Winding Up Ivy

Chapter Thirteen - The Plague

The Plague. That's how I felt.

Like I had the fucking Plague. Not because I was sick or anything, I hadn't been sick in three years, I liked to nod to my cleanliness for that fact, deep down I knew it was more likely that germs just hadn't had the chance to catch me yet. I'm sure I would get sick one of these days, but right now I was feeling physically healthy.

No. I felt like I had The Plague because of the way Evan had been avoiding me all week.

This wasn't the same as the pleasant distance we had always shared before the kiss a few weeks ago, this was 'turn in the opposite direction' avoidance. While I spent some time trying to convince myself that this was what I had wanted anyway, a part of me stung every time I saw him hightail it in the opposite direction when he saw me coming near him in the halls.

It was Friday again and I still hadn't had a chance to speak to Evan about what had happened the previous week, I was starting to settle on the fact that I likely would never have that chance.

There he was, visually unaffected sitting with a group of his friends at his usual table, eating french fries and talking to the pretty new girl Alex who had started Monday, who starts a new school mid-semester anyway? She was sitting right beside him, legs hooked over one another, gesturing as she spoke.

Her delicate hands moved much like Molly's do, with that feminine ease I always found so captivating. Her thick brown hair fell over her arms, it almost looked like she was swimming in it. She had slid in easily with the girls that Evan and his friends always hung out with, raising in popularity quickly and settling there. At some point she had come to rest a hand on his knee, she smiled up at him reassuringly and he nodded with pinched brows.

What were they even talking about? I tried to tune them in more but they were speaking so closely that I couldn't make out any words. I wanted to pinch myself for acting so absurdly, Evan didn't like me, he didn't owe me anything. He didn't owe me a conversation or even a look, because we were nothing. So why did it hurt so much to not have him look at me directly in the eyes in the same way I had become accustomed to in the last few weeks?

"What's going on in that pretty little head?" Gunner reached over the table and poked me smack in the middle of my forehead. A boyish smile enveloped his lips, he dangled his opposite hand with a chip between his fingers.

I pulled my gaze from where I had been looking and met his expectant view, I was sure he knew what, or more particularly who I had been looking at. He had a brow raised as he looked over his shoulder and nodded knowingly.

"Ah." He recognised, meeting my gaze again.

"What?" I feigned innocence, picking up an apple slice from my tray and shoving it in my mouth.

"Iv, you're a smart girl." He said quietly over the table, I was hoping that no one else was listening in. Everyone at the table was in their own conversations with one another so it seemed unlikely. I frowned, indicating I didn't know why he had said that, he shook his head. "People have been saying you slept with him last Friday." He told me bluntly, I blinked at him confused.

"Pardon?" I prompted, he reached over and rested his hand on mine that was sitting on the table.

"I'm not saying you did, but a few people saw him go in your house and he didn't ever come back to his own party." He was speaking quietly, leaning over the table to keep the conversation between us.

Panic flushed through me, I suppose that handful of people outside of Evan's house at the afterparty had gathered their own perception of what had happened in my house that night. I knew the truth but that didn't matter, this was high school, and people were going to think what they wanted. They were going to gossip about Evan, because it was Evan and they would gossip about me because, again, it was Evan.