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When we finally got home that night, I felt like I’d been run over by a semi truck. My body hurt all over from the full practice we’d endured after running for an hour and a half. I had blisters on my feet and I hadn’t been paying attention during practice and I’d taken a sack that made me bite through my bottom lip.
I fell into the couch and groaned as my body protested. Booth and Vaughn were in the same shape and they each folded onto the couch on either side of me. I wasn’t so sure Coach hadn’t tried to kill us.
“Booth. Call your mom and have her come take care of us.” Vaughn grunted out the words like it was exhausting to even speak.
“This place is disgusting. She’d murder all three of us for living like this.”
I sighed. “Booth. Call your mom and have her come murder us.”
He let his head rest on the back of the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “Do you think she’s okay?”
“Who? Your mom?” I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“I meant Ella.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you chased her down.”
Vaughn snorted. “No one could.”
“What was I supposed to do? Not take the chance to talk to her? It’s nearly impossible to catch her. She changed her normal schedule and no matter how many times I call or text, she doesn’t answer. I regret the pile up, but I couldn’t let her get away without trying.” I winced. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, though. I probably should’ve stopped when I realized the entire team was following me.”
“She hates us. And she has every reason to.” Booth pushed himself off the couch and groaned. “I’m going to bed.”
Vaughn turned his head to face me after Booth was gone. “She has every reason to hate me. I’ll talk to her and tell her that you two were just victims of my selfishness.”
I picked at a callous on my hand. “I wish that I thought it would help.”
“There has to be something we can do.” He sounded like he was starting to panic. “Right? She can’t just write us off. She cared about us.”
“And we turned the whole campus against her. I think she can just write us off, Vaughn. I think she has.”
He stared off into space as I forced myself off the coach and towards the stairs. I could see a look of determination play across his features but I just ignored it. Ella was done with us.
53
***Ella***
“And then the entire football team was on top of me. At least that’s what it felt like. I bled, Mom. My chin has a big bandaid across it because of him. I had to go back to the nurse this morning and get a bandage change.” I could tell she wanted to laugh so I sighed. “Go ahead. If it wasn’t me it was happening to, I’d laugh, too.”
She tried to hide her laugh with a cough. “No, no. It’s not funny. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I groaned. “I mean, I’m not fine. I’m mortified. He chased me with the entire football team. I’m trying to blend in. I just want to finish this semester already and become invisible until I get back to Penn.”
“With a Daughton woman’s curves? We don’t do invisible, honey. We were built to stand out.” She did laugh then. “I’m sorry. It’s really not funny. I’m just picturing it and I can’t imagine what the hell he was thinking. And why didn’t the guys behind him realize what he was doing and stop?”
“I don’t know! They’re lucky we didn’t all land in a pile of shit after how much they scared me. I just looked up and the entire football team, in their helmets and everything, was chasing me down. Now I know how the other teams feel and I’m not surprised they lose.”
She laughed even harder. “A bunch of idiots.”
I reached behind me on the bed for Connie and then sighed when I remembered he wasn’t there. Laying flat on my bed, I stared up at the ceiling and ignored the sneaky tears that slid out of the corner of my eyes and into my hair. “I just want to come home, Mom.”
“You will. Thanksgiving is in a couple of weeks. You’ll be home before you know it and itching to leave again. It’ll get better, Ella. It won’t always feel so raw.”
I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know if it’s because there are three of them but it hurts worse than it did when Billy cheated. The public shaming aspect aside, it just feels like someone shot me through the chest. You know that movie with the woman who walks around with that big hole in her chest the entire time? That’s me. I don’t think her hole hurt, though. Mine does. A lot. And just when I get distracted by something and start to smile, there it is again.”
“I have no idea what movie you’re talking about. Are you sure it wasn’t a porn? All this talk about holes hurting makes me think you’re thinking of a porn.”
I started to say her name in exasperation, the same way I always did, but then I stopped and took in a breath of air that hurt a tiny bit less. “Thanks for always being you, Mom.”
“It was a porn, right? Was I right?”
