Be My Dreamcatcher [girlxgirl]

Three

As soon as she enters my apartment, Eva flops down on the couch very ungracefully. How un-Eva-like.

"Well what have you—"

"Ooh, ooh, you've got braaaas lying around." She stretches the word so far that it sounds like the dirtiest word ever. She dangles the aforementioned bra (singular) from her index finger.

I snatch it from there. "Har har de har. It's not like you don't wear one."

"Not today," she says abruptly and stares at me long enough that I turn away from her myself.

I clear my throat. "It's just one bra, by the way."

She ignores the correction. "Hmm, scarlet and Victoria's Secret. Little Charley has got some taste."

"Little Charley is a 26 year old grown ass woman," I throw the bra hastily into my room and turn back towards the couch.

"You're three years younger than me," she remarks. "Also, you're sloppy here even though your office is pristine." She waves her hand to the empty pizza boxes and clothes strewn around.

"That's a professional space. Here, I live alone so need to make efforts." I shrug and sit down beside her feet on the couch.

"I wonder why." She yawns. "Haven't you found any girls throwing themselves at your feet yet?"

"Haven't you?" I retort.

The lazy haze seems to lessen from her hooded eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're out here getting hammered in the middle of the night, not with an actual partner. And then you're avoiding your own house as you came to me, a person you barely know. It's clear that you're feeling untethered right now."

Eva blinks for a few seconds, the laziness completely gone, then says in a quiet but deadly voice. "You know, my first impression of you was that you weren't good at reading people."

"You mean you thought I was dumb."

She opens her mouth to reply but I continue, "Yes I'm dumb if you want to oversimplify. The medical term is alexithymia."

"You—what?" This is the most flustered I've ever seen Eva Bridgers to be.

"It's a disorder in which I can't—"

"I know what it is, but why, uh, why didn't you tell me?" She rubs at her eyes, probably to drive the drunk fog away.

"I don't go around telling everyone that I have a disorder that makes me socially dumb."

Now I'm staring at Eva and she seems to have a problem with forming coherent thoughts. "I know enough medical specifics to know that you're wrong in calling yourself 'socially dumb' due to your alexithymia. However, I'm also a tiny bit too drunk to elaborate right now." She pauses for a second, maybe to conjure my exact sentence in her head again. "Also, I, uh, I don't think I'm everyone."

"Eva." Never has my voice been so strong with her as it is now. "You're my senior, my supervisor. You'd have been lax with my work and I don't need or want that. Besides, I've had to live all my life with this. I think I'll manage."

She completely sits up now. "There's. Nothing. Wrong. With. Sharing. With. People. You. Care. About."

I'd have preferred her voice to be louder, not this whispering with menace.

"What are you getting at?"

She stares at me for a few beats before lying back down. "Well you don't care about me. We've only known each other for a month."

I have neither time or skills for riddles. Not when she barges into my apartment (not literally, but close) in the middle of the night, totally wasted, and I don't even know why.

"Eva, just tell me what you want to, in straight words."

She grins slowly. "None of us is quite straight, Charley dear."

I fake gasp, caught in the moment. "Eva Bridgers, making bad jokes! What is this world becoming?"

She laughs and I join in.

"Okay," Eva sits up again with a sigh. "I'll tell you why I'm here. Only if you let me sleep in those duckies afterwards."

"Deal."