“Ellie, I really think you need to call the police,” Fred says finally, breaking the silence.
“I’m not talking about this again,” I say, and even I can hear the warning note in my voice.
“What if he tries to do this shit to some other girl?” he asks.
I clench my fists. “Do you really think me going to the police is going to help them?”
“If he get’s arrested—”
“If he gets arrested, he’ll just get bailed out. And he’ll be able to afford a fancy enough lawyer to get him off with a fucking warning. I’ll have to go through all of that shit. And the girls who want to hook up with him in the future will never know.” He looks like he’s going to argue some more so I stand, bringing my plate to the sink. “I should get going.”
“What?”
“You have to get back to school, and I have to start looking for another job.”
“Wait—”
But I’m already walking to the bathroom to retrieve my clothes. I hope he gets the hint that I just want to get out and leaves me to it.
He follows me.
“Why are you leaving?” he asks, standing in the doorway as I gather my discarded jeans and tank top.
“I just told you—”
“How about we try a real answer this time?”
Of course he won’t make this easy on me.
“Fred, I just want to get back to my own place, okay? It’s nothing personal.”
“Bullshit.”
I look up at him in surprise. He sounds really pissed—and looks it, too. “Why are you doing this, Ellie?” he asks.
“Doing what?”
“Shutting me out like this. Last night—”
“Last night was rough, okay? I wasn’t really myself.”
His entire face tightens. “You were. You were yourself without all the rough edges and bullshit walls.”
His words make my chest feel funny so I roll my eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. God.”
I push past him and head to the bedroom. For a minute I’m sure he’s going to grab my arm, but I tense automatically and he seems to think better of it. Back in his room I slip out of his sweats and into my jeans. My tank top is hopelessly torn, so I’ll have to wear his t-shirt home—a prospect that bothers me far more than I want to admit.
“What did you mean last night?” he asks from the doorway. I hadn’t known he’d followed me again.
“What are you talking about?”
“When you were telling me what happened. You went into this whole thing about how stupid it was of you to go over there.” I wince but he continues. “And you said you only did it to make me jealous. What the hell was that about?”
Shit. I hadn’t remembered saying that. I have no idea how to explain those words. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him so pissed. “Don’t lie to me, Ellie. You know what you said. I want to know why.”
I straighten my shoulders. Fine then. “I saw you last week. With that woman.”
His face creases in concern. “What woman?”
“The blonde,” I spit out. I know that I probably sound like a crazy, jealous girlfriend, but I don’t care. He asked for it.
His face clears. “On Friday.”
“Yeah. On Friday. You looked mighty chummy.”
His eyebrows go up. “And that bothered you?”
“Give me a break, Fred. I know that you have every right to date you whoever you want, I know what our agreement said—”
“You should, since all of those little stipulations were completely your idea.”
I glare at him. “Yeah, well, I just didn’t realize you were dating. It surprised me, okay? And I reacted badly.”
Something in his face seems to relax. “Why do you think that is?”
“Oh Jesus,” I mutter. “I am not going to sit here and participate in psychoanalysis, okay?”
“It’s not psychoanalysis, Ellie. It’s a simple question. Even though you insisted that we both be free to date, seeing me with another woman freaked you out. I think you need to ask yourself why.”
“It didn’t freak me out. I just…”
“What?”
“I just didn’t like it! It surprised me, that’s all. And it made me feel stupid because I haven’t been seeing anyone.”
“Wait—you haven’t been seeing anyone?”
I sigh, shaking my head. This is getting way out of control. Exactly what I didn’t want.
“Since when?”
“Does it matter?” I shoot back.
“It matters to me.”
“Fine.” There’s a lot more bitterness in my voice than I intended, but I feel goaded. Embarrassed by my revelations. “I haven’t seen anyone since you and I started fooling around.”
He closes his eyes and for a moment I’m unsure of the meaning of his reaction—then he opens them again and I feel my breath hitch. There’s so much relief in his face, so much joy. It scares me.
“Don’t get all carried away,” I warn, holding up a finger, wanting to head him off before he can explain the reasoning behind his expression. “It’s more of a coincidence than anything else. I’ve just been so busy and I haven’t really been going out much, so I haven’t had a chance to meet anyone and…”
I trail off, realizing that I’m babbling. And that my words have absolutely no effect on him.
“Can we just drop this?” I ask.
“How about we drop the charade, instead.” He takes a step closer to me and I don’t like the look in his eyes.
“What charade?”
“The one that says we don’t mean anything to each other. I’m tired of it.”
“Oh, God,” I burst out. “I knew this was going to happen!”
“Now hang on!”
“You hang on, Fred! I told you I wasn’t interested in a relationship. I told you! And you assured me you weren’t either. And now you’re going to get all emotional and romantic on me—”
He takes another step toward me, seemingly unaffected by my words. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“I’m not scared.” I want to add the words of anything, but I’m not entirely sure who I’m trying to convince.
“You are scared. You’re scared of how you feel about me and what that means. But you don’t have to be, Ellie. We can take it slow and figure it out together—”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” I snap back. “Because nothing has changed.”
“Yes, it has. I’ve changed—I’m not willing to pretend anymore.”
“Oh, so you’ve been pretending this whole time? That’s real nice to know.”
“I’ve been giving you your space because I thought it was what you needed. But now I think you might need something else entirely.” He sounds so calm, so unshaken—the complete opposite of me. I’m not sure if I want to throw up or start crying.
“What—what do you think I need?” I curse myself for the tremble in my voice, but Fred only takes a step closer, his gaze intent on mine, some unknown emotion darkening his eyes. It scares me, the way he’s looking at me. But then he’s reaching for my hands, taking them in his own, so gently—as if I’m a child he might scare away.
“Ellie, I love you.”
Everything in me seems to still. It’s like someone pressed an almighty pause button—as if the very air around us has frozen.
“Ellie, say something.” Now he sounds shaken, tortured almost. As if he can barely stand to wait for my response, as if his whole world hinges on what I say next.
I pull my hands away, not wanting him to feel how badly they’re trembling. “Don’t say that,” I whisper. “Don’t.”
His face crumples, as if he’s about to cry, before hardening an instant later. “Why? It’s true. And you know it’s true.”
I feel like I can’t breathe. Not with him looking at me like that. Not with those words hanging in the air. I’ve never been this scared in my life—not l
ast night, not even that day all those years ago with Doug. Chad, Doug—those men had the power to hurt me physically. But Fred is different. Fred would never hurt me. I know that. Yet he, more than anyone else I’ve ever known, has the power to destroy me entirely.
“You don’t,” I tell him, shaking my head, trying to keep the tears from coming. “You think you do, Fred, because you have this obsession with worrying about people. You’re like—addicted, or something. Addicted to saving the people in your life.”
“You’re full of shit, Ellie.”
Suddenly I’m angry. I didn’t ask him to do this. Didn’t ask him to care about me. To pin his hopes on me—and the way he’s looking at me, like I have the power to make everything okay—I didn’t ask for that. It’s not fair. I told him who I was. What gives him the right to decide that I’m someone different? That I want something different?
“I must have seemed like the perfect project for you, didn’t I?”
He narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Things were getting too normal with Jet, right? He was doing too well. You needed someone else in your life to try to save and I must have seemed just perfect for you. The fucked up girl with weird mommy issues who can’t even handle a boyfriend. God, I was exactly what you needed, wasn’t I?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Fred so pissed. “You think that’s what you are to me? Some…some charity case?”
“It’s pretty obvious from where I’m standing.”
“You know what’s obvious from where I’m standing? That you’re a hell of a lot more insecure and cowardly than I ever imagined.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughs, the sound so bitter and unlike him that it makes me shudder. “I’m standing here telling you that I love you, Ellie. I’ve never loved any one the way I love you. I want to be with you, to have fun with you, to make you happy. The way we’ve been doing for the past two months. I love you.” The pissed look is fast giving way to one that I can only describe as heartbroken. “And instead of working through that, instead of letting yourself think about how it would actually be between us, you freak out. You panic. Because you let your walls down with me last night and you know it. And you’re so fucking scared of living your life like that, of being open with someone, that you panic and push me away.”
He’s breathing fast, as if that took more out of him than I can imagine. I have no idea what to say. There’s a little voice at the back of my head telling me that he’s right. That he sees me in a way no one else does. That he always has.
What would it be like, giving in to him? I think of the way things have been the last few months. How happy I’ve been. How centered I’ve felt. How…normal it all seemed. What would it be like, to willingly stake my claim on that life? To let Fred love me, and to love him back?
But then I see the blonde girl in my head again. The look on his face as he looked at her. More importantly, the way that it felt to watch it. The horrible, crushing feeling in my chest. Letting him in means letting that in, too—the possibility that he might hurt me. I can see my mother, sobbing on the couch, because one of her many, useless exes had left. That’s what you get when you let people in. Because people, no matter how good their intentions, will always let you down.
Fred’s watching me, his face resigned now, as if he knows exactly how this is going to go. He takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders, preparing himself for something. “Ellie, I’m going to say this again, and when I’m finished saying it you can either stay here and talk to me about it or you can leave. But I’m done pretending. If you leave, that will be it.”
I stare at him. His eyes are wide, pleading, trying to reassure me that it will be okay, that we can do this. I feel like I’m the edge of some cliff, trying to decide whether or not to jump.
“I love you, Ellie.”
I’m shaking my head before he even finishes. The edge is just too close, too steep, and I can’t see what’s at the bottom. Self-preservation has been at the core of every decision I’ve made since I was fifteen years old. Leaping now would go against everything in me that makes me…me.
“I can’t.”
Fred closes his eyes, as if the sight of me pains him. “You can see yourself out.”
Just like that, it’s over. I rub my hands over my arms, suddenly cold, and Fred turns away, back toward his room. Towards the bed where he held me and comforted me all night. Don’t think about that now, I tell myself. Just get home. Get home where you’re safe.
But as I turn to leave, his voice stops me.
“You were wrong about one thing.” He sounds tired. Defeated. “Two, I guess. The girl, the blonde—that was my sister. And I do worry too much, about everyone. I’m too anxious, too scared all the time. I know that. But not when it came to you, Ellie. I never worried about you. I always knew you were strong and capable. I always knew that you could take care of yourself.” He pauses, a ragged intake of breath. “Maybe that’s why I loved you so much. Because you were the one person I didn’t have to worry about. Because you were the person I could just let go with. The one person I could just be with.”
I turn to him, wanting to reach for him, to take it all back. But he’s already walking away, back to his room, leaving me standing alone in the hall.
Chapter Twenty-four
Fred
There’s never been a time in my life when I so desperately wanted to just take off. I feel like there’s no safe place for me. She’s everywhere I go. Asleep in my bed, laughing on the couch, curled up next to me in the shower. I consider heading back to school before I realize that she’ll be there, too. She’s gotten into every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to get away from her. She’s tattooed onto my fucking flesh, for God’s sake.
And thinking about her hurts like hell. I knew it was a risk, telling her how I felt. Knew she might freak out, might push me away. But there was a part of me that believed she’d come around. I think I always felt that, even from the beginning. That she cared as much as I did. And it might be scary and it might be hard but eventually she would admit it and we could move on.
What an idiot I was.
I don’t regret it though. Even if it means I lost her forever, which at this point it’s pretty clear that I did, I still don’t regret it. I love her. That’s the truth. And I’m tired of not telling the truth.
Jet comes home about an hour after Ellie leaves. I hear him and Zoe in the hall outside the apartment and I’m tempted to bolt to my room so that I don’t have to see them. But the pain in my chest is physical, so harsh that I don’t think I can make it in time. So they find me sitting at the breakfast bar, a beer in front of me. I have no idea what I look like, but their expressions tell me it isn’t good.
“What’s wrong?” Jet asks immediately. He’d been laughing at something Zoe said, but the smile fades as he takes me in. “Fred?”
I shake my head, reaching for the beer. My chest is tight and my throat aches with the tears I’ve refused to shed.
“It’s Ellie, isn’t it?” Zoe asks, her voice soft.
“Yup. Sure as hell is.”
Zoe’s not much the embracing type, but she comes to me, laying a hand on my shoulder. I close my eyes at her touch, wishing I could hug her, could hug anyone. Wishing there was a way to make this feeling go away.
“I’m sorry, Fred. I really thought she would figure out what she was doing.”
“Doesn’t matter now.” I take another sip of beer. “It’s over now.”
“Shit man.” Jet falls onto the stool next to me. “Did she end it?”
I shrug. “I guess I did. After I told her I loved her and she completely shot me down.”
Jet curses and I feel Zoe’s hand tense up.
“Fuck this,” I mutter, pushing back from the counter. “I should get back to school.”
“You shouldn’t drive yet, man,” Jet starts to say, but suddenly I’m so filled with rage at the entire fucked up situation that I take
my now empty beer can and chuck it at the wall, as hard as I can. To their credit, neither of them flinches.
“Sorry, Zoe,” I mutter, immediately feeling bad for my outburst. “I’m gonna get my stuff.”
I walk to my bedroom, trying hard not to look at the bed where we had laid together last night. When she’d actually let me in, when all her walls were down. I should make the bed, or strip the mattress—something so that I don’t have to come back next week to her smell lingering on everything. It’s going to be hard enough coming back to this apartment, knowing I won’t be seeing her here.
“Fred.” Zoe is standing in my doorway, alone. I hadn’t heard her approach.
“Sorry I’m being an ass.”
She shakes her head. “You’re not. And you certainly don’t have to apologize.” She crosses her arms, leaning against the doorjamb. “Look, I just want to tell you…about Ellie…”
I hold up a hand. “Please don’t. I know you want to help, but I really don’t think I can stand it right now.”
“She’s messed up about guys, Fred,” she says, ignoring me. “Her parents didn’t give her the best example, you know?”
“I know. She told me.”
Zoe clearly wasn’t expecting that. “What else did she tell you?”
I turn to face her. “She told me about her Grandma Rose, and how she always took such good care of her. She told me that after she died she felt on her own. She told me about her mom’s fucking asshole ex, the one that hurt her. And about her mom taking his side.” I feel a sob rise in my throat. “She told me everything.”
Zoe looks shocked. “She told you all of that?”
I nod, leaning over to clutch the dresser. “I thought…she trusted me. I thought I meant something—”
“You did!” Zoe cries, coming over to once again touch my shoulder, clutching it this time, her grip firm. “You do. It took her years to tell me all that, Fred. If she told you…she must trust you.”
“Yeah, well, a hell of a lot of good it did me.”
“Maybe she needs time,” Zoe starts, but I shake off her hand.
“Please don’t give me false hope. I need to get this shit out of my head so I can move on.”
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