NUDES ☞ ethan dolan

1.5

Mia strut over to Ethan in the hallway, placing a kiss upon his cheek as she grabbed his bicep. He turned to her, narrowed eyes. It was hard to make out their conversation, but I managed.

"What the fuck are you doing?" He hissed, shrugging her off.

"I was saying hi?" Mia said slowly, Ethan's friends around him snickering. "After last week I thought that-"

"You thought wrong. Goodbye," he waved, and the sight made my shoulders relax. At least she didn't end up getting what she wanted from being a backstabber.

"Eve! Noah!" Mia shouted, smile on her face as she walked over to us, squeezing into the group and ignoring me. "We should hangout after school today," she suggested, teetering back and forth on her feet.

"Sorry, maybe next lifetime." Noah sighed, linking arms with Eve and I as we walked away.

My friends had really stuck with me on this; they almost seemed more angry with her than I was when I told them what had happened.

Mia had been trying to talk to them since Thursday but they'd been blowing her off.

Today was Monday, and it was the first day Ethan had been back at school. He skipped Thursday and Friday- Grayson said he was faking sick because he didn't want to get out of bed. Mia obviously thought she would have some solace in him, but she was wrong.

Ethan called me over the weekend, but I couldn't bring myself to talk to him. And as I passed him in the hall he looked at me with a gaze I couldn't quite make out what it meant.

The next time I saw him though, I identified the clenched jaw and narrowed eyes as anger. That's what most of his unchecked emotions found a way to manifest as.

The fact that he was angry at me though? Kinda made me hate him more.

I was still really hurt by what he did, but a lot of the feelings of victimized frustration had dissipated, being replaced by indignation.

Seeing him was like seeing red, which coincidentally was a prominent color in my wardrobe today. Maybe my subconscious knew that it was necessary.

"You look hot today," Alex grinned, walking up to me. I raised my eyebrows at his comment. "I'm sure Ethan's kicking himself for whatever he did to upset you so much. He deserves it,"

Alex and I had been talking here and there, and all of his flirtatious comments from this point were jokes. I made him swear that they were because he needed to know that I wasn't interested, and he respected that.

Today, I was wearing a red bodycon dress with a black bomber jacket and black heels. And some matte red lipstick to match, on top of my red nails I had done last week.

If I couldn't feel good, I at least wanted to look good.

Monday's were always the worst- they seemed to pass agonizingly slow. But I was on the way to my last class of the day, walking with Alex because we'd had class together the previous period and he offered to walk me. I was glad to have patched things up with him.

Ethan stopped us in the hallway, motioning for Alex to leave, standing in front of us with his arms crossed.

Most people were already in class, so no one noticed when Ethan dragged me into a dark, empty conference room to talk.

"We have science." I scoffed, picking at my nails.

"I make one mistake and you go crawling back to Alex?" Ethan raised his eyebrows, looking me up and down. One mistake? He was a little off. His mistakes had been building up.