All Bets Are Off

Chapter Three - Ella Fordman: The Girl of Many Talents

For Jess.

Happy birthday, hun . x

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Picture of Leslie (played by Ashley Greene) to the side --->

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Monday morning, the second last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed. I was the classic teenager who loved sleeping in and had a groundbreaking case of ‘Monday-itis.’

The last thing I wanted to do?

Go to school and face Phoenix and the bet that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get away from.

As I parked into the crowded lot and locked my car, Leslie walked up to greet me from where she was chatting with a bunch of girls on the school newspaper. It was unusually chilly, and she was huddled in bootleg jeans and a black wife beater, a purple beanie adorning her head, her curls cascading out from underneath it. I had opted for a leather jacket and a crazy ripped neon top, matching it with bright pink skinny leg jeans, clean white tennis shoes and a micro-color scarf to complete my image, as well as a pair of earrings that were little half-crescent moons and some thick multi-colored bracelets on each wrist. 

No wonder there weren’t millions of boys lining up at my front door.

“Hey, Ella,” Leslie greeted, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. “Seen Phoenix yet?”

I sighed and shoved my keys into my bright purple satchel. “No, not yet. Thank God. I wanna put this off as long as I can.”

“Maybe you should just opt out of the bet,” Leslie suggested. “I’m sure he’d understand. Then you can go back to doing your own thing and pretending Phoenix is the worst thing to ever happen to this earth. He can keep reading and living his own life, and we can forget that stupid night ever happened.”

I wished it were that easy. I wished I could just tell Phoenix it was a stupid, drunken mistake and that it never should have happened. But this was Phoenix Adams, and there was no way I’d make myself look anymore stupid in front of him than I had already.

“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head softly and making my thick curls bounce. Unlike Leslie, my hair needed constant care to keep up the bouncy, big curls I had. “I have to do this. It’s gonna suck, but I can’t let Phoenix win. I just have to go along with this. It’s only for one month, though, right? What’s the worst that could happen?”

Even as I said the words I knew I was an idiot. I knew I was wrong and that I’d be put through hell and back with this bet. I was just stupid and naïve enough to hope that I was right.

“Ellie-Ellie-oxen-free,” a voice called out cheerfully—too cheerfully for a Monday morning (I always knew there was something weird about him)—and I turned with a frown to see Phoenix taking long-legged strides towards us. He wore dark jeans and a black t-shirt, seeming unaffected by the cold that was blowing in from the north.