Friends Don't

Chapter Twenty-four

It was the day before I was supposed to head with Lana to her family's house yet I was being summoned to the administrator's office.

I stepped into the office unsure of why I was even there in the first place. My grades were great in all of my classes and I hadn't done anything. Maybe somehow, they caught wind of what happened between Grayson and Jared, though I didn't see Grayson anywhere around and I hadn't heard any news from him about it.

I sat there listening to the phone ring and the lady at the desk talk on the phone every few minutes before I was called back into the office.

I sat down in the chair and looked at the dean sitting behind his desk. His eyes shifted from his computer and to me. He looked upset. "Mrs. Knight, thank you for coming in."

"What is this about?" I asked.

"Well, it seems we've run into a money issue where your tuition is concerned." He spoke like he didn't even know what to say.

"What's the problem?"

"Well, you know your parents have been paying your tuition," he began, and of course he knew where the money was coming from, my parents poured money into this college, "and it seems that is no longer the case."

"What do you mean that's no longer the case?"

"Any credits you received during the fall semester are still there, so you're good on that," he paused as he looked at me concerned," but I received a call from your mother this morning informing us that they will no longer be paying for your tuition."

I bit the inside of my cheek to not only keep my jaw from hitting the floor, but to keep myself from saying what I really wanted to say. "So, what does that mean?"

"Unless you can find a way to pay your tuition, I'm sorry, but you're no longer enrolled here," he spoke the last bit so softly. Even he acted like my parents were scum.

"Oh," I said after hearing his words, even though I knew exactly what it meant the entire time.

After talking for a few more minutes, I left the office and headed back for my dorm, or what was my dorm. I was furious, locking and unlocking my phone continuously as I decided whether or not to call my mother and bitch her out, but decided against it. I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. No, I wasn't going to confront her about it at all.

I swung the door to the dorm room open letting it bounce back on its hinges. "I'm so pissed off!"

"What's going on?" Lana questioned me, jumping from her spot on the couch and rushing over to me. "Where did you go? I invited Derek and Grayson over to hang out with us, but you just disappeared."

From the corner of my eye I noticed Derek and Grayson sitting on the couch for the first time since my entrance, both staring at me.

I threw open the closet door grabbing my bags out and opening them up while shoving clothes into them.

"What are you doing?" Lana asked frantically; probably from my hasty behavior.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" I snapped at her, but then apologized. "Sorry, I'm not mad at you." I zipped a bag up and opened my suitcase and started stuffing, messily, more clothes. "My mother decided that she isn't going to pay my tuition anymore."

"She what?" Lana shouted.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I pulled it out to see a text from my mother. You've been cut off from your trust fund

I chucked my phone across the room hearing it bang against the wall. Well, that was probably a hole I was going to have to pay for.

"Woah, what the hell," Derek yelled.

I wasn't getting my trust fund until I was twenty-one, anyway, and I didn't even care that I wasn't going to get it. It was just the fact that she was doing anything possible to piss me off all because her precious little Jared got his ass kicked.

"Ellie, calm down," Lana said calmly.

"I have a week to be out of here, but I plan on being out by tonight."

"Where are you going to go?" Lana asked me.

"You can't just leave," Grayson said. His voice was close, so I knew he was standing right behind me.

"I don't really have a choice," I told him as I zipped the last of my bags and stood up looking at the half empty closet.

"You can't leave," he said again.

"I have to," I started picking up my bags and bringing them over to the door.

"Why?" he asked and I could hear sadness in his voice.

"Because I have nowhere to go here. I called Aaron on the way over here and he said I could come stay with him for a while."

"You can't just move to the other side of the country," he told me, and I looked over at him to see the hurt in his eyes.

"Look, we're leaving tomorrow to go to my parents. We can just go there and then figure out what to do," Lana told me.

"No," I paused as I took a deep breath trying to calm myself down, "I don't have time to just sit around and enjoy the holiday."

I watched her race to her purse and pull her phone out. "I'm going to call my parents and see if they've heard anything from your delusional mother." She slipped out of the room with Derek following after her.

"You can't leave, Ellie," Grayson said.

"I have to."

"Can't you just get a place here to live?"

I laughed, not at him but at the whole situation. "I have, like, three hundred dollars to my name right now. Aaron is going to let me live with them for free until I can get a job and save up enough money for a place of my own." Aaron understood the craziness of our mother.

"We can get a place together."

"Grayson."

"Yeah." He sat on the couch and looked up at me. "I was going to get a job and place of my own next year for school but I can do it sooner."

"Grayson." I sat on the arm rest and shoved my cold feet under his thigh. "That's very sweet, but no."

"Why not?"

"Because you already had a plan in place and I'm not going to ruin that for you, and us living together?"

"I think we'd be great roommates," he said, wrapping his arm around the back of my legs letting his hand rest on his thigh. "And I have enough money saved up that we could get a place after we get back from Christmas break."

"I don't know." I sighed.

"Just say yes, because if you decide to drive across the country, I'll stand in front of the car so you can't leave, or if you decide to fly, I'll pull your ass out of the terminal before you make it onto the plane."

I laughed. "Is that right?"

He nodded. "That's right," he said matter of fact.

"I don't believe you."

"Try me."

***

I know, this chapter is a little short, but the next one is longer.

What do you think about Grayson suggesting they live together?

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