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“Did you try to see her?” I asked with a great amount of hesitation and worry. So far, none of us had been able to get to her. If she was getting our texts and calls, she wasn’t acknowledging them.
“I tried. I spent an hour on the phone with Dad this morning, begging him to give me her address. He’s not budging.” He leaned against the stair railing and rubbed his tired face. “I walked around campus the rest of the morning, hoping to spot her. Nothing. I did get a message back from her friend, though. Natalie.”
Fisher stood up straighter. “What’d she say? She’s ignored everything I’ve sent her.”
“Thanks to me, people around campus are being assholes to Ella. Calling her names and being cruel to her. Natalie let me know that I deserve to rot in hell and that she hopes a football gets shoved up my ass and we never win another game.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what to do. In all the time I’ve known Ella, she never retreated. She was alway up for a fight when I pissed her off.”
“People are treating her like shit because of me. You were right about me making people think she cheated on me. You started the shit ball rolling down the shit hill but I made it worse.” Struggling with his own guilt, Fisher sat on the stairs and held his head in his hands. “I should’ve known better. I don’t know why I believed you. She didn’t care about Billy anymore. She cared about us. She trusted us.”
I swallowed down the urge to vomit. It was all I felt like doing since waking up and realizing just how severely I’d hurt Ella. I had an ever present memory in my head of some chick dancing on me while Ella watched, her eyes pooling with tears. I’d felt so vindicated at that moment. I was proud of how I hadn’t crumbled, despite how weak I felt over the idea of Ella not being in my life. I couldn’t stop imagining the look on my face that she’d watched. Proud, cocky, mean.
“I’m going to go out and look for her again. If I hear anyone talking shit about her, someone will have to bail me out of jail.” I yanked open the door and looked back to see that they were both coming with me. “Think your dad will bail us out, even though he hates us?”
Vaughn shook his head. “Not a chance.”
Fisher shrugged. “My parents would be too ashamed to have a kid in jail. They’d get us out.”
“I need you to know something, Vaughn.” I waited for him to look at me. “If I hit someone today, at least one of the punches will be me imagining it’s you I’m hitting.”
He nodded. “That’s fair.”
51
***Ella***
Ikept my head lowered as I walked away from my last class of the day. What I’d learned about the college campus since things went to hell with the guys was that everyone on it really, really supported the football team. I felt like I was in middle school again with a bunch of kids whose biggest goal in life was to make me cry. Thankfully, spending three years of my adolescents with Vaughn had toughened me up. I cried a lot but it wasn’t going to be over a bunch of people I didn’t know hating me. Much, anyway.
I still had Natalie on my side. And Chris. Even though Natalie was still refusing to acknowledge that she liked him, he refused to go away. I was thankful. A few times I’d been heckled, Chris was there to call it off. Other times, it was Natalie going rabid on whoever happened to make a nasty comment at me. When I was alone, I did exactly what I was then. I walked with my head down and moved fast. It was harder to catch a moving target.
My apartment was calling to me and all I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and count the days until I could transfer back to Penn. I had to work that night, though. I’d taken on more shifts at the coffee shop to cover the costs of everything I still needed to replace. Paul covered a lot of things, like my books and a new laptop. Mom covered clothes and toiletries. It was the stuff I didn’t even realize I needed until I went to grab it that I was left to replace. Then there was the search for a new Connie. I didn’t want anyone to know how devastated I was over a stuffed animal so I’d tried to play Connie’s loss off as just another frustrating thing that’d happened. In secret, I’d found an exact match to Connie online but the seller was asking a ridiculous price since Connie had been some special edition toy.
I didn’t even know why I was trying so hard to replace Connie when the new Connie wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t have the same smells, the same thin spot in the middle where I squeezed it. Not having anything left me feeling so at odds, though. I’d found myself waking up in the middle of the night, trying to find Connie.
Mom had gone back home that morning and Paul had left shortly after Mom arrived so I was officially without parents again. It seemed silly but being so hurt had made me feel like a kid again, like I wasn’t sure I was okay on my own.
Lost in thought, I didn’t notice two guys walk past me and then turn around to follow me. At least, not at first. Until they decided to make their presence known. Unfortunately, by that time, we were away from the quad and I’d let my guard down since there were fewer people around. My shoulders were just finally starting to sink down from where they’d been up around my ears when the two of them fell into step on either side of me.
“Well, hello there, Ella Daughton.”
I hadn’t seen them coming so I flinched and tried to step away from him, just to bump into the other one. I glanced nervously from one to the other and started to walk faster. I didn’t know either of them and I could tell by their jeering smirks that they weren’t there to be kind to me.
“What? Feeling shy?” The one to my left casually put his arm over my shoulders. When I shrugged it off, he laughed. “Aw, come on, Ella. Don’t be that way. We’re just here to be your friends. You need a friend right now, don’t you?”
I shook my head and walked even faster. My heart was hammering away, fear tingling all along my spine. “Just leave me alone.”
The one on my right caught my wrist and pulled me to a stop. “Look, we know the kind of kinky shit you’re into. We’re not family, but we can role play, babe. I’ll be your stepbrother and Eric can be your step daddy.”
I yanked my hand away and glared up at him. “Fuck you.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan, honey.” Eric grabbed my waist and brushed against my ass. “We know you’re a freak. We just want to see it in action. Let me and Brian have a viewing party, huh?”
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed at them and backed away. “What the hell is wrong with you? Leave me alone!”
“Don’t be a bitch, Ella. We just want some of what you were giving your stepbrother. Just a sample, even.” Brian leered at me and grabbed himself through his pants. “I’d be happy with that dirty mouth.”
One second they were in front of me, the next they weren’t. I blinked and screamed as something large flew across my vision. Stumbling backwards, I watched in with the slow realization that the fast moving blur had been Booth. He was on top of both Eric and Brian, pummeling them with his huge fists.
When one of them got a punch in, Booth growled like an animal and went at them even harder. Fisher ran up to the mess and jumped right in, landing an elbow in someone’s side like he thought he was a professional wrestler. I would’ve laughed if the circumstances weren’t what they were.
