LISTEN I KNOW HOW LATE THIS CHAPTER IS IVE BEEN PROCRASTINATING WAYYYY TO MUCH LATELY IM SORRY
"I'm giving you five minutes to explain."
Alana had let both of us inside, and before Evan could even ask what the hell was going on she aggressively pulled me into the Kitchen, leaving Evan and Zoe in the living room.
"Listen, I realize it was a bad idea."
"Oh really?" She shoots back sarcastically. I don't think I've actually seen Alana mad before, besides when she rants about something. I glance back towards the living room, where Zoe and Evan were sitting on the couch. Zoe was probably filling him in on what was going on, based on the somewhat horrified expression on Evan's face.
"Look," I whisper to her, "I don't care if you never want to see his face ever again, but-"
"I already made that announcement a year ago."
"I know, Alana." A moment passes before I speak again. "But just give him this one chance."
"Don't you remember what he did? All the lies? The fake emails?"
"That I helped write. But you're not mad at me for that- as far as I know."
"That's different."
"How." She gives me a long look.
"Cause... Well... It just is! What does it matter to you anyway? I thought you haven't talked to him since we posted the suicide note."
I actually don't know why it matters to me. It's like what I was thinking about on the way here, all of a sudden I actually started caring about things that I usually couldn't care less about. Post-July party me wouldn't go all this way to help someone.
"All that doesn't matter. What matters is that Evan wanted to apologize to you, to at least try to make up with you. Whether you decided to be friends with him or not after this is your decision. If you would just talk to him, then you might change your mind. That's what happened to me... kinda." She gives me another long look, I could tell she was thinking, which meant I was getting somewhere.
"Was Zoe in on this too?" She says suddenly.
"Well, yeah."
"So you, Zoe, and Evan just decided it would be a good idea to come over to my house and talk?"
"No. Evan had no idea this was happening either. And I thought of the idea and just told Zoe I was going to do it. She only agreed because she thought that you and Evan needed to talk, too."
"Oh, so you're just a dick."
"Basically, yes." She stands, staring at the ground, biting her nails for a bit. I look over at the living room again to see that Zoe and Evan were talking casually now. At least they already made up.
"Okay, okay," Alana says, making me face her again. "I'll be 'friendly' and not kick you guys out of my house like I originally intended," Thank fucking God, "But that's only because Zoe wants me to."
"Good," I sigh out, and she leads me out of the kitchen.
As soon as we step into the living room, Zoe gets off the couch and leads Alana off to the side, probably thinking she's going to have to convince Alana a little bit more. I casually sit on the couch where she was sitting, trying to pretend that this was a totally normal situation. Turning to face Evan, though, I find that he doesn't buy it at all. "Jared."
I quickly drop the act and turn my body completely towards him. "Okay, I already had this conversation. It was a bad idea. I'm a dick. I'm sorry. But, this way, you can talk to her." I say and motion towards the two girls.
"This is not how I intended to that," He replies, furrowing his eyebrows at me. Shit.
"I realize that," I say, looking around at his features. He doesn't even need to say anything to let me know that he was annoyed. "But I mean, you're already here, so you might as well."
Evan gave me an 'are you kidding me' look. "You know what? Okay," he sighed out. "But what about Alana."
"Oh, it's good now, kinda. She was going to kick us out, but I convinced her not to,"
"Oh, great," he said sarcastically.
"And she decided to let you talk to her! That's good, right? Plus, look, Zoe's probably getting farther than I did." We look over at the two girls talking in the corner. Alana seems a lot less frustrated now. Evan stares at the girls for a little bit longer, then sighs.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay, I'll try to talk to her. I mean, as you said, I'm already here, so, might as well."
"Great! Now the Evan and Alana friendship session can begin-"
"But Jared," he interrupts (rude) and his furrowed eyebrows come back. "If I get uncomfortable, or start getting anxious, or if everything doesn't go how you think it will, you have to take on your promise to take me home whenever I want to."
"Damn, your more demanding then I remember, " I say trying to lighten the mood just a little bit so there wouldn't be as much tension as there is now.
"Jared."
"Alright alright, I got it. I'll take you home whenever you want to. I forced you to get here, I shouldn't force you to stay." His face softens and he slowly rests his head on my shoulders.
"Evan?"
"I'm scared."
"Why?"
"What if it doesn't go well? What if she hates me forever? What if-"
"And what if it goes really well, huh? What if you make up right away."
"You don't know that."
"Yeah, and you don't either." I nudge his arm. "So that's why you have to go and try, dumb dumb." He huffed as a response. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Alana and Zoe start walking towards us. Evan does, too, and quickly gets off me.
"So, Evan, haven't seen you in a bit, huh?" Alana says, trying to put on a friendly act (but not doing it very well).
"Uh, yeah... I guess," He replies awkwardly and looks to me for help. Sorry bud, you're gonna have to do this on your own.
"I, um, have to... go to the bathroom." I try to say unsuspiciously, though failing. I make eye contact with Zoe and try to tell her to follow me.
"No, fuck off, I need to go to the bathroom...more..." We stare at each other, then suddenly both run off towards the bathroom.
"Hey, Jared!" I hear Evan try to whisper-yell to me, but I continue running. We make it to the bathroom door and both squeeze ourselves in, shutting the door quickly behind us. Then we both try to put our ears to the door. Zoe wins and pushes herself up against it, not letting me have any room.
"Are they talking? What are they talking about? Is Alana killing Evan? Is Even dead? What's going on?" I ask, not as quietly as I intended to, still trying to find room to listen.
"Well, I would be able to hear them if you would shut up, bozo." I comply and stop trying to do anything, crossing my arms. I few seconds go by and neither of us says anything. "Okay, I can't hear shit."
"Great," I say, throwing up my arms and letting them flail down.
"If Evan is being murdered, I'm blaming you."
"You know, this definitely isn't the first time someone has said something like that to me." She rolls her eyes and we suddenly fall into an awkward silence.
"So... I haven't seen you in a bit, either. How was your Summer?" She speaks up.
"Are we really about to have a conversation about our Summer in the bathroom?"
"They can't make up in a minute."
"I guess."
Zoe and I talked about the past year for a while. She told me about her little meet up with Evan at the orchard and I told her about how I became the king of hormonal gremlins (and eventually finding Evan).
"Okay, we've been in here, for like, ten minutes. It's getting a little weird. We should probably leave now," Zoe said after checking her watch.
"Good call," I reply and open the door. We head out of the bathroom and back into the living room. The scene that we walk into (thankfully) wasn't that of Alana dragging Evan's lifeless body out of the front door, but of Alana talking about this extravagant story that happened in one of her classes, with Evan laughing softly with her. He noticed us first and smiled.
"Did you guys have fun in the bathroom?"
"Yep."
"So much fun." Alana turns around and aggressively points to Evan.
"He cares about my physics class! Why can't you give a shit about my hectic college life?"
"Ew, college, gross," I reply and walk over to Evan, sitting in my original spot on the couch. Alana gives me a quite offended look and I laugh at her.
Maybe this wasn't that bad of an idea?
______
"I'm sorry," I say out of the blue. We were in the car on the way back to Evan's house. It was pretty late, he actually didn't ask me to go home early like I thought he would.
"For taking me to Alana's house against my will?" He asked jokingly.
"Well, yeah," I say laughing back. I'm glad he isn't actually that mad at me.
"I don't think you've ever said sorry to me, like, ever."
"Probably." I glance over at him, finishing off the burger we got after we left Alana's house. "But seriously, I know you didn't want me to get involved and all,"
"Dude it's fine," He said while chewing.
"Shut up and let me feel bad."
"You literally wouldn't let me apologize for the whole Connor Project thing."
"Yeah, but this is different."
"It's different because this is way less serious, Jared. I mean, you did help me let me talk to Alana. I don't think I would have been able to without it. So thanks, I guess." He looks back at me and smiles. I smile back.
When I pull into his driveway, I remember my conversation with Zoe and an idea pops into my head.
"Hey, Evan."
"Hm?" He stopped opening his door to look at me.
"Are you free tomorrow?"
"Yeah, why?"
"How about we go to the orchard? I got nothing better to do." A huge smile that I don't think I've ever seen before spreads on his face (Honestly, it was cuter than his usual one- fuckin shut up, me- whoops sorry.) and he nods excitedly.
"Yeah! Let's do that!"
"Alrighty, it's a date! See you tomorrow then," I promise and he gets out of the car and shuts the door. He turns and waves at me before going into his house.
Ha, a date. Like that will ever happen.
~~~
Okay, so like I said in the first part, I procrastinated about this chapter way too much cause I didn't really care that much about it (even tho it's important) and I just didn't feel like writing it. BUT I am excited to write the next chapter, so be waiting for that :)
I'm not gonna complain about something in this A/N so thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story
Sincerely, your favorite person with baby hands,
Me