Once An Eve Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

come retrieve me, insisting I accompany her to the dining hall, where she would sit with me for hours. Sometimes we’d play cards. Betty would pour us her newest batch and I’d sip it slowly, telling Quinn about my journey to Califia.
    When I looked up, Arden was still studying me. “Besides,” I added. “It wasn’t exactly easy to lose you and Caleb in the same month.”
    Regina, a heavyset widow who’d lived in Califia for two years, teetered on the stool beside us. “Caleb is Eve’s boyfriend,” she whispered to Arden. “I used to have a husband, you know. They’re not as bad as everyone here says they are.” She raised her glass, signaling for another drink.
    “Boyfriend?” Arden narrowed her eyes at me.
    “I guess,” I said, resting my hand on Regina’s back to steady her. “Isn’t that what he would be called?” At School we’d learned about “boyfriends” and “husbands,” but only to be warned against them. In our Dangers of Boys and Men class, the Teachers told us stories of their own heartbreaks, of the men who had left them for other women or the husbands who’d leveraged their money and influence to keep their wives in domestic slavery. After seeing all that men were capable of in the wild—the gangs who slaughtered one another, the men who sold women they’d captured, the Strays who resorted to cannibalism in desperation—some of the women in Califia, especially the escapees from School, still believed that men were universally bad. Life after the plague seemed to prove that, over and over again. But there were also the few who still remembered husbands or past loves fondly. Many called Regina and me hopeless, to our faces and behind our backs. But when I awoke in the middle of the night, my hands searching the bed for where Caleb should’ve been, hopeless seemed too mild a term for how love made me feel.
    Delia and Missy were arguing now, the packed tables quieting as their voices grew louder. Everyone’s attention shifted to their side of the room. “Let it be! Enough!” Delia yelled. She gripped her drink, letting the green coin clink around the bottom of the glass.
    “Just tell her,” Missy urged. She turned around in her seat, waving frantically at me. “Eve! Hey, Eve—”
    Delia reached over the table and gave Missy one good push, sending her tumbling backward onto the floor. “I told you to shut it,” she said. Missy rubbed her head where it had met the hard wood. “Just shut your stupid mouth,” Delia continued. She got up and started around the table, but Maeve pulled her back.
    “All right now. Enough.” Maeve glanced around the room. “Guess you two need to learn to slow down. Isis—get them to bed, will you?” Her eyes darted to me and Arden, as if gauging our reactions.
    “Tell me what?” I asked, still stuck on Missy’s words.
    Isis laughed. “Missy’s just drunk—right, Delia?” she urged. Delia wiped the sweat from her forehead, but didn’t respond.
    “Somebody saw him,” Missy muttered, brushing the dirt off her pants. She was speaking so low I had to stoop down to hear. “Someone saw that boy Caleb. She knows,” she repeated, pointing at Delia again.
    Maeve stood and grabbed Missy’s other arm, helping her up. “That’s silly. This is just—”
    “I didn’t want to tell you,” Delia started, cutting her off. Everyone in the hall was quiet. Even Betty had stopped talking, standing silently behind the bar with a stack of dirty dishes in her hands. “But when I was in the city the other day, scavenging for supplies, I ran into a Stray. I’d seen him around last week. He’d asked me where I’d come from, where I was heading—”
    “You said nothing, right?” Maeve interrupted, her voice flat.
    “Of course,” Delia snapped. She was calmer now that she was in Isis’s and Maeve’s grip. She refused to look them in the eye. “He had tried to barter with me for my boots. And then the other day he pointed to the new ones he was