Page 74 of #Awestruck

Over the next few weeks, Evan and I settled into an easy routine. We played basketball, and he went to his football games while I cheered for him (either in the Forest or from home). We played our video games, watched movies and TV together, made out a lot, and generally spent as much time together as possible around his schedule.

I got cute and funny tweets from him while he was on the road, playing in different cities. Like:

Or:

He also took me to meet his grandmother, and she was just as he’d described. Awake but unresponsive. She didn’t speak or interact with us in any way. It made me feel so sad for him, that he was so alone, and some feminine instinct in me wanted to fix all of his broken parts.

When he was away, I kept assisting Aubrey with the reunion stuff. I tried to convince her that I should be let out of my Reunion Minion contract. “I don’t think I should have to help anymore. This was conditional on me getting the story on Evan, and obviously that’s not happening now.”

“No,” she corrected me. “The promise was conditional on you being introduced to Nia. I actually feel like you owe me more because I got you both a new friend and a boyfriend out of it.”

She was kind of right. So I sucked it up and kept doing whatever she told me to do. And then I was the only one doing any work. Evan helped out sometimes, but he was busy, and Aubrey left with her family and my parents to go on their cruise.

I attempted to lure Rory into working with me under the pretense of offering her baked goods. But we’d been sisters for too long.

Cabo?

Rory said she’d be gone for about a week. Whatever. It was her life. She could burn it down to the ground if she wanted to.

I just needed to keep reminding myself that Evan was worth all the ridiculous grunt work Aubrey was forcing me to do.

Speaking of feeling like I was forced to do things, work was the worst part of my life. Brenda spoke to me about once a week to ask if I had an update for her yet. When I said I didn’t, she had another reprimand form for me to sign, which I continued to refuse to do. I didn’t know how many forms I could get before her cousin in Human Resources called me in to let me go, but I knew I had to be close.

Or maybe I wasn’t. Maybe Brenda intended to keep me around and torment me endlessly with her reprimands and dirty looks. They weren’t paying me, so it wasn’t like it affected her bottom line.

She also wasn’t assigning me any tasks. When I asked the other interns if they needed help, I got rejected at every turn. Like they didn’t want to be tainted by associating with me. Which I understood, but I was really bored.

Sometimes I wondered if Brenda hoped that I would break. If she was waiting to see if things with Evan and me would end and then she could manipulate me into saying whatever she wanted because I’d be all heartbroken and angry again.

I attempted to look for other jobs, but nothing was happening on that front. I thought my best bet would be to try and transfer into another department at ISEN. I checked the company job postings daily. I would have been happy in any position—anything to get me out from under Brenda’s thumb and keep me on the right career track.

Unfortunately, the people doing the hiring weren’t interested in talking to me because I was Brenda’s intern. No one was willing to cross her by “stealing” me away.

Which probably meant that in order to keep pursuing my dream, I’d have to move to a different city.

And leave Evan behind.

It felt like there were no good solutions. And the stress of my situation was making me sick. I had some awful flu-like symptoms that I managed with over-the-counter medications. I kept warning Evan to keep his distance—the last thing he needed right now was to fall ill, but he insisted on cuddling with me and kissing me regardless. He told me he had an incredible immune system, and it seemed to be true.

About a week after my lunch with Aubrey, he came by after practice and collapsed on my couch. On his more physically intense days, we just quietly watched a show together and relaxed. I wondered what it would be like to be with him in the off-season. Obviously he’d still work out and train, just not at this same intensity.

My throat had been scratchy and raw the last couple of days, and I was trying to drink some herbal tea with honey to soothe the inflammation. But every time I swallowed, it only seemed to get worse. I tried forcing a cough, but that just made me feel like my throat lining had both caught on fire and was being stabbed simultaneously.

Evan noticed my distress. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’m in a lot of pain in my throat.”

He leaned over, as if he meant to examine me, and I backed up. “No way. This might be strep throat, and I’m not giving that to you.”

“If you’ve had it for a couple of days, then I probably have it, too.”

Oh no, I really would be one of those girlfriends who cursed her significant other’s football career.

That pain spiked again, somehow more intense this time, and Evan looked even more concerned. “That’s it. We’re taking you to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital.” Money wasn’t the issue; I was still covered on my parents’ insurance. He just seemed to be making a fuss over something that wasn’t that big of a deal. He felt my forehead, as if his hands doubled as thermometers. “I can go in and see a doctor tomorrow.”

Another wave of pain hit me, and I almost doubled over. It was getting worse.

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