You're a Lucky Man
I'm a Cabbier through and through, so I obviously loved TBS (mostly). However, Evan grated on my nerves. How could he not like Cat? She's so sweet and cute! Not the smartest, but her heart's in the right place. So that thought led to another until I had this sort of Cabbie fic out there. And I'm not afraid of corrections in grammar (in fact, I like it. I've found mistakes in my other stories no one bothered to point out to me and hated it), so feel free to criticize as long as there's an explanation. I'm done with rambling now, so enjoy!

Evan Smith was not an idiot. He went to Briarwood, after all. He wasn't often a jerk either, but he definitely wasn't an idiot.

When he first met Cat, she was sweet and adorable with the bonus of blonde hair and blue eyes. He had liked her right away, and she had liked him.

The next day, his friends noticed and asked about his good mood. He told them about the blonde cutie pie he had met at Nozu the day before. A girl from Hollywood Arts that he was going to meet again that night. They had exchanged looks and barely bothered to disguise their whispers on how long she'd last.

He didn't care. He really thought Cat was something special.

After school, things shifted a little bit out of place.

On his SplashFace account, there was a new comment.

You've already hurt Cat's confidence. Don't you dare do more.

The comment was left by someone who called himself RockRobster.

Evan went to the guy's page and saw a picture of a lanky teenager with pale skin, nerdy glasses, and a slight afro of curls. He also saw a link to his board on something called The Slap.

The first thing he saw on there was a status that said I kind of have a crush on a cute little redhead whose name rhymes with "splat".

Instant pity. He didn't know much about not getting girls or crushing in silence, but in the few times he'd experienced it, it had been painful.

But… why had the kid threatened him? Did he know Cat? Was Cat his crush? But that couldn't be because Cat was blonde… right?

Evan shook his head. Too much thinking for one day. He may not be an idiot, but thinking really wasn't his greatest skill.

Besides, he had a date to get ready for.

Finally, he was at the… what did those kids call it… the Blackbox theater. Evan wondered what the movie Cat had co-starred in was about.

Then Cat arrived.

She was wearing a dress almost as pretty and sweet as she was when she bounced up to say hi.

Evan smiled. Cat was looking so cute and happy. She was just plain adorable.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see an angry brunette talking with someone who he instantly recognized. It was the kid who had warned him on his SplashFace, Robbie Shapiro.

The Robbie kid was wearing a belt of tools around his middle and seemed to be arguing with the girl (who was really pretty, actually, but he was with his Cat and besides, blondes were prettier than brunettes) when the girl snapped the belt into his stomach and Evan winced. Angry girls were hard to deal with, and he knew this far too well.

The weird thing was that the brunette had been pointing at him and Cat. Evan shook it off. He shouldn't be thinking of other things, no matter how mysterious, while he was on a date.

Cat had been playing with her hair and it was her kiddy voice that broke him from his thoughts.

"Here, sniff it," she said, smiling sweetly.

He pressed his nose to the curl of hair and inhaled deeply. He wondered what her hair would smell like. Probably artificial strawberries or sugar or sunshine. Something as sweet and bright as her.

Her hair didn't smell like anything. No, actually, it smelled… processed. Fake. Not like Cat at all.

Evan decided to ignore it. Hair didn't say everything about a girl, after all. The craziest and ugliest girl he'd ever dated had had hair that smelled like chocolate ice cream.

He couldn't, however, ignore it when that Robbie kid kept on glancing back at him and Cat. What was he doing? Maybe… maybe he was like an overprotective brother. Or something. But then why was there envy in his face?

He was so focused on the figuring everything out that he missed the sound of flapping wings and a bird's squawk. The Robbie kid, however, didn't.

As soon as Cat left after saying, "I gotta go freshen up!" the brunette girl from earlier and Robbie were up and after her. Oh, and that guy Andre. But he was after the bird, so he didn't count.

He was left sitting there, wondering what the chiz just happened and what the chiz had been happening these past two days.

When Evan finally collected himself enough to go after his girl, he got up and found the brunette girl who told him that Cat was sweet and pretty and deserving to be accepted. He knew that. He said, "Huh?" because he didn't know why that chick was telling him something he already knew.

Then Cat peeked out from behind the lockers.

"Hi."

"Cat?" Evan was surprised. This girl had Cat's voice and her dress and her face… but her hair was maroon, not yellow.

"I guess." She was playing with a bit of her (red) hair.

"Is that you?"

The girl who was Cat nodded. She had lied to him? Well, it explained a bit even if he hated liars.

"But—"

"It was a blonde wig!" she blurted out. "And the blue eyes were fake. It was for Beck's movie." She exhaled quickly. "This is me."

"Well, you're beautiful." Evan told her the truth. She was beautiful.

"I am?" She looked so happy.

"Totally," he told her, smiling to himself.

crush… cute… redhead… rhymes with "splat"

It hit Evan like a brick aimed at his head and he could feel the smile slip from his face.

He had seen the glances Robbie gave her. He read the threat and the crush confession. There were probably more things people that actually knew him would have seen. Robbie liked Cat.

Evan really liked Cat too, but he wasn't about to crush a poor nerd's spirit. Besides, he could move on. He didn't like admitting it, but there were always girls around for him.

He knew what he had to do.

"But I'm really into blondes. Later."

He could hear Cat's gasping and squeaking as he left, but he couldn't do it. Evan wasn't so bad of a person that he'd steal someone else's girl (and from what he could see, Cat was Robbie's girl even if she didn't know it yet).

He really did like blondes best and gave them more chances than other girls. He really didn't like people who pretended to be something they weren't. But that wasn't why he dumped the sweetest girl he'd ever met.

As he walked away, he thought, You're a lucky man, Robbie Shapiro.