The sun slapped down too, striking and swift as usual.

Eve sucked in the sliver of lingering cool from her air-conditioned house, willing it to keep her straightened hair unfrizzed for as long as possible. She breathed again, slid her eyes closed and let the snakes of cold manufactured air slide over the surface of her dark brown skin, then burrow into her unseen pores. They glided across her coiled muscles to stretch them out and slid between stiff joints til they loosened and popped.

The bustle of the garden party remained a murmur as Eve rolled her shoulders back and pushed them out again. She could do this. Paul would be happy to see her able to do this, and the kids would have their energy expenditure for the weekend. Perhaps it would grant her a moment to herself, or even a few. And Paul would be so happy.

Eventually, she lifted her chin, wore her confident but demure smile and finally, unstuck her white kitty heels from the carpet and pranced out of her peach-cream bungalow and onto the emerald lawn.

“Here come the ice pops!” Eve sang out, beaming brighter than the gleam of all the buffed and polished mustangs lining the cul-de-sac like a plastic wreath. Cries of joy burst into the air before a herd of children charged her legs. “Oh goodness, I—”

“Can I have one?!” A shock of red spikes.

“Well, wait—I mean yes, but wait a moment everyone, let me—”

“I WANT THE STRAWBERRY! Strawberry is the BEST!” Rosy plump fingers hooked onto the edge of the tray.

“Oh haha! Indee—”

“Mrs Owell,” a whisper pushed through a lock of straight black hair, currently being nervously chewed on. “Did you find my orange one?”

“Yes, I did find the orange ones. Yes, I—”

“Where?!” A gaze as green as the astroturf beneath Eve’s kitty heels shot up. “Can I have it?”

“You can have them in just a moment, Lucy—goodness— Doreen? Is the table clear?” Eve kept her posture impeccable as she tiptoed through the marsh of snapping children with the grace of a ballerina, gliding through the glassy stares and over the plastic veneers of their parents towards the picnic table by the low trimmed hedges.

The warm air gathered on Eve’s forehead, but she resisted a frown against it. She had to keep her lightness, her shoulders back and low, her chin raised, her gaze knowing but innocent. Just like Paul liked her. So, Eve let her hips sway with each step until finally placing the tray of multicoloured ice pops on the table.

In the two blinks it took her to push out an exhale of proud exhaustion and brush away the sweat on her forehead, the tray had emptied, now only offering her own warped reflection in the foggy steel.

“It’s too hot, isn’t it?”

That voice, rasping, low, measured.

Eve’s brown eyes flicked up but a dagger of sunlight cut away the face the voice belonged to in its lethal edge.

“Darling, do you have Joshua’s bottle?” Paul called, and Eve’s attention was away before she let the ache of that lost conversation sink in.

He grinned perfectly from the driveway where he stood with a beer in hand between Harry and Bryce as they tended the grill. His dirty blond hair was parted on the right and combed back, his green-hazel eyes were as lustrous and tepid as weak champagne, and his impeccable posture was as straight as if propped into place with a hanger slid under his skin. In the slanted shade their home offered, his gaze almost looked warm.

“Yes, dear! I have it!” Eve beamed at him, wider than before.

She twisted around again to the table, Eve peeked under it search for Joshua’s particular deep blue bottle in her pale-yellow hamper, rummaging through the tissue packets, squares of melting chocolate and that hidden pouch she forced herself not to look at. She couldn’t. Not right now. Not when Paul expected her.

A feather-soft touch of fingertips brushing the grooves of her arching spine, and with it, the same voice whispered, “I think it’s—”

“Mommy!” a squeal shattered her brief hidden moment beneath the table.

Eve span on her heels again to face her son, her heart swelling at the sight of his beautiful amber brown skin and the loose wheat-brown curls trimmed neatly about his head. With his father’s eyes, her fuller lips and a straighter nose, Eve knew he and his younger sister Jane would be beautiful once grown up. It made it easier to take his sometimes-petulant demands with forgiving warmth. “Yes, my sweet Joshie?”

“I’m thirsty!” he stomped.

Fussy for a drink, just like his father, she thought, but instead said, “Indeed,” as she smiled and Joshua’s periwinkle polo shirt. “You are quite the troubled little tomato, aren’t you?”

Joshua squawked out with another defiant stomp. “Not a tomato!”

“No, no, of course not, dearest.” Eve quickly corrected, “You are a very smart, and very thirsty young man. Come let me get your—”

“Here you are.”

That voice again. Airborne. Effortless.

Eve looked up again and found the sun had become a woman. For a moment, its light turned the edges of her tousled black curls to a translucent halo. How long she been at her side, gently, quietly, with exactly what Eve needed in her outstretched hand? That hand…

Agnes had clipped her nails again. Eve was glad to see the hangnail had healed, as had the pokes from her darning needle across her left index finger. The shadow beneath the slightly large cuff of Agnes’s peach cotton shirt promised the cool of her distant air-conditioning, and it was just wide enough for her to slip her fingers beneath it, perhaps up to the second knuckle. That would be enough. That was… always enough. But with the sun beating down in steady, weighty thuds alongside her heartbeat, Eve considered more.

If even if just her fingertips could catch a break, perhaps that would be enough… for now. Yes, then all else would slip away. And she could breathe.

Eve’s eyes adjusted to the eclipse Agnes cast against the saturated perfect blue sky. The shadow of her body was respite enough. She smiled a whisper of a smile, and Agnes met hers with the same.

“MOMMY!”

Eve took the bottle, beaming so wide as she implored her dear most demanding son and pressed it into his small hands. “There you go, love. Now say thank you to Miss Agnes like a good young man, ok Joshua?”

Joshua snatched and sucked on his bottle, mumbled something into its spout before bouncing back through the legs of parents to join the ginger boy on the drive and scream after a whizzing RC car.

“Thirsty?” Agnes asked, sliding her blushing fingertips across Eve’s silky wrist, leisurely gliding up the tender inside of her forearm until they pressed around Eve’s elbow to help her to her feet. But that purposeful brushing across the smooth planes of her warm brown skin, searching for the velvety hair that Paul had encouraged Eve to remove…

Eve leaned into the steadiness of Agnes’ palm as she stood, her own hand finding Agnes hip without looking. And without looking, at each other or anyone else, Eve exhaled, Agnes inhaled, Agnes exhaled, Eve inhaled. Eve’s thumb brushed Agnes’ side just above the waistband of her red culottes, and Agnes’ forefinger traced a tickling circle around Eve’s elbow.

“I am,” Eve finally answered, shifting her weight to her right leg so the top of her hip touched the bottom of Agnes’s hand just a little. “But Paul will—”

She shook her head, quickly patted her straightened hair back into place, checked her white nail polish, licked her lips glossy again, felt Agnes’ lidded gazing as she did it all. “I have to keep an eye on Joshua, you know. He’s… taking after his father. He’s needy, boisterous… a-agitated.”

“Oh, that’s unfortunate.”

Eve felt the world tilt and pressed her other hand to her temple, but Agnes, as ever, was there, steady at her side. “It’s not you, Evie.”

Eve’s brown eyes met Agnes’s blue with a tenderness like the low tide caressing the shore. “I… I know,” Eve whispered. “But sometimes… I wonder if…”

“If?” Agnes’ voice lowered.

Children bleated somewhere in the cul-de-sac’s centre to her left, a couple of dogs barked as they dashed between the street and the lawn, the howling laughter of men rose with the barbecue’s smoke on the drive, billowing upwards, smudging the bowl of sky…

Eve’s bones trembles as her eyes snapped open, focusing on the woman before her. Agnes, with the beauty mark below the left corner of her mouth, nails trimmed to make planting flower bulbs easier, smelling of sweet tea or bourbon or fresh soil. Eve couldn’t stop her body from fully turning to face Agnes, nor her hands from absentmindedly brushing her shirt’s wide collar smooth, her fingertips the peach fuzz on Agnes’s pale neck.

“I wonder if…” Eve breathed.

Agnes’ rosy sleek lips parted. “If we could…”

Eve’s breath caught in her throat.

Agnes had an oasis in her eyes.

“I am… so thirsty, Agnes.”

One more finger-width caress against her skin above her elbow, and Agnes flashed that crooked smile on summer-heated lips, now so close that Eve could smell the bourbon on her tongue as she asked, “Your usual poison?”

Eve’s lips slid into a wide, slow smile, one that Paul would never see, as her fingers curled around Agnes’s collar, just a little. “Yes… yes, the u—”

“EEEEEEvelyn~ I have finally found you!” Rachel Docherty cooed high and whiny as she parted the sea of lean and tanned bodies in her approach, the magenta skirt of her tea dress swaying over her fourth pregnancy. She looked like a bell.

“Rachel!” Suddenly at arm’s length away from Agnes, the humid air so quickly frigid that Eve got goosebumps, she beamed. “Well, aren’t you the picture of prosperity.”

Rachel gave a proud smile, sweeping her long auburn locks off her shoulder. “Oh, it’s hardly me, dear. It’s Colin! I really should get a leash for that man, he is a bull! I can just lay there, all pretty, and he goes on for hours!”

Eve laughed with Rachel, who’s own echoed a dying seagull.

“Well, I just wanted to ask a favour of you.” Rachel began after heaving a deep breath.

Eve kept on her smile. “Oh? Well, what can I help with?”

“Do you have any more of those fruit compote bowls?” Rachel asked brightly, her fingers softly fanning out over her pregnant belly again.

Eve blinked, the sun’s sharp claws sinking into her back like hot knives again as she repeated, “…Compote bowls—”

“Yes! Your divine sticky sweet dishes of macerated fruit! Me and my Colin just love ‘em. All that sweet goodness crushed and oozing together…” Rachel squeezed her eyes shut and licked her lips in infantile keenness. Behind her, Eve watched Maryanne’s black haired and green-eyed daughter do the same as her ice pop dripped onto her cotton dress.

“And with the kids all home for the summer, whenever I get around to makin’ my classic cheesecake, oh I tell ya, all five of us could go through one o’ them every day!” Rachel squawked out her laughter again. “But soon, once this little man comes out, we’ll get through them even faster.”

“Well I… I am flattered. Truly, Rachel.” Eve attempted to glow, clasping her hands so tightly together. “And you’re having a… another boy…”

“Oh isn’t it a miracle?” Rachel glowed as expected, cheeks as rosy pink as her lip gloss, still two shades too bright despite her being as pale as a snowdrop. “Colin was so happy, he swore he’d give me another! So, you better get cooking, Eve!”

“Sure—Yes, of course.” Eve, again, smiled. She smiled so well. And right on time too.

“Darling!” Paul.

Eve’s eyes snapped past Rachel but the sun shot into her eyes as the hood of the barbecue swung up. She almost flinched but pushed it down, blindly beaming as she replied, “Yes, Paul?”

“It-It’s Jane! Would you mind—” his voice strained to rise above the hissing and cracking of beef and pork over the grill, the fog of metallic smoke fogging the Tupperware dome of sky above her.

Eve knew that tone. It squeezed out every time his tie was too tight, or his eggs were slightly browned at the edges, or if she was tired.

“I’ll be right there!” Eve chirped before turning back to Rachel and nodding, “Yes, fruit compote for you, Rachel. I will surely get those to you, I just—”

“Oh, I know dear,” Rachel winked. “Duty calls.”

A scalding panic yanked on Eve’s nerves, and simultaneously stretched a smile into her cheeks, “Indeed. Excuse me—”

Eve cleared her throat and again wove her way through the chattering, day-drinking mothers populating her lawn, their heels and tennis shoes trampling the violets Agnes had planted for her last birthday. They would’ve been due this weekend, but with all this mindless traffic, perhaps seeds were safer crushed in the soil.

Eve stepped from her crushed garden to the paved driveway, chancing a glance over her shoulder as Joshua and the ginger boy trundled past her pegs. Heads of blonde and brown and black hair sprayed into place swayed about, all ducking and nodding and thrown back as they laughed or drank. When did she lose Agnes amongst this storm?

“Darling!”

“Je—Oh goodness, Paul!” Eve jumped as Paul suddenly popped into existence again. Her heart shook her ribs like someone wrongfully imprisoned. She clutched her chest, steadying herself, panting a laugh. “Where did you come from?”

“Well… the barbecue’s right here. Didn’t you see me?” Paul questioned; his hands suctioned to her waist.

“N-no I did, I…” her heart finally settled back into its cell, and she smiled. “I did. Joshua was quite… I was making sure he got his bottle. With the heat today, I had to make sure.”

“Mm.” Paul hummed as she gazed down at her. “Well, you know I’m always around when you need me.”

“I know. You’re my rock.” Eve smirked, clearing her throat and glancing about, not for Agnes. No, of course not. “Oh, where is Jane?”

“Jane’s fine, darling.” Paul exhaled, both hands now on her slight swell of hips, holding on. “She’s playing with the Peterson’s girls in the back.”

“The Peterson’s… and their baby? But she’s so small. Doreen might—”

“I told you she’s fine, darling. Trust me?” Paul muttered softly, as his iron fingers extended.

His steel forearms swiftly cuffed her to his hip while he reached across the table before them to snatch a greasy grilled prawn from Harry’s plate. Paul chewed open mouthed and Eve watched flecks of half crushed meat bounce out through his pristine teeth as he and Harry jeered at each other.

But Paul had put on too much cologne again, and between that and acrid smoke from the dying barbecue and the lethal piercing heat shooting down from the unclouded sky, everything stabbed at the back of her throat.

Eve turned her head towards the house at her right in attempt to find unpolluted air, staring right through to her back garden through the open front door, but the corner of her eye caught an imperfection in Paul’s pristine perfection just as she sought relief. His shirt, which was actually more of a powder blue than Joshua’s whispering warm periwinkle, was crumpled above his belt buckle where he’d shoved it in too hard.

Eve huffed and brushed her fingers against the creases.

Paul’s core tightened as his illuminated eyes cast his weighty gaze over her like a spotlight, and through she immediately yanked her hands away, his grip on her immediately fastened.

“My, my, so handsy… are you eager, my darling?” Paul cooed; his pink gums revealed as he bore his signature grin.

Eve’s stomach dropped, and her eyes flashed over her shoulder again, this time for Agnes, and then back when bobbing heads again blocked her sun out like storm clouds. “Eager?”

“I mean, Jane is… what, nearly three now?” Paul dreamily lifted his eyes to the warm light above them, a swooning smile spreading into his firm jaw.

Paul licked his lips.

Paul’s eyes turned to gold in the sun.

Paul looked through her and she saw him see another child. Another son. Another time.

“Apologies to interrupt the happy couple…” That voice, the hushing sea, the ocean meeting the shore. “but, may I borrow your wife, Paul?” Agnes asked brightly, sweet as wild cherries. “The kids are restless for the cake and a good pair of baking hands would be handy to get it cut.”

“Of course.” Paul glowed, taking on Eve’s compliment, absorbing it until his chest swelled. Finally, he let go of Eve’s waist. “Please, put her hands to good use.”

“Oh, I will.” Agnes smiled, then touched Eve’s arm, just above her elbow before striding into the house.

Eve only realised she had followed Agnes until the waterfall of her air conditioning stripped the film of polished summer humidity away from her eyes. She gasped as if coming up from the ocean’s floor, and Agnes was there, catching her as she stumbled out of her white kitten heels.

“Breathe, Evie. Breathe.” Agnes whispered as she guided Eve around the corner and into the kitchen, out of sight from the front door.

Silence sang a serenade as Eve leaned against the marble top kitchen island, panting behind her trembling fingertips.

Agnes’ hands found her and pulled her in, and the embrace opened the cage around Eve’s heart. It beat wild, pounded until it heard and matched the once distant rhythm of Agnes’ own. Eve exhaled until she melted, her hands holding on so tightly.

“I’ve got you.” Agnes said. “I’ve got—”

“Darling?”

Eve flinched, stiffened, eyes spinning towards the kitchen’s open archway entrance.

“Darling…” Agnes whispered again. And Eve met her eyes, brown to blue. “Are you still thirsty?”

“Yes…I’m parch—” Eve started, but her breath was snatched as the lip of a dripping glass of ice water touched her collarbone. “C-Cold!”

“Isn’t it?” Agnes purred, as she began to move it across Eve’s skin.

Her hands gripped Agnes’ waist as she gasped shallow breaths through the slow sliding drawl of the glass up her soft brown neck, her eyes fluttering closed as Agnes drew the cold across her cheek, over her plush bottom lip and stopped there. Eve shivered as the cold bit down, and she leaned into it.

“Drink, darling.” Agnes exhaled.

And Eve inhaled, as she did.