Evan’s teeth crept out and chewed on her lips nervously. “One and the same.”
“Your family’s mills pretty much propelled Georgia into the Industrial Revolution.” Devon’s eyes gleamed when he rattled off names and dates and factory locations, and Evan dropped his arm and nodded along as her shoulders went limp and her eyes glazed.
“Devon?” I had to say his name twice before he allowed me to interrupt his catalogue of Lennox offshoots.
He snapped out of his monologue and gave me a questioning look, then followed my nod to Evan, who had her eyes cast down and her mouth set in a tight, thin line. I honestly had no clue if Devon would even pick up on a social cue that subtle, but he nodded back and shut up.
Which wound up being just as strange, because now there was all this bizarre quiet. I broke it by asking the one question that had been screaming in my brain since I recognized my school friend. “Devon, what the hell are you doing here?”
For a minute, the cool, lanky-limbed, confident guy balled up and retreated, leaving twitchy, bug-eyed, over-anxious, more familiar Devon in his wake. “I, uh, applied.” He lifted and lowered his hands like he didn’t know what to do with them or where to put them.
Evan clicked out of her quiet melancholy and hooked one arm through Devon’s again and one through mine, making us a tiny human chain. “Okay, new, awesome friend and knight in shining armor, how do you two know each other exactly?”
“We’re, like, friends. We, uh, go to school. The same one,” Devon ran his free hand through his carefully styled bed-head hair. Since when did he use product?
“You two go to the same school but had no clue that you were both going to be in Ireland in this highly selective nerd program this summer?” Her eyes roved from my face to Devon’s, then she pulled us close and tight, so we made a little three-person knot. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“I knew Bren would be here,” Devon offered.
“Well, yeah. I told you! Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. And when did you get a makeover? And why didn’t you tell me that?Maybe it was weird to feel so betrayed. Devon and I weren’t exactly best friends. But he knew I was coming here. And we were friends. I accepted him. Listened to his problems with a pretty sympathetic ear. Tried to help him navigate high school. He must have seen me at the dorms. Why all the secrecy?
“I didn’t think it would happen.” Devon held his hand out and shook it with frustration. “My grades were too low, but, based on my essay, I got waitlisted. When they didn’t call by the time school was over, I figured there was no point, so I went to Chicago with my aunt. I got the call there, telling me some kid who was supposed to go got appendicitis or something. So I left, but it was, like, two day’s notice.”
“You better kiss your aunt’s ass if she’s the one who inspired this whole…” I screwed up my mouth and raised my eyebrows, at a loss for words.
“Metamorphosis?” he suggested with a glance down at his vest, his button-down with the cuffed sleeves, his dark-wash jeans, and brown leather and suede shoes.
“Were you a caterpillar before?” Evan asked as we followed the jostling group into a small, dark pub.
“If by ‘caterpillar’ you mean ‘seriously shitty dresser with bushy eyebrows and a crap haircut,’ then yes.” Devon took Evan under the elbow and led both of us to a table over in the corner, private and away from the others. “And I may be a better-looking butterfly, but I’m only nominally better at the big social gathering thing.”
“You’re adorable,” Evan gushed, her eyes cutting to me and sparkling, like he was a cute secret we both shared. “Who uses words like ‘nominally’ in real life?”
“Guys who get waitlisted for study-abroad nerd programs,” I groused.
“Are you pissed?” he asked as the waitress came over.
Evan sat up straight, cleared her throat, cocked a brazen eyebrow and said, “I’ll have a glass of whisky and a pint.”
The waitress rolled her eyes and barely stifled a sigh. “I take it you’re needin’ a shotof whisky and a pint?”
Evan shook her finger in the waitress’s direction and broke open a wide, sweet smile that was so catchy it was practically viral. “That’s it! I guess the slang is different in America.”
The waitress didn’t attempt to cover-up her full-on sigh and wrote the order down without fanfare. Evan’s success made us brave, so Devon asked for pint with shifty eyes, and I seconded his order. When the waitress left, Devon repeated his question. “Are you pissed at me?”
“No,” I ground out. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe! Jesus, Devon! I was scared to come here. And I felt like I was by myself until I met Evan. It would have made it a little easier to have stuck by you from the beginning.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. But, uh, Bren? I don’t want to offend you, so don’t jump down my throat, okay? I wanted to come here and, you know, make some new connections. I wanted to try being…the way I am now. Not chickenshit Devon who’s Frankford’s resident freak. It was sort of my summer resolution. Make sense?”
Evan pulled her hair into a perfectly messy bun and secured it with a few bobby pins she pulled out of her pocket, then spoke in her sweet, melting voice. “So, wait? Let me get this whole mess straight. You,” she said, pointing at Devon with a bobby pin, “are some kind of outcast freak back home?”
He gave a curt nod. “That would be correct, basically. But also a massive understatement.”
She stuck another pin into her glossy hair and clicked her tongue. “Fuck that. You aren’t a freak now. I know you’re gay and all, so don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re seriously hot. Like aesthetically, not like I’m looking to be your fag hag or anything.”
“Evan!” A jolt of shock propelled my voice.
“What?” Her mouth quirked into a cute, pleased-with-herself smile. “Sorry if I offended you, Devon. But, back to my point here…you guys are pretty shitty friends if you never said all this! Devon is sweet and gorgeous, natch. And, Brenna, he’s right. He needs to get over whatever crazy shit he’s going through back home, and he can do that here. So let him. Plus, I’m really happy you weren’t attached to his ass when we got here.” She swallowed hard and blinked rapidly, a few times in a row. “Cause I can’t compete with that fucking paisley vest! He owns it. You never would have been able to take your eyes off of it to notice my kitten heels, cute as they are.”
The waitress brought over our drinks and took our order before I could say a word to Evan. And once all that amber-colored alcohol was on the table, there was no going back to the sweet words she said before that made all the fine hairs on my neck stand on end.
“Toast!” Evan cried and plopped her shot glass into her pint. The three of us watched, eyes soldered to the glass as the shot sank and the beer sloshed over the rim and onto the table. She picked it up carefully and held it up in the middle of the table. “To getting rid of all the fucking bullshit in our lives. And to new friends who rock the perfect shoes and vests. Cheers.”
“Cheers!”
We clanked our glasses against each other’s and took deep, long draughts, then slammed them onto the table when we were choked with alcohol. It was Evan who just kept drinking, her throat tightening and relaxing, two rivulets of beer dribbling out the sides of her mouth. Watching her made me feel like I was drowning, like I needed to take a breath for her, but she finally hammered the glass down in triumph and wiped a victorious wrist across her lips.
“Holy shit, loves. Y’all are gonna need to carry me back to the dorm. Whew!” She shuddered and hiccupped. “So, wait, I wanna win the game we started before.” She put an unsteady finger out and bopped me gently on the tip of my nose. “Jake. Jake, Jake, Jake. He is…artsy? Kind of quiet, but cool. Always wearing his paint-speckled shirt and ripped-up jeans. Ironic and sensitive.” She held her hands, prayer-style in front of her and raised her eyebrows high.