Ella's Twisted Senior Year (8 page)

Never in my life have I seen someone so horrified as when Ella realized she’s stuck riding to school with me. The expression on her face was fleeting, but it rivaled that of my sister’s when she has to get a flu shot. I guess she didn’t get the memo last night. Last night Mr. Lockhart had asked me if I’d mind driving her until she gets her car back. This morning, it seems like everyone was aware of that fact except for her.

Guilt grips me as we drive to school, neither one of us daring to break the silence. I shouldn’t have let it go that far yesterday. Hell, I shouldn’t have offered to drink with her, especially since she seemed a little freaked out by it. She’s right about one thing, about me becoming a football player and changing into one of them. Back in the day, I would have never pictured drinking underage, at home or not. It just didn’t seem smart. Now I drink all the time with the guys, at parties, and at home where my parents don’t ever say anything about their liquor supply being slowly depleted. Have I really changed as much as Ella thinks I have? Sure, I spend weekends at parties instead of hanging out in the rec room, but isn’t that what all teenagers do?

My mind drifts into a fantasy of what life might have been like if Ella and I had stayed friends throughout high school. I would have still tried out for football because of my dad, so I would have made all the same friends. Would she have come with me to watch the games? Were we doomed a long time ago to grow into separate social cliques or would we have stayed together?

“Where are we going?” Ella asks when I turn off the main road.

With my hand on the steering wheel, I extend a finger to point straight ahead. “Donuts.”

“Uh, you just had a muffin at home.”

I give her a side-eyed glance. “Correction: I just had a
healthy
muffin at home. I eat them every day to keep Mom happy but then I stop for a donut.” I pull into a parking spot and put my finger to my lips. “Don’t tell her,” I whisper.

Ella grins. “Try not to take too long. School starts in fifteen minutes and regular students like me don’t get free tardy passes.”

I’m not sure what she means by that, but I cut off the engine. “Then let’s hurry.”

“I’m not going in,” she says, studying the zipper on her backpack.

“You’re not hungry? Those muffins are not appetizing.”

She shrugs. “I don’t want to waste money on donuts.”

“But you didn’t say you weren’t hungry so come on, I’ll buy.”

She sighs through her nose and looks out of the passenger door. I nudge her with my elbow. “You can still hate me, Ella. Me buying you a donut won’t change that.”

Her lips quirk into a smile but she forces it to go away. “Fine. You can buy me
one
donut. And a coffee,” she adds with a smirk. “And I’ll still hate you.”

It doesn’t really feel like she hates me so I grin. “Sounds like a plan.”

Mrs. Kim’s eyebrows shoot to the ceiling when we walk into Kim’s Square Donuts. “New girlfriend?” she asks, eyeing me conspiratorially. Before I can say anything, she puts her hand up to her mouth to block the words she totally doesn’t say quietly. “I like her. She seems nicer than the other one.”

I nod, wishing I had a time machine to erase the last few seconds and go back to when Ella was in my truck and tell her she can stay there and wait on me. There’s no way Ella didn’t hear that because Mrs. Kim doesn’t ever speak quietly.

“You want the usual?” she asks, reaching for the glazed donuts.

I nod and remind myself how to speak. “Yeah, and uh, whatever my friend wants.”

Ella steps up to the glass, gazing over the varied selections. “The donuts are square,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “That’s cool.”

“Easier to make,” Mrs. Kim says. “Plus it’s more donut than the circle ones for the same price.”

Ella nods. “I like that. I’ll take one glazed, please”

“And a coffee?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Nah, it’s cool. I was just messing with you.”

“And a coffee,” I tell Mrs. Kim.

She leans over the counter and makes this exaggerated wink. “This girl is nice. I like her better.”

My lips twist upward before I can help it. “Yeah, I do too.”

Ella clears her throat. When I look over there, she’s staring at her shoes, a grin the size of Texas on her face.

Mrs. Kim rings up my order and I nudge Ella in the shoulder on my way to the register.

“I still hate you,” she whispers.

“I know.” I hand her a coffee and the bag with her donut.

“This is really good,” Ella says after the first bite. We’re back in the truck and less than a mile away from the school, which really sucks because I’m not ready to leave her just yet.

“They’re seriously the best in town. And the shop is so small and hidden that barely anyone knows about it.”

“Thanks for breakfast,” Ella says, looking over at me with what appears to be a genuine—not an
I hate you
—smile.

“You’re welcome. And get used to it. I go every day.”

She flinches, holding the donut a couple inches from her mouth.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “You
will
be riding with me for a while, right? I’ll buy our breakfast every day. It’s the least I can do for someone who hates me.”

She rolls her eyes. “I can’t take your charity donut and coffee money. It was just this once.”

“It was a dollar and fifty-seven cents,” I say. “Not a big deal.”

“You don’t have to take me to school. I’ll figure something out.”

“You can’t ride the bus, El. That’s social suicide.”

“Duh,” she says, bursting into laughter. It’s sweet, seeing her carefree and having fun, laughing at my comment but not belittling me for it.

“Well how are you getting to school before you get your car back?” I ask as we turn into the parking lot. “You have a pair of invisible wings I don’t know about?”

She shrugs and takes another bite of her donut. “I’ll have my friend April stop by and get me.”

I shake my head. “No way. We live in the same house for the time being. I can take you. I don’t mind and it saves gas so we’re being environmentally friendly.”

“The environment ruined my house, so I don’t really care about it right now.” She shakes her head in an adamant no. “I refuse to inconvenience you. I’m already taking over your rec room and that’s bad enough.”

I want to tell her that Kennedy frequently had me drive twenty minutes out of the way to pick her up when she didn’t feel like driving to school, but that comparison wouldn’t really help anything. I’d already ignored a handful of texts from Kennedy since last night, so the last thing I want to do is talk about her.

Instead, the hollow feeling in my chest that’s been lingering there since the day of the tornado seems to grow bigger until I can’t overlook it anymore. I pull into a parking spot and lift the shifter into park. “Why do you hate me so much?”

Now that the question is out in the open, I wonder why I didn’t ask it earlier. We should have cleared the air years ago. So, she didn’t like me? So what? We could have stayed friends.

“Umm . . . do you really need to ask?” Ella’s expression isn’t sarcastic, but more genuine than I’ve ever seen her. “You crushed me that day, Ethan. How could I stay friends with you when you dropped me so freaking hard?”

My brows hurt from how tightly they’re pulled together. “What the hell are you talking about? What did I do to you?”

Her jaw falls open. Looking at her mouth makes me remember last night, and those glorious few minutes where her lips were on mine. I bite hard on my bottom lip and wait for her reply.

“Are you seriously asking this? Are we seriously getting into this right now?”

I nod. “Hell yes we are. I’ve been dying to know what happened to us. I would have been fine staying friends, Ella.”

She looks at the clock on my dash. “Fine. We have four minutes until the bell rings. Let’s just get it all out in the open now.” She takes her coffee and downs the rest of it in a few gulps, tipping her head back. Then she lowers her gaze on mine. “You were my best friend, Ethan. And when you rejected me that summer before eighth grade, it just totally crushed me.” Her eyes fill with tears and I reach out to grab her hand but she pulls it away. “It felt like you betrayed me. You didn’t have to be so rude about it. You didn’t have to call me a
stalker
.”

“Whoa.” I hold up a hand to stop her. “What are you talking about? I never called you a stalker. Never. I was in love with you.”

Her eyes widen. “Then why did you tell Corey to reject me for you?”

A ball of anger rises in my chest. “Corey told you that?”

She looks at me like I’m dumb. “Of course. When he pulled me away the day we were in your pool and he told me you didn’t like me and that
‘honestly, he thinks you’re a stalker, Ella,’
” she says, making her voice low and stupid as she mocks him.

“Oh my god. Did he tell you that after you had him tell me you didn’t like me?”

Her lips tighten and a muscle in her jaw twitches. “He told you that?” She looks past me, as if she’s staring into her memories instead of the high school parking lot. All around us, students are filling into the school and we’re sitting here in our own little world, revealing one hell of a story and I don’t think either one of us knows all the details.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “That day in the pool, the last day you ever came over. You went inside with Dakota to get a drink and he told me you wanted me to deliver a message that you didn’t like me in a boyfriend way, just in a friend way. He told me you wanted me to lay off.”

“That son of a bitch,” Ella snaps. Her hands ball into fists as she grips her backpack straps in her lap. “He played both of us. He told me you didn’t like me. Which was weird because that summer I was pretty sure we both liked each other. Every day I went over there thinking that would be the day we’d kiss.”

I nod. “Me too, Ella. You have no idea how badly I wanted to ask you out.”

She blinks and a tear rolls down her cheek. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I say, leaning across the seat. Fear of being rejected again makes me move slowly, my thumb lifting to brush away her tears. She doesn’t shove me away. “I had the biggest crush on you,” I say, wincing as my heart rips open. These are secrets I should hold close, keep them tucked away to where no one can use them against me. But the gates have opened and I can’t hold back any longer. “I
was
going to ask you out that summer. After Corey told me you didn’t like me, I was bummed but I thought we could still be friends. Then you just left and never came back. It killed me, Ella.”

She reaches up and covers my hand over her cheek. “I can’t believe we’ve been suffering from a lie all these years.”

In the distance, the bell rings but we don’t move. This moment is too special to worry about something as trivial as the start of first period.

“Why would that asshole do that do us?” I ask, gritting my teeth as I think about Corey and how we’re not really friends anymore. I haven’t hung out with him in a couple of years.

“I might have an idea,” she says. Her beautiful features twist into a scowl. “Not long after that, he made a move on me. He tried kissing me that same day actually, but I was so heartbroken about being called a stalker that I pushed him away. He tried hooking up with me like three more times at April’s beach party.” She shrugs. “Maybe he said it to break us apart so he could hit on me?” She frowns and shakes her head. “No, that’s stupid. Maybe he just didn’t like you.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, girl.” I grin and brush her hair behind her ears. It feels just as wonderful as I thought it would. “He wanted you. That explains perfectly why he’d pull such a dickhead move.”

Her cheeks flush. “We should go to class.”

“Not until you’re okay.” I reach down and grab her hand, more because I know she won’t shove me away than out of a need to comfort her. Maybe that makes me shallow, but I don’t care. I need to touch her, to feel her heartbeat beneath mine. Being near Ella is healing a part of me I’d forgotten was broken.

“It sucked so bad,” she says, blinking away more tears. “You moved on so easily. You got hot and popular and you made a ton of friends. I was just stuck without you.”