I had grown tired and disgusted with the way they treated others. I was sick of their fucked up head games and how quickly they’d turn on you if you didn’t agree with whatever they had to say.
It had become harder and harder to look the other way at the things they did.
But then the fire happened.
And I was sent to Spadardo’s.
Things that had started to seem so clear in the weeks before had become blurry and muddled and not as important.
Especially not when I was now full of a bitter anger that erased everything else.
I wouldn’t allow myself to think ofhim.
Hehad been the reason I was so willing to turn my back on the girl who sat across from me.
What an idiot I had been.
“Really?” I asked, refusing to show how relieved I felt at her offer.
Dania shrugged. “Sure. Why not? But just so you know, it won’t be a free fucking ride. You’ll have to help with rent and shit. And you can’t just sit on your ass and eat all of my Pringles. I’ll cut your damn fingers off if you go near my moisturizer. But yeah, for a while, I think it’ll be cool.”
For the first time I felt that maybe Dania was a real friend. The kind who would be there when your world fell apart.
That maybe under that bitchy exterior, she had come to care about me.
I couldn’t claim to feel that way towards her. My emotions were stunted and muted under the weight of resentment.
“Thanks, Dania,” I finally said.
Dania smiled. A real one. “That’s what friends are for.”
A horn honked from behind me, startling me. I almost flipped them off in my rearview mirror but thought better of it. No sense alerting the locals that bad ass Ellie was back.
I had, without realizing it, come to a complete stop at the intersection in the middle of town. I put my blinker on and turned down a familiar side street, slowly driving past JAC’s Quick Stop and thought briefly about stopping.
But I kept on driving, eyes trained forward.
Maybe it was completely selfish of me, but I had thought little of Dania, my former best friend, in the years I had been away.
Sure, every once in a while I wondered how she was doing. I wondered if she had ever been able to turn her life around. But I would never allow myself to think about her for too long.
My mind ran scared of any and all thoughts that would remind me of the despicable person I had been.
And I sure as hell never thought about the other people who had formed my shallow and miserable inner circle—Shane Nolan, Reggie Fisher, and Stu Wooten. I had never particularly liked any of them.
But getting the hell away from them and the shit storm I had lived had been the biggest motivation to leave.
I remembered that moment when I packed my car and drove out of town, unsure, lacking confidence; terrified I was making a huge mistake.
And for the first few months I had been convinced that I was right. But then slowly, I began to realize that maybe I could be something better. Something more.
It had been the most liberating feeling I could ever remember having.
Now here I was, back in my own personal hell. It was hard to associate this town with anything other than my misery. It was where my mother had left me. It was where I had been bounced from foster home to foster home, never finding a family.
It was here that I had made friends with a lonely boy and then I had hurt him in the worst way possible.
But it was also here that I found him again and then fell in love.
