivan tend to have that effect on people."
Kudos to anyone who updates more than once a month, 'cause the stamina required is insane. You gotta be on Adderall for this shit.
Aw, they've got cute little crushes on each other.
This chapter was unintentionally more about Morgan than Eve it seems like, but I couldn't be bothered to go back and fix that.
Jahseh, who are you? So mysterious...
I got a bit lazy towards the end, I'm tired asf but I did it. Thoughts and feelings, guys!