All Bets Are Off

Chapter Thirty-Three - Ella Fordman: Confessions of a Heartbroken Girl

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          Dedicated to @Flopsie7554 for our conversation about Supernatural. Thanks for all of your awesome support :)

 

Also, if you want, when Phoenix&Ella talk, play the song to the side. It really helped me get into the mood.

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~Chapter Thirty-Three – Ella Fordman: Confessions of a Heartbroken Girl~          

 

 

The next few days passed in a haze of dancing, classes and my home life.

Now that the practice for Alessandro was over, Leslie and my dance class was back on, and we’d continued to teach it every Monday and Saturday. On the days when sadness hit, it was a great distraction from my thoughts of Phoenix, Carter and Clara.

I still saw Carter every now and again. Sometimes we’d share a chaste kiss in the hallways, but sometimes I was too distracted in my own thoughts to even manage that much. I felt like I was slacking off in the girlfriend department, but after everything I’d been put through, I felt like I’d earned that much. And Carter hadn’t complained once about my reluctance. It wasn’t the kind of fairytale moment you’d see in a storybook, but I was slowly learning that romance doesn’t always play out like it does in the movies.

Sometimes you have to find a kind of happy medium in between.

I also surprisingly hung with Clara a lot, who was not half as bad as I’d originally pegged her to be. After really getting to know her for a few days, it wasn’t hard to see her lack of friends at school. So she joined Leslie and I when she wasn’t hanging out with Phoenix—which was frequently. But she was nice, and though I couldn’t imagine how tough being the new girl at Oakbridge High might be, I could imagine that a supportive friend group was sometimes all you really needed to grow comfortable.

I hadn’t spoken to Phoenix in six days—which was a long time for us considering how frequently we used to speak. I constantly saw him around with Clara, but when I did, I was lucky to earn a second glance from him.

It seemed he’d moved on, which was a good thing, I supposed. We’d gotten past our previous arrangement with Alessandro, and now things had returned to the way they used to be, just like they should. It hurt a lot to see him and Clara sharing lunch outside as she giggled at a joke he’d told her, but I managed to convince myself that it was a good thing whatever we’d had was over. Neither of us could be hurt this way.

“Okay, ladies, let’s practice the pirouettes, okay?” I said Monday afternoon in our dancing class as I turned on the stereo and the soft, lilting arpeggios tinkled out of the speakers.

Immediately the collection of ten-year-olds leapt off the wooden warm-up bars and began practicing, their pink tutus ruffling as they stretched and danced around.