Chapter Text
Eve has never been a social person. Maybe the odd drink to catch up, but she has always hated the obligation to stay chatting to someone when she would much rather be at home, in pyjamas, watching The Chase. Bradley Walsh has never bored her the same way her distant friends or relatives have. That sort of dread only increased if it was a group of people she had not seen for a very long time, with good reason.
Long story short, Eve hates reunions.
Which is why she spends a solid ten minute tube ride regretting every life decision that has led her to this moment- her seventh year university reunion. Maybe she picked the wrong yoghurt at Tesco? Eve wasn’t really sure that could have made a difference, but you never know with the butterfly effect. She supposes she was quite lucky in that it was only her old group of friends that had decided to meet up, as opposed to having to make idle conversation with people she could barely remember while at school, never mind with less hair and more kids. It still doesn’t make the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach any less intolerable, though. And why pick seven years to decide to meet up? Eve figures at least make it ten, and then she might have pulled her life together by then. These people have new lives, away from each other. She did not appreciate people trying to stick their noses into her business.
Eve, surprisingly, doesn’t get lost while trying to locate the quaint pub tucked away in an obscure back alley, despite having terrible signal and being paired with shitty instructions in a WhatsApp group chat by Elena. It isn’t long until she pushes open the door and smiles awkwardly to familiar, but older, faces.
"Eve! So glad you could make it! Hope you found us alright," Elena stands up from their crowded table and ushers her over. Eve makes a point to not make eye contact with any of the other people.
"Yes, thank you," Eve settles on saying, trying to ignore how strained her voice seems. It was then that she finally casts her eyes across the table, and lets her shoulders relax for the first time in hours. No Oksana. "Nice to see you all."
"You’re looking well, Eve," Kenny nods towards her and smiles, the exact same smile he had when he was eighteen. Eve is genuinely quite glad to see him.
There isn’t all that many of them really, Eve noted as she sat down. Elena, Jess, Kenny, Hugo, and herself. Without Oksana, she was sure that she could survive the night.
"Oh, Oksana just texted me, she’s on the way," Elena cuts through Eve’s reassuring thoughts. Fuck.
"Oh, that’s nice. It’ll be good to see her again," Eve manages to say with a smile. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Honestly, I’m surprised you two didn’t stay in touch, you were inseparable at uni," Jess pipes up from across the table, taking a swig of her drink.
"I suppose it’s funny how things work out."
Eve goes up to the bar to order herself a drink, a gin and tonic, probably the first of many tonight. She pops it down on the table before she excuses herself to the bathroom.
She stares at herself in the mirror, and makes a list of things she can see. She can see her clumpy mascara, she can see smile lines dropping down her face, she can see that stubborn grey hair she got way too early and hadn’t had chance to dye away, and she can see Eve, twenty nine years old, a fully grown adult. It helps her calm down slightly, to think of herself so far removed from her school days. It is a comforting thought, to know that things have changed and people change, and that it’s only one night. She can just make a few conversations, avoid Oksana’s piercing gaze, and just wait for her bed.
Plan B, get blackout drunk.
She can feel her presence as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom. Eyes down, go back to your seat. Get ready to smile and be civil, Eve, she can hear her voice in her head already, tongue looping around vowels in that accent. Eve’s fingers trace the velvet of the chair before she sits down, and she spies those hazel eyes in her peripheral. Glancing up, she sees the girl she used to know take a long swig of Eve’s drink, before smiling. Eve returns the sentiment awkwardly.
"Eve," is what she says. The word spreads out on her tongue like honey and Eve feels a repulsive shiver go down her spine.
"Hello," is what Eve says back. "You look the same," she adds on, which is true, annoyingly. Oksana still has that glowy, just rolled out of bed skin even almost ten years later. Eve bet that she didn’t have any greys yet.
"You look older," Oksana states, speaking it as if it is a compliment. "It’s nice."
The silence between them seems to stretch to an awkward length, and she hears someone from the table cough to try to break some of the tension. The world feels like it starts again, and Eve finally drops their eye contact.
"So, Oksana, how have you been?" Jess asks from across the table, forever the polite one.
"Uh, good," she replies, taking her eyes off Eve for a second to look over. "I live in Paris, now." And the way she says it makes Eve sick to her stomach, all smug and superior.
"Ooh, that’s fun and different," Elena beams, shaking her shoulders, and Eve doesn’t mention how this shouldn’t be surprising information, how Oksana had always wanted to live in Paris. Maybe she had only mentioned it to Eve, though, and that thought makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
"Ah, yes, it’s pretty recent, actually. I live between there and here, just doing bits and pieces," she looks sheepish for a moment, and Eve knows it’s an act, she’s about to reveal something. "I have someone special here, now."
The revelation is a kick in the teeth, and Eve grabs back her drink to take a strong gulp. She doesn’t look up when she notices Oksana’s eyes skim over her.
"I actually invited her, here, if that’s ok? You all know her, so I figured it would be nice," Oksana continues, and Eve genuinely wants to be sick. Would it be wrong to throw up in the glass directly in front of her? We weren’t out at university, she wants to say over the table, but forgets that Oksana was, it was her that wasn’t- isn’t. The thought makes her stomach roll in her abdomen again.
You all know her. She doesn’t want to think about the implications of Oksana’s statement, though her brain starts rattling through Oksana’s exes. Nadia, maybe? No, she’s sure that she saw her get married on Facebook about a year ago. She had scrolled through the comments when she saw the announcement, hoping to find Oksana. She hadn’t.
"How exciting," Hugo drawls, seconds away from making some sort of derogatory comment. That was the deal with Hugo, Eve always thought, sensible and sweet until he found something to sexualise.
Oksana ignores him. "Sorry she’s late," and she says it more apologetic than Eve thinks she’s ever heard her. Maybe people do change. "She’s so shit with directions. I tell her all the time to swap to Google maps instead of the shitty one on her phone, but she refuses."
It stings a bit, to hear her speak to freely about someone. That she shares that domesticity that Eve had always craved from her, yet still pushed away full force whenever it seemed to rear its head. She wonders if they share a pillow like the two of them had done years ago, in Eve’s dorm room. Back when it felt like it was them against the world.
The bell for the door goes and Oksana’s eyes brighten. "Oh, here she is!"
If Eve had known who was about to walk through the door, she’d had bolted. Or, better yet, not have accepted the invitation to begin with.
"So, everyone, I’m sure you remember Anna."
Eve glances up to catch Anna’s eye. Her fucking language teacher at uni. Isn’t that breaking some sort of moral code? Maybe not illegal, but fucking hell.
The years sat on Anna’s face unflatteringly, though maybe it’s just Eve that thinks that in the context. She makes a polite smile to her, not holding her eye contact. Eve notices her hair is down, curled to her shoulders. It takes a mountain of strength to resist taking her own hair down then, to remind Oksana of her hands in it. Her fingers twitch against the glass, but she doesn’t do it.
"Fucking hell," Hugo says, drawing out the syllables. "Miss Anna. You’ve done well with that one, O."
"Yeah, well," Oksana smiles, looking fucking proud of herself, "I always had a bit of a crush on her at uni."
Eve misses how Oksana intentionally looks at her then, something strange in her eyes. She instead just stares down at her glass, face frozen in an awkward smile. She ignores how that comment will probably fuel her nightly cry.
"Sit down, sit down," Elena says, and the couple take their places opposite Eve. If she had looked up, she would have seen them sit closer together as they move. Probably best she didn’t.
"Lovely to see you all," Anna speaks finally, and it’s awkward and clunky coming out of her mouth. She knows she shouldn’t be here.
"So, how did you get together?" Kenny asks, and Eve notices his quick glance in her direction.
"Well, we bumped into each other in the street, and I just had to know what my favourite student was up to," Anna says, and it’s awkward, rehearsed. Eve sees Oksana try to take her hand and Anna place it on her lap instead.
"She’s so modest," Oksana laughs. "As if she wasn’t my favourite teacher." Eve needed another drink.
Oksana’s face drops for a second as she watches Eve stand, before turning her attention to the polite laugher around her.
"Double gin and tonic, please."
"Hey, Eve, you okay?" Jess. Always the kind one.
"Yeah, just a bit weird seeing everyone, I think," Eve answers, letting out a sigh. The drink is handed to her and she cradles it in her grasp, not wanting to return to the table just yet.
"Yeah, didn’t expect to see Anna Leonova here honestly. She hated me in her classes," Jess rolls her eyes, and Eve lets herself laugh, a nice genuine one. The feeling stays on her chest as they head back.
"So, Eve," the questions start almost as soon as she sits down. This time directed from Anna, peering down her nose at her with an unreadable expression, "do you have a significant other?" Her eyes drift down the the ring on her finger, probably made obvious by Eve’s nervous fidgeting with it.
Shit.
"Oh. Yeah, actually," Eve answers, and leaves it at that. She doesn’t mention that Niko had left her the week before, had already collected all of his things. She doesn’t mention the last thing he had said to her was that she was a cold, dead thing dressed up as a human, pretending to be capable of loving someone else. She doesn’t mention that she still wears the engagement ring, despite him now probably being long gone. It gives her a comfort, she thinks, and Niko was never a cruel enough man to ask for it back.
"You’re married?" Oksana questions, her voice a bit hoarse.
"Engaged."
"You never mentioned."
"Why would I?"
Elena coughs from next to Eve, "Well, actually, that brings me to why I asked to meet up." She pulls her hand out from her lap and holds it out, a large diamond secured to her ring finger. "Brad proposed!"
There’s the usual polite commotion over the ring, how he did it, when the wedding was going to be. Eve catches Kenny’s forlorn face in the corner of her eye for a split second.
"I was thinking maybe the end of next year? And of course you’re all invited! I know we don’t see much of each other now, but you were all such a big part of my life, and Brad has heard so much about you."
Eve feels her stomach drop, and she excuses herself to the bathroom. What a glamorous woman Eve Park truly is, hunched over the toilet in the third cubicle from the right, dry heaving. It’s like she’s seventeen again. Eve does not think she feels things stronger than the average person, nor does she feel easily overwhelmed, but Jesus Christ, Oksana’s cupid’s bow and how it moves as she spoke. The way she casually looked over at Anna, as though loved up, casually and in public. All the things Eve had wanted, what she thought she deserved, yet pushed away. Her twenty two year old self was too fucking stubborn.
"Eve?"
Shit. That fucking voice. Eve decides she is not mentally prepared for whatever is about to unfold, so stays quiet, her knees digging into the bathroom floor.
"Eve, I know you’re in here. Don’t be a fucking child."
Silence, again.
"Anna has left." And this time she speaks softer, as though she knows that’s what Eve wants her to say.
"Why am I meant to care?" Eve answers, because she can’t help herself. She straightens herself out, and steps out to the sinks, running her hands under the way too hot water. She doesn’t dare flinch.
"Because you made her uncomfortable?"
Eve scoffs. "Yeah, right."
Oksana steps towards her as she goes to grab some tissue for her hands. She’s always been taller than her, and when Eve glances down at her feet she has heels on, a contrast to Eve’s usual loafers, so the height difference is magnified.
"Was that your plan?"
"Oksana," Eve starts. Her back hits the wall as Oksana draws closer.
"No, you’re not allowed to fucking call me that," and Oksana is seething, eyes scattered across Eve’s features. "You’re not allowed to scare off my girlfriend for your own enjoyment and then say my name like that. Like you care."
"I barely said a word to her," Eve says, words coming out as a laugh. "You’re not allowed to blame me for this one."
"Go fuck yourself, Eve."
"Gladly," Eve lets herself smirk, raising her chin slightly to look at Oksana more clearly in the eyes. She’s wearing heavier makeup that she had ever done in uni, not counting that weird three month phase where she was convinced dark heavy eyeliner was the best thing since sliced bread. She has gotten better at it, Eve notes.
She watches Oksana’s gaze fall to her lips for a split second, and she entertains the idea herself, eyes drifting to that cupid’s bow. She still has that little scar just near her mouth. It’s weird seeing it in the flesh. Oksana breathes out heavily, and her lips part slightly, making Eve gulp. All she had to do was lean forward, just slightly. She thinks it would only be a few inches. Eve tries to smooth out her features as Oksana’s brow furrows, burdened with some emotion Eve can’t pick apart at the minute.
"I’m sorry."
And then Oksana is gone, a cold breeze fluttering over Eve’s lips as she leaves.