The Singles (72 page)

“Ummm, elaborate, please?”

“I feel like a traitor for wanting him. Not necessarily to
her
but to my parents. You saw what happened when my mom met him two years ago. I can’t even imagine taking him home and introducing him. She would flip her shit.”

In the past Kendra’s been the voice of reason, which is probably why it took us so many years to become friends. When she quietly says, “You’ve got to live for yourself, Evie,” she surprises me. She mumbles something else, but my phone beeps loudly, interrupting her.

I look down and see that it’s my dad.

Déjà-freaking-vu.

I’ve been trying to do better with answering his calls, so I tell Kendra I’ll call her later to which she gladly agrees since I woke her up so early.

The moment I swap calls, Dad gets right to the point. “Did you get the money your mom put in your account on Friday.” My parents have had the same archaic bank for years—no online banking and no problem a representative is able to fix over the phone—so I have to rely on ATMs to keep up with my balance.

“Hello to you too, and I’m not sure.” I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, sliding my feet into a pair of flip-flops. “I haven’t used my card in a few days, but I’ll walk over to the student union ATM in a little bit just to check.”

He laughs in surprise. “Who is this and what have you done with my Evelyn? Surely this creature can’t be my child. What happened to the girl who maxed her card the second it was loaded?”

I remember a time last year when he asked me similar questions in anger, but now his voice is completely relaxed. This is the first time he’s talked to me like this in a long time, but I guess it’s because I’m not being hostile with him today about cheating on Mom.

“I’ve been busy with school work,” I say.

“Look, Evelyn, the reason I called you is this: Do you plan on coming home for fall break? Your mom and I are trying to make sure we plan accordingly.”

“Haven’t decided yet, why?”

“It’s right around the anniversary of Lily’s death.” At his own words, he sucks in a breath. “God, it feels strange calling it that.” To my ears, it sounded even stranger because anniversaries seem like something that should be celebrated and not a cause for pain—but I let him continue, “I think it’s better for your mom, better for myself, if we get away. Take our minds off everything.”

I start to tell him that no matter how much they do to try to completely distract themselves, it’s never enough. I’ve tried and failed, rinsed and repeated. Instead, I promise to let him know my plans before Oktoberfest begins next weekend.

As he ends the call, Dad tells me quietly, “I’m proud of you this year, Evelyn. Now, I haven’t seen your grades yet, but it’s nice not to have gotten a call from the cops or your RA at three in the morning because you’ve been arrested or gotten in some other trouble.”

It feels like a bit of a jab, but I suppress my usual sharp retort. “Sadly, I’m the boring kid who’s so lame my resident advisor doesn’t even know my name,” I admit, to which Dad tells me to keep up the good work.

Tossing my phone on my bed, I stand up and start to gather my shower supplies to head for the bathroom. Since the door is open and the shower’s not running, I’m positive I’m alone. I hang my towel and clean underwear on the towel rack and start to get undressed.

My shirt is off and I’m pulling my pants down when I see a set of male feet step out of the shower and onto the cushy red bathmat. Shrieking, I spin around, but not before realizing that it’s blond-haired, Hollister-esque Daniel. He gets a flash of my bare ass for just a second before I jerk my pants back up. My tank top is a few feet away from me on the floor, so I grab my towel off the rack in front of me.

I face him, my skin on fire as I take in how his mouth his hanging wide open. “What the hell are you doing in my bathroom?” I grind out, keeping the towel wrapped tightly around my chest. When he doesn’t immediately answer, I start to reach for my phone but then his eyes slip over my shoulder.

“Hannah said I could use the shower. Damn, Evie, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

As soon as he says Hannah’s name my nostrils flare. “Really?” Giving him a cold stare, I jerk my thumb to the bathroom exit, walking in a slow circle as he moves toward it. “Get out of here.”

“Ahh, hell, I—”

“Get the fuck out!”

Since none of the suite bathrooms in Campbell dorm have doors that lock, I shower quickly, peeking around the corner of the stall every time I hear the slightest noise. As I creep back to my room fifteen minutes later, I hear the sound of a comedy movie playing loudly from inside Hannah and Lara’s room, and I hope Daniel’s not in there. In spite of the Elliot fiasco, I know my roommate still carries a torch for him. I also know that if Hannah let Daniel spend the night, it has a lot to do with Corinne. I’m around my room way too much not to notice that neither of my suitemates have ever had a guy spend the night until now.

Fucking retaliation.

I tiptoe into my room and close the door as quietly as possible, but when I turn around, I jump when I see that Corinne’s sitting up in her bed sleepily looking at her laptop screen.

She giggles at my reaction and pushes her curls away from her face. “Morning.”

“Good morning.” Going through my drawers, I grab a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. “Did you have a good time last night?”

“Ehh, it was okay. I went to some frat party—and I can’t for the life of me remember their name—with Ella.” She gives me a curious look as I step into my jeans. “Why were you yelling a few minutes ago?”

I stare down at my pants, focusing way too much attention on buttoning them. “There was a douchebag in our bathroom.”

As I get finish dressing, I can feel Corinne’s bright green gaze regarding me inquisitively. When I get a bottle of water out the mini fridge, she leans over the side of her bed and grabs my wrist. Swallowing hard, I pull away.

“Evie? There’s something you’re not telling me.” I don’t meet her gaze, so a moment later, she tentatively asks, “It was Daniel, wasn’t it? The douchebag in the bathroom. He spent the night with Hannah.”

My lips curve downward into a frown. “I’m sorry, Corinne.”

She simply lifts her shoulders, but the fact she feels wounded is clear as day on her soft features. “It’s not like we were ever dating. Just friends, and if I look at it that way, I guess I kind of deserve it after what I did with Elliot.” I open my mouth to tell her exactly what I think about her believing she deserves to be hurt, but she cuts me off, adding, “Plus they’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, so it was bound to happen.”

“You deserve better.”

“Right.” Rolling out of her bed, she stretches her short arms over her head and yawns. “Alright, I better get dressed. I’m supposed to be meeting a few people from Communication Theory in the library to work on a group project”—she glances over at the alarm clock sitting on the edge of her desk closest to her bed—“fifteen minutes ago.”

Five minutes later, I watch in concern as she rushes out our door with her energy drink in hand. Shaking my head in anger, I finish getting dressed to go to brunch with Mac and Nathan. On the way out, a sound in the storage closet right outside the bathroom door stops me. I turn to see Hannah on her hands and knees looking through the bottles of cleaner and rolls of paper towels.

“We’re out of TP,” she tells me. When I keep walking past her, she clears her throat. “You don’t have anything to say?”

I look over my shoulder just in time to watch a satisfied grin stretch slowly across her face. I give her a cool smile, thinking how the Evie from last year would’ve probably knocked her ass in the closet and propped a door against it. “No, nothing to say today.”

***

B
ecause Nathan backs out of eating with us to meet a deadline for an online linear algebra test, Mac suggests we go off campus and to one of the local malls. I’m thrilled when she offers to drive, and after we pick her Jetta up from the junior parking lot, she takes me to a little coffee shop downtown. It’s overcast out but warm—probably one of the last really warm days of the season—so we sit outside talking about music.

“Cameron handpicked songs for me in every language I failed in Diction,” Mac informs me, referring to her mid-term recital. At the skeptical look I give her, she nods slowly. She picks off a chunk of her blueberry muffin and pops it into her mouth. “You think I’m bullshitting you, but I’m not—“Das Veilchen” and a Russian piece I still can’t pronounce, and I’ve been trying to sing it since the start of the year. I swear everyone’s ears will be weeping blood. What does she have you doing?”

“I seriously doubt anyone’s ears will cry blood, but she gave me “Florian’s Song” and “Vissi d’arte”.”

“
Bitch
,” she hisses and then shakes her head and laughs. “Not you, but Cameron. Ugh ... that woman hates me. I think she wakes up in the morning and her hatred of me is the only thing that powers her through the day.” Polishing off the rest of her muffin, she raises her brows at me. “All right, quit nursing that scone. I need to go spend my entire paycheck to make myself feel better about failing mid-terms.”

Four hours later, after we’ve spent most of the afternoon at Short Pump Mall and I’ve scored a few new hats for my collection and a couple things to wear during Oktoberfest, Mac drops me off in front of my dorm.

“I’ve got to go pick up Eli from baseball conditioning.” She scrunches the tip of her nose like she can already smell his sweaty body in her front seat. “Text me later and maybe we can get together this week to rehearse. Lord knows I need every ounce of practice I can get.”

Promising her that I will, I return to my room. Corinne’s still out and there’s nothing but silence coming from Hannah and Lara’s room, so I assume and hope they’re gone too. Alone with nothing but my thoughts, I make an effort to take a nap to sleep away the dull headache forming between my eyes. When I wake up an hour later, covered in sweat after dreaming about Rhys Delane, I take the fact that my sheet music is the first thing my eyes land on as a sign.

Looking at the short text thread he and I exchanged nearly two weeks ago, I consider sending him a text. I could ask him to meet me or tell him that I’d like to talk tomorrow after practice, but the thought of him misinterpreting anything I might write makes me cringe. Finally, I suck it up and hit send. The response doesn’t come through immediately, like before, but finally I let out a breath of relief when my phone beeps.

6:18PM:
At Ippy’s.

I take those two words as an invitation and thirty minutes later, my heart is in my throat when I walk into the bar. I shove my hands into my back pockets to stop them from shaking. Although there are not nearly as many people as the last time I came here, the place is still busy for a Sunday night. I comb my gaze around in search of him when I see that the bartender on duty is a petite girl with a shock of orange and red hair— à la Hayley Williams.

Did he leave already? I start to text him but then another thought enters my mind, and I jab my tongue into my cheek. Was he just never here and sent me that message in an effort to tell me to screw off?

I glance around once more and I’m seconds from leaving when I hear his voice as he greets someone else. I follow the sound to the bar, where he’s on the receiving side with a couple of shot glasses—one empty and the other full—in front of him. Slowly, my disappointment begins to fade away.

“I won’t screw up. I won’t wreck things this time,” I lecture myself under my breath, walking toward him. I pull my hands out my back pockets and smooth them over my hair. God, I wish I had one of my hats right now. 

“You’re killing me,” he says. I slide onto the barstool. His eyes fall on mine, penetrating and unblinking, as he waits patiently for me to say something. When I don’t, he tosses back his drink and swallows hard. “So what angle are you going for tonight? Gonna tell me how different we are? Or are you—”

“Shut up, Rhys.” I move my face closer to his, a little wave of pleasure rippling through my veins at the flash of surprise on his face. I shouldn’t admit it, but I like catching him off-guard. The look is gone almost as quickly as it appeared, though. “Maybe I came to say sorry. Did you ever consider that?”

“This must be the part where you ask me to take you home?” His tone is teasing. It’s also just the slightest bit cruel. Same as his smile. “Tell me one thing, Evelyn. That whole spiel you gave me last week about being too different—you don’t for a second believe that, do you?”

The back of my mouth goes dry as I lean away to search his gaze. Maybe I’d believed what I’d said to him once, but that was before I began untangling him. Before he succeeded in getting to me. The truth is, Rhys and I are just the same—messy and fragile.

“No, I don’t,” I finally tell him. “So now that I’ve admitted that, I can leave you to drink alone or you can accept my company.”

He lifts his lips and cocks his head to one side, and all of a sudden, the only thing I can think about is digging my hands into his thick black hair. “What makes you think I’m drinking alone?”

I look around at the rest of the bar stools and then back at him. “Oh, I don’t know. Just a wild guess.”

“That would make you wildly fucking wrong. I had a parting shot with Jase before Daisy took him to the airport.”

I run my finger along the rim of one of his empty shot glasses. “Sad to see him go?”

“He’ll be back soon enough.” He signals the girl with the flaming hair and she immediately comes over giving him the smile he manages to elicit from most women. “One more fireball, Hazel, and something sweet and virginal for Evelyn.”

“Sure thing, Rhys.” She winks, but before she leaves, she stares from him to me and then back again. “She’s gonna drive you home?”

He turns to me, his dark eyebrow lifting questioningly, and I nod. As soon as Hazel scurries off, I lift my own brows. “How were you going to get home if I hadn’t shown up?”

“Hazel would’ve taken me.” I feel a stab of jealousy, wondering if he’s ever slept with the other bartender. Taking in my drawn expression, he laughs. “The whiplash is killing me, beautiful. For what it’s worth, you’re getting worked up over something that was well before your time.”