𝔼𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕟

Chapter 8 : Parents

Another week has gone by, and my relationship with Ivy is... good.

Frustratingly good.

I used to think keeping myself at a distance from her was hard, but this? This is pure torture.

Psycho Alex is back, and he’s getting greedy.

At least when we didn’t talk, I couldn’t grow this curious. Now, everything she does makes even less sense.

Ivy eats the breakfast I make without inspecting it, but she never drinks the tea. She doesn’t flinch anymore, but whenever she thinks I’m about to touch her, she winces. When I yell at the TV, I catch her staring at me, her wide eyes filled with panic.

And sometimes, she smiles.

Ivy smiles when she says ‘hi’ in the morning. She laughs at my jokes. She prepares our midnight snacks, even when there’s a good chance we won’t eat them together.

Ivy tries. She really does. Sometimes, she asks me tons of questions. When I don’t give answers, just to annoy her, she turns to Tyler to get them — the traitor.

The issue is, it’s a one-way thing.

Because I enjoy our time together so much, I forget sometimes.

I forget that I don’t know anything about her. I forget that she’s been through things I still don’t know about. I forget that she doesn’t function like the rest of us.

And that’s when I make the mistake of returning a question. She shuts down and leaves without a word.

Other times, I fill her cup with tea, then feel like an idiot when she grabs her bottle.

And somehow, the closer we grow, the more it feels like she’s a stranger. It’s worse now because I want to know her. I want to understand what makes her tick.

I don’t want to break down her walls. If she needs them to feel safe, I want Ivy to be surrounded by them at all times. I just wish she had inserted a door that I had the key to.

It’s almost disturbing to watch her around our friends. I couldn’t see it before, but now I do — I didn’t have anything to compare it to.

Ivy has a way of driving attention away from her without ever making it obvious. She’s an incredible actress, and it pains me to think that, for her to be this good, she must have been doing it for a long time.

She’s probably doing it with me, too.

Ivy laughs loudly and teases, but she never answers questions. She acts busy when the guys talk about plans outside the house, or she uses sarcasm when asked about her feelings on a topic.

Maybe the guys continue to ask because they forget she’s broken, too.

Some days — they’ve become rare — Ivy is extremely sensitive. It usually happens after a night filled with faint sobbing that I sometimes hear from her room.

But today... today is different.

The second I arrive downstairs, I feel the tension.

Ivy and Tyler are in the living room. She’s sitting on the carpet next to Tyler’s feet — he’s on the couch — and they’re both eyeing a brown envelope on the coffee table.

Tyler looks like he’s about to cry. Ivy looks like she’s about to rip it to shreds.

I know better than to interrupt a moment like that. I may not know Ivy that well yet, but I know my best friend.

I go into the kitchen to make some tea, almost certain they haven’t heard me, but then Ivy starts talking. Something she never does when she’s upset. Not when I’m around, anyway.