where did the party go;

***

He liked her.

He really said he liked her.

Part of her was wholly apprehensive to the very sudden admission, because, yes, he was a jock. He was on the top tier of the school; handsome, popular, and widely adored by the student populus. Why would he honestly like some like her? Dark, brooding, and outcast by almost everyone? It was just a joke – a prank. It had to be. There was no way this was real, no matter how much she might have ( guiltily ) wanted it to be.

… But there was another, stronger part of her that listened closely to what he was saying; the sincerity; the very real upset and fear woven throughout his voice. There were serious feelings there, and it was almost too abundantly clear. He was bearing a part of himself to her that he didn’t normally share, and what’s more, it was about her. How he wanted to be her friend, if nothing else. How he wanted her to not hate him, despite everything.

And it was why, for that very reason, that not so rational side of her, stupid and cliche as it was, won out, and without letting herself panic or overthink, Evelyn quickly reached up, cupped Noah’s face in her hands, and pulled him down to press her lips against his behind the safely of the looming bookcase beside them.

***

There were plenty of things that Noah expected to happen to him in that moment there with Evelyn. Not one of those things expected was for her to actually kiss him. In fact, at first, he thought maybe he was imagining something. This couldn’t be a dream. It was too real to be a dream and if it was all just a dream, that would mean he had started dreaming about going to tutoring and the library. That just wouldn’t do at all. Noah wanted to pinch himself, but there was also a part of him that worried about it really being a dream. If it was, and he woke himself up, it would all be over, never to be seen again. That wasn’t something he could risk.

So, instead, he simply leaned into it, enjoying the real feeling to it for as long as he could before finally having to pull away to catch his breath. His cheeks were slightly flushed as he stared at her, tempted to look around and see if anyone had actually caught them kissing back behind the shelves. Yet, he didn’t, since Noah was pretty sure she would take his looking around as some sort of sign to make sure that no one had actually seen him kissing her in the library.

“I…I don’t get it…”

•••

It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room at those 5 words. Because, no. That couldn’t be real. He couldn’t have meant that. There had to be some kind of mistake, right? There was just no way he was serious. But he kept going – kept venting – and Evelyn wasn’t at all sure what to do. Instead, she just stood stock still, her eyes doe-like and wide in shock and disbelief. That is, until the guilt kicked in.

Evelyn knew, when it came to the popular crowd, she was less than kind. But could you blame her? They’d spent so many years of her life tormenting her. And hell, that’s how she and Noah’s relationship had started off as. They’d snarked, taken jabs without any qualms. But now … now things were different, clearly. And it was enough to make her feel a little ill. “It wasn’t an issue,” she mumbled at last, her voice soft and fragile as she struggled to conjure the words she needed to say. “Y-you’re not an issue, it’s just … different. Things h-have gotten different, a-and y-you–.” Her voice broke off; the ‘you’re different’ resting on her tongue. God, she’d even started stuttering in her nervousness. That’s when you knew it was bad. 

But he’d said … 

“Do you… . you’re s-serious? You like me . . ?”

***

“Yeah and just…try not to start throwing up on my shoe because of it or something. I get that it’s the worst thing you could imagine happening to you and I’m the worst guy to be in this situation with.” He knew things were different. He was part of the reason they were different in the first place. It had been vain and stupid to think that he could just keep things as they were between him and Evelyn, knowing how he felt about her. “I know it’s different. I’ve known it’s different for a bit now and I’ve been trying to make that better. I thought, maybe, if we could hang out and be friends that maybe you would stop disliking me so much. Obviously that didn’t work and it’s never going to work because you hate guys like me. I get it. We suck.”

Noah groaned softly then. This was far more emotional labor than he had planned to do the entire week and yet here it had all been spent in one moment of one day. It wasn’t even as if he could chalk the entire conversation up to just running into Evelyn somewhere. No, he had seen her in the library and actually went to hunt her down for a conversation. Noah clearly had no one to blame for this entire conversation than himself. “I’ll stop trying to make this a thing. I’ll stop pushing invitations on you or trying to make you be friends with me, Evelyn. Promise.”

***

“Why?!” she asked again, though, truthfully, it sounded far more like a demand. “Why are you just saying ‘hi’ to me? Didn’t you tell me that you didn’t want me around? That you wanted a new tutor? Even when I told you that I didn’t hate you? When I told you I’d keep helping you because I don’t want to see you fail!” He wasn’t looking at her anymore and he was moving back as though she was diseased, and wasn’t that all the evidence she needed? What in the world had she been thinking? How could she have gone and let herself develop feelings for Noah Lawson? Was she really that stupid?  Had she not learned her lessons from countless years of bullying?

Evelyn felt tears prick at her eyes but she fought to keep them down the best she could. “You’re the one who told me to leave, Noah. I ‘m not … this isn’t my fault,” she countered, trying to find some kind of solid ground for her to grab hold of.

***

“Because I like you, okay! I like you and you say that you don’t hate me, but I’m not entirely sure I believe that! You’re literally always mad at me for everything that I do. I breathe and you’re mad at me! I got a new tutor because I was tired of feeling…this way around you and knowing that you would rather be anywhere else than in the same room as me. Do you know how shitty that feels? Of course you do. I know you do. Well that’s how you make me feel when I’m trying to learn so that I can keep playing the sport I love. And, yeah, I figured if this was going to be such an issue then I would just get someone else to tutor me so that you didn’t have to deal with all of this anymore.”

Noah groaned softly as he looked down, wanting to look anywhere but in her direction at the moment. It hadn’t at all been his intention to just blurt that all out, but here he was anyways. There was no taking it back now, not that Noah was sure he would even want to. Somehow, having it out in the open felt almost freeing in a way, like a weight had been lifted off of him with that confession. “I’m just trying to make things better for you, but no matter what I do, I’m always fucking up.”

***

Why … ?” Her tone was incredulous and bitingly cold in response; defenses rising as she realized they were alone. What in the world did that mean, anyway? Was this just him trying to mess with her more? Hurt her? He’d never gone out of his way to say ‘hi’ or talk to her so freely before. Even when they were tutoring together. This was like when he’d gone and invited her to that party weeks ago, unprompted. It just didn’t make any sense. What was he doing? There had to be more. There just had to be.  

“You can stop now,” she finally ground out as she gripped hard at the books she held like a shield in her arms. “I don’t know why you keep doing this. We already fought. You got what you wanted in the end. Is this just you doing this because I was mean to you? Should I expect trash to be tossed on my head in the next second, or what?”  

***

“I’m not – I was just saying hi. That’s it. I won’t bug you again if it bothers you that bad.” Noah looked down, clearly hurt by the interaction before taking a step back. He had known since the beginning that this whole thing with Evelyn was nothing more than a thought in his head. There was no way that she would ever like someone like him. There was no way that she would even trust being around someone like him, not with how much she hated guys like him. He had known that since the very beginning, yet here he was, still desperately trying as if that was going to change anything.

“I’m not going to dump trash on you, Evelyn. Not all of us are like that.” Plenty were and he could get that, but that didn’t mean all of them were. Especially since he couldn’t remember a time where he had been outwardly mean to the girl to the point of trying to embarrass her in front of other people. That just had never been him or how he wanted to do things. “I’ll leave you alone then.”

***

Wait. What? What was he doing? Why was he here? With her? Did he follow her? No, there’s no way … right? Those were the frantic mess of questions filtering through her mind as she found herself suddenly face-to-face with the very subject of her thoughts and panic. Embarrassingly, Evelyn felt her cheeks go hot as she stared up – Jesus, why was he so tall – at the boy in front of her. “What are you doing?” she couldn’t help but blurt out. “You’re … you’re getting tutored, aren’t you?.” Oh whatever the hell he and that girl were doing. 

Oh god. Kill her now. What she wouldn’t give to have the floor swallow her. Why did she say that?! Out loud?!

“You looked … busy, I mean. Don’t keep Jessie waiting.”

***

“Uh…yeah. We finished, actually. We’re done for the day and I just…I saw you come over here so I figured that I would say hey or something.” Maybe this had been a bad idea. He shouldn’t have just followed here back here without any actual plan on what to say. Now it just looked like he followed her back here to make things a thousand times weirder than they already were. More importantly, Evelyn was in the library, so surely, she was there to actually get some work done, yet here he was, distracting her and probably annoying her, as he always seemed to do.

“Right…yeah, I’ll let you get back to what you were doing then. Just figured that I would say hey when I saw you.” There was no reason for him to do that. It wasn’t as if they were friends and they hadn’t exactly been frequent with the greetings around campus before. Noah had no reason to think that he needed to tell her hey before leaving just to not seem rude. Rather, he had wanted to approach her. Noah just wanted to see her, to hear her voice, plain and simple.

To be frank, one of the last things Evelyn expected to see when she walked into the university’s library that evening was Noah Lawson. The very same Noah Lawson who actually appeared to be with another tutor ( as he’d coldly informed her over their last and seemingly final text exchange ), whom, quite clearly, he’d abandoned all actual pretense of studying with to instead flirt shamelessly towards instead if the closeness and absurd, shared giggling between them was anything to go by. Okay, so maybe that part was more expected. And yet, it filled her with an unbridled, festering anger all the same to see. What the actual fuck?

Hadn’t he told her, if he failed his classes, he’d be kicked off his precious football team? So what the hell was this? Their books weren’t even open, for goodness sake. For one, wild moment, the goth contemplated going over there and giving the asshole ( and her so-called fellow tutor ) a piece of her mind, but stopped at the last second. What good would that do, really? Noah obviously didn’t care – about her or about his grades. He acted like he had, but it really was all a front in the end, wasn’t it? God, and she’d fallen for it. She’d actually come to … like him. What in the hell happened to her?

Clenching her books tight to her chest, Evelyn bit hard at her bottom lip as she quickly stormed off towards a bookshelf near the back for the building, unable to look at the scene in front of her anymore and wanting to get as far away from it ( and him ) as she possibly could.

***

Being with another tutor wasn’t as easy as it had been with Evelyn, but he had been adjusting. Noah had been putting in the extra work and he had been trying his best to really understand what she was telling him so that he wouldn’t be such a burden on her to have to catch up. All of it was easier said than done, but the session had finally seemed to come to a close. Noah didn’t feel as clueless as he had when he first got there for the session and honestly, things were starting to look up. It wasn’t like his sessions with Evelyn, and he had come to accept that they would never be like those sessions, but this could actually work.

As if his thoughts of her had summoned her there, he glanced back for just a moment to see a familiar figure heading back to disappear among the bookshelves. It was easy to excuse himself, considering they were done for the day and all, and that is exactly what Noah did. With a smile, he excused himself from the table, gathering up his things and shoving them into his backpack as he made his way back between the bookshelves.

There was a chance it wasn’t even her, and yet here he was, combing through shelves of books as if finding her between them would make things any better. What was he even going to say to her when he did find her? Their prior conversations hadn’t exactly ended on the best note, so why did he think this would go any better? Noah was soon given the opportunity to figure out exactly what he would say to Evelyn when he faced her, turning the corner and coming face to face with the girl.

“Evelyn……hey.”

FAWN: I love you, dipshit.

FAWN: I'd never hurt you. You know that, right?

FAWN: But . . . seriously. Just talk to her. If you can.

[...]

FAWN: Yeah. Whatever you need.

[...]

FAWN: Wow.

FAWN: I know I said this before, but . . .

FAWN: You really like her, huh?

FAWN: Still /what?!/

FAWN: He told me it was weird when they tried a year ago. So, yes, I'm sure.

FAWN: They didn't date, you Jelly Belly.

FAWN: Noah. Would I ever lie to you?

FAWN: He's like, besties with her. So, yes!

FAWN: He literally just told me that Evelyn is into you!!!