Safety Net {l.r.h}

18) "Blue balls dropped by for a visit"

LUKE HEMMINGS

It's finally Labor Day weekend, and I had a long two weeks before this. Ellie had tutored me nearly every day so that my grades didn't slip, but I had only made that my excuse for spending more time with her. Ashton and Michael would watch from a distance, and they could tell I truly felt something for her. Calum assumed I was still trying to get with her for the bet, but I'm working up the courage to tell him, my first friend ever, that I'm not following through with our stupid college pact about relationships. We had a complicated friendship, almost brotherly, but being emotionally damaged from our childhood meant that we didn't talk about our feelings much. They were just pushed to the side. As for football, the coach had a one-on-one conversation with me about Landon Taylor and asked what we were fighting about. Normally I didn't snitch on people, but I explained to him that I had caught him slipping date-rape drugs into girls' drinks, and that I didn't want to get in trouble for being honest. Thankfully Coach had bypassed the mention of my party and underage drinking and suspended Landon for the rest of the season, making up a sob story of his idiotic choices in order to get him in trouble.

I had my bags packed and loaded in the back of Ashton's Tahoe, waiting on everyone else to get done. I had decided on a Santa Cruz cut off, dark sweatpants, a snapback sat backwards on my head, and my all-black Chuck Taylors. I wasn't much of a shorts person, even if we're going to Cali. It's currently 4 a.m. on a Thursday, as the drive was 12 hours long. Michael walked along the sidewalk, dragging his large suitcase behind him with bags under his eyes.

"Did you sleep at all?" I question, but all he does is grumble under his breath before shoving the suitcase in the back beside mine. Ashton walked out of the frat with Calum trudging behind him, helping carry his bags since he seemed too tired to do so.

"This idiot was up until 2 playing the game," Ash points out, tossing his bag in the back.

"Shut up, Ashton." Michael snapped, climbing into the passenger seat. Normally I would care considering I was the tallest among the four of us, but since Ellie was coming, I didn't mind sitting in the back.

"I assume you did too considering your attitude." Ashton says with a laugh and crawls into the driver seat. I took a seat in the back with Calum and waited patiently for Ashton's slow ass to get us to her dorm before opening the door without another word to go retrieve the girl from inside. But as soon as I got out of the car, she was stumbling out the door of her dormitory with bags weighing down one arm that held one cup of coffee while her other hand was balancing a drink carrier with four other coffees in it along with an additional fifth tucked in the middle of them.

I rushed over to her and slipped the bags off her arm and over my shoulders as she looked up at me with a tired smile on her face. She was so adorable, I almost said it out loud. She had on a baby blue tank top that stopped above her belly button, with black shorts that hung loose on her waist, but hugged her hips in the best way, an oversized zip up that hung off her shoulders from juggling all the bags, and a pair of converse with the laces tucked into her shoes.

"You didn't have to get us coffee, you know." I say, walking beside her to the car. Ashton pops open the trunk and I put her bags neatly on top of everyone else's.

"I wanted to; I knew we'd need it." The sound of the door opening caught my attention and I looked behind her to see Dayna struggling to get her bags through the doorway. Deciding to be nice, I helped her as well.

"Alright, so how're we sitting in this bitch?" Dayna asked, opening the backseat door to see Calum sitting there with his head down. He perked up at the sound of a new voice and eyed her up and down.

"You weren't lying when you said she was hot, Ellie."

Ellie looked at me and shook her head in disbelief at our friend. "I can't believe him," she mumbles.