Untitled Episode
1318 Words
Evelyn's POV
Sleep was apparently taking the semester off.
Every time I closed my eyes, the conversation replayed.
Your brother called me.
Stop assuming your brother told you all of it.
I turned onto my other side.
Ethan has never lied to me.
Not once.
When we were kids, he admitted to breaking Mom’s favorite mug before anyone even asked.
Lying wasn’t exactly his thing.
So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that something wasn’t adding up?
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand.
It was 1:47 a.m.
I opened our partnership page instead.
The post had climbed even higher.
I kept scrolling.
People had already started a poll asking how long we’d last.
Another account had reposted our picture with the caption:
The pair everyone can’t stop talking about.
I should’ve closed the app.
A tiny, completely unreasonable thought slipped into my head.
The campaign chair was going to love this.
I hated that it was my first thought.
I hated it even more because my second thought was worse.
Winning suddenly didn’t feel as impossible.
I locked my phone and dropped it onto the mattress beside me.
“No.”
I am not considering it.
Fake dating Luca Hayes was still one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.
So why wouldn’t my brain stop trying to calculate the odds?
Five minutes later, someone knocked.
“It’s open.”
Chloe pushed the door with her shoulder, balancing two iced coffees and a paper bag that smelled suspiciously like cinnamon rolls.
She took one look at me.
“You look haunted.”
“I slept.”
“For twenty minutes?”
“Maybe.”
She handed me a coffee anyway.
“I come bearing caffeine and sugar. One of them usually fixes your personality.”
I accepted the cup with a quiet thanks.
She settled onto the desk chair, spun it around, and rested her chin on the backrest.
“What happened after he texted you?”
Straight to it.
No warm up.
No pretending she wasn’t curious.
“We talked.”
“Obviously.”
“At the arena.”
“I gathered that.”
I looked down at the coffee in my hands.
“He has a solution.”
Chloe shifted closer.
“I don’t like your tone.”
“I don’t like his solution.”
“What is it?”
The words rose to the top of my tongue.
They never made it out.
“Evelyn?!”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“Out with it.”
“He wants us to pretend we’re together.”
“You mean…”
“Exactly what you think I mean.”
Her mouth opened.
“I need a minute.”
“I needed several.”
She stood to her feet, circled round the room. Then she returned, placing both hands against my desk.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate how much sense it makes.”
I looked up.
“You too?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I said I hate it.”
“So why are you defending him?”
“I’m not defending him.”
She grabbed my phone from the bed and unlocked the screen before I could stop her.
The partnership page filled the display.
“Look at this.”
Chloe turned the phone toward me.
“The entire campus already thinks something’s happening.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“I know.”
“If they keep talking, the committee is going to keep watching.”
“I know.”
“And if they keep watching..”
My phone buzzed before either of us said another word.
Mandatory Campaign Committee Check-in.
“All fellowship partnerships are expected to attend a brief meeting at noon.”
Chloe tipped forward.
“It literally says brief .”
“In university language, that means at least forty-five minutes.”
She wasn’t wrong.
By twelve-fifteen, every pair had squeezed into the campaign office.
Mrs. Jenkins, the campaign chair, clapped her hands once.
“I’ll keep this short."
“We’ve been tracking student engagement since partnerships were announced.”
A projector flickered to life behind her.
“The fellowship has never received this much attention during orientation week.”
Mrs. Bennett smiled.
“One partnership, in particular, has brought an extraordinary amount of traffic to our campaign.”
Evelyn Hart & Luca Hayes.
Every head in the room turned.
“We’ve seen record breaking interactions across every platform,” Mrs. Bennett continued. “Students are talking about the program because they’re talking about the two of you.”
Mrs. Bennett kept going.
“This is exactly the kind of visibility community initiatives need."
“As a result, this year’s winning partnership will receive additional funding for its project and represent Hawthorne at the National Fellowship Summit.”
The room erupted into whispers.
“I can already see some of you recalculating your strategies.”
The meeting wrapped up a few minutes later.
Chloe hooked her arm through mine.
“You want to win,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“Evelyn.”
“I always want to win.”
“I knew it.”
Somewhere between leaving the campaign office and crossing the quad, a thought I had spent all morning rejecting quietly returned.
Losing had never been an option.
And I refused to let it become one.
The afternoon shift at The Book Nook usually fixed everything.
The smell of coffee, fresh paper, the quiet rustle of pages turning.
It was impossible to spend four hours surrounded by books and leave in a bad mood.
I was about to become the exception.
I reached for a stack of new arrivals and started shelving them without looking.
“Morning, Evelyn.”
“Hi, Mrs. Alvarez.”
A customer wandered over.
“Excuse me? Do you have The Housemaid?”
“Mystery aisle. Third shelf from the end.”
He thanked me and disappeared.
Someone else needed help finding a textbook.
Normally, I enjoyed it. But today, every conversation felt like background noise.
Luca’s voice kept sneaking back into my head.
If they’re determined to write a story anyway…
No.
Absolutely not.
I shoved another novel onto the shelf.
“Evelyn.”
Mrs. Alvarez’s voice called from the register.
She pointed towards the display I was working on.
Half the books were upside down.
“Right.”
“You’ve alphabetized this row three times.”
“I have?”
“You have.”
“Go take your break.”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
A few minutes later, I was in the tiny employee break room with a vending machine that had probably been installed before I was born.
I pulled out my phone.
One contact sat exactly where I expected it to.
Ethan.
One call.
One conversation.
He would tell me not to do it.
And refuse to explain why.
We would end up arguing again.
I locked the phone.
Maybe I wasn’t avoiding the conversation.
Maybe I was tired of hearing the same answer.
I rested my elbows on the table.
The student partnership program, the funding, the National Summit and winning.
None of it had changed.
Only the path to getting there had.
It stung even more because Luca had been right about one thing.
People had already decided there was a story.
Whether I liked it or not.
My phone unlocked again.
This time, I opened a different conversation.
Luca Hayes.
This is a terrible idea.
Deleted it.
I’m only doing this because of the campaign.
Deleted that too.
I gathered my thoughts then wrote the only thing that mattered.
We need rules.
My thumb rested against the screen.
The message disappeared.
Three tiny dots didn’t appear.
No reply.
That is bad.
It could be he that he doesn't want to go through with it anymore.
"oh on."
- Writer
