April 11, 2010 (31)
6:45 p.m.
University of Michigan

After telling Addison about what happened with Valerie and eating dinner, I decided that I needed to talk to Cole. And doing it over the phone just wasn’t going to cut it either. So I came to his dorm, which I was now standing right outside of, extremely nervous for some reason. I was nervous he wouldn’t take me back actually. He promised me that he would, but what if he thought it over and realized that he didn’t want me back after all?
“Whatcha doing?” Shaun’s familiar voice said, startling me. I turned around to find him standing right behind me and an embarrassed blush spread across my cheeks.
“Um, nothing,” I replied, trying to sound casual, as if standing outside of people’s dorms was a totally normal thing.
“So you’re just randomly chilling outside my dorm?” he asked me, a hint of a teasing smile flickering across his lips.
“Well I was planning on knocking on the door so I could talk to Cole.” I told him.
“Oh, and when were you planning on doing that?” he said.
“You know…when I actually got the nerve to do it.” I admitted sheepishly.
He smiled back at me and pulled his room key out of the pocket of his jeans. “Well I’m gonna go inside now. Do you want me to give you some more time to stand out here or do you want to come in?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes at him, a dash of guilt creeping up on me as I did so. There was no way I was going to let Michael go after Shaun. He was way too nice to die. “I think I’ll come inside now,” I replied.
So he opened up the door and we both stepped into the small dorm room, but as soon as we did, I knew it was a mistake. Because Cole was not the only one sitting on his bed. Sitting across from him on the bed, only a few inches away from him, was Chelsea.
“Hey, look who I found!” Shaun exclaimed, beaming. They both turned to look at us and I felt bile rising in my throat. I had been so stupid to come here. Of course he was with Chelsea now. Of course he was over me.
“Evalynne?’ Cole said when he saw me, sounding shocked that I was there.
“Evalynne?” Chelsea said at the same time, her tone flat and fed up.
“Hi,” I replied, feeling beyond awkward.
“What are you doing here?” Cole asked me.
“I was uh, just going to tell you how sorry I am for what I said to you the other day. I was wrong about everything, and I’m just really sorry for the way I treated you. I hope you can forgive me.” I told him, not including the part about how I wanted to get back together with him.
“Evalynne, I promised you that I’d still be here waiting when you decided to come back to me. I’m not going to break the promise. Of course I forgive you.” A warm smile spread across his lips and he rose from his bed, striding over and wrapping me up in his strong arms.
“Aw, I love a happy ending!” Shaun said with a wide grin.
Cole pulled away from me just as Chelsea stood up and approached us. “Cole, I’m glad you made up with your friend, but I think you need to explain to her that she’s just a friend.” she said, glaring at me. I watched in confusion as Cole’s face fell.
“What is she talking about?” I asked him. “Are you two together or something?”
“Yes, we are,” Chelsea answered for him.
“I was asking Cole.” I remarked, shooting her an irritated glance. She rolled her eyes and we both looked to Cole, waiting for his answer. But Shaun spoke before he had a chance to get any words out.
“Come on, don’t do this, Chelsea,” Shaun said. I was even more confused now. What the hell was going on here?
“Stay out of it, Shaun,” she retorted, narrowing her shiny brown eyes at him.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on here?” I demanded, wanting a straight answer.
“Cole’s with me now. That’s all,” Chelsea replied hastily. I could tell this wasn’t the full story though. So I looked at Cole, knowing he wouldn’t lie to me.
He sighed, looking into my eyes for a long time before answering. “I cheated on this huge exam and Chelsea found out. Now she’s forcing me to date her. If I break up with her, she’ll tell my professor that I cheated.”
“What?” I cried, beyond shocked. I never in a million years would have suspected that Cole was the type of guy who cheated on his school work. Especially not huge college exams! I couldn’t believe it.
“Either way, Cole’s with me now.” Chelsea added, eyeing me bitterly. “So just back off.”
“Excuse me?” I shouted back at her. “He doesn’t even like you! He’s only with you because you’re blackmailing him!”
“Can’t we all just get along?” Shaun said desperately. “Fighting doesn’t solve anything.”
“Stay out of this, Shaun!” Chelsea remarked viciously.
He held his hands up in defense, taking a step away from her. “Jeez, I was just trying to help.” he uttered.
“Cole does like me, Evalynne. Because I’m not pathetic like you!” Chelsea snapped back at me, ignoring Shaun’s comment.
“I’m pathetic?” I demanded. “I’m not the one blackmailing someone into dating me!” I couldn’t help but notice that Cole was just standing there, watching this happen. He wasn’t even trying to stand up for me. He was just standing there, looking ashamed of himself.
“Well you are the one pathetic enough to stay with that guy who hit you! Are you really so desperate for a guy, that you’ll even take one who abuses women? Don’t you have any standards?” Her tone was snide, her words malicious. And I was so taken aback by it that I went speechless, unable to conjure up a response.
“Whoa, somebody hit you?” Shaun cried out of nowhere. “I knew it! I knew you didn’t run into a tree!”
“How did you not know that she was with some violent psychopath?” Chelsea remarked. “It was like, all over the news.”
“You really think I watch the news?” Shaun replied. “Who is this guy exactly? Do I know him?”
“Well you’ve met him before.” Cole said, speaking up for the first time in a long time. When I saw the angry look in his eyes, I knew that this was not going to go well. “You remember Will, right?”
Shaun’s light hazel eyes went wide as remembrance washed over him. “That scary guy with the gages?” he cried.
“That’s him,” Cole retorted smugly, glancing over at me.
“Oh my gosh! You went out with him, Evalynne?” Shaun asked me in shock.
“Yeah,” I confessed, very uncomfortable with the topic we were discussing. Chelsea seemed to be enjoying every second of it though. She stood there with her slender arms crossed over her chest, smirking at me.
“Wow,” he murmured to himself. “I still remember that one time when his brother like practically threatened my life. What was his name again? The only thing that comes to mind for me is Mr. Sweater Vest.” He grinned, obviously joking around, but I just couldn’t get myself to smile back.
“His name is Michael,” I said softly.
“Oh yeah, I heard about him on the news too.” Chelsea said. “Didn’t he like, try to kill his brother or something?”
I glanced up at Cole as we both thought back to that day. The day Cole had saved my life. He’d saved Will’s life too. But him doing this resulted in his girlfriend, Katrina’s life to be taken away from her. That was the day that Valerie had murdered her.
“Yeah, he did,” I replied.
“For real?” Shaun cried. I was pretty surprised that Cole hadn’t already told all of this to Shaun.
“Yep,” I said. How had we gotten to this subject anyways? We were supposed to be talking about how Cole had cheated on his paper, how Chelsea was blackmailing him into dating her. We definitely weren’t supposed to be talking about Will and Michael. That was a touchy topic for me and I felt really uncomfortable discussing it so openly like this.
“Oh my gosh,” Shaun said, completely out of the blue. “What time is it?”
Chelsea pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and flipped it open, glancing at the time. “Seven-oh-three,” she informed him.
“Oh damn,” he uttered, immediately grabbing a gray sweatshirt off of his bed and yanking it on over his head.
“What’s wrong?” Cole asked.
“I’m supposed to go meet someone down at the quad at seven-fifteen,” he told us, smoothing out the hem of his hoody.
“Who?” Cole wondered aloud.
“His name’s Ben. You know him, Evalynne. He works with you at the diner.” Shaun replied.
I felt my heart skip a nervous beat and I instantly felt dizzy. “Why are you going to meet him?” I demanded, sounding just as frantic as I felt.
Everyone seemed to notice too, because all three of them looked at me with curiosity. “Well he was my waiter today at the diner and after I told him that I went to the University of Michigan, he told me that he was thinking of applying there. He asked if I would meet him here to show him around and tell him about the school more before he applies, so I said yes. Why? Is he like, a bad guy or something?”
You have no idea, I thought to myself. I couldn’t say this though. Shaun’s life was depending on it. “Uh…no, he’s um…he’s great,” I replied, stuttering across the words.
“You sure about that?” Cole asked, shooting me a quizzical look. “Because you look kind of freaked out right now,”
“No, I’m not freaked out,” I lied, trying to make it sound believable, but failing epically. It was pretty obvious that I was hiding something. Chelsea raised a thin eyebrow at me in return, looking at me like I was a basketcase.
“Maybe I should come meet this guy with you, Shaun,” Cole said, causing a surge of panic to course through me.
“No!” I cried before I could stop myself. “I mean…maybe that’s not such a good idea. After all, you wouldn’t want to intrude, would you?”
“Shaun doesn’t mind, do you, Shaun?” Cole replied.
“No, you can come if you want,” Shaun told him.
“Well then it’s settled. I’m going to meet this guy.” Cole declared.
“Well based off of Evalynne’s reaction, this guy sounds like a freak, so I think I’m going to skip out on this one.” Chelsea said, not that anyone invited her to come along anyways. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Cole,” She flashed him a seductive grin, tossed her hair over her shoulder as she turned on her heel and left.
“Ok,” Cole said once she was gone. “Let’s go meet this guy,”

Author's Note: Check me out on Youtube if you wanna! I made videos for the EC+AM=4ever series & my username is LexiWrites (: