Tragic

Chapter Twenty: Ambush

Elliot

Oliver crunches pretzels in his mouth loudly beside me while I stare down into the driveway below. "Do you have to do that right now?" I ask in frustration.

He shrugs. "What? This is entertaining."

Judah is standing in my driveway, tears streaming down his face, begging me to come outside. I'm almost positive he's wasted. Oliver and I have been watching from the upstairs window for the past five minutes. This unfortunate event was brought on by a series of unanswered calls and texts. Evidently, letting him down gently isn't going to happen.

"Elliot?" My dad asks from behind me.

I turn to see him cross his arms with a slightly amused expression on his face. "Care to explain to me why the quarterback who won us State last year is currently crying outside my window right now?"

My eyes drift back to the driveway where Judah is now on his knees with one hand on the pavement. I cringe slightly. "I think he's upset."

My dad rolls his eyes. "You think? What did you do to the poor boy?"

"Dad, seriously?"

Oliver raises his hand like an idiot. "I know."

I glare at him out of the corner of my eye, but it doesn't stop him from chiming in. "Elliot broke his heart, and now I'd say he's losing his shit."

My dad laughs once. "Well, would you mind going down there and putting him out of his misery." He places his hand on my shoulder. "I just talked to Jeff this afternoon while we were working out the plans for the new building. He said Judah's not adjusting very well to being away."

Judah's father, Jeff and my dad have been friends since they were kids. Not only do they work together on a number of projects at the resort, but we also spend quite a bit of time with them socially as well. It makes it extremely awkward now that things are ending so badly between us.

I swallow back my frustration. "Fine."

He pats me on the back. "Thank you. You know how I feel about public displays of emotion, especially from such a big guy."

Oliver laughs. "Yeah, Judah really does look like a pussy right now." He throws a pretzel at me. "You destroyed him. Savage, Elle."

"Seriously, Ollie. You're not helping." I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a few breaths. I never imagined things would escalate this far. My mind drifts to Hunter not twenty feet away from all this. I can only imagine what he's thinking.

I hear Oliver laugh again. "The only thing that would make this even more poetic is if it started to rain right now."

As if the heavens heard him, thunder strikes across the sky and rain begins to pour. Oliver's hand flies up to his mouth. "Oh my God," he whispers through his fingers. "He can fucking hear me."

This causes me to laugh. "If that were true, I'm pretty sure you would have been struck down by now."

He nods. "You're probably right." He shoves another pretzel in his mouth and smirks again. "You do need to go down there. I'm even starting to feel bad, and that's pretty hard to do."

I let out a sigh. "All right, I'm going." I give Oliver a shove away from the window. "Don't watch either."

I can still hear his snickers from the same spot as I walk down the stairs. Before I push the door open, I throw my hoodie over my head. Judah looks up immediately and rushes over to me. The scent of whiskey permeating off of him nearly knocks me to the ground.