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“I’m here. Where are you?”
Damon stared at his unchanging phone screen for so long that it went into sleep mode. Still no answer. With a sigh, he powered it back on and tapped the phone icon next to the contact name.
Straight to voicemail, no rings, like always. He didn’t know why he expected anything else. Not bothering to waste his time leaving a message, he texted, “If you don’t respond I’m leaving without you.”
After the next few seconds of radio silence, he pulled his keys out of the ignition and got out of the car.
The setting sun cast long shadows across the parking lot. He would have some choice words for his so-called best friend if they weren’t back on campus before dark.
Really, if Eva was going to demand he pick her up on such short notice, the least she could do was answer her damn phone. Driving all the way out here was one of the last ways he’d want to spend his Friday night. He could've been studying, or calling his parents, or any manner of much more productive things that didn't involve being in an unfamiliar place at dusk coming to the rescue of someone who by all means should've known better.
It was exactly like he told her weeks ago.
They were at breakfast at the time, taking their usual places in the corner of the dining hall away from everyone. As soon as she sat down, Eva immediately pulled out her phone, ignoring his presence entirely. Silence wasn’t uncharacteristic of her, so, at first, he didn’t notice anything wrong. What made it obvious something was going on was the fact that even by the time he finished his food, she’d barely touched hers.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Checking my emails,” she said too quickly, a rehearsed excuse.
“You've been staring at the same thing for ten minutes.”
Eva sighed as if she was the one being inconvenienced.
“It’s one of my,” she hesitated, before settling on, “Former teammates. He’s finishing grad school this year, so he’s putting together a reunion in celebration, to bring the whole team back together.”
Damon tried to fathom a reason that would warrant anything other than an instant deletion.
“And what? You can’t think of a good ‘fuck off’ message to send before you block him?”
She paused, fidgeting with a strand of hair.
“I can barely believe it’s real. It’s like he doesn’t even remember me.”
“Probably not.” He sneered. “These aren’t exactly intellectual people.”
She swiped twice across her phone screen and started typing something. The result provoked no reaction from her.
“It’s only an hour away.”
“Why does it matter where it is? It’s not like you’re going.”
Eva shoved her phone back into her bag. A silence hung over them.
“You aren’t going, right?” he asked.
She hastily picked up her spoon and went to work pushing her food around instead of eating it. Looking down obscured part of her face with hair, but he maintained eye contact with the top of her head as if he were a magnifying glass and she was about to catch fire.
“Eva.”
She shrunk in on herself further, biting her bottom lip.
Surely, she must’ve seen the obvious trap set directly in front of her face. No one could be that stupid. Even if those people deserved her attendance, which they didn’t, the chances of anything good coming of it were approximately zero. There was no other way of looking at it.
“Don’t try to stop me,” she said, lifting her head back up in an attempt to look down on him.
“You can’t be serious right now.”
He knew Eva wasn’t the sort of blindly trusting person to really think something like this would end well. He knew it. Whatever was compelling her to blatantly act against her own interest was completely, utterly beyond him.
“I want to know if they really don’t remember me, or if this is some sort of joke, or…” she trailed off.
Did she want to get hurt? Was that the answer to the bizarre riddle he'd been presented with? That couldn't be right. No self-respecting person would set out to intentionally hurt themself.
“You’re wasting your time. How do you know the whole thing isn’t a setup?”
“I just need to see what it’s like,” she insisted, stubbornly. “I’ll leave early.”
“I’m not coming to pick you up when it goes wrong.”
“Fine.”
Eva picked up her plate to leave, and that was the last they’d spoken about it until tonight.
Real man of your word, aren’t you, Damon?
The building’s entrance, which he’d prefer to avoid if at all possible, was situated at a corner close to the street, well illuminated and clearly marked by signs. Both walls visible to him were covered in large windows, even on the side only facing the parking lot and the brick of the next building. A stupid decision, if you asked him. Half a dozen arguments for and against that particular architecture choice came to mind. In another situation, he might’ve gone through them all, with Eva occasionally cutting into his monologue to voice some objection or bring up a detail he hadn't considered.
He briefly entertained the idea of calling out for her like a lost dog. There was a good chance she might skin him alive for that, though, so he figured he wouldn’t push his luck.
To the side of the lot opposite the street was a retaining wall a few feet taller than he was, but his view of the corner it formed with the building was obstructed by cars. He supposed it wouldn’t be beyond Eva to sequester herself in some crevice behind the place. It wouldn’t be nearly the strangest thing she'd ever done.
A short walk later, he found his suspicions proven correct. For some reason, she was sitting on the dirty ground, against the wall with her knees pulled close to her chest. Her smudged eyeliner left visible tear tracks on her face, and her general demeanor called to mind one of those videos of abandoned baby animals.
Damon stood in front of her for a while.
“So.” He shoved his hands in his pockets awkwardly. “What happened, then?”
“They said I was making a scene and threw me out,” she responded in a surprisingly level voice for the visible amount of crying she’d done.
“Well,” he said. “Were you?”
Eva scowled, only bothering to answer once it became clear neither of them were going anywhere until she did.
“I might’ve yelled a little.”
“Of course.”
He extended a hand out to her.
She eyed it skeptically for a long time, before getting up by pushing herself off the ground. In the few seconds it took her to catch her balance, she almost motioned to grab onto him, but then planted her arms firmly at her sides.
“I assume your business here is finished,” he said.
“Let's just go.”
Eva brushed past him walking in the wrong direction.
“Where are you going?” Damon followed after her. “I parked in the back.”
He tried to grab her by the sleeve, but she dodged him, crossing her arms.
“Nowhere.”
She idled, turning back to face the way she came.
They stared at each other, neither quite knowing what to say.
“Did you get what you came here for, at least?” Damon asked.
Eva didn’t answer.
“What were you trying to accomplish with this anyway?” he continued. “Did you think they were going to beg for your forgiveness or something? I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I ruined the rest of their night,” she said, in the cadence of someone telling themself their deceased loved one was ‘in a better place’.
Damon caught a glimpse through the window beside them. Happy, smiling people filled the place. He didn’t know enough about Eva’s old mathlete team to pick out their table from the innocent bystanders, but it was safe to say that wherever they were, they weren’t particularly troubled.
Though, she must've spotted them, judging by the way her entire body went rigid, shifting to face the window.
“They’re…” Eva trailed off.
Her entire face scrunched up and she blinked hard, grinding her teeth. Trembling hands clenched into fists. Then, in a strange gesture he couldn't yet register the purpose of, she raised one, winding up like someone about to throw a baseball.
In the approximately ten seconds he had to put two and two together before disaster, he sprang into action without even thinking about it, catching her by the arm to pull her back. Once the more sophisticated part of his brain caught up to what was happening — what almost had happened — an explosion of emotions caught up alongside it.
“Are you insane?” he yelled, louder than he should've in public. “Did you want to end the night with a nice relaxing trip to the emergency room? You aren't made of money!”
It must've caught her off-guard, because she didn’t resist when he hauled her backwards away from the window, following quickly after him like a reactive dog getting its leash pulled. She spat out a string of curses he didn’t bother trying to parse as coherent speech, looking back at the building rather than where she was walking.
A man in a brown jacket a few steps away from the door paused in the middle of lighting a cigarette to shoot him a sympathetic look, as if Eva was some unfortunate circumstance they were being put through together.
Damon scowled back.
His initial panic quickly subsided, and all he was left with was anger at the situation. At Eva, sure, but also at the real cause of all this mess: stupid people utterly beneath them. Maybe it was true that she was fucking crazy, but that was for him and only him to decide. The next time some paltry non-ultimate tried to position themself on his side as if they knew anything about the situation, he would tear them apart. It was really a shame that doing so would be a futile exercise in self-humiliation.
He weaved between cars with little help from his enraged companion, all the way up until he could show her the inside of the passenger door. For a second, he worried she wouldn't get in on her own, but luckily, she was more focused on ranting than on keeping track of where she was, so when he let go of her, she threw herself into the seat based purely on the instinct to keep moving. Shutting the door behind her felt like closing the cage of a vicious beast.
He exhaled and contemplated how long of a break he could take before something bad happened. The relative quiet now that they were separated was certainly preferable. He looked out at the dimming sky through the tops of the buildings.
It was probably wise to keep it short.
Bracing himself, he got into the car. Eva didn’t acknowledge him, too busy yelling at no one in particular.
“How could anyone possibly care about such a pathetic, disgusting piece of trash?” She gestured vaguely at the air in front of her. “It wasn’t our fault. It was provoked. Your existence was provoking us! If you wanted to be treated like a person, you should've tried not being put in this situation against your will. You should’ve stayed in your cage where you belong until we needed you. You can't stay mad at us! We were just kids! You don’t count because of how worthless you are. How could you expect us to handle being trapped with someone like you?”
“Eva-” he started to say.
“Just get out!” She spoke over him like he hadn't said a word. “No one here ever wanted you inflicted on us anyway. Oh, her? Don’t worry, that’s no one. It doesn't matter what we do to her. She makes us all look bad on purpose. She's a freak. She's a loser! She's a cockroach!”
“Eva!” He cut her off sharply. “Take a breath.”
She made a disgusting snivelling sound and, for the first time since the start of her outburst, stopped moving long enough for him to realize she was crying.
Her anger deflated all at once, and then she was sobbing like she was about to die. She pushed her glasses up so hard while wiping her face that they stayed put on her forehead. Aside from the sound of her gasps for air, the car went totally silent. This was the moment Damon was supposed to say something meaningless but comforting.
He was never good at that sort of thing, though. Instead, he reached over to buckle her seatbelt like one would a child, an awkward maneuver given how much she was shaking. It surprised him that he managed it without getting attacked.
Leaving this place was his first priority. Anything else could come later.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, he pondered whether it would be worth it to turn on the radio. Even static would be preferable to listening to Eva cry, but he had to factor in the possibility of her freaking out at the smallest perceived slight.
In the end, her tears dried up ten minutes or so into the drive. Damon took the opportunity to glance over at her during a red light, and found her sitting with her head against the window, staring blankly out at the road. She gave off the sort of pure, concentrated misery that could usually only be found in paintings.
He restrained himself from saying ‘I told you so’ solely for fear of setting her off again. Unfortunately, the longer he went without thinking of anything more productive to say, the harder it became to resist.
Eventually, he settled on, “Did you eat?” instead.
She didn’t answer.
“Before they kicked you out,” he continued. “Did you actually have dinner?”
It probably would’ve been easier to have a conversation with a pet rock.
“Bweh,” she responded.
“I don’t know what that means. Can you use your words?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said, like a petulant child.
“There's gotta be someplace open somewhere around here.”
He scanned his general surroundings for any source of a quick meal. Really, he'd planned on having his own dinner an hour ago, but for some reason, he'd spent the time driving instead. Funny how that worked out. Just thinking about it made him realize he was starving. As far as he was concerned, it wouldn’t kill her to suffer the indignity of a free dinner. That cost was miniscule in comparison to what she’d put him through.
Then came his salvation. At the end of the road, on the corner of the intersection, there was a Waffle House. It fit all his criteria in terms of edibility, availability, cost, and lack of obnoxiousness.
“I guess we’re going here.” He flicked on his blinker at the last second and turned into the parking lot.
Eva glanced up at the sign as he parked, and said, “I don’t like waffles.”
“So don’t order them. Everywhere else is closing.”
Pulling the keys out of the ignition, he mentally prepared himself to physically drag her into the restaurant if he had to. Realistically, he probably wasn't capable of such a thing, but over the years he'd gotten good at bluffing.
After getting out, he stood idly next to the car watching her sit there. Then he sighed, rounded the front of the car, and opened Eva's door for her. She didn't move, didn't even glance in his direction. Part of him wanted to believe that if he looked impatient enough, it would spring her into action.
Just when he was reaching out to unbuckle her seatbelt, she did it herself, throwing the thing so hard he had to narrowly dodge being hit by the metal part. She crawled out of the car laboriously like doing so caused her physical pain. Maybe it did. If it was possible to pull a muscle from crying too much, she reached that point easily.
Eva dragged her feet all the way into the restaurant and all the way to their table. Luckily, no one looked twice at the state she was in. That surprised him, considering the fact that it wasn’t even particularly late yet, only quarter after eight.
Damon leaned toward her, across their two opposite sides of the table.
“You can go to the bathroom by yourself, can't you? Wash your face.”
She huffed like she was about to snap at him not to tell her what to do, but got up anyway. Her footsteps made a distinctly heavy sound that he couldn’t help but think of as childish.
By the time she returned, they'd already been served drinks, which he took the liberty of ordering on her behalf. Two iced teas — one unsweetened and one regular. If Eva noticed that he’d remembered her weird aversion to sugar, she didn't acknowledge it.
Now that her face was clean, she somehow looked even worse. Her hair was a mess, curls drooping and losing shape. Her eyes were simultaneously swollen red and marked with dark circles. The cuff of her right sleeve was damp, alongside a spot on the front of her shirt. She dropped into her seat like dead weight, staring blankly down at nothing. Even when the waitress came back to ask them if they were ready to order, she just sat there, head in her hands, watching the condensation on the side of her glass with unfocused eyes.
It wasn't that ordering for her was particularly difficult — she tended to only eat the same things anyway — but it was about the principle of the matter. She never even bothered to look at the menu.
He settled on a simple egg sandwich, the same for both of them. Sometime in however long it took him to order, Eva ended up on her phone. Damon couldn't see what she was looking at from the angle they were sitting, but he could make an educated guess.
“You’re still thinking about them,” he said. It wasn't a question.
“The girl who once said that it’d be easy to track my career in research since I’d obviously never be married has a baby now.” She brought the phone closer to her face, squinting at it. “She works in accounting.”
“Yeah, that’s typically what people do after graduating high school.”
She shook her head slightly. “You don’t get it.”
“I don’t,” he conceded.
Eva didn’t look up at him, tapping onto what was presumably yet another social media profile of someone who’d scorned and rejected her. In a single motion, he plucked the phone out of her hand, powered it off, and slid it into his jacket pocket. She continued to stare irately at her empty hands.
“I don’t get why you’re fueling this obsession with people who are obviously beneath you. They aren’t even ultimates.”
“They started it.” Her voice started to rise. “It’s not my fault.”
Right, because nothing was ever her fault. She could drink directly out of a bottle labeled ‘poison’ if she wanted to, and any negative consequences arising from that would be solely because the world was out to get her.
“You know, you’re the one who keeps doing this,” Damon said. “You keep purposely walking straight into situations you know will hurt you like something’s going to change. That’s the part I don’t get. I mean, explain to me how any of this makes sense.”
Eva pouted and said nothing. Typical of her.
“Honestly, at this point, I think cutting yourself would be a more productive use of your time.”
She pounded on the table with both fists, snapping, “What do you want from me, Damon?”
“What do you want?” he countered. “Do you even know?”
“I just want them all to suffer!”
He suddenly remembered they were in public and schooled his expression, quickly checking to make sure nobody was staring at them.
“I want a million dollars.” He leaned back in his seat. “That doesn't mean I'm going to get it.”
“Shut up.”
Thankfully, she followed his decrease in volume. Maybe there was the tiniest amount of sense left in her after all.
“I’m not saying revenge is wrong. I’m saying your methods are ineffective. I mean, has this ever worked? Once?”
She grit her teeth, and a second later her head hit the table. The sound that came out of her was indiscernible as either laughing, crying, or both. He wasn’t sure which option would be the worst scenario.
Either way, at least she wasn’t bothering anyone too much. Finding a drive-through probably would’ve been a better option, in retrospect, though it was too late for that now.
Eventually, her voice faded to sniffles. Some time later, she lifted her head, showing a tear-stained face. She took a napkin from the holder so aggressively that it nearly tipped over, knocking into a salt shaker that fell onto its side and slowly rolled toward her. In a fit of rage, she smacked the thing away, sending it rolling across the table to land next to him on the seat.
“Destroying stuff isn't going to accomplish anything,” Damon said, placing the shaker right-side up on the table.
In a flash of white, before he had time to process what was happening, she shot out of her seat and grabbed him by the hair.
The blow he expected to follow never came. Instead, in the exact final millisecond, she seemed to suddenly realize what she was doing, and let go of his head just as harshly as she'd picked it up. Eva landed back on her side of the booth with an audible thump and folded her hands in her lap, seething like an open flame.
Damon tried not to contemplate how close he'd likely come to leaving this dining establishment with a broken nose. After all the trouble he'd gone to, as well.
He shouldn't have rolled his eyes and said, “Last time I ever help you,” but in the heat of the moment, he couldn't help himself. It came as naturally as rubbing circles on the still stinging part of his scalp.
“Next time I’m calling Diana,” she responded bitterly.
“You told me you can’t stand Diana.”
“Exactly.”
A second later, the waitress arrived with their food, a welcome distraction. Damon thanked her out of habit.
He picked up a fork and knife and started cutting into his sandwich, eating it one piece at a time. Were they under any other circumstance, Eva definitely would’ve made fun of him for it, because God forbid he not want to get his hands dirty.
She had no such qualms about that, immediately taking it upon herself to start tearing her food into random, variably sized chunks with her bare hands. The pieces, crushed inside her fists, were all discarded back onto the plate. It must’ve been therapeutic to her in some way, given how quickly she focused on it. She tore through half a sandwich that way by the time he’d barely taken his third bite.
Maybe now she was calm enough that he could resume the conversation without risking bodily harm.
Damon placed his fork down on the table.
“I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. I'm trying to tell you what you need to hear so you don't do this again.”
“So what?” Eva moved on to the untouched half of her sandwich, ripping all the corners off first. “I have to suffer and they don't?”
“Pretty much,” he said.
Finally, she bothered to place a torn-off bit into her mouth, chewing slowly and taking a long time to swallow.
“You're about to tell me to just get over it,” she accused.
“No, I'm about to tell you to stop hurting yourself.”
She looked off to the side, towards the tiled ground. It should’ve been impossible, but even this late into the night she still reached new levels of downtroddenness.
“I can't,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.
“That’s not true.”
Eva didn’t respond. Apparently, she was done talking to him for the night, so they took the rest of their meal in exhausted silence. She barely got half of it down before resigning herself to sitting there with her head in her hands, looking out the window sullenly. Nor did she even glance in the direction of the bill when it was delivered — not that he expected otherwise.
The ride back to campus wasn't as awkward as it could've been. Over the past few weeks, they’d long since gotten used to each other's wordless presence. It only made sense that this time would be no different. He turned the volume dial on the radio to the point where he could just barely make out what was playing if he dedicated his full attention to it, and no further.
“Can we go to your dorm instead of mine?” Eva asked as they pulled into the campus parking lot. “If my roommate sees me like this, she’ll be on me for the rest of the night and I don’t want to deal with that right now.”
“I’m not sharing my bed,” he responded.
She scoffed.
They trudged through the hallways with such an intense aura that even despite the scattering of people about, nobody tried to talk to them. Damon opened his door and let Eva in before him.
“Where’s your roommate?” she asked warily, scanning the place.
“Hell if I know. It’s a Friday night. It’s not like I’m his keeper.”
Once she assured herself of the non-presence of the ultimate influencer, she… Well, to say ‘relaxed’ would be much less accurate than to say ‘collapsed under her own weight’. She fell sideways onto the couch and seemingly didn’t even bother to make herself comfortable.
He stopped to rummage through the recycling, eventually pulling out the discarded box to some sort of crackers. Based on his lack of recognition of the packaging, it was definitely Kai's, but he couldn't imagine anyone feeling genuinely slighted by the theft of their garbage.
Damon lightly tossed the box into Eva's lap as he crossed the room.
She furrowed her eyebrows. “What is this?”
“Cardboard.” He pulled the chair out from his desk, intending to get back to what he was doing before as if none of tonight ever happened. “I don’t feel like letting you break anything I’d have to replace.”
She blinked at him once, mouth agape. Then, half a second later, she was ripping into it with the ferocity of a starving wild animal.
About five minutes in, the constant sound of tearing started to irritate him.
He didn't mention it.