Evan
face is burned into my retinas. An expression like I’ve never seen before: shock, hurt, disbelief, betrayal, humiliation, all mingled together in those dark, shining eyes.
Her eyes fill with tears and my heart sinks.
I’ve never seen Sophie cry before.
She offers no repartee, no comeback—nothing. She simply turns around and leaves without another word. I’m left feeling like I just knocked her down with a punch to the face, and instead of getting up and punching me right back, she just stayed down, bleeding at my feet.
It’s not how I wanted to feel. There’s no sense of victory or revenge.
I just stand there, fists clenched, bile burning in my throat.
“What was that all about?” Luca asks, raising an eyebrow.
I shrug and run my hand through my hair distractedly, still staring after Sophie. “Nothing.”
“It didn’t look like nothing.” Luca’s voice quivers with barely repressed amusement. “You fucked Sophie Sutton? You must really be taking the bet seriously.”
My gaze snaps to Luca. I have the sudden, violent urgent to tell him to go fuck himself and his stupid bet, that none of this is any of his fucking business and to get off my fucking back.
But my anger would only bring the sadistic fucker more satisfaction—so I swallow back the urge and wave my hand in a dismissive gesture.
“It’s not a big deal. Guess someone had to do it.”
I grab my backpack and blazer from the couch where I tossed them earlier.
“I’m off to Bio.”
Luca checks his ridiculous Rolex. “So soon?”
I shrug. “Mr Ahmed will have my balls if I’m late.”
“Wait up,” Zachary calls, putting his books away into his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’m headed that way too. I’ll go with you.”
I give a curt nod and wait for him by the door. We walk in silence until we make it out of the building. It’s snowing again, thick, fluffy snowflakes spiralling down from low, dark clouds. Students are hurrying inside, their navy uniforms blurring in the corners of my vision.
My eyes are lost in the snowfall, unfocused and unseeing. All I see, burned into my retinas like a permanent scar, is that goddamn expression on Sophie’s pretty face, the tears gliding down her cheeks. A horrible, almost embarrassing pain, a pain I inflicted myself.
I did want to hurt her. After everything that passed between us, after every blow she got to land on me, I couldn’t stand that she got to walk away unscathed.
Well, she is well and truly scathed now, and the balance of pain has been redressed.
So why do I still feel like pure, utter shit?
“What did you do, then?”
“What?” I turn. Zachary’s not looking at me but straight ahead as we slowly make our way towards the Science building.
“I can’t imagine Sophie would have come for you for nothing,” he says, his tone neutral, almost casual. “So what did you do?”
I glance away and swallow hard.
“I reported her to Mr Shawcross.”
Zachary is silent.
“You know… about her job, or whatever.”
“You told Mr Shawcross she had a job?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I try to think of the reasoning behind my actions, the chain of events that led to this horrible, irreversible point.
“We kissed. At my house, during the Christmas holiday. We… kissed.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Zachary slowly nod. He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Right. You two kissed during Christmas—so you reported her for having a job?”
“No. We kissed, and then she apologised, and told me she liked somebody else.”
Zachary is silent for longer this time.
“That’s truly shit, Ev. I can’t imagine it made you feel great.”
“It made me feel like absolute shit. Then she ran away from my house. Then—then I tried to confront her, and we had sex.”
“You and Sophie had sex?”
“Yeah—but not… it was… she just did it because she thought it’s what I wanted and she just wanted to get it out of the way so I leave her alone.”
“Well…” Zach speaks carefully. “Isn’t it what you wanted, though?”
“No—obviously it’s what I wanted but—” My face burns and my throat is so tight it’s a struggle to get the words out. “It wasn’t… she wouldn’t even fucking look at me, Zach.”
“Hmm,” Zach says noncommittally. “So you reported her about her job to get back at her because of the sex?”
I shake my head. “No. I mean, yes, but… I saw her at her job and found out that the guy she likes is some guy she works with. Some guy not from Spearcrest. Some older guy.”
“So what? Now she can’t go to her job, so she can’t see this guy, so she’s not in love with him anymore and she falls for you instead? Is that the plan?”
Zachary’s tone is dry, but he’s always been the first one of my friends to call me out on stupid ideas. I shake my head again. “No. So then I told her I wanted her to tutor me because I want to do well in Lit.”
“Which you don’t.”
“What—no. You don’t know that. Did you not hear Mr Houghton say he was impressed by my improvement?”
Zachary scoffs. “Since when do you care what Mr Houghton has to say?”
“I do care. Plus you know my dad will be royally pissed off if I fail.”
“So, study.”
“I don’t wanna study. I want Sophie to teach me.”
“More like you want to keep her to yourself,” Zachary says drily. “So you told her you wanted her to tutor you, and then what did she say?”
“She said no. She said: you don’t even know what that word means, do you? If I teach you one last thing, it’s the meaning of the word no. It means you don’t get what you want. And then she walked away.”
Zachary cracks a rare smile. “I like her style.”
I sigh. “So that’s when I went to Mr Shawcross and reported her.”
“Mm. And now she’s found out, and presumably, she’s been bollocked and told not to go back anymore. Hence that heated little moment back there.”
I nod.
“So, what?” Zachary asks. “Is it everything you wanted? Do you feel as good as you thought you would?”
“Obviously not,’ I snap, glaring at him. ‘Do I look like I feel good?”
“Hardly. You look like you just got the girl you like in trouble and then called her poor in front of all your rich friends and then implied that having sex with you is something she ought to feel ashamed of.”
“No I didn’t.” I stare at Zachary in horror. “How did I imply that?”
“Well, all I’ll say is that if you didn’t want her to feel ashamed of having sex with you, you probably shouldn’t have used it as an insult in a very public argument.”
My stomach clenches painfully. “Oh god.”
I bury my face in my hands. Zach is—as usual—completely right. In the heat of the moment, it had been the perfect comeback. I’d felt justified, full of righteous anger, like I was just retaliating against Sophie’s attacks. Maybe not in the most honourable way, but at least it had been blow for blow.
Now, I’m full of shame, remorse and horror, like I just beat up someone defenceless.
Zach sighs. “We’ll, if it helps, you’re hardly the first person to treat someone they fancy like shit for no reason.”
I peer through my fingers to give him a horrified look. “This is me we’re talking about! I never treat girls like shit. My parents raised me to be a fucking gentleman.”
“You never treat girls like shit, but you treat Sophie like shit. Like she’s special, so instead of getting the best of you, she gets the worst of you. Hard to see how you justify that one in your head.”
“What else was I supposed to do though?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Evan, perhaps treat her like an actual human being and show her a modicum of decency?”
“If I was nice to her,” I mumble, feeling heat rush to my cheeks, “then someone else might have become interested in her.”
“Oh, charming. You’re like a kid that’s not allowed to play with a toy and scribbles all over it so nobody else wants it.”
“Well, I don’t fucking know what I’m doing, do I? I was always too busy worrying about Luca taking her away from me—I just panicked.”
“You panicked for several years in a row? And then you made her lose her job and insulted her in front of everyone out of panic, too?”
I look at Zachary. “If you think I’m an arsehole, just say that.”
“Oh, shall I?” He gives me a smile full of fake courtesy. “You’re an arsehole. You’re not stupid either—you know what you’ve been doing. Treating Sophie the way you treated her all these years wasn’t an accident. You dug your own grave, and now there’s nothing left for you to do but to try and crawl your way out.”
I stare at him. “How?”
“How should I know? I’m not the architect of this whole mess, you are.” Zachary is quiet for a second. “I mean, you could always start with an apology.”
“Out of the question.”
“Right.”
By then, we’ve been standing in front of the Science building for a while, snow collecting on our heads and shoulders. We’re probably hopelessly late, and Mr Ahmed is definitely going to have my balls, but this conversation, as unpleasant as it is, is helping somehow. Even though Zachary is being more unforgiving than the world’s strictest judge.
I exhale, shoulders slumping helplessly. “If I apologise, she’ll know I did something wrong.”
“Oh, I can assure you she already knows that.”
I glare at Zachary. He stares back, impassive.
“I’m not apologising.”
“Right,” he says again.
There is a moment of silence. Awkwardly, I gesture towards the doorway. “Are you not late for your class?”
He shrugs. “I don’t have class. I just walked with you because you looked stressed and I wanted to cheer you up.”
“Oh, wow, that was you cheering me up?”
“You’re welcome, Ev.”
And with that, he turns and walks away, back the way we came from. I shout after him. “I don’t care, I’m not apologising!”
He waves without turning around and disappears in a white flurry of spinning snowflakes.
