You're My Addiction

Ellie went around the house, shutting all of the windows. They had been forecasting a major rain storm for some time now, and it seemed like today was going to be the day. Off in the distance, there were the darkest clouds she had ever seen. Ginger followed her happily around the house as she went on her way. She had just finished closing all of the windows upstairs, so she went down stairs to close everything there. No one was home, so she had to do it by herself.

She was just about to go into the kitchen, when she heard moaning and the sound of something falling on the floor. Ellie walked farther in to see what was going on. The sight she saw was a little uncomfortable and a lot awkward, but she wasn’t surprised at all.

Brian was hooking up with a girl, and it was one of those things where you wanted to look away so bad, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to. She was sitting on the counter with her legs wrapped around his waist, and her shirt thrown somewhere on the kitchen floor. His hands were running all over her toned abdomen, and Ellie couldn’t fight the mixture of anger and jealousy that coursed through her system.

“I’m so sorry!” Ellie said loud enough so they would hear her. Brian turned around and he looked a little dazed. It took him a few moments to fully assess the situation. Ellie crossed an arm over her eyes and headed towards the sliding door to exit the house.

“Ellie,” Brian said, clearly embarrassed.

“I didn’t mean to bother you, I was just going to go for a run,” she replied as she closed the door a little harder than she meant to. She was lucky that she had been wearing running shoes since she had taken Ginger on a walk earlier in the day. She took off towards the front of the house, wanting to get as far away as possible from Brian.

She had been doing so good lately, but there always seemed to be set backs like this that just kept making everything that much harder. She was angry he could still stir up such a strong emotional reaction from her, and she was even angrier at herself because it seemed she still only chose running away as the best option to a problem.

She could hear the door and the gate open and close behind her, and she knew that Brian was following her. He was struggling to buckle his belt and run at the same time. Ellie really didn’t want to deal with him at that particular moment, so she took off running down the street. She was running towards the dark clouds, and for a second, she thought this may not have been her brightest idea ever.

“Ellie, there’s going to be a huge storm here any second, there’s no way you were going for a run. I’m really sorry about what happened back there, and I promise it won’t happen again,” he called after her.

“I told you, I’m going for a run,” she yelled back, without bothering to even turn her head. “And why would you think I’m mad? I told you I’m not.”

She could tell he was catching up to her a little bit, so she picked up her pace. Ever since she got to college, she took up running every time she got too stressed or overwhelmed, which was a lot of the time. Needless to say, she had gotten pretty good at it in the past four years. Ellie could hear Brian’s heavy breathing close behind her, and she knew he was going to have to give up soon.

“Come on, Ellie, just talk to me for a minute,” Brian pleaded as he struggled to gain his breath. “I can’t run after you like this forever.”

“Smoking can do that to you,” she replied shortly, brushing off his comment. She heard the sound of his footsteps cease, and she knew he had stopped running.

“I know you’re mad, Ellie,” Brian called after her. “I know because I know you better than anyone else. When you can’t deal, you run away from your problems. When something is too big to handle, or you don’t want to deal with it, you just take off on your own and leave everyone else wondering what happened. You’ve done it before, you’re doing it right now, and you’re going to do it again in the future unless someone calls you out on it. So, I’m telling you right now so you learn to fix what’s wrong instead of leaving it broken.”

His words made her stop dead in her tracks, and it made her anger bubble closer to the surface than it had when she saw him with the girl in the kitchen. She paused for a few moments as she felt a few fat rain drops fall onto her face. She knew this was going to turn into a fight. It had been coming for years now, and she had been avoiding it for so long. It was now at the point where she couldn’t run anymore. This wasn’t about the girl he had brought home anymore. It was about everything else now.

When Ellie turned around, she saw Brian bent over trying to catch his breath. She walked slowly back over to him, and he studied her carefully as she closed the distance between the two of them. Brian had struck her where it hurt emotionally, and he knew it.

“What gives you the right to judge me or call me out on my problems?” she asked with a low and dangerous voice. “Everyone has their weaknesses, their problems, their things to fix about themselves, and I highly doubt that you’re any less fucked up than the rest of us. Don’t tell me what I need to change about myself; I know what’s wrong. Instead of picking out my flaws, why don’t you work on your own? I see you still haven’t changed because you’re clearly still a womanizer like you were before I left. Why don’t you try not to have sex with girls on the countertops in my kitchen!”

“Maybe if you tried to do the same thing with someone, you wouldn’t be so high strung!” he snapped back. “You walk around acting like everything is okay, when I’m the only one who can clearly see that you’re a mess on the inside! Stop trying to run and pretend everything is okay!”

At that moment was when the skies opened up. It rained so hard that Ellie really couldn’t see anything around her but Brian. Her clothes were instantly soaked all the way through and her hair stuck to her face.

“Don’t tell me not to pretend to be okay because once I stop trying to control everything, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to be fine again. I’m afraid the pain will be so unbearable that I can’t deal with it anymore. I’ve been pretending for four years now, and I can pretend for another four if I have to,” she said quietly. She felt like all of her resentment toward him for all these years was finally surfacing. She hadn’t felt it until now. She never blamed him for anything, and she was beginning to realize that it maybe was time to start.

“You never tell anyone when they’re stepping all over you,” he said. “Stop trying to be so damn nice and let everyone know how you feel. I’ve never seen you get mad once, so yell at me! Tell me how mad you are that you found some girl you don’t even know in your kitchen, half naked. Tell me how I made you run across the country four years ago!”

“You don’t get it, do you?” she yelled.

“You keep everything on the inside, Ellie,” Brian said. “No one ever knows how to read you, and no one ever knows what you’re feeling. I know there’s more going on here than some girl being in the house. You should hate me for everything, but for some reason, you act like nothing ever happened.”

“Do you want to know what I’m feeling?” she asked sarcastically. “I’ll tell you everything that’s been going on in my messed up emotions since we were together; if that’s what you really want to hear. I blame you for everything that I feel. You’re the one who turned my whole life upside down and tore it to pieces. You don’t know what it’s been like for me these past four years, Brian. After what happened, nothing has ever been the same. You don’t have to walk around every day with the knowledge that you ended the life of something that never even had a chance to defend itself. I think about that baby every single day of my life, and it never gets any easier. Some days, even now, I feel like the guilt is just too much to bear, and I have no one to help me learn how to deal with it.”

He paused for a few moments before he took a step forward, closing the distance in between the two of them. He placed his hands on both sides of her face as she began to cry. Ellie was surprised she had kept everything together through her whole speech. There was no doubting that the flood gates that had been holding her emotions back for so long were now completely open. She thought she was on the way to repairing herself, but, clearly, she was wrong.

“You’re wrong,” he whispered. “You have me.”

“That’s just it, Brian,” she answered between her sobs. “I don’t have you. The one time I needed you to be there for me the most, you never showed up.”

“Things were so much different back then. I was just a kid. I’m here for you now.”

Ellie closed her eyes and shook her head. The rain and her tears mixed together as they ran in small streams down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs, and when she opened her eyes again, they stared straight down into his soul. He had fellt guilty, just as she had, but never to that degree. Now, he felt terrible for everything that had happened between the two of them.

She had been so innocent back then, she had been nothing but a girl who had the whole world ahead of her and who was so full of life. Brian now realized he had ruined all of that for her, and now he didn’t know if he could ever forgive himself. Out of all the girls in the world, Ellie was the only one who had ever meant something.

“I’m so sorry, Ellie,” he whispered as she closed her eyes once again.

He didn’t know what else to do, so he kissed her softly on the lips. He lingered for a few moments, as he wasn’t sure whether his actions had made everything better or worse. He could feel her body tense, but after a few moments of hesitation, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

Everything was so familiar and so comforting, and for the first time in a long time, Ellie felt whole once again. He smelled, tasted, and felt the same as always and she couldn’t help but get lost in the kiss. She relaxed into him and he brought his arms around her waist, pulling her in so every inch of his body was touching every inch of hers.

It was probably the most passionate and heartbreaking kiss of Ellie’s life, as she let all of her emotions seep into it. She had missed every part of him, and he filled the empty spot where her heart had been lost so long ago. Her body was on fire from his touch, and she wanted every part of him as her longing came back in full force. It was the first time she really felt something again.

She was in a bit of a daze as her emotions were currently running everything, but it didn’t take her long to take control of everything again. She was going to hate herself for doing this, but it wasn’t supposed to end up this way. She knew if she ever tried to work things out with him again, she would just end up getting her heart broken way too much. She was sure she would have some happy moments, but those weren’t worth going through all of that terrible pain again. Ellie pulled away from his lips and lingered for a few moments before speaking.

“This can’t happen again,” she whispered as the rain kept pouring down around them. “I used to think we were meant to be when I was younger, but now I’m starting to think that it could never work out between the two of us.”

“Ellie,” Brian said. It was a silent request to give it a chance, but she could accept it. She didn’t know what was really going through his mind, and she couldn’t risk being used just to have fun again.

“Listen, Brian,” Ellie said as she stepped away from him. “I can’t risk doing this with you again. Just an example of one reason why is the fact that the first time you decide to kiss me in years is less than ten minutes after you were about to have sex with some random girl. I can’t do it to myself again, I just can’t.”

She had received her heart back finally, and in just a few moments, it was ripped out of her hands again. It was the biggest dilemma ever because in order to be completely happy, she would have to take a big risk. She would have to jump off of the cliff without knowing what would happen, and she just couldn’t take risks anymore. She was the type of person who had to know what was going to happen in the future, and she couldn’t do that if she was going to try to be with Brian.

And with that, she walked back to the house, leaving Brian standing in the pouring rain, all by himself.