“Wait a minute. So I wasn’t your first kiss? You were what, twelve?”
“Thirteen, thank you very much. And I’ll admit: I’d played Seven Minutes in Heaven before. In fact, I was drafted into the minor leagues at the end of eighth grade.”
We both crack up.
“In all honesty,” he says, “you were my second kiss.”
“Really?”
He nods.
“And you set the bar high, as well.”
All of this talk about kissing really makes me want to kiss him.
I think we’re about to, when a group of kids runs down the hallway screaming, which startles us both.
“You’d think they’d never been away from home before,” Evan says with a laugh, which breaks the weird intensity of the moment.
“They probably haven’t,” I say. “I mean, my parents rarely let me go anywhere, so I kind of get it.”
He looks at me. “They’re pretty protective, huh?”
“Well, they were. Now they don’t know what to do with me.”
Now there’s not much they can do with me, I think.
“Viviana—”
I look up.
“Vivana, is that you?”
“Oh no.” Standing at the edge of the open door is Dean. Dean of the HushDuo legacy. Dean of the Biggest Ass on the North Side of Chicago legacy. Dean—the guy who ruined my reputation and broke my heart.
Evan looks at me. “You two know each other?”
“I’m Dean.” He steps inside the room and puts out his hand. He’s holding a red cup that smells like some kind of hard liquor and his eyes are glazed over. He’s plastered. “I knew Viviana in a past life.” He says this with a creepy, drunk smirk on his face. My heart drops to the pit of my core. “We used to go to school together, before I transferred out of that hellhole of a place.”
“Um … okay,” Evan says before releasing Dean’s hand.
Dean looks at me. “Are you applying to St. Mary’s?”
I stumble over my words. “No—I mean, I’m not sure—I mean—”
“I never took you as a local girl. I thought you had bigger and better dreams, like Stanford or Harvard or some snotty place like that.”
What an ass. Which is what I want to say. But I’m too shocked or hurt or confused by the fact that he’s standing five feet in front of me to articulate anything of value. Plus, the last thing I need is to explain all that to Evan.
My phone dings. It’s a text from Sammie: If you haven’t started sucking his face, make it happen now, because we are on our way back.
I ignore her message and throw my phone back into my bag.
Dean’s still standing there, staring at me. “After everything that happened, I’m shocked, and frankly somewhat appalled, that you still have a phone. That you’re still willing to take that risk again.”
Oh no.
No, no, no.
I look at Dean, and then Evan, and I think about everything else that Dean could say right now that could ruin this—whatever this is—between Evan and me.
“It’s—it’s just a phone— I mean, how dare you even stand there—” I try to get the words out, to stand up for myself, but I am immediately nauseous and dizzy—and my breath is gone—completely gone. I am sitting firmly on the floor, but I feel like I’m falling, spiraling, plunging back into the disaster that is my past.
Evan gets up and starts to close the door as a signal for Dean to leave. “You’re clearly bothering her, and so I think it’s time for you to go.”
Dean chugs the rest of his drink. “And I think it’s none of your business.”
“You’re standing in my room and clearly bothering my friend, so it very well is my business.”
“You mean your girlfriend?” Dean asks with a laugh. He sounds like a six-year-old.
I really want to throw up.
“And that’s none of your business,” Evan says. He gestures toward the door. “I’m going to ask you one more time to leave.”
For some reason, Dean’s refusing to budge.
I catch my breath. “Dean, would you just go? Please?”
“Does your friend here—” He’s laughing and slurring his words. “Does he know about your texting habits?”
“Dean, please stop—”
“Does he know how you like to break up with people over text? How you don’t even allow them the courtesy of a face-to-face conversation? How you like to—”
Oh God, my heart.
“You can stop.” Evan puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Now.”
Dean laughs and then tries to sucker punch Evan, but thankfully Evan’s too fast and Dean’s too weak and too drunk to make the hit.
Instead of punching his face, Dean sort of lands weakly into Evan’s chest, which allows Evan to grab hold of him by the shoulders and basically push him out the door. “You’re letting hot air in the room. Be safe now.” And he slams the door in Dean’s face.
“Ex-boyfriend?” Evan says.
“Something like that.” I nod, stunned, unable to say anything else.
“I should call campus security.”
“Please don’t.”
Evan nods. Thankfully, he doesn’t pry further. Instead, he just turns up the music and sits next to me, his shoulder pressed against mine.
I do my best to catch my breath. I try to make my breathing slow and quiet. Somehow, it works.