Be My Forever

Chapter 13

Jasmine and I were watching The Princess and the Frog , singing along to every song, just like we always did when watching Disney movies, when my phone rang. Mom . Jasmine looked at my screen, grimacing.

“Are you going to answer?”

I rolled my eyes. If only it were so simple to not answer and to forget about it.

“Honestly, I'd rather not, but she’ll keep calling until I answer, just to tell me it is unacceptable to have a mobile phone and to not be available at all times.”

I breathed in to give myself some courage and picked up. Jasmine put the movie on pause to listen.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hello darling, I feared you were not going to pick up.”

Damn right, I had wondered if it would be wise not to. I plastered a fake smile on my face. I read somewhere that if you smile, even if it is a fake one, your voice sounds friendlier. It was at least worth a shot.

“How are you?” Mom asked.

“I am fine. How are you guys?”

“Oh, you know, your father needs to go to the physiotherapist.”

“Is he alright?”

“Except that he has trouble accepting he’s not thirty anymore, he’s fine.”

The sass in my mother’s voice made me laugh. Okay, this wasn’t so bad. Mom continued to talk about how their life was going. Like every time she called, she also wanted to know if I finally had a boyfriend. My mind wandered to the other side of the hall. Maybe I should also go see a certain physiotherapist, in lingerie. Would that also be worth a shot? I hadn’t seen him since the wedding a few days ago, so I had no clue how things were supposed to be between us now.

“No, I don’t have anyone.”

She would get a heart attack if she knew how many men walked in and out of my bedroom.

“You should’ve stayed with Robert. He was a sweet guy.”

Jasmine sighed loudly, and I bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud. My mom was the only person to think it had been a mistake to let him go. Even Dad had been glad I left him. Robert had indeed been a decent person. More than decent even. I just didn’t love him, and that alone was reason enough to call it quits. If there was no love after a year of dating, there never would be.

“Robert and I were not meant to be.”

“What a shame. Oh Evelyn, don’t forget to wish your sister a happy birthday.”

The comment was not supposed to be more than a simple reminder; to me, it felt like a bucket of iced water.

Jasmine let her head fall back against the sofa, muttering, “Here we go.”

“Like you forgot mine two years in a row?”

My mother clicked her tongue, not happy about that reminder. Like I cared.

“We already apologized for that.”

Right. Because a quick apology was worth so much. I rolled my eyes, thankful that my mother wasn’t here. Otherwise, she would’ve given me a bombastic side-eye. And everyone who knew my mom knew how bad those were. A nasty look from her made you feel like a cockroach, and the only thing you wanted to do then was to disappear.

“I already sent her a message. I don’t forget things like this.”

I had even promised to make her a birthday cake that wasn’t too unhealthy, which she had accepted by sending twenty-something heart emojis.

“Evelyn, that’s enough,” my mother snapped.

Her light-hearted mood was gone, just like it had gone up in smoke for me. This was why I didn’t like to call her. There was always a moment where she felt like she had to mother me or scold me, where she thought she had the right to even do so. Maybe she still had, but it still felt unfair and undeserved to know she would always scold me for something, even when it was unnecessary to bring it up in the first place. So I lied.

“Whatever. I need to go to class.”

“Already?”

“Yes.”

I could hear her breathe loudly on the other side of the call. She was probably pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration, trying her best to keep calm. People tend to say I have a bad temper. Looking at my mom was indication enough if they wanted to know where said temper came from.

“Okay, I love you,” she said in a forced cheerful tone.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Bye.”

I let my phone fall back on the sofa. My best friend scootched closer, her knee bumping mine.

“That went well,” Jasmine tried.

“It went as well as trying to cure a headache by hitting your head against a wall.”

“The good thing is, she won’t call you any more this week.”

At least I had that going for me. Having her call me every week was already taxing enough. Jasmine observed me with knitted brows. I sighed at that face.

“You think I overreacted.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Speak, woman.”

She chuckled. Jasmine grabbed her long dark hair and started braiding it. She really looked like the Disney princess when her thick mane was in a plait. Whereas I always looked like the drugstore version of Merida, with the personality of Rabbit. I didn’t mind. At least I could flex to others about how beautiful my best friend was.

“I think it’s normal for you to feel butthurt when your mom acts with you as if you’re still fourteen and in need of her education. However, I don’t think that being passive-aggressive towards her is going to resolve anything.”

Well, that was probably true. That didn’t mean I had to like what she said. Jasmine noticed my frown.

“You can’t keep doing this, Evy. Everything in your life would go better if you were honest.”

If you were honest . The words made my skin pimple with goosebumps.

“Are you insinuating that I am a liar?”

Here I thought that I was rather straightforward as a person.

“Oh, hell no. You are brutally honest. Just not about what really matters.”

“And what matters, oh wise one?”

“Bitch,” she muttered as she hit me in the arm.

I hugged her before she could hit me again. Jasmine, like the true hero she was, wrapped her arms around my shoulders and squeezed gently.

“What matters is telling others how you feel, Evelyn. Because you are so openly honest about mostly anything, they don’t know what you really want if you keep those thoughts to yourself. You are an ostrich when it comes to facing your problems.”

“Are you talking about my parents or about Danté?”

Her body shook as she giggled. “Both. I’m serious, Eves. You have been abandoned before, so I get why you guard your heart and run away from people instead of facing them. The problem is, you’ll only hurt yourself in the long run.”

Just the idea of telling my parents how I felt, or what I wanted, felt wrong. I shook my head. This was going to be a catastrophe. Maybe it would be better to just suck it up. Because even though I didn’t need my parents around like most people did, hurting them by saying so was not what I wanted either. I was a bitch, sure, but not such a mean one. Danté on the other hand... I knew we had to talk. How could we be just friends after having spent the whole night laughing and touching? It couldn’t have been all in my head, right? Or was I so delusional that I saw a future where there was nothing but a dead-end street?

“I need to talk to Danté.”

I had promised Jasmine that I would try to talk things out with him if things went well at the wedding. Things had gone well. Too well even. And like any drug addict, I couldn’t stay away from him. I didn’t want to. So if there was a chance that he liked me too, I couldn’t throw that away.

“That wasn’t what I hoped would be your revelation of the day, but please do! You still haven’t told me the details of the wedding.”

I ended up laying my head on her lap. Even from this angle, Jasmine was gorgeous. Her light brown eyes were shining with curiosity.

I found myself grinning when I said, “He almost never took his hands off me.”

“Did you kiss him?”

My breath caught in my throat, and I ended up coughing while heat crept up my neck and cheeks. “Gods, no!”

“There's no need to be a prude. That would be the most innocent thing you did.”

“You're right, but this is Danté. I don’t want to rush and act with him as if he was any other guy.”

Because he was not. He was the whole reason why I couldn’t fall in love with Robert. Jasmine brushed a strand of copper blonde hair from my face.

“Then what did you do?”

I smiled as the memories of us twirling over the floor flooded my head; memories filled with people and noise, where all I could focus on was him, and his eyes filled with laughter and a softness I had never seen there before, his warm hand never leaving mine.

“We danced.”

***

My alarm clock rang, indicating that it was once again time to take the trash out. Without wasting much time, I grabbed the bags and went to the back courtyard of our building. The sound of steps shuffling behind me made me turn back. My eyebrows shot up in surprise as Jared, Danté’s roommate, walked out of the hall. Needless to say, he wasn’t the one I had hoped to see. Unlike our other neighbour, Jared wasn’t that tall. If I wore heels, I was probably at the same eye-level as he was. He was a bit chubby, and always had a zen and reassuring vibe around him.

He offered me a polite smile. “Oh, hi Evelyn.”

He had been Danté’s roommate long before Jasmine and I came to live here, and yet, I wasn’t sure I had seen that guy more than six times. Was he the type of person to stay at someone else’s place, or was he simply always holed up inside his bedroom hikikomori style?

“Hey, Jared. How are you?”

“Good. It’s weird to have the apartment all to myself.”

“Where’s Danté?”

Jared threw his bags in the bin, then offered to do mine, which I silently accepted.

“He went to Greece to go rock climbing with his sisters.”

So that was why I hadn’t seen him at Hot Stuff the last time. Not that I kept tabs on where Danté went. Had I known that Danté would be on holiday, I might have rethought my decision to wear my infamous squirrel onesie outside of my home. Luckily, Jared was a gentleman and ignored my attire. I wasn’t sure if I had to say something else; I barely knew the guy. Jared wasn’t someone to care enough to do useless small talk, because he gave me one last wave before going back inside. Probably locking himself in his room, only to emerge again in a week. I shrugged before heading back inside myself. There was no reason for me to dwell outside today.