Ellie is Cool Now

Chapter 28

There is something completely satisfying about stomping off through the mud in expensive knee-high boots. Especially when you are stomping away from your ex-best friend and your almost-assaulter who just happen to be knocking boots (ba-dum-bum) in every outhouse, public restroom, back seat, one-hour motel within a fifty-mile radius.

Is it? My cheeks flush when I think of Roxy's jab.

Is it? It is.

Is it? Welcome to Slutville. Free drinks on Thursdays if you put out.

Is it, is it, is it —

"Ellie." Mark's voice is a record scratch to my internal freak-out.

"I'm storming off," I say, without pausing or turning. "Join me."

"Hold up," he says, sounding calm and rational and totally in control. His hand clutches mine, tugging me backward until I give in. I turn, eyes flying to his, hoping to convey the absolute wildfire happening inside that cannot be contained.

"Wanna talk about it?" Mark asks, somehow working his fingers between my vice grip of rage.

"What is there to talk about?"

"A lot, it seems," he says, those caramel-almost-molasses eyes twinkling with understanding.

"Roxy and I haven't been friends in over ten years. Anything we have to talk about was buried with the Stonybrook time capsule. Circa two-thousand-fucking-eight," I say, wishing that I wanted to dislodge my fingers from his grip but not having the fortitude to follow through with it. Damn it, romantic desire.

He considers me for an overlong moment. I stand firm. He rubs his thumb over the rise in my palm, that smile of his like water poured on the flame of my anger. Not that I tell him that. But as it ebbs, the feeling that rises up in its place is unmistakable. Regret. Soul-sucking, nauseating regret.

"I don't want to talk about the Roxy thing because I still don't know how I feel about the Roxy thing," I say, but I meet his eyes, and give him a one-shoulder shrug.

He responds by pulling me in and brushing the hair off my neck. His fingers tingle over my skin and his lips touch light to the edge of my ear.

Everything else falls away.

The screaming from the nearby jousting ring and the crash of wood on armor, the harpsichord tinkling and the sizzle of food cooking over fire. I lean in, closing my eyes, wondering how I ever lived so many years without this. Without him.

"When you're ready to talk about it, let me know," Mark whispers in my ear. He's so sweet, it actually physically hurts me. Like a toothache.

I know this is different. Mark is not Brock. I am not Roxy. But we still hurt someone. We're still jumping into something new just days after she caught us on her couch. I can't help but feel like we don't deserve this. To be happy together, holding hands and living our happily ever after. I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"In the meantime, we still have a prank to pull on the most notorious bully of our high school class." His hand trails down to the small of my back. It's a simple touch that tingles all the way up my spine and then back down again to lower, unmentionable places. I tilt my head back to look at him, and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to jump him right here, right now, in the middle of this medieval dirt path. I clear my throat.

"Lead the way, Mr. Wright. We need to get a look at what has become of Roy Willard."

With a grin, Mark presents an arm and I take it, and we make our way through the fairgrounds to a stage built into a small grove of trees. The backdrop is of a windswept sea, and rising from the stage is the wooden façade of a ship. We're just in time to catch the end of the show — which Mark told me plays three times a day — about a violent brute of the sea and his pillaging crew.