Chapter Twelve

                                    

                                          
A.N. An update! This chapter isn't hugely important, but it's mostly setting up the next story arc, which I can teasingly assure you all is going to be quite fucked up! It's also been a few weeks since my last update, but uni work is getting me seriously fucking stressed. This is my third and final year studying a degree in History, and this year I'm doing my undergrad dissertation, so basically I wanna kill myself (just like most of my characters!) #PrayForClay2k17.
                          
♔ Chapter Twelve ♔
                          
"Look at the fucking state of you," Evelyn laughed, when she saw me on campus Monday morning. She looked miserable, her hair matted into natural brown curls. 
                          
"What do you mean?" I asked, strolling up to her. She was standing just at the edge of campus, at the back of the Student's Union smoking a cig. She looked at the end of it in her hands, chewed her lip and threw it to the floor with a sigh. 
                          
I remembered her saying something about wanting to quit smoking, but I guess she'd given in trying. It was sometimes hard to keep up with her latest antics - one minute, it was a diet limited to orange juice and cubes of cheese; another, she was trying to quit smoking. I couldn't be bothered to keep up.
                          
I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her either, or the last time I'd actually came to a lecture on time. It must have been weeks ago, I told myself. I hadn't even been checking all of the days that were flying by, the ones I'd spent alone in my bedroom, or out on the streets, picking fights, or watching Luke's window, hardly believing he was real.
                          
"You look like you've had the shit beaten out of you," she laughed. "What happened?"
                          
"I can't remember," I lied.
                          
"Really?" Her eyes were screaming, her brows raised, like she knew everything, about why I was covered in bruises, about Tom, and Luke. "Why don't I believe that?"
                          
"Believe what the fuck you want," I told her.
                          
"Whoa," she mouthed, "you've always got to be so rude, haven't you? So fucking rude."
                          
"And you're so innocent," I laughed.
                          
"I never said that," she admitted. "Just a better person than you."
                          
"I thought you'd quit smoking," I said, nudging to the cig she'd just tossed on the floor. I pulled out my own pack and sparked one up just to tease her, blowing the smoke in her face.
                          
"I have," she sighed, "but I needed to finish the last pack first."
                          
"Yeah, sure," I chuckled, resting my back against the old red brick wall of the SU. "Just one more, keep telling yourself."
                          
She whacked me on the shoulders with her bag and seethed, "You're just so fucking cynical aren't you?"
                          
"It's part of my charm," I grinned, taking another drag of my cig and blowing the smoke into her face again. She let out a long breath, turned her back to me, and scrunched her fists.
                          
"I wanna kill you sometimes," she said, through gritted teeth. She turned back around. "I need to stop smoking."
                          
"Then stop," I told her.
                          
"It's not that easy!" she exclaimed.
                          
"How not?"
                          
"What if I gain weight?" she asked, her voice a faint whisper.
                          
In that moment, I knew I had finally managed to figure her out - Evelyn was my only real friend at university, and she'd managed to allude me until now.