I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 2: Ellie

Two years ago, I'd made my first and identical drive up from my parents' house in Santa Cruz, California to Seattle, Washington. Back before my freshman year, I was a ball of uncertain and nearly frazzled nerves but once the sleepy beachside town I'd grown up in disappeared from my rear view mirror, a sense of excitement had flickered inside me. By the time the beautifully rugged Cascade mountains kissed the landscape on either side of me, a warm sensation spread through me.

This year, when I headed into my junior year at UW, a new influx of emotions churned inside me. While I was happily relaxed and eager during my return drive to school and all the possibilities of a new school year, one call from my roommate flipped everything upside down. With one sentence, she pushed me into a sheer panic mode.

"Charlie!" I stared wide-eyed and blankly at the lane markers on the open highway ahead of me. "You can't be serious."

"Never been more serious," was the confused response that echoed all around me. "I thought... Or hoped I guess... You'd be happy for me and Wes?"

"Of course I am," I replied right away at the disappointed tones that flooded into her normally sweet, perky voice. "I'm just... shocked."

At the silence that greeted me, I rushed, "In a blown over happy way. Couldn't imagine a happier couple."

"Thank you, Ellie," my now former roommate's voice softened with relief. "Wes and I are so excited."

Freshman year, I'd hit the roommate lottery with Charlotte Montgomery. Physically, she was naturally beautiful with a muscular build that suggested she was some kind of student athlete, which was tennis in the spring semester. Her long, toned legs made mine look like chopped down tree stumps and her long, straight blonde hair complimented her crystal blue eyes.

Roommate-wise, she was a white glove clean neat freak, good student, and we'd instantly connected. As the oldest sister of four kids in her family, she took an immediate overprotective nature of me, especially when it came to any of the football players.

She's around them more than me though.

Each fall, Charlotte worked as a student physical therapist for the Huskies' football team, where she'd caught pretty much every guys' eyes during her first training camp. Freshman year she'd met Wesley Brown, one of the wide receivers, after he'd strained his hamstring during the second week of practice. His rugged good looks, down to earth charm, and her 'magical hands' pulled them together and they'd been inseparable since.

"Wait a minute..." I snorted into my car's phone. "Are you changing your last name, Charlie Brown?"

"I know, I know," she muttered and mentally I saw her blue eyes rolled. "I should probably start going by Charlotte."

I paused for a moment since Charlie delivered her news literally on my eight hundred mile drive up to UW, three days before fall classes started, which almost landed me in a ditch. "So umm... Where am I supposed to live now?"

"Oh, Ellie I've got it all worked out. You can have Wes' roommate," Charlie replied in a tone that implied she'd found the perfect solution. "We'll just swap."

"Oh no," I groaned loudly and squeezed my hands around the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. "I am not living with Emmitt. I'd be better off in a frat house than being that manwhore's roommate."

"Maybe a little manwhoring would do you some good, since -"

"I'm fine, Charlie," I interrupted before she reminded me of my... dry spell.

"Says you," she quipped with a smile in her voice.

"Says me," I pressed firmly. "Just a dry spell."