𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲𝐧 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 is far from perfect. Before starting her senior year of college, she's already guaranteed her position as the black sheep of her once prestigious family. To make matters worse, she took up bedding the rival family's eldest...
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𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒏 went down and the chill of autumn broke through her bedroom window, the more anxious Evelyn became. She tried to stay as still as possible as she glanced from her reflection in her vanity to the time on the clock beside it, but her nerves were fraying.
"Hurry up, Mariah! I gotta leave in like, ten minutes!" she complained, wincing when the girl yanked a handful of braids through the white scrunchie that was on her wrist.
"You the one that ain't have nothin' but hoochie stuff to wear! We wouldn't have took so long if you weren't so picky."
Evelyn glared at the girl through her mirror. She knew her best friend was right, but she didn't want her to be right. She wanted her to be done with getting her ready.
As much as Mariah irritated Evelyn at times, she was pretty and smart as she was loyal and kind. It was something that surprised her and disillusioned everything she thought she knew about girls. From her experiences throughout high school and the years of college she completed so far, girls were naive and bitchy, revoltingly willing to hurt themselves or other women over men that would prove they didn't give a damn about them to begin with. But Mariah showed her that she wasn't a dime a dozen. Not only was she not easily influenced by men, but she didn't even like them. It was probably why she had no issue with ignoring the criticism about Evelyn's promiscuity and the alienation that occurred because of it; she was no saint herself.
Mariah scrunched her button nose as she brought the handful of Evelyn's braids through another loop in the scrunchie. "I need'a redo these soon. You got a lot of new growth."
"It's not gonna be anytime soon because I need a song to perform at the concert," Evelyn said urgently, adjusting the four face-framing braids that Mariah had left out of the ponytail. "And you're gonna help me write it."
After fluffing the braids so they cascaded gracefully down her best friend's back, Mariah dropped her hands and smacked her lips, peering around Evelyn's shoulder to give her a more direct look. "I don't know why you even wanna do all this. You know your daddy finna skin you alive when he finds out you're performin' with the Jacksons. He don't even like you lookin' at them."
Evelyn rose from her stool and walked over to her bed to start putting her necessities together in her purse. "He's not gonna find out. We're not announcing or doing anything until after he leaves for his mission."
"Is it really that serious, E? Jackie, I mean?" Mariah questioned. As they usually were when she spoke about Evelyn's relationship with the soon-to-be professor, her face was flat and her tone was unamused. "That man been talkin' about marryin' Vivian forever. How you know he ain't gonna do it and make you do all this sneakin' around for nothin'?"
Truthfully, she didn't know. She didn't think of a future with Jackie because she felt like it didn't matter. By the time she was ready to marry, which was a far cry in itself, she hoped that she would be states away from the cursed city of Los Angeles anyhow. What mattered to her was that Jackie cared for her now, and he was the only man in her life to have done it consistently. She would lose all respect for herself if she didn't do what she could to protect him the way he always protected her.
