Chapter 15
JAHNVI
“I did it to make you mad.”
Everett jumped, almost knocking over the red travel mug he’d set on a table.
It wasn’t coffee; he despised coffee. He had a weird thing with tea—like weird to the point of obsessive.
I’d lean over during class to see what he was doing and instead of watching Netflix silently with subtitles or scrolling mindlessly through Pinterest as most people did, he’d be looking through specialty tea websites.
“Jahnvi.” He picked up his tea and hugged it to his chest, looking at me accusingly. “You scared the absolute shit out of me. Could you give me a warning next time, please?”
It was the first Thursday of the month, meaning it was speech meeting day.
Everett and I always showed up a bit early to put down chairs and greet people on the way in.
To be honest, we didn’t need to come in that early.
We just did so that it seemed like we each had our lives together, so that our dedication showed.
Everett had gotten there earlier than me and was moving a table in the empty and half-dark room. I must have spooked him.
“Sorry,” I muttered, turning all the lights on. “But I did it to make you mad.”
“Did what?”
“Partner up with KJ. I only did it to make you mad.”
His question hadn’t stopped torturing me all day yesterday. Why didn’t you partner up with me, Jahnvi? It was the way he had looked at me when he asked it, the little sliver of emotion in his usually blank eyes.
Was that emotion jealousy?
Was he...jealous of KJ? Was he mad that he wasn’t partnered up with me? Did he not despise my company?
He nodded, breaking eye contact to set his mug back down. No further explanation was needed; he knew what I was talking about immediately.
“Okay.” He nodded.
What?
“O-okay? That’s all you have to say?”
He crossed his arms and frowned down at me. “What else do you want me to say, Jahnvi?”
“I don’t know! I—” I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nose, trying to calm down. “You seemed a bit stressed the last time you asked so...I just wanted to respond to your question. I only did it to make you mad.”
He looked at me for a long time before he spoke. “Why did you want to make me mad?”
“Because you made me mad.”
“How did I make you mad?”
“Y-you’re really asking me this right now?”
“Well, yeah. How did I make you mad?”
“By doing things like this !” I hissed, walking closer to him. “You, you pretend to be invested in my life. You pretend to care, and then you—”
“And then I what?” he asked softly with his hands in his pockets. Something about his face was irking me, causing me to want to grab his collar and shake him like a carton of orange juice.
There wasn’t a single emotion on his face. It was completely devoid of anything. His eyes were hooded, his mouth was a thin line, and his leg was bobbing as he stood. Like he was already itching to do the next thing. Like he was just asking questions because I’d asked him to.
Like it was a chore.
Like I was a chore.
This was sudden, and it was a world away from the Everett I’d known recently.
The Everett I had seen yesterday was so vibrant.
He had been wearing a plain white shirt that was tucked into a plain pair of black pants.
He usually wore his granny sweaters when he was at the restaurant, but I knew yesterday was an important day for him.
That’s why I’d decided to bring my friends there for dinner.
I wanted to support him. And I guess I was also a little curious. I’d been inside his restaurant a long time ago, and I was curious to see how it had changed. It was just like I would’ve guessed.
A tad (okay, very ) worn down.
But no one seemed to notice the decor. And if they did, their mouths were too full to speak up about it. It really hurts my heart to say this. Like, my heart actually winces every time I think about it. But his food was really, really good.
Like, it was mouth-watering, craving-at-2-a.m. type food. I had eaten every crumb of the naan he’d given me. I hadn’t regretted coming there at all.
And Everett. I could tell he was stretched to the max.
He was running everywhere yesterday, doing work meant for five people.
But he was smiling. He was talking with his friends and serving food to a crowd that really liked it.
When he had looked around the crowded restaurant, his mouth had lifted into a smile.
I could tell that this was something he’d needed. It was his moment.
And he was shining.
He really was.
But that Everett was a world away from the one standing in front of me. He prompted me again, “And then I what, Jahnvi?”
“And then,” I started quietly, “you bring girls around right after you drop me home. You have fifteen different personalities, and I never know which one is going to pop out. Every second I think you don’t despise me or, hell, even sorta enjoy my company, you do something to counter it. That is what’s making me mad.”
I didn’t get louder as I talked, and maybe that made me seem angrier.
But whatever it was, it had no effect on him. He just kept looking down at me, frowning.
So, I spoke again, “This has been on my mind for the past week, so promise to tell me the truth?”
He nodded.
I bit the inside of my cheek, forming the words before I said them. “Did...did you know about KJ? That he’d react like that? Did you provoke him? I keep replaying the scene in my head. It just...it doesn’t make sense how you ducked so quickly.”
Silence.
That wasn’t a good sign. Guys usually hate accusations of any kind and would jump to defend themselves, but his face was still scarily calm and clouded. The only difference was that he shifted his eye contact to look down at his feet. He finally cleared his throat.
“I’m...sorry if he scared you,” he said quietly.
Well that cleared it up. “Why?” I whispered.
He suddenly spoke louder, jarring me. “G’morning, Mr. N.”
I hadn’t even noticed that our head coach had come in. With one final look at me, Everett walked past my left shoulder. In doing so, he ever so slightly grazed it and, I was ashamed to admit it, the entire point of contact lit ablaze.
I felt like a fish thrown back into water.
I realized that my cheeks were burning and that I was sweating. When I was talking to him, I hadn’t noticed, but now that he was gone; I felt everything tenfold.
Trying to hide how flustered I was, I moved over a few tables. Everett and our head coach were talking about how the past tournament had gone. I wasn’t fully listening, but I heard something about Washington DC. I brushed it off since I was still thinking about our encounter.
My head snapped up and my eyes flew open. How had I managed to drift off? The entire team had shown up and the head coach had apparently been speaking for a while now.
Long story short: we were going to attend a speech tournament in DC that ten people would be chosen for. Captains were automatically going, and it was in two weeks.
When the date was mentioned, Everett shifted in his seat next to me. We were both sitting in the front row, right in the middle too. He was looking down at his hands, fidgeting with his ring.
I poked his arm. “ What’s wrong? ” I mouthed.
He shook his head, but he wasn’t getting off that easily. When our head coach stopped talking and everyone started to file out, I grabbed his arm.
“Jahnvi, what?” There was a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“Tell me what’s wrong.” I probed again, “Is there something up with when the tournament is going to be?”
He exhaled slowly and looked above my head. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to go. With the wedding—”
“What wedding?”
“The wedding order, Jahnvi. Keep up.” He rolled his eyes. “I need to be around when the wedding order happens. I’d only be back two days before the wedding if I go to DC. The tournament is smack-dab in the middle of the preparations, and I just can’t risk being gone then.”
“But Everett, it’s a big deal to even meet the requirements for this tournament.”
“ Obviously. ” He crossed his arms and his leg started bopping. “Grow up, Jahnvi. I want to go, of course I do. But I can’t lose this order. The restaurant’s reputation will be ruined if I mess up a big wedding. So, I need to be there.”
“Can’t your employees take care of it for you?”
“I don’t have that many people working for me. Definitely not as many as your dad does.” He wrenched his arm from my grasp and stood up, grabbing his backpack from the ground. “Whatever. It’s later’s problem.”
“Not to stress you out even more, but—”
“Jahnvi, whenever anyone says that, they’re lying.”
I got up with him and started walking out. “Well, I heard some people talking about last night at EJ’s. And, well—”
“They didn’t like the food? Oh, I thought—”
“No, no, they loved it!” I assured him. “That’s the problem. You’re going to be a lot busier if more people start coming to the restaurant. You need to hire more people.”
A group of freshmen were annoyingly talking in the middle of the hallway, so we split apart to walk around them. When we got back together, he waved a hand at me.
“I handled it the last time.”
“ Barely , Everett.”
“Don’t worry about it, I have it all together.
You”—he pointed at me—“just focus on trying to beat me in speech, because I still think I have the lead.” He grinned at me.
With a final wink, he left my side to get to his friends, who were talking near the lockers.
He seemed like his usual aloof and playful self.
But his fingers didn’t stop messing with his rings.