Reading Eve

Rain slid down the windows. We sat in dim light, with lamps shining down on our open books. I sat on the floor, watching Eve, reading her as if she were my history notes.

She lay on my bed, chin propped on her fist. She scribbled in notebook once in a while. Her black hair glowed in the lamp that shined on her like a spotlight. She kicked her feet back and forth slowly. She wore shorts, despite the cold outside. Her legs were long, with wispy hairs just along her shins. Her silhouette fell on the wall, curving more at her nose and lips.

"My dad died in Vietnam," I said, hoping she would turn to face me.

Eve didn't move. "Liar."

I shrugged and smiled. "I felt like talking."

"You should be feeling like studying," she replied, eyes still focused on her textbook.

"I'm just a little distracted, is all."

The eyelashes of her shadow blinked. "Do you want some tea?"

I shrugged again, then nodded. She set her pen down and climbed off my bed. As she stepped over me to my makeshift cupboard, her perfume found its way to my nose.

I sat up and leaned against my roommate's bed. "Is that Chanel?"

"Yeah," she answered, picking two tea bags from the box. "How'd you know?"

"My sister has it." Smells better on you, though, I thought.

She smiled. "How old is she?"

"A year younger, nineteen."

"She doesn't go here," Eve both asked and declared.

"Yeah, no, she goes to Spelman."

"Hm." She poured hot water into blue and black mugs and plunked the tea bags up and down. She left them in, the string dangling off the side. She handed me the blue mug. "You know, you shouldn't tell lies like that. About your dad."

I shrugged, taking a sip of the tea. I swallowed, and the hot water stung my throat. "I just wanted to get your attention," I confessed.

She sat back on my bed. She stared intently into her tea, jostling the bag. "You sure shrug alot," she said. "Tell me more about your sister."

I told Eve what she would want to know, that Courtney had graduated third in her high school class, and was accepted to Georgetown, Harvard, and NYU, but chose Spelman over all of them for "the experience that would most enrich her whole person." And I told her how she played soccer, tennis, and violin, and how I nearly gouged out a classmate's eyeballs for oogling her when she was in seventh grade.

"What does she look like?" Eve asked.

"Me, just shorter and with longer hair. And a girl."

"I think I would have to see her," she said. "My sister and I look nothing alike. We both took after our fathers."

"You don't have the same dad?"

She cut her eyes to mine, precise as a ruler's edge. "No."

Thunder hummed outside. Wind raked through the trees, sending rain splattering onto the window.

We sat in silence for a long moment, both of us drinking tea and me thinking about Eve.

"I bet I can read your mind," she said, setting her tea down on the floor by the bed.

"Really?" I smiled. "How?"

"I just can."

"Do it, then."

"Okay."

We stared at each other.

"You have to think about something first, duh."

I chuckled. I looked into her eyes, a brown made honey by the lamp.

"I believe you love me," she declared without a lull in her voice or a smile on her lips. "And you're not sure I feel the same way."

I blinked. I covered up my mind like a stranger had intruded on me showering. I gulped. "Do you?"

She shrugged this time, and lay back on my bed. "So that means you really do love me."

My ears grew hot in an instant. "I didn't say that."

She inhaled and exhaled visibly. "Were you going to tell me more about your sister?"

I sighed. "She's cool. You'd like her. She studies psychology. She's dating this kid from Morehouse."

"You're not gonna gouge out his eyeballs." She smiled.

"Maybe," I said. My head lightened when I saw her smile.

"I wonder if they've been...involved." She stared at the ceiling.

I'd rather not think about that, I meant to say. I could hardly think of Courtney kissing anyone, much less doing more. I wondered how many guys Eve had kissed. Or more.

"Two," she said, sitting up again.

"Huh?"

"Two. I've only ever kissed two guys."

I shrunk my eyes at her.

"I told you I could read your mind," she said.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I don't know. I just can. I can read you like a book I wrote myself."

She smiled wide, letting the words escape more easily from her lips. Her lips, which I could have lunged for at that very moment.

But she must have known that.

She shrank away, back onto my bed with her tea. "We should get back to studying," she said.

I pulled my textbook close to me. Reading history would always be easier than reading Eve.