Love is a Pretty Tragedy

My skin was soaking up the sizzling mid-summer heat. There was the puttering from the old air conditioning unit, the bees buzzing around our perfectly kept garden, and Aly humming along to a song stuck in her head. Poolside in my backyard was a normal summer occurrence for us. In the past years on the days that Henry was working, we would always come out here and just relax. However, an afternoon like this was the first of this summer as it was no ordinary summer.

"I can't believe you told Ethan to come to my house yesterday." I said while taking a sip of my lemonade that our house staff had made for us as usual. They loved Aly for some reason and always hated me.

"What do you mean?" Aly said sitting up in the beach chair. She was now intrigued as her eyes became wide. "Ethan came to see you yesterday, and you are just telling me now! We have been sitting out here for an hour."

"I was the one surprised that you didn't bring it up.” Her favorite thing now is to tease me about him. “So you really didn't tell him to come to my house?" I was now the one intrigued. I grabbed the sunscreen bottle and reapplied to my face, the first place to always get embarrassingly burned.

"No, I was going to call him this afternoon to invite him to your birthday bash tomorrow."

"Ugh," I moaned," that's still going to happen? I thought you would give up." Okay maybe I knew she would never miss the opportunity to throw a party, but I hoped that she had since it hadn’t been the topic of any of our conversations.

"Of course it's still going on, but don't get me off subject. I need dets!" Aly said almost jumping out of her seat.

"Well, nothing exciting happened.” That was a lie, and Aly could see right through me as I bit my lip.

“Stop with the lip biting and just spit it out!”

“He came over, we walked to the park a little bit from my house, hung out, kissed, walked bac..." I was stopped by Aly shrieking.

"Ah! That's so exciting. Tell me in detail! I knew the first chance he would get alone with you he would try to plant a wet one." Aly squeaked.

"Well, Ethan hadn't planned anything; so we went to the park. I decided to take him up to the woods."

"Estelle, don't tell me you took Ethan to your brother and yours old clubhouse." I paused, and a frown appeared on her face. She really did know too much about me.

"But it was okay, I did break down. Ethan was amazing though; he came over and comforted me and..." I couldn't finish. If I continued, I would have to tell Aly the truth. I could feel my eyes starting to water; so I took a few breaths, even though it didn't help. Aly came over sat beside me with her innocent eyes staring into mine. "And it was amazing, more than amazing." Just thinking about the kiss still made my lips tingle.”He was just so different than how he had been so far.”

Aly gave me a big hug, "Aw Ella, I'm so proud of you. You need this to help you. You were throwing away your life before."

My whole body tensed as I wiped away a tear from my eye. "Al, I can't believe you just said that.” She seemed to be sticking by her words. “You-you don't understand.” I thought she knew me better than to say something like that. I felt on the verge of tears and rage as I spat, “You wouldn't know since you've never been in love." She quickly flinched at my comment, and a hurt expression appeared on her face. That was a low blow, but I continued anyway, "You don't get it at all. I wanted Ethan to be him. More than anything in the world. It didn't help that Ethan seemed like him, his kiss, the way he acted, everything. It was almost too much to handle. I still love him. I don't know how to stop."

"Estelle." I looked Aly now, her dark brown eyes tearing up. "I love you, okay? I just want the best for you. Henry is an asshole, plain and simple. You poured your heart out to him, while he just..."Aly couldn't even finish, "Just please, please give Ethan a chance for me. You're strong and you can get through anything. You will get over him." She put her arms around me, and I was glad to finally have a shoulder to cry on. “I am here for you now and always”

If only it was that simple to get over the kind of love we had.

Henry's POV

It took both of my hands to open the steel metal doors to the gym. Shawn was inside waiting. The bright sunlight immediately illuminated the pitch black room. The doors shut behind me with a bang. My eyes soon got used to the light, and I noticed Shawn wasn't the only one in the room. Audrey was as well, with a huge grin on her face. A sigh came in the direction where Shawn was sitting. "Henry, Henry, Henry," were the three words he spoke very slowly. He made it seem like he was processing some great information, but I knew he was just using it as an intimidation factor.

"Yes," I answered timidly, then cleared my throat and answered with a sterner yes.

"There are only a couple things I ask of you." Shawn got up from his corner and slowly walked towards me. His eyes locked into mine, and I couldn’t look away. His size was overbearing even though I had increased in size recently myself. "You missed yesterday's practice."

"I'm sorry," My voice cracked slightly. Everything about Shawn unsettled me. I hated him because of that, "I had something very important to do, but I promise it won't happen again."

"Save your excuses. What could be more important? Is it a girl, even worst a human one?" Shawn spat at me with disgust as his black eyes narrowed. I glared over at Audrey; I knew she told. Somehow she must have followed me and was so jealous she tattled-tailed. I should have never let her in on my obsession with Estelle; she would have never figured it out on her own.

"It was." I admitted, it seemed pointless to lie when I knew he knew. Shawn seemed surprised by my honesty. "Except I will never see her again." Even though I wanted that statement to be true, I knew I couldn't stop myself. She was becoming more of an obsession each day. Instead of in love with her I was fixated and infatuated with any information I could find out about her.

"Do you promise?" Shawn questioned.

"Yes," I replied even though I knew that was going to bite me in the butt later.

"Good, because there are many other nice girls here that are your own kind and belong to your clan." Shawn turned around and smiled at Audrey, who looked down and acted all shy. Fake. "In fact, instead of tomorrow's usual training you two should go on a little date. That would bring you one step closer to being fully accepted into the clan."

"I can't do it tomorrow." I replied a little too quickly. Tomorrow was Estelle's birthday party, sure I wasn't invited, but I was still going. It's not like it stopped me before. Anyway, I already had her present and everything. If it all worked out, I might be able to win her back. It would be more of a problem with Shawn insisting I didn’t see her though.

"Why?" Shawn said while I was heading for the steel doors. He quickly followed in step beside me. "You don't have plans with that girl, do you?" It seemed like he could almost read my mind. I would have known he had, if he hadn't already taught me how to block others out. I guess he should have taught that power last.

"No." I nodded my head in disagreement while Shawn opened the door one handed. "You've been taking the pills, right?" Shawn whispered into my ear as I walked by.

"Every day, twice a day," I said without turning around, hoping to avoid talking to Audrey completely.

"Perfect." Shawn shouted from behind me. If I would have turned around, I would have seen a new expression form on his face, one of pure excitement. I would have seen him give a quick smirk to Audrey. Instead, I was preoccupied with thoughts of sneaking into Estelle’s birthday party. I missed the secret plans going on behind my back.