Since Forever Ago

by Olivia Besse

  “Ugh!”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “God, Evan, you are, like, the worst.”

  “I can’t believe you did that!” Kara continued, a horrified look on her face. “That poor girl!”

  “I know!” Evan sarcastically agreed with him, scrunching up his nose in distaste. “I’m horrible!”

  “You really are!”

  “It’s not completely his fault,” Max insisted in a hurried tone. “I mean, he only did it because he cared about her!”

  “You are so selfish,” April told Evan, scowling at him as she did.

  “I know, right?” Evan moaned out, trying his best to hold back his laughter as he caught Max’s eye. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “But then,” Max began, drawing back the attentions of the two girls who had been preoccupied with glaring daggers at Evan. “Something happened.”

  “Ooh, what?”

  “Evan eventually told her about how he felt and she... well, they sort of got together,” Max explained, feeling his cheeks grow warm as he thought back on the night he had confessed everything to Riley.

  “Oh my God, that’s so adorable!”

  “So you finally hooked up with your childhood crush after all of these years?” Kara whispered out, her face softening as she did. “That is, like, Disney movie material.”

  “I love Disney movies,” Evan mockingly cooed out, at which both girls nodded their heads fervently in agreement.

  “I know, right?”

  “Okay, enough about... whatever it is you guys are blabbering about,” Max interjected in frustration. “So after all of that happened, everything was going great. But then the girl found out that Evan had merely encouraged her ex to cheat on her—”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” Max grumbled under his breath. “And now she’s fucking pissed at him!”

  “Well, I would be too,” Kara flatly stated, crossing her arms across her chest and wrinkling her nose at Evan once again.

  “Why?” Max blurted out in response. “It’s not like it was his fault!”

  “Of course it was!” April disagreed. “He broke her trust!”

  “But she’s not even that mad at her ex!” Max told them, letting out an exasperated sigh. “She seems to be more pissed at Evan. Why would she be angrier at Evan than at the guy who did the actual cheating?”

  “Really?” Kara squeaked out. “Do you really have to ask?”

  “God, guys are so dumb,” April muttered under her breath with a slight shake of her head.

  “It’s, like, totally obvi,” Kara said, rolling her eyes at the confused looks on the boys’ faces. “She’s in love with Evan.”

  “What?”

  “If she was still in love with her ex, then she wouldn’t have even cared that Evan had said that,” Kara explained matter-of-factly. “But the fact that she’s mad at Evan shows that she cares more about him than her stupid ex.”

  “So... does that mean that Evan still has a chance?” Max quietly asked, a hopeful look in his eyes.

  “Um, duh.”

  “Well, then. That settles it,” Evan began with an amused smirk. “I guess I can finally stop bitching and moaning and complaining and whining and crying and—”

  “How would he go about doing that?” Max curiously inquired, ignoring Evan’s taunting gaze. “How should he try to fix this?”

  Kara let out a tired sigh, shooting Evan a bored look. “You two are utterly hopeless,” she sighed out. “Haven’t you watched any movies? Go beg on her doorstep. Go hold signs while standing on her front lawn. Go write her a love poem. Go do something. Anything!”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  Twenty-nine

  “Oh fuck, Max is here!”

  “Well, it is midterms week and we are in a library,” Liz reminded her in a bored voice as she dropped her books onto the tabletop.

  “Why do we have to sit here?” Riley hissed, shooting Liz a pained expression. “Can’t you pick another table? Any other table?”

  “Riley, this is the first empty table we’ve come across in the past twenty minutes,” Liz replied, a tired look on her face. “You can crawl underneath it and study from there if you prefer, but I’m staying right here.”

  “After all of these years of friendship, I never thought you’d betray me like this,” Riley whispered back before turning her lips downward into disapproving frown.

  Liz rolled her eyes as she pulled out a chair and settled in, ignoring her crazed friend as she took the empty seat beside her and craned her neck to glance in the other direction.

  “I can see him through the gap in the bookshelf.”

  “Riley, you’re being really creepy right now,” Liz muttered in warning.

  “He’s with that April girl,” Riley announced in a low whisper, her eyes narrowing as she watched them from afar. “I can’t believe he’s been begging me to talk to him this whole time, and then he shows up at the library to have a private study session with her!”

  Liz shot her an incredulous stare before taking a look for herself. “And like 10 other people,” she pointed out flatly.

  “I don’t like her,” Riley mumbled to no one in particular. “I don’t like her one bit.”

  “As I’m sure.”

  “She’s ridiculous,” she continued, letting out a tiny scoff. “You can barely see her shorts! Isn’t she cold?”

  “Why do you even care?” Liz asked in exasperation. “I thought you said that you’re over Max!”

  Promptly after stomping into the living room after her tête-à-tête with Jeremy the previous evening, Riley had boldly declared to her roommates that Max was indeed an asshole who wasn’t perfect for her. “I’m over him, over boys and over all of this bullshit in general!” she had shouted while storming into the kitchen in search of strong, dark liquor. “Bring on the cats!”

  Instead of responding to Liz’s question, Riley merely cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Anyway, I wonder if it hurts her brain to make her voice so nasally. Why do girls even do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Liz muttered under her breath, distractedly flipping through the pages of her textbook. “Ask Audrey.”

  “Ugh, and did you see her nails?”

  “What?” Liz asked, furrowing her brow in confusion.

  “She has nail art!” Riley blurted out, her face scrunched up in disgust.

  Liz stared back at her with a blank expression. “So?”

  “What kind of person takes the time to decorate each individual nail?” Riley demanded in a loud whisper. “A crazy person, that’s who.”

  “Shhhhhhhhh!” a peeved nerd seated at a nearby cubicle hissed out.

  “Thank you,” Liz whispered out to him with a grateful nod of her head.

  Unfortunately, Riley didn’t seem to get the memo. “Oh God, he’s smiling at her,” she groaned out, tugging at the end of her ponytail in frustration.

  Liz glanced over to survey the scene. “I think that’s a grimace.”

  “No, it’s a smile,” Riley insisted through gritted teeth.

  “Why do you even care?”

  “I don’t!”

  “Sure,” Liz replied with a defeated shake of her head. “Okay.”

  “...I bet she got a blowout just to come to the library.”

  “I’m sure she did,” Liz mumbled, barely even listening to Riley’s commentary at this point.

  “God, her eyebrows are straight.”

  “Riley!”

  “Ugh, look at her!” Riley continued, ignoring Liz’s cries of annoyance. “She’s talking on the phone! Who talks on the phone at the library?”

  “Who talks at the library, period?” Liz hissed in response.

  “Why is she even here? She’s not even studying!”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Liz said, shooting her a pointed stare.

  “Oh shit! He looked over in this direction!” Riley suddenly cried out in a
hushed tone, ducking her head low to the tabletop. “He didn’t see me, right?”

  “He can probably sense that you’re eye fucking them,” Liz mused sarcastically.

  “Am not!”

  “Riley,” Liz firmly began. “You are acting like an insane person. Now, shut the fuck up, open your book and study.”

  “Thank you,” the nerd loudly whispered from behind the cubicle’s wall.

  “Fine,” Riley grumbled, clearing her throat obnoxiously before opening up her laptop. Just as she had positioned her fingers atop her keyboard, however, her phone let out a series of loud beeps.

  “Dammit, Riley, silence your phone!” Liz hissed at her, glancing around to deliver apologetic smiles to their neighbors. “I don’t know if you understand what a trip to the library entails, but—”

  “Oh shit!” Riley gasped out as she glanced at her screen, shoving the entire thing in Liz’s face. “Look! Noah just texted me!”

  “‘Hey,’” Liz read aloud. “How cryptic.”

  “What do I say?” Riley asked, her eyes widened in confusion.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Is ‘hello’ too formal? I’m going to go with ‘hi.’”

  “Dude, don’t respond to him,” Liz said as she pulled a face.

  “Why?” Riley inquired with a bewildered expression, her thumbs still hovering over her screen.

  “Riley, stop,” Liz calmly whispered back as she plucked the phone from her crazed friend’s hands. “An ex is an ex for a reason.”

  “I never said I was going to marry him! I was just going to exchange a polite ‘hello’ with an old friend!”

  “‘An old friend’?” Liz repeated in a mocking tone. “Why don’t you just go and have a chat with your old friend who’s right over there?”

  Riley stared back at Liz as if she had sprouted another head. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to go up to Max! Especially not when he’s with another girl!”

  “I don’t get it,” Liz muttered under her breath, shaking her head in defeat.

  “All I’m saying is that Max doesn’t seem to care about me, so why should I care about him?”

  “You’re making a much bigger deal about Max sitting two feet away from another girl than you did about Noah sharing beds with, like, twenty of them,” Liz mused, a saccharine smile on her lips. “I wonder why?”

  “Don’t you jump to conclusions, Elizabeth Graynor,” Riley dramatically replied, grabbing the phone back from Liz. “Because there aren’t any conclusions for you to jump to here.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Ugh, I can’t study,” Riley whined, leaning forward in her seat and resting her chin atop her stack of books. “I’m not in the right mental state to be sitting in a library right now.”

  “You can say that again,” Liz muttered under her breath as she returned her attention to her lecture notes.

  “I’m going to go home.”

  “Riley,” Liz began in a tone of warning.

  “What?” she cried in response. “I just want to go home and spend some quality time with Audrey!”

  Liz narrowed her eyes in an accusatory manner. “You better not reply to Noah.”

  “I won’t!”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I wasn’t planning to!” Riley whispered defiantly. “And even if I were to text him back, what’s the big deal?”

  “Do not reply,” Liz firmly repeated. “You’re just being irrational right now because you saw Max.”

  “I’m completely rational!” Riley shrilly replied. “What are you even talking about?”

  “You are the most indecisive human being I’ve ever met,” Liz said with a sigh. “Your head must hurt from changing your mind about Noah and Max all of the time.”

  “I’m a 21-year-old girl!” Riley defensively hissed back as she began to gather her things. “It kind of comes with the territory!”

  “Whatever,” Liz mumbled, shaking her head slightly as Riley rose from her seat. “Just promise me that you won’t text him.”

  “Fine.”

  “And no cyber stalking.”

  Riley let out an incredulous scoff. “That was, like, so two weeks ago.”

  “And no drinking.”

  “We don’t have any alcohol left in our house anyway!”

  “Thanks to you,” Liz said with an amused smirk. “So just go home and study.”

  “That was my plan,” Riley retorted.

  “Promise?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “You were never a Scout,” Liz reminded her.

  “No need to get technical, Elizabeth,” she huffily replied. “But you don’t need to worry about us. There will be absolutely no texting, no stalking and no drinking.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just me and Audrey and our piles of textbooks,” Riley theatrically prattled out as she slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’m going to make midterm week my bitch. You have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

  Thirty

  "Wouldn’t it be great if there was a wine truck?"

  “What?”

  “You know, like a food truck,” Audrey explained as they made their way down the snack aisle. "But with rosé and white wine spritzers. Then we wouldn’t have to come all the way to the store!"

  "I would pillage that shit," Riley grumbled under her breath, grabbing a bag of chocolate chip cookies off of the shelf and observing its harrowing nutritional data chart.

  In sharp contrast to what she had promised Liz they would do, Riley had convinced Audrey to forgo an intimate evening with their essay prompts in favor of a prolonged trip to the grocery store. After loading up on enough wine to hydrate a small country, the two were now perusing the junk food section in search of processed crap with which to placate Riley’s broken heart.

  “Ugh, I’m really not in the mood to write my paper,” Audrey groaned out as they maneuvered their shopping cart down the aisle. “I need to stop hanging out with you. You’re the queen of procrastination!”

  “At least I’m the queen of something, then,” Riley petulantly replied.

  “I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter,” Audrey whimpered, picking up a pack of energy drinks and placing it amongst the bags of chips and bottles of alcohol that they had amassed. “So you better stay up with me!”

  “I drink, you write,” Riley said with a smirk.

  “Why do we have to write papers, anyway?” Audrey continued, pouting like a sullen child. “I mean, most of them are just thousands of words of pure bullshit strung together at the last minute. My last paper didn’t make any sense, and I didn’t even proof-read it and still got a B! Like, does anybody even read them?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Speaking of bullshit, I can’t believe that Noah actually texted you again!” Audrey said, shaking her head in dismay. “He really has no shame.”

  “I don’t know,” Riley drawled out, meekly shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe he sees something that I don’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe I wrote him off too quickly...”

  “Riley, don’t you dare think about crawling back to him,” Audrey said with a sharp gasp, narrowing her eyes suspiciously in her friend’s direction. “He’s bad news!”

  “I’m just really confused. Especially after I found out about what Max said to him. Like, maybe all of that wasn’t entirely Noah’s fault. Friends can be very influential, you know!”

  “Not really,” Audrey replied, frowning slightly. “I mean, you never listen to us.”

  “But then Liz was going on and on about how an ex is an ex for a reason,” Riley prattled on as they made their way towards the freezer section. “I honestly think she’s just projecting her frustrations with Henry onto me, though.”

  “Well, she’s right,” Audrey said. “And you can definitely trust me. I’m really good at getting back with my exes and, let me tell you, it never turns out well.”

  “Maybe.”

&nbs
p; “And, no offense, but the reason that Noah’s your ex is pretty valid.”

  “But people can have lapses in judgment,” Riley began with a frown. “Right?”

  “One lapse, sure,” Audrey replied, surveying the popsicle choices on display. “But multiple?”

  “I guess...”

  “And can’t you say that Max just had a lapse of judgment too, then?” Audrey cautiously asked.

  “Er, no,” Riley said with a shake of her head. “I don’t even know what’s going on with him. He’s been texting and calling me, but then I saw him at the library with that girl earlier—”

  “No!”

  “Yes!” Riley moaned out. “I just... I don’t get it.”

  “So he’s been acting like he still wants to work things out with you while parading her around in public like that?” Audrey asked with a disbelieving scoff.

  “I know, right?”

  “Ugh, all guys really do suck,” Audrey muttered under her breath as they turned the corner. “I guess even the ones you were friends with before you—”

  “Oh God!”

  “What?” Audrey asked, her eyes widening at Riley’s sudden outburst. “Did you want ice cream?”

  “Hide me!” Riley hissed back, ducking behind an elaborate display of boxes of crackers. “Quick!”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s Noah!” Riley frantically whispered, jerking her head in the direction of the checkout stands. “What do you think he’s doing here?”

  “Um, buying groceries?”

  “I can’t let him see me!” Riley blurted out, still crouched down behind the tower of cardboard boxes. “I never even responded to his text!”

  “Riley, get up!” Audrey instructed through gritted teeth, glancing around nervously. “People are staring!”

  “Not until he leaves!”

  “Riley—”

  “Just stand right there and... ah!”

  Audrey merely stared in horror as Riley lost her footing and fell back against the carefully arranged 3D presentation, her eyes widening to the point of looking as if they might pop out of her head as an avalanche of graham cracker boxes ensued. The deafening sound of hundreds of boxes crashing to the floor prompted every customer in the vicinity to turn their heads in their direction, including that of the one person that the perpetrator had been so determined to stealthily avoid.