Careless

There were things in Ella's life that never made sense to her. Her mother leaving her father was one of them. When she was little, she thought everything was okay, she never knew that the moment she went to sleep her parents started arguing. They would argue about everything, the ice cream that her father would give her before dinner, the house, money, and her father not having a job. Everything.

When her mother remarried, Ella was distraught. She was thirteen when Todd came into their lives with his flashy Ferrari and two kids. It was also the year when she started getting into trouble. At first it started as small things, skipping classes, not doing homework often, lying to the teacher. Then it escalated, smoking weed in the girl's bathroom, getting into fights, not coming home.

The one thing though that saved her was music. Her love for violin was the one thing that saved her. It was her escape. She could remember clearly the first time she ever saw a violin. Ella was five and her grandmother would play it often. That one memory always stuck with her. So did her wild behaviour, sadly.

That tattoos and late nights home were just one of the things Ella could to do piss off her mom, for some reason, Ella couldn't stand her mother. At first she thought it was because Renee took her away from her home, from her father. But then she realized why would it matter? Her father never even bothered to call her or even try to contact her.

Getting into Julliard on talent, Renee couldn't handle her anymore and decided to just get her an apartment closer to the school so that Ella wouldn't have to live with her and Todd anymore.

The freedom Ella got from living by herself and not even having to work, she instantly took advantage of. Her first day of moving into her new apartment, Ella and her friends went out and got wasted. Her behaviour continued, her marks suffered, and she was barely passing.

Standing in front of Sid's room for the past minute, Ella thought of all the things she needed to say to him. All the things that needed to be said. She gathered herself, she prayed silently to God to help her get through this moment. Ella hoped that God wasn't too mad at her for all the things she'd done in the past to grant her prayers.

Her shaking hands hovered over the door, she was still debating on whether she should knock or not. Ella could always run. That's what she was good at after all, running. It was easy; no one would have to know where she was. It would save Ella the trouble of telling Sidney and it would save Sidney from being troubled.

Without much thinking, Ella knocked the door before she could even regret it. It was too late to back down now. She owed Sidney an explanation. He had been nothing but amazing, he deserved to know why the wristband meant a lot to her. She clutched the wristband tightly, as if he would give her strength.

"Mom, I don't want to talk right now," Sidney mumbled and gave out a long sigh.

Taking a deep breath, she spoke. "It's Ella, can we talk?" she asked softly. Ella played with the ends of her sweater.

Sid had taken her home after the incident, both afraid to say a thing but goodbye. She didn't bother changing and on impulse walk over to Sidney's house. It took Ella all she had to even make her way to Sidney's house. She was tempted to run, to be a coward.

Counting to twenty, she didn't hear a peep from him and decided to go inside. She couldn't blame him for not wanting to talk to her, but she felt like she needed to explain herself, after everything he had done for her.

Ella entered Sid's room cautiously. She took a second to examine his room, numerous medals and trophies adorning his rooms. There were also a lot of hockey gears and posters of hockey players all over the floor and walls.

Her eyes finally landed on Sidney, whose side was turned to her, sitting at the edge of his bed. "Sid?" she called. "C-can we talk?"

Ever so slowly, Sidney turned his head to face her. He had a solemn look on his handsome face like he was trying to make sense of everything. He hoped that Ella was here to explain everything to him. Sid was angry that Ella couldn't trust him enough to tell her what happened to her, he just wanted to be there for her.

Nodding silently, he moved slightly so that Ella could sit beside him. Getting the hint, she walked over to him and sighed as she sat down. "I guess I should start from the beginning, huh?"

Sidney gave her a hopeful look, but then was replaced with worry when he saw tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. "You don't have to tell me," he reassured her quietly, and held her hand, as if to tell Ella that he was still there with her.

Shaking her head, Ella was determined to let her secrets. "No! You have to know," she exclaimed and took a deep breath, exhaling quickly. "It started when I got involved with hard drugs and made friends with the wrong people," she began, wiping the stray tears from her eyes. "I went to this party at the bad end of town one night. One of my friends suggested that I go with him. You'd think that a party at a bad end of town was a sure sign of something bad right? But no, I was stupid," she said sarcastically and laughed bitterly.

Gulping, Sidney didn't like where her story was going. He knew that it was going to be bad, especially with the way she acted when she lost the wristband.

"I'm not sure how it happened, but it was really late and I was smashed. I went to one of the rooms to get my head together because people just kept on passing me drinks. I think somewhere along the lines, someone slipped ecstasy in my drink or something because I saw a few people taking it," Ella continued. It was becoming harder and harder for Ella to continue as she began to remember everything. "There was man who came into the room; I thought that he just wanted to get away from the party like I did.

"God, I was so stupid. He got closer and closer to me and we started to talk. He was friendly and I thought, you know, he was a nice guy. And then he started to place his hands all over me. I didn't really know what was going on, everything just kept on spinning. Before I knew it, the man was on top of me. I tried screaming, biting, scratching, but he just kept on hitting me. After that I blacked out. I woke up the next morning, naked and bruised. The man was gone," she finished robotically, but the tears on her face just kept on falling.

Gulping again, Sidney couldn't get rid of the lump on his throat. It was like it was permanently stuck there. He couldn't imagine something so horrible happening to someone as sweet and kind as Ella. Sidney never hated someone as much as the man that rapped Ella. He wanted nothing more than to kill the man, to take advantage of a girl was just disgusting.

He scooted closer to Ella and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, Ella tensed then quickly relaxed. She rested her head on his shoulders and instantly sobbed. Sidney began to coo in her ears, whispering comforting words every so often, as he rubbed her back.

"A month later, I found out that I was pregnant," she said suddenly.

Feeling his heart stop, his hand also stopped, but only for a moment. Pregnant, she was pregnant. Sidney couldn't wrap his head around that fact that she ended up pregnant with the bastard's child. "Did you… did you…" he tried to ask if she aborted the baby, but he couldn't bring himself to ask.

Somehow, Ella knew he was asking if she had gotten an abortion, so she just shook her head against his chest. "I didn't. I kept it and dropped out of Julliard to work. It was going fine; I thought everything was turning up, then my mom found out I dropped out of Julliard and gotten pregnant. I couldn't tell her that I was raped, because I couldn't even believe that I was raped," she explained.

Removing her head from his chest, she just realized that she somehow ended up in between Sidney's legs and he was leaning on the headboard for support.

"I hated the baby. I really did think about abortion, but then I realized that it wasn't the baby's fault. It was mine and that man's fault. The baby had nothing to do with any of what happened. There was this one time, I was about six months pregnant, and I was just lying down on my bed I felt him kick. Sid, I felt my baby kick," she said fondly. "I knew he was my baby, not his, mine and I fell in love with the baby.

"Eight months into my pregnancy, I found out I was being evicted. Mom stopped paying for my rent and I couldn't work because I was pregnant. I knew I had to give him up," she had difficulty saying. More tears started to pour down her face.

Suddenly, everything clicked in Sidney's head. Why she was so broken, why she carried the baby sized wristband with her everywhere she went and why she missed home. Everything made sense.

"Wyatt, his name's Wyatt. But he's probably been adopted now to a loving family who could take better care of him than I ever could. I wasn't supposed to have this," she said and showed him the wristband. "But the social worker let me have it," she said. "I miss him Sid. I miss my baby," she finally broke down crying. Ella shook sporadically as the tears continued to fall.

She couldn't say anything else, nothing would come out. If it did, it would just be a jumbled mess and Sidney couldn't say anything. He wished he could help her, he hated that he couldn't do anything, so Sid just swore to himself that he would do all he could to help her get through what happened.

Her crying started to die down. Eventually it stopped. Removing her head from his chest, he was able to give a small smile. She was finally resting. She deserved a moment of peace, even if it was only a moment.