Embrace (Evolve Series #2) (5 page)

I nod, giving her a comforting smile, urging her to
go on. “It was always assumed, well, with the help of endless blatant comments
from our parents, that Dane and I would simply end up together. At first, I was
all for it.” Her voice falters and her gaze drifts past me, far-off and
disconnected. “I’m not sure now if that was because I actually liked him like
that or it was just another one of the programs my parents installed that I mindlessly
followed.”

 I can almost hear the self-analyzing going on in
her head, but just as quickly as she’d gotten lost, she’s back, looking at me
once again. “Doesn’t matter either way.” She smirks facetiously. “Dane never
wanted me.”

Pain etches her eyes and she quickly recovers the
frown she doesn’t think I noticed. “Then when his parents died, and he came
here to be near Tate, well… I followed him. I thought if nothing else, we’d be
friends. I’d known him so long, and he was lost and alone. I just wanted to be
the one constant, the one familiar comfort, in his life.”

I can’t even help it, I reach over and take her hand
in mine. She looks down to our joined hands and a small, soft smile appears
before she goes on. “I think maybe he appreciated it, until Laney came along.”

And there you have it—two peas in a pod. No wonder
we had formed an instant, unspoken-but-understood friendship. The finer details
may be different, change a few names and exacts, but Whitley and I share the
same story. I know exactly how she feels, which is why I remain silent. There’s
nothing really for me to say, anyway. She doesn’t want me to tell her how bad
it sucks—she knows that. She doesn’t need me to tell her “I’m sorry,” because
pity doesn’t solve anything, nor does she want me to make a joke and lighten
things up; our pain is not to be trivialized.

“Do you have any of your Coke left?” she asks me out
of nowhere, clearly done with the intellectual portion of our buzz. “I have,”
she smacks her lips, making the face of someone who just licked the bottom of a
shoe, “like absolutely no moisture in my mouth right now.”

I can barely pass her my drink I’m laughing so hard,
when she again spurts out the random.

“Evan, look!” she squeals, latching onto my arm. “Look
over there!”

My eyes follow the end of her pointed finger to a
red balloon bouncing aimlessly along the ground.

“Go catch it for me, pleasssseeeee?!”

Um yeah, I can do that. No problem. 
I lumber
out of the car, my head a bit foggy but the fresh air instantly helping that. Luckily,
the balloon’s lost most of its oomph, so I catch it easily, handing it to her when
I notice she’s now standing behind me.

“Going flat, but still hang on, just in case. We
don’t want it losing its way again.”

“Thank you.” She smiles, her voice low and tender.
“I’ll go put it in my car.”

I watch her as she walks there, tucking the balloon
in the backseat with great care, then makes her way back to stand in front of
me.

 “I don’t want to be an underdog anymore. Do you?” I
had no idea it was coming out of my mouth, but it just did.

Her face slowly lights up and she shakes her head
back and forth. “Not at all. I’m too cute to be an underdog, right?”

I laugh, jealous of her resiliency. “Definitely too
cute,” I agree with a wink. “That settles it. We are now the opposite of
underdogs. We are—”

I’ve almost made the connection when she shout-giggles
it for me.

“We’re overcats!”

“Hell yes we are! Over, badass, sexy, freaking cats!
And I say we officially start our journey, with say…” Again I have to stop and
think, but my partner in crime has it all figured out.

“Tattoos!” she squeals, giving me a vibrant smile.
“I’ve always wanted a tattoo! Something my mother would think is ghastly!”

“Did you just say ghastly?” I fail at containing my
laughter.

Whitley is exactly the prim Ms. Proper who says
things like ghastly, and ten bucks says she gets a tiny butterfly or heart on
her ankle.

“Okay, so maybe tomorrow we can—” I start.

“There’s a tattoo shop one street over! I
so
bet they’re open, come on!” She’s dragging me by the hand as she says it.

“Whitley, we’re gonna get busted. We’re messed up,
wandering the streets, leaving your car…” I can’t even articulate all the
things wrong with this plan.

She turns back to look at me, puckering out her
bottom lip. “Evan, this is downtown. We aren’t the only stoned college kids out
right now. Relax.”

If the debutante thinks I need to relax, I must be
acting like a phenomenal pussy, and we certainly can’t have that. “Hop on,” I
turn and bend, letting her jump on for a piggyback ride.

W
hitley is trying so hard not to turn up
her nose right now it’s hilarious. Her big blue eyes are about three times
their normal size, taking in every nuance of the shop. There’s indents in her
lower lip from her teeth that just loosened their grip, and her once creamy
complexion is now simply pale. I’m tempted to tease her, but don’t really want
to draw attention to our current “condition,” because I know they’ll turn us
away.

“Y-you’ll go first, right?” she asks with a shaking
stutter to her voice.

I lay one hand on her shoulder, squeezing
reassuringly. “I seem to remember this being your plan,” I remind her, quirking
a brow, “but yes, I will go first.”

She lets out a deep breath, her face and shoulders
relaxing with it, and gives me a grin. “What are you going to get?”

I have no idea. A tattoo should mean something,
right? I wrack my brain, but nothing stands out. Can’t get my school or ball
team symbol; I’ve hardly built a deep-rooted love for Southern yet. Can’t get
anything to do with you-know-who; enough said there. Realizing it really
doesn’t matter what I get, just that I do it with this kind, accepting girl
beside me, I smile devilishly. “You pick.”

The look on her face is even more sinister than my
own. “And you pick mine?!” she says excitedly. “No peeking, no rules on what or
where?”

“Deal.”

“Okay then, we’ll go at the same time.”

So when the artist comes up and ask which one of us
wants to go first, we explain we’d like to be done at the same time, away from
each other. He looks at us like we’re crazy when we ask about blindfolding each
other and tells us to work that part out on our own, before yelling to a girl
called Jess, who saunters from the back.

“You take the guy, I’ll take the girl. They want to
be apart and tell us what the other one is getting.”

Jess rolls her eyes, but the side of her lip
deceives her…she thinks it’s a fun plan. “So tell me what to do to him,” she conspires
with Whitley, as they move away to conspire.

Guy looks at me, arms crossed over his massive
chest, eyebrow raised and viper bites shining in his face. “So what’s the plan
for her?”

Luckily the girls are across the room, so I don’t
have to get too close for him to hear me and can still keep my voice a bit low
as I tell him my plan. He doesn’t need to draw it up and we’re set.

Jess comes back over and motions to me. “Come on, hunky,
you’re with me.”

I walk down a hall with her and she opens the door to
a small room, walls covered in artwork and pictures of various people and their
tats, asking me to have a seat in the chair. “Shirt off, which your girl said
to wrap around your eyes. And no peeking,” she reminds me. “Her words, not
mine.”

After a few minutes of listening her prep from
behind my makeshift blindfold, aka my shirt, I feel her hand move to my right
pec, pressing down a piece of paper, I assume to transfer her drawing.

“Ready?” she asks me.

“Yup,” I say with as much assertion as one can provide
seconds from their first (surprise) tattoo. I’m not nervous
exactly
, but
the thought of getting a permanent picture of whatever the hell Whitley, a girl
I hardly know, has chosen does sober me just a bit. What if she picked a big
ass dragon? I’ll be in this chair for hours. Worse yet, what if she picked
something humiliating, like a unicorn or some shit? I’ll have to carry it on my
body for the rest of my life.

I am giving Whitley an obscene amount of trust right
now. Crazy.

And what I’d picked for her—what if she hates it?
Regrets it in the morning?

Jess’s words break the paranoid cluster whirling in
my head. “It hurts less if you’re not all tensed up.”

“Right,” I mumble, rolling my neck and taking a deep
breath. “I’m ready.”

You know the sound of the drill at the dentist? You
know you won’t really feel it, since the doc’s loaded you up with excruciating
shots of Novocain and you’re sucking in the gas like a fiend, but you still
know there’s a fucking drill heading into the core of your tooth, where there’s
a bundle of trigger happy nerves?

That is exactly what Jess’s drill o’ art reminds me
of at this moment.

“
D
id you peek?” I ask her as we walk back to
her car, my voice laced with suspicion.

“No, did you?”

“Absolutely not,” I reply confidently and bump her
shoulder with mine. “Though now that I’m completely in my right mind, I’m
hoping you didn’t brand me with a rainbow.” I give her a wide smile, part of me
knowing she’d never do that. “You regret it?” I ask pointedly.

“No matter what you gave me, I don’t regret it.
Yolo!”

“Yeah, me either,” I laugh; I can’t believe she just
said yolo…that word fad needs to die out. I open the door for her and once
again climb into her car. “So, we gonna do the big reveal now?”

“Sure.” Her small hands tremble as she unbuttons her
pants, lifting her hips slightly to scooch the waist down just a bit. I’d
instructed her tattoo be placed in the crook of her hip, that sweet little dip
women have that can be their secret, unless they choose to show you, and low
enough to still be covered in a bikini. Yes—I thought of everything, even
inebriated.

She pulls the covering off and gasps softly as she
sees it. “A red balloon. I can’t believe that’s what you picked.” Her eyes
water a bit as she looks at me thoughtfully and I smile.

“You like it?” I ask nervously.

“I love it.”

“I wanted you to remember the night we decided our
worth. You’re awesome, Whitley, and I have a ton of fun with you. Everything
does not go to shit when you show up, so don’t believe that. You’re beautiful
and kind and I’ll hang with you anytime you want. So every time you look at
that balloon, you block out their words and hear mine instead. Okay?”

“Oh, okay,” she says softly, sniffling back her
tears. “Look at yours now before I make a scene.”

I reach behind my neck and pull my shirt off,
anticipation eating away at me. I go without a shirt a lot, so I’m silently
praying she wasn’t too blasted to make a good choice.

I pull off the covering, revealing an intricate and
really quite stunning compass rose. The lines are black and bold, shadowed with
red. The N, S, E and W letters are scripted and also shadowed. I’m relieved and
amazed simultaneously. It’s awesome and I love it. But I don’t understand why
she chose it.  

When I look from my chest to her, she’s biting her
bottom lip, question in her eyes. “You like yours?”

“Yeah.” I nod and beam. “I actually like it a lot;
it’s kickass.”

“It’s so you never lose your way again.”

My eyes bore into hers, never straying, as I let the
gravity of it all sink in. Practically strangers, stoned, and yet we connected
profoundly over the same moment in time—a random act of chasing a deflated
balloon around a parking lot.

Words like “kindred spirits” are bouncing around my
head and quite frankly tripping me out, so I clear my throat and quickly put my
shirt back on. “We better get going; it’s late.”

She says nothing as she starts the car and drives me
to my dorm. When I hop out, I thank her for the ride and she thanks me for
paying for her tattoo. We make no specific plans to hang out again, but
something tells me we will. I have no idea what she’s thinking. I’m not even
sure what I’m thinking, but I do fall asleep with a smile.