"Just Friends"

Chapter 29

JULIE

Sam dropped me off at the front door and told me to go in, that she was coming in a second.
I agreed and walked inside the school.

I had been sleeping at her house for a whole week now.
She didn't want me to go back home, because I had mentioned Bill and his jerk attitudes.

I made my way to my locker and opened it up to grab my Chemistry book.
From across the hallway, I noticed Evan's locker was open and a guy was taking out some book. The door shut and Evan's face appeared.

His brown eyes were darkened with eye bags, surrounding the eyelid with brown-ish tones.
The rest of his skin was dyed a weird, sick-looking yellow. His hair seemed filled with grease and it was a mess.
It was the first time he came to school since the break-up.

He looked awful.
He probably felt awful.

I remembered the way he talked with confidence, somehow sure that things would be okay after the break-up.
It did not match the guy I was looking at.
I wondered if he didn't feel safe enough to show me how he actually felt. Or if he was in denial, holding it together from nonexistent pieces of reassurance.

I always felt like I could tell him anything. Like I could be honest, no matter how fucked up my thoughts felt.
I remembered the time we went back to his house after a party, and instead of sleeping together, we talked. The entire night.
We could have had sex easily. But we didn't.
He began asking me things, and I replied; then it was a conversation, and suddenly it had been the whole night.
A hole opened in my stomach.

I wanted to say something.
Hug him.
Or smoke a cigarette with him, since that always helped.
Or maybe take him to the dressing room and make out, which, once again, always helped.
Then Hailey joined the scene, and I realized he wasn't mine to take care of.

That part of my life, that involved him, and all the small things I had learned did him good; it no longer existed.

I had so much knowledge.
For example, I knew that the yellow skin was caused by a whole lot of alcohol, probably vodka, and little sleep.
But it was now useless.
I had learned for absolutely nothing, because now the connection disappeared and I couldn't use those things for shit.

It sucked. It was so much bullshit.
And it made me hate myself, and him, and Sam, and Argentina.
And every single thing that brought me to this point, because I had, in summary, wasted time making my life even harder.