A/N--Guys, words honestly cannot say how sorry I am about the length of time it took me to write this chapter. It's kind of pathetic, honestly. So I'm sorry! Anyways, this is probably one of the last chapters of this story. There will probably be one last chapter after this and then an epilogue :)
So anyways, I hope you all enjoy this chapter and leave me comments, even if they're telling me how awful I am cause I took so long!
I'm sitting on my window seat later that night, a blanket fallen but still covering my toes and Darko curled up on my chest. Tears are trickling down my cheeks and my stomach feels horribly sunken as I watch Ethan throw the last of his bags into the back of his truck.
He's leaving.
I know that one of my dad's rules was that if we broke up Ethan had to leave the house; that he didn't want to be around that kind of awkwardness. But in the midst of all of the drama today, not once did it hit me that Ethan would actually leave. I guess there had been this last glimmering hope that he'd realize how stupid he was to think that I'd actually cheat on him, that he'd realize I'd never do such a thing.
But now, as I watch him climb into the front of his truck and put the key in the ignition, I realize that that hope was completely pointless. He's done with me. He's so done with me. And it's made so obvious when he peels out of the driveway and speeds away into the night without even once looking back at this house.
Ethan's gone.
I'm not going to see him every morning as I pour myself a bowl of cheerios nor am I going to be able to sneak away into his room just to make out a little bit. I'm not going to be able to give him sly smiles across the bowl of mashed potatoes at dinner and I'm not going to be able to feel his fingers on my waist. He won't be there when I've had a bad day and I won't be able to comfort him when he's had one.
It's all over.
All the smiles, the laughs, the kisses.
They're no more.
And that simple realization knocks a hollowness into my heart that I know will be here to stay.
I sniffle into the quietness of my room, feeling so utterly awful that I just don't know how to handle it. I'd go to sleep, curl up under the covers and try to escape into the simplicity of dreams, but I know that sleep's not going to be a very easy thing for me to accomplish. Not with all of these thoughts running through my head.
I could always do the cliché thing and watch awful comedy movies and overload myself on chocolate and ice cream, but girls only do that when they have friends. I don't really have those anymore. I haven't talked to Jeanie in ages, Jesse was never truly my friend, and Fred well...Fred's been blowing up my phone for hours but those texts and calls are never going to be returned.
And I know that I have Darla and my parents right down stairs, but I can't help but feel like they're going to be mad at me for this whole thing. My parents loved having Ethan here, I know they did. My dad loved having another man in the house and my mom loved having another willing hand to help out around the house since Darla and I never really do. And now, because of me...he's gone.
If I'd just pushed or shoved Fred away, if I'd screamed at him and told him to get the hell off of me, none of this would have happened. Ethan and I would have still been so happy together and my parents would have had their polite little helping hand.
But now he's gone and it's all my fault.
There's a knock on my door just then, a cautious rapping of knuckles against wood. I don't really want to see anyone, I kind of just want to sink into my covers and emerge only for food and the toilet, but I'm not going to turn anyone away. I can't. Not when I don't have anyone else.
So I sit up in my bed, bringing the covers just over my knees, and then call out for the person to come in.
My mom hesitantly pokes her head through the door, concern and sympathy written on her face, kind of surprising me. I thought she'd be mad at me for Ethan's leaving, that she'd blame it on me. Never did I think that she'd actually look like she wanted to help me.
She asks, "Is it alright if I come in?"
Hesitantly I nod, thinking about how good one of her hugs would feel right now. Sure my mom and I haven't had the best relationship in the world, but her hugs are out of this world. Honestly, I'd take a hug from just about anyone right now. I'm dying for something, something to just make me feel a little bit better.
She comes and sits on my bed, looking at me like she's trying to appraise where I am emotionally, like she wants to know if I'll reach out and bite her or not. She asks, "How are you doing?"
And it's then that I once against feel tears start to sprinkle their way down my cheeks. Now that someone's here and asking me if I'm okay, I realize how utterly not okay I am. I feel like shit, I am shit, and I don't think there's anything that's going to make me feel any better. I shake my head, not knowing what to say, and before I can even mumble anything close to coherent, my mom's pulled me against her and has given me my first hug in what feels like forever.
She strokes my hair and murmurs to me that it's going to be okay, that everything's going to work itself out in the end. Typical mom sayings when their kids are having emotional breakdowns. But even though I know it's not true, even though I know nothing's going to work out in my favor, it stills makes me feel just a little smidgen less awful.
I murmur, "I just don't understand why he didn't believe me. Why would I cheat on him? Why?"
She says, "I'm going to tell you a story, okay? It might help."
I nod, willing to do just about anything to help out with this shitty situation. She says, "I know what it feels like to be cheated on."
My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach and I look up at her in shock and awe, my jaw dropping. I exclaim, "Dad cheated on you?!"
"No," she chuckles, shaking her head calmly back and forth. It's then that I find it okay to breath, my world having stopped for just a moment. While my dad can be kind of kooky sometimes, he's still the best, most faithful man I know. It'd make me lose all hope in humanity if my dad hadn't been faithful to my mom. "But I thought he did."
"Why?" I ask her meekly, wondering if it'll give me any kind of insight into why Ethan wouldn't listen to me. I understand the seeing me kissing Fred part, that part kind of speaks for itself, but it still doesn't explain why he was so adamant to not believe me.
She says, "When you love someone, the way I love your father and the way I know Ethan loves you, all of the feelings towards that person are pretty damn powerful."
Yeah, that's why I feel so fucking shitty right now, I think to myself. If it were anyone but Ethan I wouldn't feel like the world had dropped from the bottom of my feet. But it's him, it's my own perfect Ethan and I can't help but be all dramatically sad about losing him.
My mom continues, "So when you walk in and see the person you love kissing someone else, you immediately feel betrayed and heartbroken and you just can't think clearly. Rationally."
"How do you know this?" I ask her, trying my hardest not to think about what Ethan went through when he saw me and Fred. It'll only make me feel worse and guiltier.
She smiles ruefully, "Your father, whether you've realized this or not, has a lot of crazy fans out there. I've seen it. I've seen them pounce. And first it really hurt and I had this awful fear that your dad was going to leave me for one of his fans. But after a little while, I learned how much he really loves me. He kind of had to prove it to me, but now I trust him with my whole life. That's what you have to do with Ethan."
"But it's different," I point out, "That was with a bunch of girls who dad didn't even know. He saw me with one of my friends."
She says, "Well the situations aren't exactly the same, but the same thing needs to be done in this one to fix it. You need to prove to Ethan that you love him, Hallie. If you truly want him back, if you really do love him as much as your heartbroken face says you do, then you need to show it to him."
"How can I when he's already left?" I ask her, feeling a bit empowered but also terrified at her little speech. I want to show him how much I care about him, how that Fred thing was just some crazy misunderstanding, but what if he doesn't believe me? Or what if he just doesn't want me anymore? I wouldn't be able to handle it.
She cracks an encouraging grin and says, "He left your dad with an address. He's going stay with one of his friends in Louisiana until their tour this summer."
"And what? I'm just supposed to drive live forever away and show up at some stranger's house and beg for forgiveness?" I ask her incredulously, the scale of what she's asking me to do scaring the shit out of me.
She challenges me, "Do you love him?"
"Yes," I say immediately, "But that's...that's so much...what if he...?"
She shakes her head at me, silently telling me to shut the hell up. She says, "No what if's Hallie. Your dad probably isn't going to like me instigatin' all of this, but I really like the impact Ethan's had on you. You're my good Hallie again, the one who smiles and jokes and laughs. Ethan brought you back, sweetie. So I want you to sleep on it tonight, no need to drive while you're all emotional, and then travel tomorrow. It's almost a nine hour drive."
"How do you know that?" I ask her, wondering why on earth she's acting this way, acting like my best friend. No mom that I know of would ever push her daughter to chase a boyfriend nine miles and beg them for forgiveness. No mom at all. Especially my mom, who's always given me grief about my friends and my choices.
But then again, when I think about it, Jeanie and Jesse were never truly my friends. Fred sort of was, but he wanted something more and overreacted in such a wrong way when he didn't get it. So maybe my mom was right in not liking me spending my time going out and drinking with the three of them.
But I'll never give her the satisfaction of saying that to her face.
She laughs and says, "Your dad has dragged me to one too many LSU games."
I chuckle a little bit, never realizing how cute my parents are together until just now. I want a relationship like the two of them have, I truly do, and I'm starting to realize that Ethan provided me with that. Because even though I don't want to risk sounding like a thirteen year old girl, Ethan and I are pretty fucking adorable together.
And I'm really not ready to give that up.
Without my mom, I honestly don't believe that I would have made the decision to drive the longest distance I'll have ever driven, only to possibly get rejected by the one and only guy I'll probably ever be in love with. I would have been too terrified, too frightened by the likelihood of him shutting the door in my face to even think of doing such a thing.
But now I realize what I have to do to get Ethan back.
And I'm going to do it.
I'm going to get him back.
XXXXXXXXXX
To say that I'm nervous when I pull into the driveway of a university apartment complex late the next day would be a complete understatement. Fucking terrified would be a better way to put it. I've tried calling him, texting him today just to see if he'd be here or to see if he felt any better about the situation, but I have gotten a grand total of zero replies.
Of course.
So I'm about to walk into the apartment of some kid I don't even know and beg for forgiveness from my boyfriend (it'd kill me to officially call him my ex) who still can't even talk to me. If he can't talk to me over the phone or even over text, how can I expect him to talk to me in person? I mean, yeah, I can demand his attention in person and everything, but still...it makes everything a lot more personal.
What if he doesn't want that?
What if he kicks me out of the apartment or, even worse, gets his friend to do it? What if he can't even look at me anymore? He couldn't do it yesterday morning, so how can I expect him to do it now?
I feel like I'm going to be sick, honestly, with all of the nerves and emotions churning through my stomach right now. I haven't eaten all day, I only had to stop once during the nine hour drive it took to get here and that was just to pee and get more gas, and I was too shaky to even put my eyeliner on right.
I'm a complete mess and I'm about to walk into the lion's den.
I'm dumb as hell to be doing something like this. I truly am. I'm not an emotional girl usually, on the outside that is. I keep everything to myself just because of my fear of looking too clingy or girly or anything that Jeanie and the guys said was bad. So to come here and travel this far to basically proclaim my love for this guy and put myself on the line to get rejected, is so out of character for me.
And I hate it. I hate it so much.
It's my character for a reason. That's how I'm comfortable doing things. My way.
This is definitely not my way.
And my mom knows of this, which is the exact reason why my mom has been blowing up my phone for the past hour saying that if I chicken out she'll charge me the amount of gas it took to get here and back. I don't have that kind of money. The bitch is making it to where I have to do this just because she knows that I'm a wiener.
So that's why even though I've never in my life been this nervous about anything, I turn off my car and then slowly climb out, my body practically trembling.
Since his friend, whoever the hell he is, lives on LSU's campus, there are a ton of people my age walking around, most of them donned in bathing suits since it's hot as hell this summer. A few of them give me once-overs, probably wondering who the hell I am, but I'm too freaked to even consider hating the unwanted attention.
I look down at my hand where I've written his address, mentally taking note of the apartment number 10587, and then finish walking the length of the sidewalk. It takes me a few minutes to find the apartment since the one building seems to house about fifty of them, but when I do, when I see the plain and boring front door of the apartment with nothing documenting its existence except for the numbered plate, I feel my breathing start to quicken. My heart pick up pace.
But even though my whole body is screaming for me to just flee the premises and pay back my mom by working at McDonalds for the rest of the summer or something; I know in my heart that this is something I have to do. I've never really fought for anything in my life, never wanted to put that much of myself into something for fear of it not working out or not wanting to look stupid, but this...Ethan...I'll fight for that. I'll fight for him.
Because this past month and a half, how I felt and how my world practically shifted due to getting to know him, has shown me that he's the one thing I have to fight for.
So with that thought fueling my actions, I quickly raise my hand up to the door and swiftly knock, knowing that if I don't do it now I never will.
"Gimme a sec!" a masculine but unfamiliar voice calls out, and something about it, something about actually hearing his friend's voice and realizing that this is real and not some nightmare, freaks the hell out of me.
My nerves taking over, I let out a quick breath and then turn around, hell bent on getting the fuck out of here. But before I can even make it three steps forward, I hear the door open behind me and that same voice call out, "Hey, what's...wait. Hey! Did you just knock on my door?"
Simply because there's no one else present around us, I know that he's talking to me. And I know I have to answer because, because...I don't know. I have to. So I turn around and see a friendly looking blonde guy standing in their doorway, his eyebrows raised curiously, a bit amused looking honestly, and say hesitantly, "...yeah."
His eyes slowly take me in, looking over my features, before he sighs and says, "You're Ethan's girl, yeah?"
He's been talking about me, I think to myself. Whether that's good or bad, I have no idea, but it does save me explaining myself to this guy. That's one good thing about today, I guess. I say, "Yeah...is he...is he in?"
He shakes his head, "Nah, he left a few minutes ago to pick up pizza. You can wait inside for him if you want."
So I nod my head, and then follow him into the apartment, thinking that every part of this whole situation is uncomfortable and stupid. I don't want to be here with this guy I don't know, with this guy who probably hates me because of what I did to his friend, and who, even though he seems nice enough, doesn't even want me in his apartment.
It's a typical boy's apartment. Trash everywhere, walls bare except for random posters, and a huge television set. But before I can even think about looking around, I see a familiar T-shirt draped over the side of the couch, an also quite familiar guitar placed in the corner of the room.
My heart immediately aches just looking at his stuff. I remember when I was able to curl up against his chest while he was wearing that T-shirt, or how he'd let me sleep in it just because it smelled like him. It was only two days ago that we were that happy and now...now everything is just heartbreakingly different.
"Look, I know the two of you are going through some weird shit right now," his friend says, startling me out of my thoughts and making me look up at him. He looks severely uncomfortable as he watches my face, and it's then that I realize my mistake. I'm thinking of things far too emotional to think about in front of total strangers. I'm obviously upset and this guy really shouldn't have to deal with me. "But I'm completely awful at comforting people...so..."
"Sorry," I apology sincerely, feeling pretty damn embarrassed about being all emotional and sad in front of this total stranger. "Hey, what's your name? Sorry...I didn't even think to ask."
"I'm Cole," he says with a smile, looking overly relieved that he won't have to comfort me while I sob on his shoulder. "Hallie, right?"
"Yeah," I say, feeling a bit better that Ethan's actually mentioned me to this guy. "And I'm sorry about intruding like this, I just...I really need to talk to Ethan."
"I get it," he says, walking over to the bar and then plopping down into one of the stools. "If this were a movie, this would be the whole heart-pounding chase after the person you love scene, right? Except you're in a strange apartment and not in some airport."
I laugh, genuinely laugh for the first time since yesterday morning, and say, "I guess so. Hopefully I get the whole happily ever after part."
Looking a bit more solemn, Cole lets on, "The dude's crushed; you know that? Didn't even wanna jam with me like we usually do."
"I know," I say, ducking my head in shame. Who am I to think I can actually have a nice conversation with the best friend of the guy I cheated on? He probably hates my guts and wants to see me rot in a hole for what I did to his best friend. "I just...the whole thing was this huge misunderstanding. My friend...well, he's not really my friend anymore I guess, pushed himself onto me. Apparently he's had this thing for me for a while, I just never knew. Ethan walked in before I could push him off."
"And let me guess," Cole says, "He didn't even want to listen to your explanation?"
"Nope," I say shaking my head, but immediately feel the need to explain, "But I get it, you know? I would have done the same had I walked in with another girl."
"Yeah," he admits, "But you shouldn't be beating yourself up so hard about this. It's as much Ethan's fault for not listening to you as it is you not pushing this Fred guy off you in time."
I never really thought about it that way. Not even once. Cole continues on, "Look, I have no room to get into the middle of this, but I know Ethan. I know how...how stubborn he can be, I guess. He should have listened to you."
"He wouldn't have had to listen to me if I hadn't let Fred kiss me. I should have pushed him off the minute it happened, but I just couldn't even m..." and my words are cut dead off when we both hear the sound of the door knob turning.
My heart freezes, my breathing comes a standstill, and I feel my posture immediately one thousand times stiffer. Shit shit shit. He's going to be so mad at me for coming all this way, he probably just wanted to be left alone and I'm not letting him do that by being here. This is going to be bad, so so bad.
And then he takes a step inside, shutting the door behind him like nothing's different. It's only because he hasn't seen me yet though, me sitting on the couch against the wall. He spots Cole the second he walks in though, asking him, "Do you know how hot it is outside? My God you could cook this thing on the side..."
It's in the middle of the sentence, after he's grabbed himself a slice and then turned to head to the sofa I'm sitting on, that he sees me. His words come to a halt, and his eyes widen, looking absolutely shocked that I'm here. Which, you know, is pretty understandable seeing as how he's in a completely different state than I was.
His eyes give me a quick once over, as if he's trying to really accept the fact that yes, I am here in his riend's apartment.
And then he mumbles just one word.
"Hallie."