thinking about evangeline and nicknames
growing up her family called her “eva” for short. when she was little she loved it, but almost everyone who called her that back then is dead, and anyone who might call her that now would never know them, and it felt like allowing anyone new to use it would be wronging them. so she doesn’t let anyone call her that, with the exception of addie
addie herself avoids using it, but every once in a while when shes feeling especially vulnerable and young and is looking to her big sister for comfort, eva will just slip out
when evangeline finally gets to enter the normal world and make friends who know nothing of the eighth day, she starts telling the people at her part time job, or her college classmates, or neighbours on the same apartment building floor to call her “angie” because she heard it once in a tv show (something she is thrilled she can finally watch) and is so excited to find those little connections to this new world she’s living
jax starts calling her just “E” at some point. she doesn’t even really think about it because jax is always coming up with nicknames for everyone in his life and has already called her plenty of things unrelated to her name. she only notices it when, thanks to jax using it publically, it starts to catch on a little with her friends and family
except for riley, who calls her by her full name exclusively. she doesn’t really know if it’s a choice of his or subconscious but it’s what he does
until a random quiet morning, jax making a mess of the kitchen after he proclaimed he’d make the three of them lunch, riley sitting at the dining table doing his college homework, evangeline working her way through the checklist of movies jax made for her to catch up on, when riley asks evangeline if she could run to their room and grab her (newly bought) laptop for him. only when he asks her he calls her “evie”
and it makes evangeline freeze. it isn’t until riley says her name a few more times, her full name this time, that she is able to move again
and while she passes the kitchen and sees four separate bowls full of mystery liquid and jax covered in a random white powder (what could that kid possibly be making), while she walked through the room she shared with riley and sat in the spot she slept every night laying next to him, while she held in her hands a piece of technology she didn’t think she could ever use that was bought with money she earned from a job she never thought she would work, evangeline thought about what riley had called her
it was so close to the name she’d been given by her family, a name she’d deemed off limits for so many years. but she thought in that moment about where she was, and who she was with. riley was her family, jax was her family. they’re different than what she had before but they’re still hers. they would never be what she had before with those who called her eva but she was ok with it. she was ok with evie. she expected it to hurt more, to feel like she was replacing her old life with the next best thing, but it didn’t. she wasn’t replacing anything, she was just making room for more
when she finally returned with the laptop riley joked that he thought she had died on her way there with how long she took. and in response she just smiled and told him she liked that he called her evie. she thought it was cute
so after that he kept using it, which quickly caught on with jax too because as much as both boys will deny it, jax thinks riley is one of the best people to walk the earth and parrots basically everything he says. and everytime evangeline hears her boys call her it, she wouldnt be able to hold back her joy even if she wanted to, which she didn’t
