Chapter Text
Sometimes Evan’s angry about the way everything turned out. He knows just how awful the things he did were, because when he thinks about it objectively, starts using phrases like ‘lied about being friends with a boy who killed himself’ and ‘lied to a grieving family’ and ‘lied to a sister who finally thought that she might be able to one day forgive her brother’ he feels sick to his stomach. But Jared doesn’t deserve to feel bitter, really. It’s not like any of that stuff affected him, not like he ever really tried to stop Evan. He remembers Jared pawning off badges like he hadn’t told Connor he looked like a school shooter the day he killed himself. Maybe Jared hadn’t been as embroiled in it all as Evan, and that’s fair, but Jared hadn’t exactly been a good person either. That’s why it had stung so much when he realised that he and Jared weren’t friends anymore, and weren’t ever going to be again.
Evan had always assumed that Jared’s friendship wouldn’t last, because the older he got the more distant he seemed, and Evan’s never been the guy to reach out to people, always too afraid of rejection to try - but he hadn’t expected it to end like this. He’d thought they’d just gradually drift apart. Maybe they’d text once in a while, maybe in college when they were both a little older and a little less self-absorbed they’d meet up for coffee or something. Instead Jared’s last words to him had been ‘Fuck you, Evan. Asshole’, and it's a line that he plays over and over and over again on a loop in his head.
If he lets himself think about it, properly, which he doesn’t often (because it hurts and because he knows nostalgia is a dirty liar,) he thinks it hurt more than the stuff with Zoe. More than Alana, more than his mom, even, because Jared knew all the worst parts of him, and he’d stayed anyway. He’d known it wasn’t built to last but - god, he’d hoped. It was proof that he could be known and still loved, or something like it. Some semblance of ‘cared for’.
Now he’s not so sure, and he hates Jared for it, because he still doesn’t really understand why it happened.
Evan works at Pottery Barn for a year, after he finished high school. It’s a shitty job, and it involves way too much talking to people for his liking, but it’s probably helped his anxiety a bit. He doesn’t enjoy it, even on a good day, but he manages, and by the end of the year he feels a little less guilty about the fact that he’s starting college in the fall.
He makes friends, sort of. There’s a cashier named Kendall who he usually eats lunch with. She’s got the kind of bitter, world-weary attitude he’s come to expect from retail workers. He can’t blame them, really, because he’s only been working for a year and he already kind of hates people in general. Lunch is the only time Kendall really gets to drop the whole faux-cheerfulness shtick, and she revels in being able to complain about just how incapable the general public seems to be. Evan usually just listens, because he likes to do things that don’t require interaction with the public, like restocking shelves and loitering around the parts of the store he knows are usually the least busy. He has less horror stories to share, and he doesn’t envy her a bit.
Josh works there too, but he’s, like, 21, and Evan always feels a little off-kilter when they talk. They’re probably friends, or something like it, but Josh is always just a little distant, and he looks at Evan like he’s a particularly interesting equation, sometimes. It’s weird. Kendall agrees, because for some reason she’s decided she likes Evan, and, she confesses to him one lunch break, over a salami sandwich and a pack of salt and vinegar chips, he definitely hit on her on her first day of work, and it was super weird. That’s what she says, at least, and frankly Evan has no reason to doubt she’s telling the truth.
There are other people who work there, too, obviously, but Kendall and Joshua are the people he sees the most - Josh because they usually work the same area, and Kendall because they always take their breaks at the same time. They have a group chat on Facebook where they complain about their store manager. He and Kendall have a separate one where they complain about Josh.
It’s kind of nice to have friends again, especially ones who don’t know about his baggage. He doesn’t have to worry about them judging him. Or at least not for the things he’s done in the past.
“Excited about college?” Kendall asks, bumping his shoulder and quirking an eyebrow at him.
“Sure,” Evan says.
Kendall gives him a look, and Evan knows he doesn’t sound half as excited as he probably should do, but - well.
“Jared goes there,” he says, and Kendall’s face shutters.
Evan hasn’t told her everything, because there’s just… so much to it all, but she knows that they were best friends for years, and now they kind of hate each other. Evan’s pretty sure Jared’s taken to vaguing about him on Twitter now, but he generally tries to avoid looking. They don’t even talk anymore. He doesn’t understand why they can’t just stoically disregard each other or whatever.
“Ah,” Kendall says.
She stares at the floor for a beat, before directing her gaze towards him, and Evan knows she’s going to try and comfort him. Beneath it all she’s actually a pretty nice person, but he really doesn’t need to think about Jared anymore than he has today, thank you very much, so he just shakes his head at her. She drops the subject.
“I’ll miss you here,” she says, resigned, “I don’t know how the fuck I’m gonna put up with Josh for another year. Especially if whoever they’re hiring on to replace you is as much of a disaster as Clara was.”
Clara, Kendall’s explained before, was the girl who worked his shift before him. Apparently Kendall had been the one to show her the ropes, and she’d been insufferable. Evan’s just glad Kendall’s actually taken a liking to him.
“It’s okay,” Evan says, “you know you can, there’s always Facebook.”
“That there is,” Kendall says, and he likes to think it means she’s forgiven him for leaving her to the wolves.
It’s not that Evan’s scared about the fact that he and Jared are going to be attending the same college. He’s sort of gotten over that side of things - it’s been over a year now, since they fell out, and Jared had glared at him enough for the duration of their senior year that his wrath doesn’t bother Evan now (or he hopes it doesn’t at least, because it’s been a long time since they’ve actually crossed paths). He’s more just frustrated. He knows why he has to stay close to home, knows why he’s never really had an option as far as college choice goes, and he can’t resent his mom for their circumstances, but he does kind of hate Jared for not moving away when he had the chance.
He hates Jared for a lot of reasons, nowadays, and that’s the problem. He’s not sure how he’s going to respond to Evan being there, and Evan doesn’t know how he’s going to respond to seeing Jared again. He doesn’t even know what kind of person Jared is anymore.
He’s transferring into second-year, had worked up enough credits at the community college that they’d just about let him, and that’s kind of terrifying too. He’s staying at home for the year, because accommodation on campus is expensive and also kind of unnecessary, given that Evan can just get the bus, and that’s probably a good thing even if his mom’s worried that he’s going to be missing out on the ‘university experience’, whatever that’s meant to be.
As far as he’s aware (though he avoids checking Jared’s social media unless it’s a really bad night, in which case he loses all self control and does it as a weird self-flagellation type thing,) Jared’s in his second year, studying engineering, or comp sci, or something like that. Alana’s mentioned him a couple of times, because while she and Evan aren’t exactly close they’ve kept up a frosty sort of correspondence since he apologised. He thinks she’s starting to warm up to him, but then she’s at some Ivy League university out of state, so she only knows as much as he posts on Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever. Evan never asks after him, so he doesn’t know why she bothers with the occasional updates, but it does give him an idea as to what he’s getting into.
Evan doesn’t see Jared at all for the first week he’s at college. It’s an unexpected boon, because it’s not like the college campus is particularly big, and all the science subjects tend to share a lot of the same lecture halls. Evan’s studying ecology.
Kendall pesters him for updates, and Evan texts her dramatic recitals of the stuff he sees going on. Most of it isn’t particularly exciting, really, but it’s nice that she’s trying to keep in touch.
Evan’s not sure he’s making friends, really, but he’s talked to a handful of people, has a good ten new Facebook friends at least, and he feels like he might actually be doing okay with the whole socialising thing. The lecture halls the ecology majors use have two levels of seating, and Evan likes to sit at the very back of the upper level, in an attempt to avoid having to meet anyone’s gaze, or answer any questions. There’s a boy named Dustin who seemed to share a similar interest in staying unnoticeable, and they’ve struck up a weird camaraderie. Atif sits with them too, though he claims it’s just because it’s quieter up there.
He gets coffee with Kendall on Saturday, near campus because she insisted that he give her a grand tour, even though Evan knows he’s just going to walk her past a few bland looking buildings.
She makes them sit next to the window, because she’s convinced that they’re going to see Jared, and she wants to be able to stick her middle finger up at him, apparently. Evan’s tried to explain that there’s no reason why Jared would be around and not, like, in his dorm or whatever, but Kendall insisted. Evan’s also tried to explain that actually he’d rather not seek out Jared and deliberately annoy him. That was also a no go, because Kendall’s decided that he’s just not angry enough, and that Jared needs to know that Evan has people on his side. Evan’s not sure why she’s turning it into a whole thing, when realistically Jared’s forgotten all about him now and it was just a falling out between high schoolers, but she’s always liked a grudge.
Evan gets a hot chocolate, because he still doesn’t really like coffee and he’s gotten over the fear of being considered childish for ordering it. Kendall gets some kind of matcha thing, which Evan wrinkles his nose at.
He’s picking absentmindedly at a piece of caramel shortbread, Kendall telling him about how Joshua’s decided to revolutionise the bedding section of the store and is doing an absolutely pathetic job of it, when he sees him through the window. He averts his gaze as quickly as he can, tenses up just a bit because seeing Jared again wasn’t meant to hurt but has sent a weird stabbing pain through his chest anyway. Kendall notices, and squints at him.
She turns to look out of the window, and Evan realises he probably could have handled things better.
It’s not like Jared really stands out as a person, so there’s no reason for Kendall to know it’s him walking by except for the fact that she likes to stalk his Instagram and tell Evan that he’s actually super ugly, kind of, and that Evan could do so much better anyway. He thinks Kendall’s built up their relationship in her head a little, but she’s not easily swayed so he lets her believe in her weird fantasy. It’s not been a problem until now.
“That’s him, right?” she asks, quietly, glaring daggers at him even before Evan’s answered in the affirmative.
He’s resolutely staring past Kendall’s head at the wall instead of joining her staring out of the window, though it’s admittedly taking most of his self control not to. Kendall sticks her middle finger up and Evan takes a deep breath and hopes with all his heart that Jared hasn’t noticed. Maybe Evan’s changed hugely, somehow, maybe Jared won’t recognise him (he would, if he say him, because Evan hasn’t changed much at all). Maybe he’ll assume Kendall’s trying to insult someone else, even if her glare is directly quite squarely towards him. Maybe he’ll just write it off as Evan being kind of petty, and move on with his life, and it won’t have to be a whole thing.
“He’s calling me an asshole,” Kendall says. “I think that’s what he’s saying at least. I’m kind of bad at lip-reading. Or - no, wait, I think that was meant for you actually. Do you think he thinks you put me up to this? I’m gonna tell him to fuck off.”
“Please don’t do that,” Evan starts to say, closing his eyes and sighing.
The apologetic glance Kendall send his way when he next looks at her tells him she probably already has.
Evan makes the mistake of glancing out the window, after that, because he suddenly has to know what Jared’s doing. He has to know if this is going to be anything more than a horrible one-off event they can both forget about in a month.
Jared’s looking at him. Evan grimaces, but can’t quite force himself to look away. It’s like people always talk about watching a car crash, but really it feels more like he’s the one driving the car, headfirst into a wall.
Jared looks lost, if Evan had to put a name to it - or he does for maybe five seconds, before his expression goes blank, and he gives Evan a look that’s pure venom.
Evan’s not sure how he feels, really. It’s hard to say. His chest feels tight, and his stomach heavy, and there’s a buzzing in his head that’s making it hard to think. Anger is the easiest, he thinks, and anger’s what Jared deserves, because this isn’t just about The Connor Project, it’s about the years of distance, the insults, the way Jared made him feel like a burden he’d never wanted and never asked for and he’s allowed to feel angry for that.
He levels a glare straight back at him, and thinks about graves and how he’s just dug his own.
Evan’s the first one to look away.
He turns to Kendall, and takes a sip of his hot chocolate, and says, quite calmly, “he’s going to ruin my life.”
“He’s not,” Kendall says. “We’re going to ruin his.”