Reunions and Ruses by Marie Landry

Author:Marie Landry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, romantic comedy, sweet romance, romcom, brothers best friend, canadian setting, bisexual romance, lgbtq romance, fake dating
Publisher: Marie Landry

CHAPTER TEN

Evie opens the apartment door and freezes when she sees me sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. With a grin, she holds up a paper bag from the bookstore. “Apparently our psychic link is as strong as it always was.”

“What did you buy?”

She kicks off her shoes and hangs up her jacket before sliding down onto the floor beside me and dumping out the contents of the bag: two stained glass coloring books and a package of markers.

“I noticed you usually use pencil crayons, but a sales associate saw me looking at these books and said markers work best.”

Evie’s thoughtful gesture leaves me speechless. I move aside the coloring book I was using and pick up one of the ones she bought. Coloring has been an outlet for me since my therapist suggested it after my accident. The activities I could do were limited, and I was prone to bouts of depression and anxiety that left me feeling hopeless and exhausted. I thought it sounded ridiculous and juvenile, but I eventually gave it a shot. It didn’t take long for me to discover the repetitive, mostly mindless activity quieted my racing thoughts. All these years later, it still has the same soothing effect.

“Thank you.” I’m afraid to look at her in case it causes me to give in to the tears that are building behind my eyes. “That’s mighty thoughty of you.”

Evie snorts out a laugh at the inside joke, a reference to one of our favorite childhood movies, Disney’s Robin Hood. She gives me a one-armed hug and then hops up from the floor, suggesting I pick pages for us to color while she changes out of her work clothes.

She returns a few minutes later with two small glasses of wine. “You not seeing Leland tonight?”

“No, he had a bunch of paperwork to do,” I tell her. “We hung out with Felicity at the store today and had lunch together. And he took me out for pizza last night.”

Evie makes an indecipherable humming sound. I debate questioning her, but my best friend isn’t one to hold back, so if she has something to say, I know she’ll say it sooner or later. She watches me for a moment before picking up a red marker and getting to work on the page in front of her.

“You and Wes going out tonight?” I ask.

“We’re supposed to, yeah. He’s doing some overtime and he’s going to call me when he’s done.”

Silence falls as we color our pictures. This has always been a solitary activity for me, so it feels strange yet comforting to be doing it with Evie. When ten minutes pass and we both remain silent, I pull up one of my favorite instrumental playlists on my phone.

“Okay, I totally get the appeal of this,” Evie says after a while. Her page—an elaborate scene of a castle, lake, and forest—is about a quarter done. I’ve been watching from the corner of my eye as she methodically chooses her colors and carefully shades in each section.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.