5
The Lobby Can Absolutely Get Worse
Kylie
Evan: I’m here. Lobby.
I made it as far as the third-floor stairwell before my stomach gave out.
I sat down on the step to catch my breath, and when I looked up, the asshole from the laundry room was standing in front of me.
I laughed like an insane person. I couldn’t help it.
Now he’s gone, and I’m still sitting here with my phone pressed to my chest.
I wipe my face on my sleeve one more time and go down.
Evan is on one of the couches in the Corvin Hall lobby when I get to the bottom of the stairs, and for one stupid second all I see is that he cut his hair.
Just around the sides, close enough that there’s a pale strip of skin above his ears where the sun didn’t get all summer.
He’s had the same haircut for years. He always gets it two weeks later than he should, after complaining that it’s getting long, and he doesn’t have time. He must have gone this weekend. After.
He stands up when he sees me, and my chest nearly gives again, because all I can see is his mouth on hers. My hand tightens against my side.
“Hey,” he says.
I stop a few feet away. He looks tired. Any other day, I’d ask how late he stayed up and tell him an energy drink after dinner isn’t healthy.
I’d reach up and flatten the piece of hair at his crown that never lies right after a cut, because he never notices it and always ducks his head so I can reach.
It’s sticking up now. I fold my arms and keep them folded.
The lobby keeps moving around us. A delivery guy comes in with a pizza box and reads a name off his phone at the desk.
Two girls pass behind me arguing about a quiz neither of them studied for.
The asshole from the stairs comes back down with an empty laundry bag over one shoulder, looks at us for exactly one second, and heads straight for the basement door without breaking stride.
Good. At least one person on this campus can mind his own business.
Evan glances at the couch. “Can we sit?”
“I’m fine.”
“Kylie.”
“You came here, so say what you came to say.”
His mouth presses flat. He used to do that when we fought in high school, when he had something to say that would only make me angrier. He’d hold it in, and I could see him doing it, and I found it annoyingly considerate. Now all I want to know is what he’s holding in.
He wipes his palms down the front of his jeans. “I’m sorry. I mean it.”
“I know what the words mean.”
His jaw ticks. “Okay.”
The silence stretches until I can hear someone hitting the vending machine. He looks around the lobby, then back at me. “Can we please go somewhere that isn’t here?”
I almost say no. Then two guys walk in and look between us, and I nod. “Outside.”
The air is cool. It moves through my sweatshirt and raises goosebumps on my arms, and I don’t unfold them to rub the skin.
The sun is almost down. People are crossing the lawn between buildings with backpacks and iced coffees, and somebody laughs so loud I can still hear it after they’re halfway down the sidewalk.
I walk toward the side of the building without deciding to, and Evan follows, and when we’re far enough from the entrance that nobody coming in or out can hear, I stop and turn around.
He doesn’t come as close as he normally would. Normally he’d be right there, close enough to hook a finger in my back pocket. He stays a full step back.
“You said there was more to explain.”
He looks at the ground, and my stomach braces. “Kylie, I don’t know how to say this without making it sound worse.”
Don’t cry.
“No, I mean—” He blows out a breath. “I’m trying not to say it wrong.”
Do not fucking cry.
He looks up at me, and there was a time that look would have softened me.
Not because he was working me, but because it’s Evan, and we’ve had hundreds of fights, and almost all of them ended with one of us realizing we were being ridiculous.
I know what he looks like when he’s actually nervous, and he looks like that now. He keeps swallowing.
“I knew her before that night.”
The words sit on top of me and don’t go anywhere.
“How long?”
“Not long.”
“Days?”
“A couple weeks.”
I try to line it up. Two weeks ago, I was still home, on my bedroom floor surrounded by storage bins, writing labels in Sharpie: Desk.
Shoes. Winter? I don’t know where he was, or what he said he was doing, or which nights he called and which he didn’t.
The days keep sliding around, and every one I try to grab has a question mark on it now.
“How?”
“We met through people.”
“What people?”
He says a name I sort of recognize, a guy he knows, somebody I met once, maybe twice, at somebody’s house.
“And then what?”
“We talked.”
“Define talked.”
His face changes for half a second. “Evan,” I say.
“We texted.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I’m not counting messages, Kylie.”
“You remember enough to know it’s been two weeks.”
“Because I know when I met her.”
“So what did you talk about?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing important.”
I laugh, and it isn’t funny. “Important enough that you told her you were single.”
“I didn’t tell her that. Not exactly.”
I go completely still. “Do not.”
“What?”
“Do not start doing that.”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“No. You’re changing the size of words until you can fit through them.”
His eyes close. “She asked if I was seeing anyone.”
“And you said?”
He looks at the bike rack, the brick, anything that isn’t me, and I know before he says it, and I stand there and wait for it anyway.
“What did you say?”
“That it was complicated.”
I can’t say anything. There are too many words, and they’re all trying to get out at once, and they jam somewhere in my throat until all I can do is stand there with my arms wrapped around myself so tight my fingers dig into my ribs.
“Complicated.”
“I know.”
“We were complicated?”
“No.”
“You told another girl we were complicated.”
“I fucked up.”
“You’ve said that.”
“Because I did.”
“No. You keep saying it like it covers everything.” My voice is climbing, and I don’t care. “You fucked up when you kissed her. Fine. That’s one thing. What do you call telling her you were basically available before you kissed her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. Yes, you do.”
His face hardens. “You want me to say I planned this. I didn’t.”
“I want you to stop acting like every single part of it happened by accident.”
“I’m not.”
“You were texting her for weeks.”
“Two weeks.”
I watch him hear it, and his face goes slack.
“Wow.”
“That came out wrong.”
“No,” I say quickly. My heart’s racing. “That one came out really clear.”
He drags both hands down his face. “I’m not trying to minimize it.”
“You just corrected me, because apparently fourteen days of lying deserves accuracy.”
“I wasn’t lying every day.”
It’s out before he can catch it, and we both stop. The laughing people on the lawn are gone. There’s a car somewhere far off and my own breathing, loud and uneven in my ears, and Evan’s face has gone gray.
“Kylie—”
“No. Keep going. This is really helpful.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t waking up every morning thinking, today I’m going to lie to my girlfriend.”
“Wow. That’s a really high bar. Congratulations.”
“Ky—”
“Jesus Christ. You lied to me.” My voice cracks down the middle, and I watch it go through him.
“I know,” he says. He takes a step toward me, and when I don’t move, he stops. “I love you.”
My eyes burn so fast I have to turn my head.
I stare at the bike rack. One of the bikes has a flat back tire, the rubber folded against the rim.
I hate him for saying it, and I hate myself more, because I believe him.
I don’t know what to do with a love that can sit right next to two weeks and complicated without flinching.
“You don’t get to say that like it fixes the sentence before it.”
“I’m not trying to fix it.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because it’s true.”
I wipe under my eye with the side of my finger, and it comes away wet. I didn’t even feel it happen.
Something in his face gives. “Ky.”
“Don’t.”
I look past him at the windows of Corvin. Somebody on the second floor has a plant in theirs, too big for its pot, the leaves pressed flat against the glass like it’s trying to get out.
“I asked you,” I say. “Do you remember that? Last week. I asked you if something was wrong.”
“I remember.”
“You told me I was being weird.”
“I didn’t say it like that.”
“You laughed at me.”
“I was trying to—”
“You fucking laughed at me, Evan.”
He looks down at his shoes, and now that I know where it goes, the memory comes back sharp.
His room, the navy comforter, his phone face down on his thigh.
Me asking. Him smiling and bumping his shoulder into mine and telling me I was making something out of nothing, then kissing my temple and putting on a movie.
My face got hot. I sat through the whole first half feeling like an idiot, like I’d made it weird, like I was that girl. I apologized. I actually apologized.
“You made me feel stupid.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now, because I’m telling you. You didn’t care then.”
“That’s not fair.”
I turn my head and look at him, and he flinches. Good. Maybe it isn’t fair. I don’t have room in me right now to care.
“I cared,” he says, quieter. “I just didn’t want to have the conversation.”
“Because then you’d have to tell me.”
“Yes.”
Finally, a clean answer. I wait for it to feel better, and it doesn’t.
Behind us, a door bangs open. Someone comes out of Corvin, keys jingling, and heads for the parking lot without looking our way.
Evan pushes his hands into his pockets. “I should’ve stopped talking to her. I should’ve told you. I shouldn’t have gone to the party.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
He doesn’t even take a breath first. “You.”
I look at the bikes again, and he breathes in slowly.
“I don’t expect you to be okay right now. I know you’re not. I just—Kylie. I don’t want this to be it.”
My throat closes. “What am I supposed to say to that?”