Not Another Reason

Chapter Eighteen: Guilt

Evelyn and Chloe count through the routine as they watch the girls run through it. It had seemed to be going well and to their liking and everyone seemed to be perfectly on cue and in formation, well everyone except Jessica. At one point in the routine, half of the girls do a roll to go into their next spot in the routine while the others do stunting, and Jessica being apart of the group that is rolling, rolls in the wrong direction and messes up the girl in front of her, frustrating Evelyn enough to turn the music off, finding the whole routine to be ruined instead of letting them continue.

"Jess, what the hell? You've had days to learn and practice this routine, I'm getting tired of your fuck ups." Eve yells, throwing her arms in the air. Jess groans, Evelyn's yelling not bothering her at this point, now that she's gotten used to Evelyn abusing her power of being captain to torture her any chance she got.

"Okay. That's okay, guys, um.. Just, everyone take five." Chloe yells, wrapping a hand around Eve's arm to pull her back next to her. "It's okay, we can just run through it again and perfect it, I'm sure Jess will get it."

Evelyn rolls her eyes as she shakes her head, at this point not even caring anymore and just wanting the practice to be over so she could see her friends and boyfriend. "I'm gonna get our waters."

As Evelyn grabbed two water bottles from her cheer bag for Chloe and herself, she overhears Chloe stopping Jessica, starting a conversation with her. She takes a sip as she starts approaching them, taking notice in Jessica's rather unpleasant facial expressions to whatever it was Chloe had been saying to her.

"What's going on?" Evelyn asks as she approaches the two, handing Chloe her water bottle.

"I was just letting her know, I think it's so brave of her to come back after everything that happened." Chloe responds, and Jessica puts on an even more confused facial expression. "Everything that happened?"

"Yeah, you know, like what everyone's saying. That you cheated on Justin and called it rape, or whatever, cause you regretted it." Chloe answers, Eve's eyebrows raising as she finally caught onto the conversation, the rumor her, Bryce, and Monty had started to save Bryce's ass being more effective than they had thought it would be.

"But hey, look look, I totally understand, because you know, I should know, he's my man." Chloe continues, Eve letting out a snicker at Chloe's attempts to make Jessica feel better but only making it worse. "But, I don't have a problem with it, and Evie got over you trying to get her best friend in trouble so there's no reason why we should have to let it affect our work, right?"

Evelyn has a smirk on her face as she stares at Chloe, but as she looks over at Jess she notices she was beginning to breathe hard and her face began to contort into the face she made when she was really hurt and about to cry, something Eve hadn't seen since the night she found out about her and Justin, and what Bryce had done to her, making Eve's smirk drop.

"Jess.." Eve begins, putting her hand out to touch her shoulder as she began to realize the effects of her actions, but Jessica pushes her hand away from her. "Don't touch me!" She says angrily, before running away to break into a sob, making Evelyn finally start to question the things she has done to protect her friends.

"You alright, Eve?" Chloe asks, noticing Evelyn whole demeanor change as she actually started to feel sad, but once Evelyn had heard Chloe's voice she snapped right back. "Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?" She asks, before noticing the sound of a camera shutter clicking, making both girls sigh.

"Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me." Evelyn groans, looking away as Chloe yells towards Tyler, his camera pointed at them and clicking away. "Really? This is for yearbook?" She yells.

"Don't you have windows to stalk, perv?" Evelyn asks him, before ending with "get the fuck outta here! Jesus."

"Monty, can you stop driving reckless for once, we're in Bryce's car. He'd kill us if something happened to it." Evelyn groans, looking around at the streets surrounding them going by quickly as her best friend decided to speed.

"Oh you're one to talk about reckless driving Miss I like to speed in school parking lots." Montgomery jokes, making her roll her eyes. "Oh fuck you." She mumbles, looking down at her phone, but noticing as Montgomery finally decided to slow down. They drove for about a minute calmly before Evelyn hear's Monty whisper "Oh shit."

"What?" She asks, looking up ahead of them to see a kid riding his bike a couple of feet ahead of the car and slowly realizing it was Clay as he had taken glances behind him at the lights suddenly trailing him.

She looks over at Monty, noticing the devilish smirk appearing, making her scream "Monty, no!" But Montgomery had already hit the gas, speeding up behind Clay making him look back in confusion and then fear at the realization he was about to get hit.

Evelyn thinks quickly right before the car could make contact and grabbed a hold of the wheel, swerving it around him as Clay had jumped off the bike away from the car, trying and succeeding in avoiding to get hit.

"What the fuck, Eve?!" Monty yells at her as she slaps his arm hard. "What the fuck, Monty?! You could've fucking killed him!" "And? He's been causing the most trouble out of everyone since the tapes came out." "I don't fucking care. You do not touch him, okay. Focus your anger on Tyler, or anyone else on those god damn tapes, but Clay's off fucking limits. He hasn't done shit lately, so leave him the fuck alone."

Montgomery rolls his eyes, clenching onto the wheel but stays quiet, knowing that no matter what Evelyn said, Clay Jensen was still a target.