Clara thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t have stopped seeing you if you told me. I would have been mortified, yes, but that wouldn’t have made me break up with you.”
“I made such a big mistake, Clara,” he said. “I wish I knew how to apologize in a way that’s bigger than words.”
Clara nodded. It was too much for her to talk about over sandwiches and milk. She tried for something light.
“Would you like one?” she asked holding out a tater tot.
“A peace offering?” he replied.
She shrugged, and he took it.
***
“I thought about you all the time while you were away,” Evan said before class started.
Clara looked at the wall beside her desk to hide her face. Amy had made fun of her in the hallway, and she fought back and won. She no longer cared what everyone thought of her mental breakdown. Except for Evan. She was embarrassed about it with him.
“I was scared for you,” he went on. “And I thought it was all my fault.”
Clara stared at the wall as she replied.
“I get it from my mom,” she said quietly. “It didn’t really have anything to do with you. It’s . . . it’s a chemical thing. That’s what they told me, anyway. I think what happened with us just kind of helped along the inevitable. It was going to come either way, like after Christmas.”
“Oh.”
They were silent. Clara finally turned to face him.
“I heard voices,” she said. She didn’t understand why she told him that. She thought maybe he needed to know just how crazy she really was. She wanted to be honest about everything.
She waited for him to get up and leave. For good.
“Did you hear my voice, Clara?” he asked. “Because I talked out loud to you all the time.”
“What did you say?” Clara replied.
“I told you I loved you.”
***
She closed her locker and turned around. He was standing there staring at her, a look on his face she’d never seen. He was wrestling with something, but she didn’t know what it was.
He approached her and cupped her face in his hands. He looked into her eyes searching them. His brows were furrowed as he looked at her, searching, searching the hazel until he discovered it. And then his face relaxed, lit up, and he bent his head to kiss her tenderly on the lips. It was long and slow and gentle. It demanded nothing. It forced nothing. It forgave and asked for forgiveness.
Evan was pulled away by a teacher. Clara heard “no physical contact in this school” as he was ushered down the hall, walking backwards and stumbling into students because he refused to walk face forward and turn his back on her.
***
She waited by her car for him. She hoped he would come. How could he not after kissing her in the hallway? She needed to feel his lips again, taking her back to a place before their fight, and her breakdown, the hospital, and her loneliness.
She saw him in the distance. He was coming. She itched to go to him. She couldn’t stand it. She saw him running, and then she moved. Fast and stumbling and then she crashed into him before she knew it, her body crushed against his chest, his arms holding her desperately, afraid to let go. She cried like she did before the pills, spilling the tears into his shirt, and she heard his sob, felt his body shake with it, and thought that she was holding him up so he wouldn’t collapse.
“Clara,” he cried, his voice strangled and strange. “I’m sorry.”
He cupped her face, and she watched as the tears poured from his peridot eyes, running down his cheeks and falling on to her. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks and chin. He kissed her lips hard, and she clasped her hands around his wrists, held onto him as he kissed her with a force she’d never felt. He meant to bruise her, and she wanted him to.
“I’m sorry,” she said over and over into his mouth, tasting his tears, her tears at the corners of her lips.
He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her to her car and set her on the hood. He pressed her hard against him, hearing her moan as he sucked her neck, pushing himself harder in between her legs until she cried his name.
“I want you to always say my name, Clara,” he said looking down into her eyes. “Will you do that for me?”
“Yes, Evan,” she said softly, wiping underneath of his eyes. She pulled him gently to her lips.
He opened her mouth with his tongue and found hers, playing with it until she squirmed with heated sexual desire. He pressed his hips harder into her, and she pushed back wanting him to take her there, on the hood of her car, in the student parking lot.
She felt him dragged from her, heard a familiar “no physical contact in this school,” and Evan’s protests that they weren’t in school but outside of it.
“Wise guy,” the coach said as he escorted Evan into the main building.
Clara sat on her car watching Evan grow smaller with the distance between them. He turned around and flashed her a smile.
“I’ll be seeing you, Clara!” he shouted.
And she smiled back.
Epilogue
“Your roommate sounds awful!” Beatrice said, her face screwed up in an unattractive grimace.
“He is,” Evan replied. He sat beside Clara and Beatrice on the soft spring grass surrounded by the honeysuckle vines.
“And he rarely showers,” Evan went on. “That’s unpleasant, too, when you’re living in a 12 x 12 cell.”
Clara giggled at Beatrice’s shocked reaction.
“But he’ll be out of my life soon, and there are other things about college that are fantastic,” Evan said. “Like my class schedule. I don’t have to report until eleven.”
Beatrice sighed dreamily. “I can’t wait to go to college,” she said. “Do you have a lot of homework though?”
“Yes,” Evan replied. “A lot.” He turned to Clara and smiled.
“I bet Clara will go to Maryland to be with you,” Beatrice said teasingly. “She got accepted, you know.”
Clara cocked her head and scowled playfully at her sister. Beatrice giggled.
“I’m hoping she does,” Evan said, and took Clara’s hand in his. Clara blushed. Even after everything, she blushed.
“Are you excited about prom, Clare-Bear?” Beatrice asked.