By the time they said their goodbyes and went on to Griff and Duke, she was long gone.
I ran upstairs to the rink’s rotunda lobby area and ran the entire rink in a frenzy in my fricken suit and dress shoes, but it seemed she must’ve left the premises.
Next I tried her phone. I called about a dozen times, but only received her answering machine.
“Dude,” Duke caught up to me. “You’re gonna wanna be down there for dinner. If you skip out it’ll definitely be noticeable.” He must’ve seen my panicked face, because the next thing out of his mouth was, “You alright? You’re really white, man.”
“Ellie... She…” I grappled for words, but I didn’t know how to explain what happened without telling the entire story. Because what did I say? I went and wrote her real name on the seating chart, and she ran away? That would call even more attention to both of us- her in the way that she was using a fake name, and me in the way that I made a huge dumbass mistake with the girl Iloved.
And lost.
“Dude. I feel bad for whatever must’ve happened between the two of you. But I think she’d understand that you wouldn’t want to lose your job tonight. They’ll be super pissed if you don’t hurry.”
“I need to… I need to think!” I shouted and scrubbed my hands over my face. How did I fixthis?
Duke must’ve decided he’d had enough with trying to convince me and started shoving me hard back toward the entrance of thebanquet.
“Take a deep breath, put on a fake smile. You’ll be out of here after dinner and can go fix things. She probably just needs some alone time to cool off,” Duke said behind a fake smile.
He was right. I couldn’t risk getting fired. Ellie would understand, wouldn’t she?
I forced a dry swallow. I had to let it go for now to save face…
Duke pushed me lightly in the direction of the ice and continued to do so with his hand on back until we went all the way to our table. Then he all but shoved me in my chair.
“Nice, rookie at our table!” Campbell called out. “Where’s-”
I looked up and noticed Duke shooting Campbell with a “shut up” look. He was definitely about to ask where Ellie went. Hell, I would have too if I were him.
I shook my head and pulled at the front of my hair. I grabbed for my phone, but Duke swiped it from me.
“TJ, chill, don’t say anything right now that you’d regret,” he warned.
“I need to…” I felt so much pressure boiling inside myself that I wanted to flip the fricken table in front of me. “I need to know if she’s alright at least,” I said without looking up at him.
“Sav,” he said. “Text Ellie and make sure she’s all good, please.”
“Will do,” I heard her quietly say to him, but more so to me.
How did she run off by herself when she couldn’t even make it past my door without having a panic attack? Seeing her real name made her that upset? I figured I would show her that I knew about it, which I didn’t think was a big deal, and then we’d be A-ok and better than ever.
Guess I was wrong as fuck.
Duke pushed a drink toward me.
I looked at the amber liquid in front of me and an empathetic looking Griff and Sav.
How did I manage to fuck up again?
I blew out a sigh and downed the whiskey in one gulp.
I downed about five or more of them too.
I lost count at somepoint.
Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized how stupid I was for doing what I did to Ellie.
Sav told me as much too.
