Chapter Text
Jared woke up to a loud ringing.
He patted around for his phone before bringing it up to his face. Squinting, as he had yet to put on his glasses, he read to see who was calling him.
Evan.
Why the hell was Evan calling him at- he glanced at the time- 11 in the morning? Okay, 11 wasn’t that early, but it was summer! If a kid wants to sleep in until 3 pm everyday he deserves to have the right to do that!
Shaking his head to clear his mind of his mindless rambles he clicked the answer button.
“Evan?”
“Oh my- Jared! It’s happening! Oh my God, ohmygodohmygodohmygod!”
By ‘it’ Jared was gonna assume he meant he was getting his soulmate mark.
In this universe you get the name of your soulmate on a random part of your body. It normally happened in your teenage years, but everyone was different.
Jared already had his and it was on his wrist. He had covered it with bracelets though because he didn’t want anyone to know that his soulmate was, well, Evan.
Not that he was embarrassed or ashamed of Evan at all! He seriously wasn’t! But he wanted Evan to get his mark before they would talk about it. Which meant no one could know. Kids at school would definitely spread it around as he was one of the first kids in his grade to get his mark. And if his moms found out then Evan’s mom would find out which meant Evan would know.
Jared reached over for his glasses. If he had them off for any longer then he was definitely going to form a nasty headache.
“So who’d you get?”
“Uh, I don’t actually know? I can just feel my knee tingling and it’s kinda glowing I guess?”
“Ooh, yeah it- I heard it does that for a bit before the name shows up,” Jared explained. “So you might just end up waiting for a bit.”
“Oh,” Evan paused. “So, uh, what were you doing before I called?”
Jared snorted. “I was sleeping, Ev.”
“Oh I’m so sorry! I woke you up and my mark hasn’t even appeared yet!”
Jared shrugged his shoulders before realizing Evan couldn’t see him. Stupid.
“It’s fine, I probably need to start fixing my schedule for school anyways.”
It was silent for a bit after that, but not an awkward silence. At least, not for Jared. It felt pretty nice for them to just share each other’s presence, even just on call.
“Jared! It’s forming!”
Jared grinned. This was it. They were gonna have the talk, they’d probably become boyfriends and Jared could stop wearing these stupidly uncomfortable bracelets and hold Evan’s lean, soft looking hands—
Woah buddy, slow down there.
“Who is it?”
“It’s,” Evan paused for a moment, probably waiting for it to completely form. “Connor Murphy!”
What.
“We barely even know each other! Oh gosh, should I start talking to him? Or would that be suspicious? Gosh, c’mon Jared! Please don’t go silent on me!”
Evan was talking, but Jared couldn’t seem to really grasp onto the words. He felt sick. He was going to be sick. Evan was Jared’s soulmate, but Jared wasn’t Evan’s. He didn’t know how it possibly get worse.
Jared forced himself to speak despite feeling like it’d be impossible to keep his voice from shaking.
“You should probably wait to see if there’s any signs of him knowing when we get back to school. My mom just texted me though, so I have to go do some, uh, stuff. We’ll have to talk more later.”
“Oh! Okay, bye Jared!”
“Bye.” He hung up.
The rest of his day was spent lying in his bed, ignoring most of Evan’s messages.
Jared was now ashamed to admit it, but that summer before junior year was the start of his ‘mean streak.’ Or also known the start of him mocking Connor in the halls. The start of avoiding Evan and acting as if it was because he had more important things to do, more important people to talk to, than Evan.
But, this senior year Jared was going to try his best to fix things. Make things right between him and Evan, and hell, why not just go ahead and try to apologize to Connor while he’s at it? It shouldn’t be too complicated, right?