Page 92 of Under the Weatherman
When Dex found a reason to move on, Evan grabbed my elbow and whispered. “I’m about five minutes from bailing.”
Thank God. After only twenty minutes, the mingling was wearing me out, too. I wanted to skip the rest of our date night and lock ourselves in his house. But I wasn’t going to rush him. “We have time if you want to catch up, put new faces to old names.”
“It’s strange. I look around and sort of recognize people, but it’s like when you’re watching a movie and you can’t figure out where you’ve seen an actor before.”
“Ah, you need the Internet Yearbook Database.”
“IYDB?” He laughed. “That would be perfect.”
I mimed scrolling an invisible phone. “Dex Whatshisname. Starred in French class. Oh, here’s a gallery of photos. And oh, he pissed himself in Algebra class? Bam. That’s how I know him.”
He snorted. “Honestly, it makes me feel a little less stupid for falling for your deception.”
The familiar sting of guilt soured my stomach. I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of meeting the real Lizzy Grant until right then. “She isn’t here, is she?”
“I don’t think so.” He stepped a little more into the living room, scanning the faces, and then he froze, skin turning white. “What’sshedoing here?”
He directed the question at Kyan who was nearby, chatting with Dex. I followed his line of sight, expecting to find my doppelganger, but the woman he was staring at was the dark-haired Patagonia chick. Was she an ex-girlfriend? I swallowed down a sudden jolt of jealousy.
Kyan reached for Evan’s elbow, backing him into the kitchen, “Hey, be cool.”
I stayed close, hoping the mystery would resolve itself before I made an ass of myself, digging for information. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” Evan said through clenched teeth. I hadn’t seen him this angry since the day he first saw me at the newsroom. He glared at Kyan. “You should have warned me Vicky would be here. I wouldn’t have come.”
Kyan held up a hand. “Dude, it’s been a decade. Until right now, I’d honestly forgotten about all that. You should let it go, man.”
Evan raked a hand through his hair, totally destroying his structured look. “I don’t care. You know what she did to me?”
He was asking Kyan, but I was the one left in the dark here. I shook my head. “No. What?”
He turned to face me, his eyes clearing like he was surprised to find me there. He chewed on his upper lip, one eye narrowed, and then he said, “Remember when I told you I’d had a rough time in high school?”
I nodded. He’d hinted at a series of events that had bulldozed his trust. “What did Vicky do?”
“She and one of her friends pulled a nasty prank on me in tenth grade that embarrassed the fuck out of me.” He breathed heavily through his nose, like a bull reading his charge. “They each asked me out on a date, same night, forcing me to choose between them. I foolishly thought it meant I’d become some kind of super stud.” He laughed bitterly. “You have no idea what a loser I’d always been, and I just wanted to feel the slightest bit accepted, you know? Cool. Likable.”
This was all news to me. In what universe was Evan a loser? “So what happened?”
“I chose Vicky. Meghan told me she’d only been joking anyway, and I thought she was just saving face. But when I went to pick Vicky up, she said the same thing. It was all a joke. Who would want to go out with a dork like me?”
Oh. The horror of high school mean girls hit me with a visceral nausea, like I was still in tenth grade getting picked on myself. I felt like the last person in the world who could offer him comfort here after the way we met, but it gave me a deeper insight into why he’d been so angry with me. Right now Evan just needed an ally, however imperfect. “So we hate her?”
That shocked a laugh out of him. “Yes.”
“Do you want me to fight her?” I pulled my hair back, making like I was getting ready to rumble.
Kyan stepped in. “No fighting.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re no fun.”
“Look,” Kyan said, his arms forming a human barrier as if I was seriously going to throw a punch. “We all had beef with someone in high school, man. Maybe you could confront her now, give her a chance to apologize?”
Evan closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I don’t want to give her the satisfaction.”
I had to agree with Kyan. Evan was going to be in a grumpy mood the rest of the night anyway, and I’d already experienced his world-class grudge holding. If he could patch an old would, maybe he could get closure and move on. But it was Evan’s decision. I was ready to hit the road on his say.
He didn’t even get that choice because Vicky Patagonia stepped into the kitchen.
