I Hate Football Players

21: Stay Here

Wait. Am I the third wheel?
That's worse. I don't want to watch him play tonsil hockey!

"What am I supposed to do while you're on a date? Hold her purse? Keep the car warmed?"

"You're coming too." He rattled the car with his slammed door and headed to the house. Muffled through the glass, he shouted, "Stay here. I'll bring someone for you."

I rolled down the window. "Better not be fucking Kieran!"

That could have been taken totally out of context.

He didn't turn back, only lifted a middle finger at me. I rolled up the window as his rearview mirror image shrunk. Pin-drop silence enveloped me, except for faint throbs of music beats, I took a deep breath and leaned into the window. My six-hour shift sagged me in the seat.

The dark silhouettes of overhead suburban trees blurred with the backdrop blanket of twinkling stars. My eyes drooped lower, taking my chin to my chest. Before I was aware of what happened, I fell asleep and drifted straight into my nightmare.

I blinked at the scene from the corner of the bedroom. Throbbed beats pumped into my bones and I watched as Ryder kissed the freshman version of myself, then wedged himself between my legs. Recognition trickled over my skin, overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of this setup. My feet were stuck to the floor, and my body was as frozen as my younger self in bed. A wall bystander, tears streamed out my eyes as I hovered, helpless and detached like a ghost outside of my own body.

What was happening? How could I see this? It didn't make any sense.

My throat tightened and cut off my speech. Every cell of my body screamed to do something, anything, to help me, but I could only watch. A horrible suffocation compressed my body as if I drowned in a pressurized container. Icy water flowed through my veins and grasped control of my body, as I felt when Ryder pinned me down. And then -

Finally, the door banged open. Another football player stumbled in. He was...

Jake?

The tall, wide frame of today's senior quarterback Jake, not freshman nobody Jake from the time of the party, grasped one hand onto the door handle and steadied himself.

This doesn't make any sense.

"Ellie." Jake stared at me in the corner with a soft, sympathetic expression. His voice was the last thing over freshman me's muffled screams. "Now you know how I feel."

Those words jerked me awake. I hit my forehead on the window with a smack. Deafening beats pounded in my ears, and white dots edged my line of vision. I clasped my sweaty forehead in both palms and gasped out ragged, uneven breaths. Goosebumps littered my forearms as I hugged them around my stomach.

Visual inventory, Ellie. Inside in a car. Parked alone. On the side of a street of small boxy houses. In the dark. And I fogged up my window.

What was that?

I rubbed my forehead with all ten fingers, wishing I could draw out the confusion. Every single time, it was the same. Always the same recap happened, with zero deviation of details, including the nightmare before Harper dragged me to the beach.

Why again? And now why is it changing?

Am I supposed to be sympathetic to how Jake feels?

Or does it mean Jake can't 'save' me?

I lifted my index finger to my foggy window and etched one word into the condensation:

W-H-Y?

Why was my brain like this? I couldn't understand it. My palm shook, but I smeared away the word. Given my broken brain, I was glad I wasn't at a party tonight. The sooner we could leave, the better.