Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
My eyes trailed over to Ellen, and my stomach clenched.
God, she was beautiful.
She was nothing like Margot.
Where Margot was blonde, blue-eyed and mean as a snake, Ellen was the exact opposite.
She had tanned skin, brown hair that looked like fire when she was in the sun, and hazel eyes that changed from the greenest green to the darkest brown, depending on the day and season. She dressed so cute and prissy, while Margot wouldn’t be caught dead without a midriff baring halter top—regardless of whether it was fifty fucking degrees out or not.
But what I loved the most about Ellen—yes, I fucking said loved, always have, always will—was the way she never stopped smiling. She never got down, even if everything in her life was turning to shit. By me—mostly. By her mom. By Margot. It didn’t matter what happened, Ellen never got down.
Except, apparently, for today.
She looked fucking tired. Like she was defeated and barely holding herself upright.
“That okay with you?”
I looked up to find Sean staring at me.
“Sure,” I said without even knowing what I’d just agreed to.
“Good. Take Tally’s Tahoe. Everyone should fit into it sans you two. Keep them at the clubhouse until we figure out what the fuck to do afterward.”
I nodded once.
Though, I knew for a fact that the ladies would only remain still for so long. They all had jobs. They all had lives. And most of them had kids who wouldn’t like being cooped up for more than a day.
Twenty minutes later, the ladies were all loaded.
Both in the physical sense, since they were in the Tahoe, and in the inebriated sense since they’d been drinking quite a bit tonight. Though none of them were completely sloshed, thank fucking God.
“Ready, Freddy!
Me, I’d be angry or discontent. Naomi? She just rolled with the punches.
Ellen, however, was a silent presence in the back seat and wouldn’t even look at me.
“You okay?”
That was only directed at one person, and she turned her head slowly to give me her eyes, and what I saw there was enough to steal my breath straight out of my lungs. Again.
“Yeah,” she lied. “Fine.”
I didn’t believe her for a second.
But did I say anything? No. I let her stew. And being left to stew, she became more and more mad, and I should’ve known that the pot would boil over.
Fuck.
Chapter 8
I went for a walk today because I stress eat and hated myself a little bit. I took a bag of M&Ms with me because I needed something to motivate myself to walk in the first place. Ate a piece every ten seconds. Sometimes life is all about balance.
-Ellen’s real life thoughts
Jessie
I don’t know how it happened.
One minute I was sitting in the living room, flipping through the channels on the TV in the main room of the clubhouse with Ellen sitting on the couch perpendicular to me, and the next she was making a weird sound in her throat.
I turned to look at her, and the moment our eyes met, she broke down into sobs and ran from the room.
She was crying so hard that it took everything in me not to go to her. Not to follow the sound of her sobs into the hallway where she’d been given a room for the night.
My eyes went to the screen, and I realized that the movie that we’d watched hundreds of times so long ago when we’d been together was now playing on the big screen.
And I closed my eyes in dismay.
Shit.
I got up and walked down the hall, knowing that this was one of those times where I needed to fix this.
I couldn’t do this anymore.
I had to explain my reasoning.
Surely if she knew, she’d agree.
She’d realize that I wasn’t staying away from her to break her. Not to humiliate her. Not because of Sean. I was doing it to save her, dammit!
‘“Ellen,” I started to say, pushing her cracked door open slightly.
She was lying on the bed, her face buried in a pillow, trying to stifle the sounds of her sobs.
I felt sick to my stomach.
She held her hand up, trying to stop me from coming in, but I ignored her.
I did, however, leave the door open for her to have some semblance of openness, as if I weren’t shutting her in and forcing the issue.
“Get out,” she cried.
I came forward, not stopping until my knees hit the bed.
I lifted one knee and planted it into the bed, then leaned over until I could brush her hair away from her face.
I was such an idiot.
All this time I was protecting her and never once had it occurred to me that I was hurting her even worse in the process.
Sure, I’d realized she was sad.
But she had put on a good front these last few months. Ever since our parting comments that last night we were alone together, I’d stayed away.