Pen Pals - Dear Evan Hansen

Chapter 5

TW: talk of suicide attempt

Evan's POV

He looks me up and down while taking another puff of his cigarette. He's perched up on a built in bench by the window sill so all of the smoke will go outside. "For starters," he says, "how'd you break your arm?"

My heart sinks. I go to say the same lie I've been telling everyone including Jared, cancer.sticks, and my mom, but for some reason, part of me wants to say fuck it and just tell him the truth.

"If I tell you how it really happened, you can't say anything or laugh or judge me or whatever," I say cautiously. I mean I don't even know him, so I've got nothing to lose. It's like one of those anonymous confession apps. It means nothing.

He gave me a suspicious look but said simply, "deal." He had a much more serious expression on his face now.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, so I work at Ellison as a r-ranger not that far from here, and I like to climb trees a lot, so-"

"So you fell out of a tree?" he asks mid-sentence slightly disappointed like he was expecting more from the story.

Say "yes."

"No. I, um, I sort of did it on purpose."

He pauses for a second. "You... jumped... out of a tree?"

I can feel his eyes boring into me, and my face got redder and redder. I can't even look him in the eyes. All I can do is nod. Things get quiet for a moment.

"Shit, Hansen. I didn't know you had it in you," he says. "Well, this took a turn."

"I'm sorry I shouldn't have said anything now things are gonna be weird and it's my fault I should've-"

"No, look, you're all good I swear," he starts. "I promised I wouldn't judge, and I'm not."

I look up at him for the first time since I said it, and he seems to be genuinely concerned which is not the reaction I was expecting from him.

"I-I've never told anyone that before," I say with shifting eye contact.

"Not even your parents?"

I shake my head.

"Well, why'd you choose me of all people to tell?"

I just shrug and start to avoid eye contact again.

He snuffs out his cigarette on the window sill and throws it into a small trash can near him. By the time I look back up, he's only a couple feel in front of me. He sits down next to me on the bed facing me. I can feel my heart racing in my chest.

Please don't hate me. Please don't hate me. Please don't hate me.

"Do you... I don't know- do you want a hug or something?" he asks seemingly unsure of himself.

I look up at him with teary eyes that I can barely see through. I'm taken aback at first, but then I nod.

He scoots closer to me and wraps on arm around my neck and one around my torso, so I do the same to him. I rest my chin on his shoulder as a few stray tears fall down my face. We're both sort of stiff and uncomfortable, but we slowly relax into it more and more. Neither of us say a word.

"Hey asshole, what do you-" His bedroom door swings open, and the two of us jump back away from each other. Zoe's standing in the door way with a surprised look in her face, and I don't blame her. This isn't what I was expecting either.

"What the fuck Zoe! Haven't you ever heard of knocking?!" Connor yells.

"Sorry for interrupting your date," she says jokingly. She then turns to me. "Evan, what are you doing here? Are you okay?"