The Person Within Me

I tried to calm down as I walked inside and pushed myself on my toes to see if I spotted Hunter´s face somewhere. A part of me wanted to look for Tyler too, but I was too nervous enough about being on the party that I didn’t need to add him to that.

Most people at the house were from my school, but there were also a lot of faced I didn’t recognized. And, as I walked in the high heels and shorts and some guys eyes lingered in me, I regretted letting Eva decide what I was wearing. Eva had a completely different reaction, while I blushed at the stares, she enjoyed the attention I had denies her all our lives.

The place was too crowded and the music made it hard for me to her even Eva, who was too excited and was already banging in my walls trying to break her way through. I had to push my way to the living room, which had conveniently been turned into a dance floor. I stood there for a moment, looking at the people dancing in front of me and the couples pushed up against the wall making out.

Why the hell had I told Hunter not to pick me up? I barely talked to anyone else in school besides him and in this mass of people it would be impossible to find him.

Don’t be so dramatic. Eva rolled her eyes, just walk around a little and you´ll find him.

I kind of appreciated that she was trying to calm me down, but I had not forgotten that she was the one who got me into this mess. She something along the lines of ‘her time to have some fun’ but I tuned her out and made my way into the kitchen, hoping to see Hunter there.

“Shiloh,” someone called my name, but it wasn’t him.

I turned in my spot and my heart stopped for a moment when I saw Tyler grinning at me. I was so happy to see him but even more so that I didn’t have to be alone anymore, I was dying of nerves because I had never talked to him outside of school and I had no idea how to act around him.

“When did you get here?” he asked when I made my way towards him.

I smiled nervously. “Just now. I was looking for Hunter, have you seen him?” He shook his head and it seemed like he hadn’t liked that I was looking for Hunter and not for him. “That´s weird, he should be here by now.”

“You two didn’t come together?” he asked taking a sip of his drink.

I shook my head. “No, I told him I´d meet him here. Did you come with someone?”

He shot me a grin and shook his head. “I asked you to come with me but you said no.”

No, you didn’t. Eva disagreed. You told her you could pick her up, but you never asked her out.

I wanted to roll my eyes at the way Eva saw things, it was obvious that for Tyler those two were the exact same thing. But I didn’t want to listen to her at the moment, I didn’t want her to ruin the excitement that what he´d said made me feel.

“Well, Hunter and I had talked about the party and I didn’t want him to feel like I was blowing him off if I came with you,” I replied unable to hide my smile.

Tyler nodded. “Yeah, I understand. I know Hunter has a thing for you.”

I could feel Eva´s jealousy and anger mixed up with my confusion. “He doesn´t, we´re just good friends.”

“No, you´re good friends with him,” Tyler said. “He has always liked you, I thought you knew that.”

Was it true? I had never thought of Hunter that way, but as of late it seemed sort of impossible not to. With Eva and her loud thoughts and with the way he had reacted to them I was stupid not to think that he had thought about me in that way.

I shook my head. “We didn’t know.”

Tyler frowned at me slightly and stared at me for a moment before saying, “Who´s we?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said ‘we’,” he told me confused, “you said ‘we didn´t know’.”

I furrowed my brow and thought on it. “No, I didn’t.”

“You did.” He seemed just as confused as me.

Did I? I started to panic. Oh my God, I probably did. “I- I didn’t notice, that´s so weird.”

I was worried he would think I was strange, but he just chuckled and took another sip from his beer. He was saying something else, but I could no longer pay him any attention. The only thing that was on my mind was the fact that I had talked in plural and I hadn’t even known I did it.

What was happening? Was I started to feel like Eva and I were the same person? No, that couldn’t be it. Eva and I were still as against of the idea of the other as we were the first day. But maybe it was something I couldn’t control, or even her, because I could feel it in my core that it had not been her the one to put the word on my mouth.

“Hey, are you okay, Shiloh?” Tyler asked when he realized I wasn’t listening to him.

I looked up at him and cursed mentally because I wanted to be with him so badly, but I wanted to be there completely. I didn’t want my worried mind to steal me away from the long expected time I had with him. “Yeah I… I think I´m gonna go see if I can find Hunter, though.”

“Oh,” he said, his face falling for a second before he pulled it together.

“Just to let him know I got here before he gets worried,” I added quickly.

He nodded with a smile. “Sure, I´ll see you later.”

I shot a forced smile in his direction before turning around and making my way to the backyard, which was just as crowded as the rest of the house. My hands were shaking and the pain in my head was pulsing angrily, I tried to keep Eva at bay because she was more eager than ever to get out and I could feel every single one of her hits to the back of my head.

In the farthest part of the garden was the place where people were playing beer pong, and I immediately spotted Hunter in a small group of his other friends. “Hunter,” I called him.

He looked up, his black hair ruffling in the light wind and his emerald eyes sparkling when he saw me. “Hey! I didn’t think you´d come.”

“I said I would,” I shrugged, forgetting to hide my shaky hands.

“Still, you know I wouldn’t have gotten mad at you if you didn’t come,” he replied, then he looked at my hands. “Are you okay?”

I flexed my fingers and crossed my arms across my chest. “This isn’t really my scene,” I excused myself.

“You should drink something, relax a little,” Hunter said extending his red cup towards me. “You can finish mine.”

I took it and looked down at it. Jake, one of Hunter´s friends, chuckled and nudged me slightly. “You won’t get drunk with half a beer.”

“I´m blaming you if I do,” I chuckled taking a sip.

“And where were you?” Hunter asked.

I tried to ignore another one of Eva´s hits. “I was with Tyler.” He raised both eyebrows at me surprised. “Yeah, I told him I´d meet him here.”

He grinned at me. “You should go with him, I don’t mind. I know how much that means to you.”

“We all do,” Jake added with a smirk.

I had to laugh despite the fact that I could already feel myself losing control. Eva was furious; she couldn’t stand me leaving Hunter for Tyler. And as I made my way to the living room again I realized that I was just escaping from both of them because I didn’t want Eva to have any type of interaction with them.

Hunter didn’t seem upset at all that I was going to be with Tyler, in fact, he had suggested it himself. He wanted me to go. He couldn’t possibly have feelings for me if he was doing stuff like that. Tyler had been wrong, he had been reading too much into the friendship.

I was slightly calmer now that I knew nothing was going on between me and Hunter, but my time was clicking away as the headache grew and my hands shook furiously.

“Hey,” I greeted Tyler when I found him talking to couple from school.

He smiled. “You found him?”

I nodded with a grin. “Yeah, he was by the beer pong."

Tyler laughed at that and nodded. “Of course he is, how didn’t we think of that before?”

We stayed there in the living room trying to talk around the loud music with the couple with whom I had never crossed two words with in my entire high school. They seemed nice enough and they looked very surprised at the fact of seeing me at the party with Tyler. After a while they left to go dancing and we moved to the backyard where it was easier to talk.

He took a sip from his beer and looked at me. “I have to tell you, I was very surprised when you refused to come with me tonight?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Surprised how?”

“I don´t know, I mean, I know the way you feel about me…” he trailed off, shrugging.

I nodded once, but inside my heart was pounding and my cheeks blushed with embarrassment. Of course he knew about my crush, I was so obvious about it. “And you thought I would jump at the first opportunity you gave me.”

“Not exactly in those words,” he laughed.

There was a loud bang in my head. No! I wanted to scream. No! I told her, stay away. This is my life!

It has been your life for too long now

&&

Eva opened her eyes after a split second of being closed and she smirked in relief when she realized Tyler hadn´t noticed the change. She had little time, she knew that, and she also knew it was the perfect time to get Shiloh at her weakest. This was the night where everything blew out in favor of Eva.

This was the night she took the body for herself.

“If you knew how I felt and you sort of felt the same, why didn’t you ever ask me out?” she asked serious, all the doubts Eva had always had finally getting out..

He was surprised by the question; Shiloh wasn’t supposed to be so calm about him knowing, she was supposed to be flattered that he had wanted to come to the party together at all. “I did.”

Eva shook her head. “Before, I mean. Why now and not before if you´ve known all along?”

“Well, because something changed about you,” he replied putting his red cup on the floor and sinking his hands in his pockets. “You were always so closed off; you never actually let me get close enough to be with you. But that changed recently, you opened up and I thought it was now or never.”

She smirked slightly. “You never really tried,” she said and shrugged, before adding, “and now it might be too late.”

He frowned. “You feelings for me changed?”

Eva shook her head. “No, you just made me see other things that were there too but I had never thought of before.”

He nodded, somewhat defeated. “Hunter.”

Yes. Hunter.

&&

Eva had left Tyler right where he had been standing when they had talked and she walked away from him all the way to the front lawn where she could have a little time for herself.
She really didn’t need to think the way Shiloh so normally did, she just wanted to visualize what she had been doing all along.

Was it enough? Was messing with Tyler enough? Was ruining her relationship with Sam enough, her relationship with her parents? Would Shiloh be weak enough to push away now, to lock her up on the back of her mind and take control for good?

She looked ahead into the line of cars parked all along the street and she spotted Hunter leaning against the side of his car looking into his cellphone.

No, that wasn’t enough.

Eva started walking, her high heels clicking against the concrete and her eyes set on the figure ahead. She was just doing it for finish Shiloh off, she was doing it because it was long overdue both for her and for him.

When she was merely three feet away from him, he looked up and grinned when he recognized her. “Tired of Tyler already?”

“I´m not really interested in him at all,” she shrugged her shoulders with a half-smirk.

“Oh really?” he questioned raising an eyebrow.

He thought she was joking, that she was just messing with him. But nothing could be closer to the truth. Eva was not speaking for Shiloh, this time she was being herself and only herself. She wanted him to see her and not the other girl. She stopped right in front of him and chuckling at the way he furrowed his brows at the closeness.

“Really,” she said, pushing herself up on her toes and closing the space between them in a kiss. One that not even she knew how long he had been waiting for, one that was exactly what Shiloh needed to melt away into Eva´s subconscious.