His blonde, her brunette, one beautiful mess

[18] Are you cheating on me?

"Ella, can we talk?" Zach asked and tugged gently at my sleeve. 

"Sure," I said and followed him to a lesser crowded hallway. It was my first day back at school after getting shot and I'd been showered with pitty. Pretty quickly I'd found that it was very irritating to get stopped by strangers who wanted to tell me how sorry they were for what had happened. They acted almost as if they themselves had pulled the trigger, which was silly if you asked me.

"So what's up?" I asked. 

"Are you cheating on me?" 

I almost choked on pure air. Zach looked completely serious as his brown eyes watched me warily. 

"No! Why would you even think that?" I hissed and crossed my arms over my chest. 

"The article?" He said as if I should know what that meant. 

"Which article?" There had been plenty written about the events that had transpired, enough that I hadn't had the time to read every single one. 

"The one in you were interviewed for, the one which says your boyfriend laid himself back down so that they wouldn't hurt you." He looked scared and frustrated at the same time. "Last time I checked I was your boyfriend and nowhere near that bank."

"Come on Zach, it must be a misunderstanding. I'm not cheating on you." I stepped closer. "It doesn't make any sense now does it? That I would be cheating on you with someone that I also went to the bank with? See, it's only a misunderstanding?"

He seemed to calm down and nodded. I took his face in my hands and kissed him.

"I would never cheat on you Zach, never."

"Okay," he mumbled and pressed his forehead against mine. "I believe you." He didn't sound awfully convincing.

"You better," I said with a smile, pushing away my own doubt. "Now do you know where this article is? I'd very much like to read it for myself."

"Library," he said and pulled me into a hug, nuzzling his head in the crook of my neek. "I've missed you El."

He had missed me, well that was good. Still I felt like it would have been more reassuring if he'd said he'd been worried about me. Saying he'd missed me sounded like we'd just been separated because of the winter break. 

I was most definitely overanalyzing the situation.

"I've missed you too Zach."

_________

On my lunch break, I dragged Trin and Hanna to the library to find this article which painted me as a cheater. 

"The gunman threatened to shoot his girlfriend, which forced him to lay back down," I read out loud with raised eyebrows. "As twenty minutes passed the teenager was now forced himself to stand up and go to the back room were they were supposedly killing off hostages. This, of course, turned out later only to be a bluff to get the police to meet the perpetrators' demands. The teenage boy didn't make it far, because the girl he'd earlier laid back down to protect now stood up. She put up a faked lovers' quarrel to stall the gunmen, which was successful. Geez..." I looked up from the paper and shook my head. "This words it so that it sounds as if I was dating him!" 

Luckily they had kept all hostages anonymous in all article's, because if it had said that I was Lucas's girlfriend all hell would have broken loose. The pittying glances weren't ideal, but at least everyone didn't stare at me as if I'd cheated on their golden football player.