Out of Focus #SYTYCW15 Top10 Finalist! [COMPLETED]

18| Shopping Spree

Eva flipped through the transcribed notes Marshall had emailed to her until she found the segment that she wanted to use.

I was six when I lost my eyes. I grow up, old and alone. No woman want marry a blind man in my town. So I leave. Come to Canada. There I meet kind woman. Fall in love. Get married. She die six years ago. Now I live alone, again. Only radio for friend. But I not lonely. For a time, I know love. I blessed.

Apparently he lived on the mainland in Vancouver, and had come to Haven for a leisurely weekend with his daughter and her family.

Today's grouping Eva decided to turn to a set she's taken with a couple of young girls, late teens. A lovely bi-racial girl named Ray with plaited hair and her Asian trendy hipster girlfriend, Lou.

The pair of them, together for almost two years, met their senior year of high school. Where Ray's parents knew and were entirely supportive of her lifestyle choices, Lou's apparently were in utter denial. And were determined to see them separated by shipping Lou to Harvard in New York where she'd stay with a maternal Aunt.

But the pair had a plan to leave and take off for Spain at the end of summer. Lou would paint and Ray would get a job at a local bar until the time came when she could open her own little bistro.

Eva stopped at a photograph of their hands linked, fingers twined. The grip strong. Sure. And so confident.

These weren't a couple of impetuous, rebellious teens caught up in a bit of Romeo & Juliet type fanfare. But something strong, rich, and Eva truly believed, everlasting.

This was it, Lou had said. I knew the moment our lips first touched that Ray was all I would ever want. The only one who would ever hold my heart.

And how Eva had envied them that simple, honest truth. To know with such certainty. To have found their other half and to recognize one another for what that meant.

She'd never known or experienced that kind of devotion. Not with Randy, and certainly not with Nate. The two men in her life, if she could call them that, and both had been colossal disappointments.

And now there was Marshall.

Leaning back in her chair, Eva sighed. What the heck was getting herself into? This was Lottie's son, and that made it complicated. For all her bravado about responsible grownups having responsible, no-strings sex, Eva didn't blindly sleep around. And yes, she'd only agreed to dinner, but dinner led to another dinner, and another, which at some point invariably led to sex, didn't it?

Wasn't that how things usually worked between two single, consenting adults who were clearly attracted to one another? The stick, complicated mess of whether or not to sleep with him, when the time came, aside, what the heck was she supposed to do? Say? Wear?

God...did she even have anything in her closet besides ripped jeans?

Realizing she was so far beyond her depth of comfort, Eva did the only thing a girl in her position could think to do, and called her best friend for backup. And because she'd agreed to give Jenelle the week off leading up to the long weekend, she knew the one place Jenelle would be on a Monday morning.

The line rang in long, pulsing notes, but Eva stayed on, persistent, and trusted that eventually she'd give in. And smiled in triumph as Jenelle's sleep raspy voice groaned and grumbled.

"Morning sunshine."

"Why are you calling me at the ass crack of dawn on my week off?"

Eva cocked a wrist, noted the time. "It's after eleven."