Not Today | ✔️

Chapter Forty.

"It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love is indifference..."

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"Evelyn Adaline Sable, get your ass out of bed."

"Adaline?" Evelyn said, cocking an eyebrow at Jerome, who just entered her room. "How do you even know my middle name?"

"Your mom's chatty," he said with a shrug, taking a seat at the foot of Evelyn's bed.

"She brought out the photo album, didn't she?" Evelyn asked, but was positive she knew the answer.

"Hell yeah, she did. I had no idea you were such an artist with your baby food. Very impressive."

Evelyn chuckled. "I was a mini Michelangelo, wasn't I?"

"Absolutely."

"What are you even doing here? It's Christmas Eve. You should be with your family."

"Don't worry. I told them I was doing charity. Which is true. You are kind of a charity case," he teased with a sad sigh, but the wind was knocked out of him when Evelyn hit him with one of her pillows.

"If my mom asks, I'm just gonna say the bruise came from a hobo at the soup kitchen."

Evelyn hit him with another pillow.

"Jesus. Women and their pillows. There are like twenty seven!" he said.

"Don't be dramatic. There are six," she said.

"That's so much better. You know there are starving children who don't even have one pillow, let alone six," he said.

"What does starving have to do with not having a pillow?"

"Uh, you burn more calories when you lay flat?" he offered.

Evelyn let out a laugh. "You're awful."

"You love me."

"I tolerate you."

"Well then tolerate me while standing up. We have places to go, people to see, things to do. Chop chop," he clapped his hands as he stood up.

"Jerome, I'm not going anywhere."

"Au contraire, I got permission from both your parents and I can take you out today, so if you're not up and dressed in ten minutes, I'll come back and drag you out of bed by your hair."

"You wouldn't," Evelyn said, narrowing her eyes.

He grinned. "It's your scalp that will suffer if you try to call my nonexistent bluff, dear Evelyn. Now 10 minutes, not a minute more."

Jerome left her room to give her privacy and though she'd felt like a shell of herself since she broke up with Tristan, Jerome had been a silver lining she hadn't expected. It was true that every time something bad happened, something good tended to happen with it. And vice versa. She'd never expected to lose Tristan, but gain a new friend in the process.

She did as he asked and got dressed, though it only took five minutes, not ten.

"Alright, Evelyn. I know you just put them on, but get ready to have your socks knocked off," Jerome said as they left her house and got into his car.

"You're very exuberant," she pointed out.

"It's Christmas, Evelyn! Of course I'm exuberant."

"It's Christmas Eve, technically."

"It's Christmas Eve, technically," he mocked in a high-pitched voice.

Evelyn snorted. "I don't sound like that."