Alec

Alec’s hands shook as he took Eve’s box out of Terra’s hands, he thanked Terra and slowly went back inside the manor. He sat down on the window seat and opened the box with a creak. The box was filled with an abundance of paper and cloth. The papers had small oil paintings of locations that they had visited together, whether it be sunsets, old castles, friends’ houses, gardens, and places near the manor that they loved to visit.

Towards the bottom there were a few of Alec. In the stack was one that Alec paused at. He looked much more stern and cold than normal. His clothes were neater and darker. Alec frowned. 

“Is this.. Her ideal version of me?” He murmured to himself.

After he finished looking through the little keepsakes, treasures, and crafts, Alec put the box down. As he did so, a book caught his eye; it was the journal from before. Alec quickly picked it up, he’d forgotten about the diary and hadn’t yet learned who Ross was.

As he flipped through the book, Alec saw Eve sit down beside him, her clothes and face haggard and tired. He’d never seen her this way before, even when she was at her worst. She had always fought to put on a smile. Alec frowned, if his brain was making him see his dead girlfriend, then couldn’t it make her similar to her when she was alive?

“Kinda rude…” He muttered and Eve sharply looked at him, tears filling her eyes. Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear anything. Alec closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands. He decided that if he just didn’t look, his mind wouldn’t make her appear.

A few minutes later, he blinked his eyes open. Eve was gone. Alec breathed a slow sigh of relief, he slowly picked the book back up and began to read.

As it turns out, Ross was a close friend of Eve’s, he was a strong pillar of support for her for the past four years. Alec frowned, he still didn’t understand why it was that Eve never mentioned the man. The diary depicted countless memories that she had made with Ross, but never quite explained anything about the man.

Ross helped her with a lot of the things that Eve was too scared or anxious to do. Whether it be throwing out things that she had “collected”, killing gross bugs, helping her figure out how to write work emails, and even asking Alec out. He’d been there to give Eve support through it all.

It scared Alec in a way, but he also felt deeply indebted and grateful to the stranger. He began to wonder where Ross was now; did he know of Eveline’s death? Was he waiting for a call from her? From what Alec could tell, Eve was one of Ross’s few friends.

Alec got up and went to go find Eve’s phone; after he located and unlocked it, he scrolled through her contacts. There was no one named Ross.