Evolve Series Box Set

by S. E. Hall

  “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.

  Whitley 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.

  “Did 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 c
ar 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.

  TORMENT

  “You gotta bring in some ringers or you’re screwed.” I bend over, holding my side and laughing so hard I snort.

  “What do you mean?” she puffs out as she, too, is bent over, bracing her hands on her knees, her face flushed.

  “Whitley,” I gulp in a deep breath, composing myself, “when you asked me to coach your Larks for the flag football game, I assumed at least some of you had played before. Or at least watched a game on TV? Googled it maybe?”

  “Are you saying we suck?”

  Suck isn’t even close to a strong enough word for it. Not one of her songbirds can catch…or throw…or even run fast. And once the girls’ athletic clubs get ahold of them, it won’t be pretty.

  “You need to go out and find a couple of the fastest, then a couple of the biggest, burliest girls on this campus and make them a Lark. I’m talking midnight initiation tonight, Whit, even if their singing sounds like a cat’s tail’s stuck in the door, or you guys will be a laughingstock.”

  Too harsh? I feel guilty for a split second and quickly shake it off. I’m guessing it’s not as harsh as making fools of yourselves in front of the whole campus, so my intentions are on point.

  Aggravated now, she tosses down the water bottle in her hand and steps into me, one perfectly pink-tipped nail poking me in the chest. “We are smart girls, and you are supposedly a football stud, right? So teach us some tricky moves or sneaky plays like you’re supposed to, and we’ll be fine.”

  “While that sounds like a helluva plan,” I tilt my head and give her a patronizing grin, “it won’t work. Even if I teach you to throw, who will catch it? If I teach you to hand-off, who will run it? The volleyball team, soccer team, and the soft—” Oh, God, no! The words hang in my throat and I have to force them out. “And the softball team will all be entered, right? Finely tuned, athletic machines running straight at you…this is a bad idea, Whitley.”

  “Oh please,” she scoffs, lightheartedly slapping my arm, “this is flag football, Evan. We don’t want the trophy, we just want to participate for the camaraderie.”

  That sounds right and reasonable. I’m taking this too seriously. I just see a field, a ball and a hint of competition and go crazy. This is girls’ flag football for Christ’s sake, how bad can it be?

  “Okay, you’re right,” I concede. “Come on, I’ll show you some plays.”

  “Yay!” Whitley bounces up on her tiptoes and plants an exaggerated kiss on my cheek with a loud “MWAH!”

  I think her exuberance surprised even her, because her cheeks pink a bit as she bounces along beside me back toward the group of girls waiting for us. We’ve taken about ten steps when we hear a bellow.

  “Should I make a path, Coach McGrath?”

  Okay, good one. Great movie too. I turn my head with a chuckle, seeing Sawyer amble over to us, his smartass smile on full display as he glances at the group I’m working with.

  “Hey, man, you come to help me out?” I ask, the desperation pathetically evident in my voice.

  “No can do,” he retorts all too happily, “I already bet fifty bucks on the softball team.”

  Smart bet. Those girls will be in it to win it if they’re anything like L—

  Speak of the devil. There she is.

  As soon as I see her headed across the field, I panic. Had she seen Whitley kiss me? Will she react if she did? I forget Sawyer and turn quickly to Whitley. “What time did you say we had the field until?”

  “I guess now.” She shrugs casually. “Surely we were about done, right?” Um, not even. We had practiced maybe forty minutes, tops. We learned one play. Well, I showed them one play…not sure the term learned is applicable in this situation. Whitley is by far the one with the most potential, so she’ll definitely be playing QB. I guess I’ll practice with her some more, one on one, but right now I’ve got bigger problems…and she’s walking right towards me.

  “Hey, man, y’all bout done?” Zach calls as he approaches with the team. “I gotta show these diamond dolls some moves.” He smiles and gives me a fist bump.

  We’ll be playing football together, so we’re working, slowly but surely, on a “broship.” It’s just so damn awkward because they’re all close with Laney. But what decent guy worth knowing wouldn’t be Laney’s bud? It’s always been that way, I don’t ever have to waste time “feeling somebody out,” because I’ve always had the inside track to Laneydar. If she likes you, you’re all right. Her record is so far flawless in gauging guys.

  Girls? Well…the only time she’s ever been wrong is Kaitlyn, and even Psychic Friends Network didn’t see that coming. Oh, and Whitley. She’s way off hating her.

  I shake myself out of my thoughts and realize that the whole time I was off in my own world, which was way too long for my taste, I was staring at Laney. Just great. She’s standing a little ways behind Zach, pretending not to notice me, but she does. Her whole body is tense and she’s sliding the tip of one cleat back and forth on the turf, watching it like it’s the most fascinating activity on Earth…she’s well aware of exactly where I am.

  “Yeah, we’re good for today,” I finally answer Zach, then ask Whitley to let the other girls know we’re done. I wait until she’s walked away to half-mumble my next question. “So you’re coaching the softball team, huh?”

  “Looks like it. Avery’s on the team, ya know, so…” He waggles his eyebrows at me. “Coaching gets me brownie points.”

  “Well, I know you’re off to a better start than me. At least yours are athletes.” I hang my head in a combination of mocking and honest shame. “Mine are singers.”

  “Hey! I heard that!” Whitley’s back and just used her very tiny fist to inflict some very large pain in my chest…right over my fresh tattoo.

  I wince despite my best effort not to, rubbing my chest, so she feels bad and starts coddling me, going all out with her apology. “Shoot, Evan I’m sorry, I forgot.” She covers my hands with hers, essentially helping me rub.

  It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, just a little sting at first, but now…well, we’ve officially caused a scene.

  “It’s okay, Whit,” I mumble, “forget about it, please.”

  Wishing the ground would open and swallow me whole, I can feel her staring at me, and then…

  “What’s wrong?” Laney rushes to me, her voice edged with concern, her eyes worried. “Evan, are you actually hurt?” She went from ignoring indifference to Florence Nightingale in milliseconds.

  “I’m fine,” I bark, looking at the ground. Except I’m not fine since you’re in my air space and now I can’t breathe. And I can smell you from here; I can smell that lavender lotion and the shampoo you love that comes in the green and white bottle.

  “Bullshit, I saw you flinch. What is it?” Her face wears a mask of anger, so focused on me I don’t know that she realizes she just hedged Whitley out of the way with her shoulder and hip, grabbing at me now, pushing my hands out of her way and pulling on my shirt, trying to get a peek.

  The most interaction we’ve had in eons and this is it? Her mauling me in front of everyone, thinking I’m hurt and need her to save me? My body is happy she’s near, my heart so ready to soak up any attention she offers and quit aching, but my mind…my mind is still pissed.

  “I’m not hurt, all right?” I speak too loudly, too gruffly, and even Whitley twitches at my tone.

  But Laney? Laney holds strong, her mocha eyes challenging me like they always have.

  “It’s a tattoo, geez,” I grumble, pulling up my shirt to show her.

  Now it’s Laney’s turn to gasp. “What the hell is that?” She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again quickly, as though she was hallucinat
ing and just needed to refresh her vision. She’s gonna be disappointed, cause it’s still there. “Since when are you into tattoos?” she bites out, one hand on a very angry cocked hip.

  “Since now, I guess,” I offer with a gratifying simper on my face. “Guess we’re both into new things these days, huh?”

  The torment that flashes in her eyes is unmistakable, even if fleeting, and like always, I feel bad. All I was trying to do was stand up for myself, but I feel like shit. This isn’t how I wanted to do things. “Isn’t it cool?”

  Oh Lord, here we go, is all I can think as Whitley taunts Laney with her purring question, her hand now on my shoulder.

  “Well, since I’m pretty sure you’re not all of a sudden a sailor, or wilderness guide, Evan,” she starts, her tone scathing, “why’d you put a compass on your chest? Do your parents know?”

  The inflection and glare she wears is probably the only warning Whitley’s gonna get to butt the fuck out or get cold cocked, and I’m nervous for a second that Laney’s gonna hit her.

  “Whitley picked it, and no, they don’t know…yet.”

  She no more heard the last six words of that sentence than the man in the moon. Laney checked out, and Maleficent, her favorite Disney witch, checked in right when I announced Whitley’s involvement. I am a bad, bad man and my mama would test my ass if she knew my thoughts right now, because while I am seriously concerned for Whitley’s safety at this moment, the bigger part of me is tickled shitless that Ms. Laney Jo Walker is pissed as hell.

  “Why would you pick a compass?” she now asks Whitley, advancing a step toward her, seething.

  I slide over just a tad, cutting her off at the pass. It isn’t looking good. She must have seen the kiss; this reaction is about more than just the tattoo.

  “Why would you care?” Whitley challenges.

  Not good! Abort mission!!

  Laney shifts her fiery eyes at me, and I know what she’s waiting for. She’s expecting good ol’ Evan to jump in and defend her. Yes, my every instinct, and my heart, tell me to do it…but my mind wins, and I simply give her a sheepish shrug.