Seven Dares To Fall

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Two years.

The number followed Evelyn through the rest of the day like a splinter she couldn't dig out.

She tried to focus in her afternoon lecture. Failed. Tried to focus on dinner with Chloe. Failed at that too, until Chloe finally snapped her fingers in front of Evelyn's face and said, "Earth to Ev. You've been staring at the same fry for two minutes."

"Sorry. Just thinking."

"About Jaxon."

"No."

"You're a terrible liar."

Evelyn dropped the fry. "It's not — it's not like that. Something happened in lab. He had this notebook, and I saw a line, and I don't think I was supposed to see it, and now I can't stop thinking about it."

Chloe leaned forward, immediately invested. "What did it say?"

Evelyn hesitated. It felt wrong to repeat it, like saying it out loud would be taking something that wasn't hers to take. But she needed to say it to someone, or it was going to eat her alive.

"He wrote that nobody's asked if he was okay in two years."

Chloe's playful expression dropped away completely. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"That's not — that's not a rich-bad-boy-mysterious-past thing. That's a real thing, Ev."

"I know."

"Do you know what happened? Two years ago?"

Evelyn shook her head. "No. And I'm not going to ask. It's not my business."

Even as she said it, some small, stubborn part of her didn't quite believe herself.

She reached for her phone, more out of habit than anything, and saw the little red notification bubble on her messages.

Liam.

Finally.

She opened it, half-expecting an apology for ditching her in the hallway, or at least some explanation for the radio silence over the last three days.

Liam: hey sorry been slammed with rush. we still on for thurs?

That was it. No mention of the hallway. No mention of Sienna's comment, or the fact that he'd walked away the second things got even slightly awkward.

Evelyn stared at the message for a long moment before typing back.

Evelyn: yeah, thurs works. everything okay with you?

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Liam: yeah all good. long week. talk later

That was it. No question back. No how are you. No acknowledgment that she'd had possibly the most humiliating week of her college career so far and he hadn't even asked.

Evelyn set the phone down slowly.

"He didn't even ask how I was doing," she said quietly.

Chloe's expression was carefully neutral in the specific way that meant she had opinions and was trying very hard not to share them unprompted.

"You can say it," Evelyn said. "Whatever you're thinking."

"I just think," Chloe said carefully, "that a month into college, your boyfriend should probably know that his girlfriend became a campus meme this week. And should probably care more than 'talk later.'"

Evelyn didn't have a response for that either.

Thursday came fast.

Evelyn spent the morning telling herself it would be fine — a normal dinner, a normal catch-up, exactly what she and Liam needed after a rocky first week. She picked her outfit carefully. Practiced what she'd say if he brought up the rumors. Practiced what she'd say if he didn't.

She waited outside the café at 7 p.m. sharp.

7:15, he still hadn't shown.

7:30, she texted him.

Evelyn: hey, you close? table's ready

No response.

7:45, she called. It rang twice and went to voicemail.

By 8:00, Evelyn was sitting alone at a table for two, watching other couples laugh over shared appetizers, feeling smaller and smaller with every minute that passed.

She finally gave up at 8:15 and started the walk back to her dorm, phone clutched tight in her hand like maybe if she held on hard enough, it would finally buzz with an explanation.

It didn't.

Not until she was almost back to her building, cutting through the courtyard near the rec center — and that's when she heard the laugh.

Liam's laugh.

She knew it instantly. Would know it anywhere.

Evelyn slowed, turned toward the sound, and felt her stomach drop straight through the pavement.

Liam was sitting on the steps of the rec center, phone forgotten beside him, laughing at something Sienna Monroe had just said. Close. Too close. The kind of close that had nothing to do with "just friends" and everything to do with something Evelyn didn't have a name for yet — or didn't want to.

She stood frozen at the edge of the courtyard, half-hidden by a tree, watching her boyfriend lean in to say something to the girl who'd spent all week making Evelyn's life miserable in hallways and group chats.

Sienna laughed, touched his arm.

Liam didn't pull away.

Evelyn's throat went tight.

She could march over there. Demand an explanation. Make a scene the way any reasonable, humiliated girlfriend would have every right to make.

Instead, she just stood there, feeling stupid for putting on a nice outfit, for waiting an hour at a café, for practicing what she'd say about rumors that suddenly felt a lot less like rumors and a lot more like something she'd been too naive to see.

She turned and walked away before either of them could spot her.

She didn't remember most of the walk back. Just the sound of her own heartbeat, too loud in her ears, and the sting behind her eyes she refused to let turn into actual tears until she was safely behind her dorm room door.

Chloe took one look at her face and didn't even ask. She just got up, grabbed the emergency snack stash from under her bed, and sat down next to Evelyn without a word.

It was almost ten minutes before Evelyn could get the words out.

"I saw Liam. With Sienna. At the rec center."

Chloe's face went dark immediately. "Doing what?"

"Laughing. Sitting close. She touched his arm and he didn't move."

"Ev—"

"I know what it looked like." Evelyn's voice cracked on the last word. "I know exactly what it looked like."

Her phone buzzed on the bed between them.

Both of them looked at it.

Liam: hey sorry missed dinner, something came up. tomorrow?

Evelyn stared at the screen, at the casual, easy lie sitting right there in blue text, and felt something inside her — something that had been bending quietly all week — finally start to crack.

She didn't answer.

Instead, without fully deciding to, she opened a different chat. One she hadn't used before. One where the only message in the thread was a wrong-number text from three days ago that had never technically been meant for her.

She typed four words, deleted them, typed them again.

Evelyn: are you free right now

She hit send before she could think better of it — and had no idea, yet, exactly whose number she'd just texted.