His family is a mess and he wanted to fix it. Was the way he did it unconventional? Yes. But it also brought us together in a new way. Sometimes I could see right through him, and I never saw an evil bone in his body, and I just have to trust that. I just have to trust him.
As soon as I started crying when I went back to them at the burial, Wren called her dad and booked us a flight to Vegas so we could spend a week away escaping. Since Wren’s dad is a hotelier, he would take me and Wren on trips to his new hotels across the country where we’d spend the whole time at spas and feeling older than we actually were. As soon as Kennedy joined the group, she came along too and then we started to get into cheesy rom-coms, eating room service and staying up past our bedtime, talking about everything and nothing.
That’s why it feels so natural to be sitting in a California king sized bed, all in our robes, our hair tied into a towel,The Proposalplaying on the flatscreen while we eat a pizza. We’ve been going in circles for the last hour and I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere with my current situation.
“I mean, it’s not like you guys made out or anything. That would be alotworse. The physical stuff is always harder,” Kennedy says through a mouthful, wiping the grease away with her palm.
“Yeah, that would be insane,” I say, trying to laugh a little. Wren studies me curiously, but I drop my gaze from her, not letting her figure it out. I take another bite of the pizza. “But.” I add, before swallowing. “I can see where he’s coming from and why he did what he did, but I also know that he would never want to intentionally hurt me. He’s proved that to me more than once.”
I think back to the number of times he’s helped me without asking. How he doesn’t complain. How he does things willingly.Just because.He’s never asked anything of me. He doesn’t invalidate my feelings when I feel like doing it. He encourages me and makes me feel capable even when sometimes I don’t.
“You like him, don’t you?” Ken says, easily as if she’s got me all figured out. Maybe she has. When I don’t respond as I feel my face crowd with heat, she starts giggling. “Oh my god. Youliiikkkeee hiiimm.”
I push her playfully in the shoulder and she breaks our little circle by toppling over onto the bed. She’s been rooting for us to sort out our frenemy relationship and now she’s getting what she wanted. She’s still laughing like an evil genius as she leans up on her elbows.
“So what?” I try to say it casually, but it’s hard to do when it feels like my whole body is on fire. Every time I think about him, everything he’s done for me, everything he’s said to me, it’s impossible to feel cool, calm, and collected. I feel the opposite. I most certainly have the hots for Evan Branson.
What is life?
“So what?!” Wren repeats, basically shrieking. She holds my stare. “I’m not saying to over analyse it. But babe... You always tell us not to invalidate our feelings, but you’re about to do that, so don’t.”
I sigh, knowing she’s right. When she tried to deny her feelings for Miles, I told her not to. I didn’t tell her to confess her love for him, but to let herself feel how she’s feeling. Maybe I need to do that too. But God, that’s terrifying. Being attracted to someone is one thing. But caring about them, wanting to see them happy, wanting them all the time… That's a new one for me and weirdly exactly how I feel about Evan.
“Okay,” I say, sighing and they both smile wide, grinning ear-to-ear so I continue. “He’s kind to me, he listens, he brings me food, he’s not bad looking, he-”
“How long is this list?” Kennedy asks, cutting me off as she narrows her eyes at me, smirking. I twist my lips, pulling them into my mouth as I shake my head.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“There’s your answer,” she says with finality, her elbows buckling as she lies back down, her towel coming undone, unleashing her wild hair.
Wren twists the belt loop of her robe between her fingers as she says quietly, “What he did was messed up, Scar. We know that. I’m trying to be optimistic here and isn’t it kind of a blessing in disguise? If he never approached you for the project, you wouldn’t have come up with such a cool idea. The app is amazing so far and it could honestly make you famous if you two continued it. You wouldn’t have been able to find out what happened to your dad, and you wouldn’t have broken that barrier that was keeping you two apart. You just needed a shove.”
She ends her explanation with a shrug, almost scared of what I’m going to say next. I tilt my head back, taking in a breath to mull over her idea.
“I don’t like the way he did it. Out of every way he could have made a move to be my friend, to let him in, he chose the one that hurt the most,” I reply.
Technically, nobody got hurt as bad as it could’ve been, but it still stings. His family has nothing on mine, so it’s not like we’ll go down for anything. Reporters are taking the situation with Gio into their own hands, but since he’s gone it's easy for them to dismiss him as a traitor. Weighing the pros and cons like I've been taught, only puts him more and more in a better position, making me want to give him a chance.
“You don’t have to like the process to enjoy the outcome. If you like him now, if you want him, in whatever way, lead with that. What happened is in the past. Believe me, I could have prevented mine and Miles’s break up if I just spoke to him. If I trusted him.”
I nod, remembering how hard her breakup with Miles was. Their communication wasn’t the greatest, but as they started to figure it out, they came back stronger than ever. Now they’re basically attached at the hip. Sometimes I think Miles doesn’t breathe when she’s not around him. They’re always holding hands, he’s always touching her waist, her hair, basically anything he can get his hands on when she’s next to him.
“Do you trust Evan?” Kennedy asks, leaning back up now.
“I did. I was learning to and then this happened,” I respond.
“He's telling you the truth now, though, isn’t he?” I nod. He has to be. He knows how badly this has affected me and I could see in his eyes, in his voice, that he wants me to trust him for real. But sometimes those things take time. “Is that not enough?”
“It can be,” I whisper. “I don't want to be in my head all the time. It’s fucking exhausting. I know that everything that happened in high school made that hard, but I don’t want to go back to that place. I know deep down that Evan’s a good person.”
Wren’s face lights up as if I’ve told her the greatest news ever. AnotherScarevansupporter as she likes to call us. She pokes me in the leg.
“He always has been. You’ve just been too stubborn to notice it.”
“I know,” I sigh, feeling ridiculous and hopeful at the same time.
“Okay,” Kennedy exclaims, standing up from the bed. “Pool time!”
