unedited with some bonus author notes/ramblings 

warning: some coarse language hhhh

////

Evan misses Jadey's long hair.

It was too hot, she said. Tying it up didn't really keep her as cool as it was having it only reach her ears.

She'd cut it in some sort of, pixie-style, was it? He didn't really know what it was called.

All that he knows is that he won't get to see her cute ponytail again until the winter comes, maybe autumn if he's lucky.

Which he isn't. Lucky, that is.

---

Evan misses Jadey's smiles.

Not that crooked smirk or those too wide, too condescending ones that she gave out to people these days. He misses the kind of smiles she had when they were younger. That shy but sweet smile she did when she hadn't liked showing the world her braces. Missed when her smiles lit the entire room and seemed to be reserved for him and him alone.

He wonders what it would take to see her smile again.

---

Evan misses Jadey.

...

That's it.

////

Jadey cuts her hair short.

She knows Evan likes girls with long hair. It's something she doesn't want to think about. At all.

(Liar, her own voice singsongs back at her. Liar, liar, pants on fire.)

So she asks her mom if she could get it short. Her mom is obviously appalled at the action -almost disappointed- and asks why.

"It's too hot," is what she remembers saying. Her mom believes her.

(She wishes she could believe that too.)

---

Jadey finally has her braces removed.

(And she's begun to distance herself from Evan now.)

She's been making friends all around the campus. People like her better when she's joking around, when she acts with more bravado than she actually feels.

(No they don't. People hate her even more now that she's talking-)

Whereas Evan got quieter, she got louder. More cool, more popular.

(-and it's just the information she needed.)

---

Jadey doesn't miss Evan.

...

(She's lying. Again.)

////

((MY FUCKING CLASSMATE'S REACTIONS TO THIS GIVE ME LIFE, GOD THE IDEAS THAT POPPED IN MY BRAIN WHEN YOU GUYS SAID "YOU COULDN'T ACCEPT THIS" HSJKSKSKSJFKDKDK IM THRIVING

anyway, start off with Jadey, post-fallout, in 1st year college thinking about Evan and how much she hates that she still misses that gotdamn tree fucker))

////

The box hits her sorry excuse of a bed roughly, and she lets herself fall after it. God, her arms hurt like hell. Moving day was a shit ton of work. Her glasses smush against the fabric of the matress and if that wasn't fucking annoying, then she'd eat her Lush bathbombs. She sighed. The curse of terrible eyesight, really.

"First year of college," she says idly to the empty room. "First year without..."

Jadey sits up from her bed, takes off her glasses and tries to blink away tears. "Whatever. I- I don't," she grips the frames tight. "I'll survive on my own. I'm the Insanely Cool Jadey Kleinman. This is, this is nothing. I'll make friends in no time."

No matter how much she convinced herself, there was one thing that never changed.

She felt terribly alone.

-TRY AGAIN?-

(It's been a few months since she last saw Evan.

It's been a few months since they've talked. Months since she last heard his voice.)

Desklight shining on her paper, Jadey rubs her eyes in exhaustion. She sighs and places her pen to the side of the paper she was writing.

Why they couldn't type it down and print it instead was beyond her. Stupid, stuffy old professor with a stick up his ass better get with the times already. She absentmindedly rolled the pen up and down, all the while having her head cradled in her free arm.

"Something you want to say to someone, but can't..." Her hands turn to fists, her mind going back to that place -to that person- she desperately wanted to forget.

(It's been a few months since their fallout and Jadey hates that she still misses him.)

"Stupid, fucking letter writing exercise."

She let the ink in her pen flow, writing whatever came to mind. It didn't really matter what she wrote anyway.

The words she wrote didn't register in her mind. How her grip on the pen became tighter and tighter, how her body tensed up while writing, how hard she was gnashing her teeth while she wrote.

She completely, utterly spaced out.

(Their heated words were burned into her mind. Traded blows that cut deep into her heart. She didn't think Evan had it in him to call her out like that.

"Maybe the reason you talk to me, Jadey-" Evan had always been taller than her but this was the first time he put it to good use and it hurt how he says her name like it was poison on his tongue. "-is because you don't have any other friends!"

This is what she wanted. This is why she spent all those years distancing herself from him. He deserves better than someone like her, deserves the right to be happy more than she ever will. All she would ever do was bring him down.

She's tried so hard for Evan to hate her, so why? Why did her heart hurt so much-?)

Her vision suddenly got blurry. But she was wearing her glasses-?

It took her a moment to realize that she was crying and a minute to notice that her paper was getting wet and that fuck, fuck, fuck, the ink was getting smudged, no-!

"Shit!" she cried, slamming her fists onto the table top and the paper crinkling harshly underneath. "Shit, shit, shit, shit-!"

She hated this fucking assignment so fucking much.

"Fuck," she whispered, body beginning to succumb to the lulling calls of sleep.

One final tear slid down her cheek before she decided to call it a night. A single writing exercise wouldn't destroy her grades, right?

Right...

(The lonesome tear rolled down her chin and hit the paper gently. If Jadey had given care to notice, she would've seen the salty liquid blur the words she had always longed to tell him.

'I love you, Evan.')

////

Evan makes an appearance and Jadey is fucked (no not literally you perverted fuckers)

---

The chime of the bell alerted her to the entrance of a customer. Like usual, she greeted them with a smile and didn't look them in the eye. This little part-time job she took was not the best but it wasn't the worst either, plus it gave her the money she needed to put food on her table. What more could she ask for?

She usually resisted the urge to snark at the customer's orders but somehow the words just slipped from her tongue.

"What, you like a hipster or some-"

Jadey froze.

"-thing..."

From under the brim of her hat, her eyes flitted the room, looking anywhere but Ev- looking everywhere except the customer's eyes.

Silently praying that he wouldn't recognize her.

"Well, um, I guess I am-? I don't really know but uh-" His stutter was still there but he wasn't hunched over as much and he wasn't twiddling his thumbs now. Maybe if she wasn't actively avoiding his gaze, he would have held eye contact.

He ran his hand through his hair, a light blush on his face. Guess that nervous tick of his was still there. "I mean, I'm not a hipster. Yeah, I don't think I count? Maybe."

Wait what the fuck?

Did he seriously not recognize her?

Sure, she was wearing contacts... And she's been growing her hair out for a while now (haircuts were fucking expensive for fuck's sake she wasn't wasting her food money for that), Jadey wondered if E-... if he remembered what she looked like with long hair because she sure as hell didn't.

"That'll be..." She inputted the amount in the register, looking at the sum and told him as such. He gave her the exact amount and she smiled in her head. He hasn't changed at all.

Once his order was done, she gave him a customary "Thank you, come again!" with a smile that she hasn't done in years.

"Yeah, I'll be sure to," he said, eyes crinkling in that way that made her knees tremble, waved goodbye, and left the shop.

Her face felt warm as his words replayed in her mind. D-did he just, was he-? She clasped her burning red cheeks and tried to stop herself from squealing. Sure the shop was empty but fuck, her dignity would shatter if people saw her like this.

Looks like her feelings for him still lingered despite everything.

God, she was so fucked.

////

Evan became a frequent customer and never had Jadey been so glad that the nametags weren't a requirement to wear at her part-time job.

They had pleasant conversations on the counter and Evan always managed to visit during the times when the shop was the calmest, times when it seemed it was them and only them. She strayed away from eye contact at first. As time went on -when she became confident that he wouldn't recognize her- Jadey found the courage to return his beautiful blue gaze.

(Though she did find it odd that Evan never made mention of Zoe while they talked. Considering she was all he ever talked about back then, especially when the two of them got together.

Are together.

...

Jadey thought she was over that. Apparently she wasn't.)

He worked at Pottery Barns for a while, he told her. Finding that having a gap year wouldn't be so bad and that his salaries would be good to add to his college funds. She made sure not to show inclination that yes, I know, you love trees and nature, and that, yeah, your favorite color is green because it's calming and reminds you of being in nature even if most of your wardrobe mostly constituted of shades of blue.

(It kinda stung that he never mentioned her in their conversations, neither in name dropping nor vagueing her old actions. But she supposed it was fair, had she been in his shoes she would've erased all memories of that person and made sure to never associate with them again.

...

...that IS what she would do...right?)

Jadey refrained from talking much and preferred to listen to his ramblings instead, fearing Evan might find out from her stories and leave her again. This was her chance to have him back in her life and she was determined to stay friends with him this time.

(Just friends, just friends, just friends, don't get your hopes up stupid, after what you did, after all those years treating him like shit do you really think he'd ever give you a chance? He's kind but he's not fucking stupid, just friends, just friends just friends be content with just friends just friends just friends-)

---

She didn't know how it happened.

One minute they were laughing and as Evan reached for his order-

"Thanks, Jadey."

He said her name.

Evan covered his mouth in surprise.

Jadey stared at him in shock. She swallowed the knot in her throat and faked a smile.

"Come again."

Before he could react, she left the counter in a hurry, asked someone to take over her shift and took off.

////

It was the day when she had the shift to close up the shop when Evan offered to accompany her back to her dorm.

(She made sure to switch shifts at the busiest times, how the fuck was he able to corner her like that?!)

Even though he didn't have a car.

---

LAST CHAP??? BAHSHSJJSKSKDKXHDKKDKDKDLS

----

Notes:

("YOU KNEW THIS WHOLE TIME!?"

"Y-yes? I just...didn't want to make things weird. And awkward."

"Oh my God."

"Sorry."

-/-

"So, did you know it was me the whole time? Because, I'm impressed. I actually thought you didn't recognize me." and i wouldn't blame you for that tbh

"Yeah, well. It's hard for me to forget such a pretty smile."

AGHSBDDKKDKDLDLDLLD EVAN YOU SMOOTH MOTHERFUCKER I CANNOT)