You're My Addiction

They stared at her for what felt like forever, and Ellie was starting to get uncomfortable. They had been quiet during the last part of the story, and she knew they were quietly mourning for her. She looked over at Val, who quickly diverted her eyes to her hands.

“How come you never told me?” Zacky asked her. It was then that he got out of the chair and gave Ellie one of the biggest hugs she had ever received in her life. She cried again at the compassion that they were showing her, and this time when she cried, she felt like some of the sadness was leaving her forever. “I would have been there for you, you know that.”

“Oh, Zacky!” She cried into his shirt. “I know I should have, but I just couldn’t back then. It feels like there’s been this weight lifted off of my chest now though. I don’t know if I could have gone on any longer feeling like that. I thought that when I went away it would be easier to get over everything. It always seems like the easier choice to run away. Then when I came back, I was faced with everything again, and I didn’t think it was going to make me feel this way. I didn’t think that I was still going to love him when I saw him again.”

“Well, I do know one thing I’m going to do as soon as I leave the room,” Zacky said as he continued to soothe Ellie. “I’m going to go to Brian’s room and kick his ass. I can’t believe he never told anyone about this. It isn’t something that you just forget about.”

“No!” Ellie yelled out as she gripped onto Zacky’s arm so he wouldn’t leave. “That’s in the past, and you don’t need to ruin your friendship over something that’s over and done with. Who knows how much he even thinks about it anymore? I need to fix the relationship between the both of us, even though it’s the most screwed up thing I’ve ever seen. Making him relive that all over again is just going to make it worse.”

Zacky just sighed as he stroked her hair. “I don’t know what else to do to make it better, though. You can’t hold all of that in forever, Ellie. It’s not healthy for you.”

“I know,” she said. “Maybe one day there will be the right time to fix everything, but that time isn’t now. The both of you helped me tonight in more ways than you can imagine. I’ve needed to tell someone everything for a long time now, and I’m glad that you two were here to listen.”

“I knew you were hurting,” Val said. She looked up and Ellie could see all of the sadness in her eyes. Ellie wanted to tell not to be sad because now she felt like everything could only get better from this point on. “When I first saw you when you came back, I knew something was wrong because you just looked so sad all of the time. How did you deal with everything by yourself that first year?”

“I didn’t deal with it. I tried to keep myself as busy as possible with studying any anything else I could find, but there would be those moments where I couldn’t hide from it. Those days I just stayed in bed because I couldn’t get out of it. Eventually, with the help of some anti-depressants, those days became farther and farther apart. I haven’t had one since way before I came back to California, so I knew it had to happen soon.”

Val gave her a small reassuring smile and put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “If you ever need anything, or if you ever need to talk about anything, you know you can always come and find me. I’ll drop whatever I’m doing to help you. You’ve dealt with this on your own for way too long, Ellie, and you need people to help you on your way feeling happy again,” she said. At her words, Ellie truly felt that Val was one of those friends that she would have for the rest of her life.

“Thank you, both of you,” Ellie said. “But I do have one thing to ask of both of you. You have to promise you won’t tell anyone else about any of this, especially my brother. I don’t know how he would react to it, and I’m not willing to take the risk right now. When the time is right I will tell him everything that happened, too.”

“It will be hard for me to keep it from him, but I will do it for you, since you should be the one who tells him,” Val replied. “I do think he is the one who could help you through this the most, though. He is your brother after all.”

“And I won’t tell anyone, either, even though I still want to punch Brian in the face,” Zacky said. Ellie laughed and wiped her eyes one final time. She felt drained, suddenly. Everything was catching up with her now. It was four in the morning, so she was already tired, she had just cried and ocean’s worth of tears, so her eyes were starting to feel sore and scratchy, and all of the alcohol had finally left her body. She was mentally and physically drained, and at that moment all she wanted to do was sleep.

Ellie spent the next day in bed all day. The previous night, Ellie had taken a very hot shower before going to sleep. Val left to go to Matt since he had been wondering what happened to her all night, and Zacky sat with Ellie until she fell asleep. She had curled into a tight ball underneath the covers; it was how she always laid in bed when she went into one of her emotional depressions. Zacky had fallen asleep next to her sitting up. His back was against the wall and his arms were folded across his chest.

She slept for most of the next day and Zacky and Val told everyone else she had caught a really bad case of food poisoning, so she wouldn’t be coming out of her room. She was grateful for them that day, as they brought her food without the others knowing, and they sat with her at different times during the day when she wanted company.

Ellie didn’t want to get out of bed, so it may have seemed that laying her soul out for everyone to see just made everything worse, but it was exactly the opposite. She couldn’t get out of bed because she was just so exhausted. She knew that when they left for home the next day again, she would feel better than she had in a very long time.

She knew when she saw Brian again she would act no different. She wasn’t upset about what happened the previous night any longer, and she doubted he would remember much of it anyway. After telling her whole story, the only thing she wanted to do was to find a way to get over her feelings for him and to move on. She wanted to stay friends with him, of course, but she didn’t think that being in an actual relationship with him would ever be healthy.

She sat on the bed of her new dorm room and looked out of the window at the new scenery. There were mountains everywhere, and it was a lot different than the flat land of the California coast line. She thought it would be a lot cooler here too, but she never knew that it would be even hotter in the summer. The temperature wasn’t as high, but she never knew how much of a difference humidity could make. Luckily, she was one of the few lucky freshmen who got into housing that had air conditioning. She had taken summer classes, and that gave her priority housing for the fall.

She hadn’t been planning on taking classes over the summer, but with everything that happened, she thought it would be best to leave as soon as possible. She didn’t like to face her problems, and she often preferred running away from them. After that last time she had seen Brian, when he sat on the swing with her, she had bottled all of her feelings up. She refused to cry, and she hadn’t in months. Sometimes it was hard, and she knew that the feelings were going to come back up every once in awhile because they couldn’t be ignored for too long. Ellie would deal with them when the time came around.

Just then Ellie’s roommate walked into the room. By the time she had moved all of her stuff from her summer dorm to the one she would be staying in for the regular school year, she had noticed that her roommate had taken no time at all in setting up all of her belongings.

Her roommate’s side of the room was nauseatingly pink. Now, Ellie liked being a girl and she also liked pink, but there is a certain point where one can reach too much pink. Everything from the bedspread and pillows down to the majority of this girl’s wardrobe was just that one color. Ellie didn’t like to make assumptions, but she was just hoping that the girl she would be living with for a whole year wouldn’t be unbearable.

“Well, hi there,” the roommate greeted excitedly as she walked over to Ellie. Instead of shaking her hand, the girl gave her a friendly hug. “My name is Sara, without the ‘h’ of course. Everyone seems to always assume all Sara’s have an h in their name.”

Sara was definitely a girly girl to the extreme. She was very friendly, so Ellie decided to get to know her more before deciding whether they would be a good fit to be friends or not. Sara certainly did not fit the mold of her past friends. The guys were really the only ones she ever considered to be her true friends, and they had tattoos, piercings, and were the farthest thing from a pink-loving girl you could get.

“I’m Elizabeth,” she replied with a small smile. “But everyone has always called me Ellie.”

“It’s so nice to meet you! I’ve been anxious for months to meet who I’m going to living with for the next year, and I can’t believe that you’re finally here!” Sara said as she excitedly buzzed around the room straightening up all of her pink things. “Where are you from, by the way? Are you an in-state student? I am, my home is just a half an hour away. I love my family way too much to go any further, although I am excited to finally be in college.”

“I’m from California.”

“Wow! That’s so far away! You’re so brave coming all the way across the country to go to school. I don’t think I could have done that,” Sara said as she sat down on her bed, across from Ellie. Ellie thought it was funny that Sara thought she was brave to come to school here because it was for the exact opposite reason. She was actually being a coward and running away from all of her problems at home. “Don’t worry though, you can always come home and meet my family on holidays if it’s too much trouble to go home. Do you have a boyfriend or anything? That would be tough to try and have a long distance relationship, but I would give you a lot of credit.”

An image of Brian flashed into her head, but she immediately pushed him to the back of her mind again. Her heart ached every time she thought of him. Ellie knew she had just let her emotions slip into her facial features, but Sara didn’t say anything. Ellie was starting to like her a little bit. Maybe she needed someone who was full of life to help her get through this tough time.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh, that’s too bad, but I’m sure you’ll find the right one here. There sure are plenty of people to choose from in a school like this,” Sara said with a laugh. She picked up a picture frame that was on her night stand and handed it to Ellie. “This is my boyfriend. He goes here, too. I can’t imagine being so far away from him because he makes me so happy every time I see him. Aside from my family he’s definitely the most important person in my life. I love him so much.”

Ellie smiled at Sara as she handed the picture back to her. They looked like the perfect couple. She was a cheerleader type and he was a football player type, and they looked so happy in the picture together. Ellie was happy for her because she believed that everyone deserved that one person in their life. Unfortunately, Ellie hadn’t found that yet. A couple of months ago she thought she had, but now she was starting to think that she had everything wrong.

“Some of the other girls on the floor are going to get something to eat, do you want to come?” Sara asked as she walked towards the door.

“Thank you for asking, but I’m really tired from moving today,” Ellie said. “I think I’m just going to rest for now, but we can go and get lunch tomorrow if you would like.”

“I would like that,” Sara said with a sincere smile before she walked through the door.

Ellie sighed as she fell backwards onto her pillow. What was love, really? It wasn’t something that made you felt happy all of the time, because she was pretty sure it was what led her to some of the lowest points in her life. She rethought that for a second. It had made her felt like she never would be happy again, but there were also sometimes where it made her feel like the happiest person on earth.

There was no textbook definition on love either. With Sara and her boyfriend, it seemed obvious that they were made for each other. They were the stereotypical high school sweetheart couple. Ellie even was willing to make a bet that they were prom king and queen.

Then there was Ellie and Brian. Their relationship was anything but normal, but she knew that she had been in love with him, and at certain times, she thought that Brian felt something, too, even if it wasn’t love exactly. They were far from the same person. She was the typical good girl and he was the typical rebel in school. They were never supposed to be meant for each other, but something made it happen.

She was frustrated that love couldn’t be something that was simple. For some people it was, and they were the lucky ones. She would never be able to explain why she felt what she did for Brian, and she spent many hours wondering why it had to be him. Ellie knew that she would never be able to figure it out, though.

Love was not easy, but that didn’t mean that Ellie couldn’t wish it could be for her.