You're My Addiction

She always thought it was amazing how time passed by so fast. Each week you find yourself wishing for the weekend to get here, and before you know it you’ve wished by enough weekends to end up back at the same exact day, just one year later.

Ellie thought this was why college had gone by in one big blur. She enjoyed her four years, sure. After all, she had to make the most out of it. Everyone always said it was supposed to be the best time of your life. So, Ellie made the most out of her four years. Or, she did the best she could rather.

Now, Ellie thought maybe what everyone said wasn’t always true for every single person. As she got her life organized in California, she thought maybe she would be able to find that stage of her life that she could look back on later in life and call it ‘the best’. She knew that the only way to get to this place would be to get her heart back, and it seemed the closer she came to where her heart was, the harder it would be to retrieve the missing part of her soul.

It was hard living in the same house as Brian, but she dealt with it to the best of her ability. Sure, she avoided him as much as she could without being obvious, but when she was forced to see him she was kind and courteous. However, she wasn’t going to allow herself to get close to him again. She wanted to offer him friendship, but she didn’t think it would be possible.

As the first few weeks went by, Ellie lived out of boxes and a bare room. She cleaned the house in the way that a bunch of boys could not, and she cooked them meals often to show them how grateful she was to them for letting her live with them.

She wished she could get a start on her room right away, but there were more important things she had to take care of first, like getting a job. She knew it would not be hard to get one, as nurses were much in demand, but she wasn’t going to be any closer to having an income if she didn’t get her foot in the door somewhere. It took her a few weeks to become officially employed at a major hospital about twenty minutes away as a pediatric nurse. Some people couldn’t handle that area, but she found it was where she loved to be the most.

She didn’t consider herself to be a ‘kids’ kind of person, and, in fact, babies kind of scared her because she never knew how to deal with them. Ellie loved working with the patients at the hospital, though. There was something about helping saving the life of someone who still had so much to experience in life that made her feel good inside.

After getting her job, she worked tough shifts for the first few weeks, working twelve hours a couple nights a week. She would come home completely exhausted at five in the morning and would sleep till about two or three in the afternoon. Although she hated being on this schedule, it did give Ellie another way to avoid running into Brian. In fact, for awhile she barely saw any of the boys.

In keeping up this exhausting schedule, she didn’t even want to think about painting her room or unpacking her things. The only things she needed at the moment were scrubs and pajamas anyway, so why make herself do more work?

Of course, after a few weeks she finally had a few day shifts to mix along with the night ones, and Ellie was able to live a little more of a normal life. Her first goal was to make her room look like somewhere she actually lived.

One sunny Wednesday afternoon, Ellie walked through the front door with two cans of lavender colored paint. Zacky was sitting in the kitchen, eating a sandwich he had just made. He looked up as Ellie walked over to greet him.

Instead of saying hi, Ellie placed the two cans in front of him on the table. “Guess what, Zack? Since you’re the only one who seems to be home, you’re going to be the one who helps me paint my room on this fine afternoon.”

“Oh, come on, Ellie,” he protested as he wiped his hands with a napkin. “Matt said he was going to help you do that. And besides, I have things to do today.”

“Well, first of all, I don’t see my brother anywhere, so that doesn’t help me. And second, I don’t count watching t.v. as something important,” Ellie smirked as she picked up the paint cans. “Just look at it as bonding time between you and me. We have to get back to best friend status sometime soon!”

She heard Zacky grumble in protest as she walked away, and she only smiled. She knew he was following her because as much as he didn’t want to, he was going to help her no matter what. “I would change your clothes though, Ellie, because I think you’re going to have to pay in some way for making me help you.”

“Is that a threat, Mr. Baker?” she asked him over her shoulder. She laughed as she ran up the stairs to change. If he thought he was going to win at some kind of painting war, he was sorely mistaken.

Three hours later, it was hard to tell whether there was more paint on Zacky and Ellie or on the walls. But, no matter how much of a mess they had made, they still got the job done. The walls were now a much more pleasant color than the generic white they had been before. Ellie thought the room already looked ten times better.

“I’d say we did a pretty good job for a pair of unprofessional painters,” Ellie commented as she stood back to admire her work. “What do you think?”

“Yeah, I’d say it looks decent for the two least handy people in the house,” he replied as he tried to wipe some paint off of his arms. Unfortunately, it had dried already.

“Hey, I think it looks a lot better than decent,” Ellie said as she started to gather together some of the paintbrushes and rollers. “Could you start to clean these while I clean everything else up?”

Zacky grabbed a handful of brushes from her and took off downstairs to start cleaning. Once he left, she stood back to admire their work once again, holding the last dirty roller in her right hand.

“Hey, it looks a lot better,” Brian said as he entered the room. Ellie could feel him standing next to her.

“Thanks, me and Zacky did it.”

“It looks like you missed the walls a couple of times,” he said with a chuckle as he took in her appearance. Her dark brown hair was pulled up in a messy bun, but there was paint dried in it too. She had numerous paint hand prints all over her clothes, probably from Zacky, and there was purple paint all over her skin.

She turned her face too look at him and she smiled. “Yeah, I guess we got carried away a little bit, but if you think I’m bad, you should see Zack.” Ellie smiled wickedly. There were two purple war stripes painted underneath her eyes, and she pointed to them before she spoke again. “I did this though. I had to show him I wasn’t messing around.

He laughed and they both turned away to look at the room again. “I’m sure he’s covered in a lot more paint than you are. I have to say, I do like the color choice though.”

“I know. Purple is your favorite color.” Ellie mentally kicked herself for saying that before she even got the full sentence out. Friends only knew what your favorite color was. She was already showing that she cared too much just in the first real conversation they were having since she came back to California.

“Yeah,” he said sounding a little bit shocked. “You still remember that?”

“Of course I do. You’ve been obsessed with purple since you were twelve.”

“Do you want to get out of here?” Brian whispered sloppily in Ellie’s ear. She could tell he was drunk, at his own prom nonetheless. She could see his date just a couple seats over glaring daggers at the two of them. His date had been angry the whole night, and she had sat at their table with her arms crossed, thinking if she tried hard enough, Brian would ask her what was wrong. Ellie knew that the date was angry at her because Brian had talked to Ellie more, but she felt kind of bad for the girl. She knew what it was like to be ignored by them. In the past few months they had become more distant than ever.

“What about your date?” Ellie asked, tilting her head towards the girl. Brian looked over, making it obvious that they were talking about her and laughed. The girl grabbed her small clutch angrily and stormed away from the table. “Great Brian, now she’s going to hate me. She thinks were talking about her.”

“Eh, so what?” he said, waving his hand like none of it mattered, like he hadn’t tried so hard to get this girl to go to prom with him in the first place. He had told them all he wanted to go with this girl more than anyone else, claiming he had wanted to fuck her for a long time. Ellie had walked away when Brian had this conversation with the boys. She didn’t want to hear the way they used the girls in the school. There were girls who fell for their charm every time, though. This girl had practically been begging to go with Brian, and now she thought Ellie was trying to steal him away. “She won’t care.”

Brian flashed her one of those smiles, one of those smiles that could melt her resolve and make her do anything he wanted. As much as she hated to admit it, she could see how they could charm girls so easily. Ellie found herself falling under Brian’s spell more and more often lately. She tried to fight it at first, but she didn’t know how much willpower she had left anymore.

“What about Zacky?” Ellie asked as she sighed, trying to think of one last excuse of why it was a bad idea to leave prom. Zacky had asked her to go to prom with him about three months earlier. She had wanted to know why he asked her, and he said that Ellie was the only girl he knew was still going to be in his life by the time prom came around. Of course Ellie had accepted: he was her best friend. She was a little surprised that the boys even had decided to go at all, though. In fact, right now she was surprised they had stayed this long.

“He won’t care. He’s probably going to leave soon anyway,” Brian replied. They both looked at Zacky who was dancing with a girl he had started talking to about a half an hour ago. Zacky and Ellie had fun at first, but then she found herself sitting alone as Zacky looked for a girl to dance with. One who wasn’t just his best friend. Matt had disappeared with his new girlfriend, Val, hours ago, and everyone else was too busy with their dates.

“Alright,” she finally said in defeat as Brian took her hand and pulled her out of her chair. He led her out of the front doors and to his truck, which seemed like it was parked five miles away. The walk wasn’t so easy in heals.

When they finally got there, he opened the door on the passenger side for her. She smiled at first, but then frowned. She wondered why Brian was being this courteous and hoped that he wasn’t expecting anything too specific from her. Ellie knew one thing for sure; he couldn’t charm her that much. When Brian climbed in his side, Ellie remembered something else important.

“Brian, are you ok to drive?”

“Yeah I’m fine. I didn’t have that much to drink before prom, although that was a bad idea. I don’t even know why we went it the first place. It was stupid,” he said as he started the truck and pulled out of the parking space. “And besides, I’ve driven when I’ve been much worse.”

She was a little nervous, but she stayed in the truck. It wasn’t like she could get out now, anyway, since they were moving.

“Where are we going, anyway?” she asked as she looked out at the dark sky. She took her corsage off, since it was itching her wrist, and placed it on the dashboard.

“You’ll see,” he said as he smiled that smile at her again. The truth was, Ellie probably would have gone with Brian even if it did mean leaving Zacky alone, as terrible as that sounds. If Zacky knew how she felt, he wouldn’t have been mad, though. Lately, she had been looking for as many excuses as possible to spend time alone with Brian. And as she sat at that table at prom, she couldn’t help but be jealous of the girl who was Brian’s date. Although, she was the one who was alone now, and Ellie was the one who was driving somewhere with him, so should she really have been jealous in the first place?

“What about your date? I thought you really liked her,” Ellie asked, trying to find out if she did still have a reason to be jealous.

“I never really liked her, I just thought she was good looking. She got annoying anyway. She was all clingy and shit the whole night.”

“Well, you were her prom date.”

“We’re here,” Brian said as he turned his truck off. It was clear that the girl was never going to cross his brain again long enough to be anything more than a mere passing thought.

As she got out of the truck, Brian grabbed her hand once again and pulled her forward. Right away Ellie knew where they were. They were at the beach. Her beach to be more specific. Ellie laughed as she pulled up the hem of her dress up with her free hand so she wouldn’t trip over it. She had left her shoes in the truck, and her bare feet felt wonderful as she stepped into the soft sand.

“Why did you bring us here?” she asked as she walked forward a little bit so she could look at the ocean. He still held onto her hand, and Ellie stopped herself from looking into it too much.

“I thought it would be quiet,” he replied. “And I also thought that you might like to come here.”

She smiled at him, her eyes lighting up even though it was dark outside. Brian pulled on her arm, and all of a sudden Ellie found herself in his embrace. He slowly swayed back and forth, rocking their bodies in time with the waves breaking on the shore.

“And I also didn’t get to dance with you all night,” he said. “I also like your dress. It’s purple.” Ellie let out a soft laugh as she rested her head on his chest. She closed her eyes and took in the moment. It was one of those moments that you remember everything about, the sound of the ocean, the smell of him, the warmth of his body pressed up against hers, and it was then that she finally figured out what she had been feeling the past few months.

She knew that she was in love with him, and the realization made her feel sad rather than happy. She held on to him tighter, pretending that just for a few minutes Brian felt the same way. Her fake fantasy didn’t really work all that well though because Ellie couldn’t stop thinking about how he didn’t think of her in that way at all. She knew she should back out, but she realized that she couldn’t even if she tried. And she knew that in time, her feelings were going to lead to her first heart break. They always said in stories that unrequited love was the worst kind of love.