I Just Wanted to be Edgy Too

Chapter Eighty-Six

Van

Ellie was curled up in the corner chair when I arrived home. As soon as I shut the door behind me, she glanced up from her book, eyes scanning over me nervously, narrowing slightly as they rested on my face. I'm not sure what she was looking for. Guilt maybe? Sorrow and shame? If she looked hard enough, she'd see all three of those things, but she turned her attention back to her book quickly without a word.

I laid my jacket over the back of the couch and pinched the bridge of my nose right between my eyes. I had so many things to say to her, so many corners to cut, and I wasn't sure where to start.

I walked into the living room and sank into the couch, planting my feet firmly on the floor and clasping my hands together as I rested my arms on the tops of my legs. I was nervous, and she was the only person who made me feel this way. She was the only person who affected me like this. Who turned me inside out and upside down. It was maddening, yet I craved the way she made me feel. She wasn't a bad habit; not in the way Lily had been, but instead, she was the cure to everything I disliked about myself. Ellie made me better, even when I was at my best.

I glanced upwards, between the strands of hair that fell in front of my eyes, before pushing my hair back with my fingers. She wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking down at her book, completely unfazed by my presence. It stung a little to feel like that. It felt like the day I visited her in the hospital. She was sucked into reading then, and she had no regard for me. Back then though, she didn't know me, at least not in the way she did now. But it felt like she was hundreds of miles away, and I knew what that really felt like with her. I glanced away for a few moments, trying to piece together the moments of how we ended up here.

By the time I glanced back at her, her eyes were on me, scanning me over as I undid my boots and kicked them off my feet.

"Mary and Bernard say hello."

She smiled softly, the way she did anytime I mentioned my parents, but she still didn't say anything to me.

"Ellie...how long are we going to keep this up between us? I'll be leaving in a few weeks and I don't want to look back on this time and regret how we treated each other."

She pressed her book shut softly and laid it in her lap. "How long are you going to worry about me running back to Barns?" Her words were poison and ice, and I probably deserved that.

"I don't think you will..."

"But you did. And you've apparently been thinking it the whole time. Why would we do any of this together if you were worried about me running back to someone else?" She twirled her hand around in the air, motioning at the house and everything in it.

"I'm sorry." And I was. "I'm sorry I've doubted you. I'm sorry I worry about the man you had a life with, threatening your current life. Our life. You have the deepest history with him. The two of you have been through more things in a few years, than what some people deal with in a lifetime. It's in me and I'm sorry. I'm trying to get over it, but it doesn't help when I find out you've been spending time with one of his mates, and you didn't tell me about it. It added fuel to that fire, El."

"I should have told you, and I'm sorry. If I could take it back I would."

"You don't need to take it back...just be honest with me, love. There's nothing to keep from me. Nothing to hide."

"I can say the same thing to you."

"Fair enough. I worried you'd go back to him. It always eats at me. I wanted you so much before I had you, and I didn't realize it. Even then, even in those moments when I'd see your hand in his, I was close to losing it. It makes sense now, knowing what you mean to me, but then it didn't. Then, I'd just get mad and drank myself into oblivion to try to get you out of my head. You always went back, and I guess I figured you always would. Maybe that's why I rushed across the world the way I did when he answered your phone. Because I thought...I thought you'd really left me for him."