Redefine Me, Redesign Me

“I don’t even want to answer the phone when she calls anymore,” Ellie complained to Lisa about her mom’s calls over lunch.

Lisa nodded in understanding she’d heard a lot about Ellie’s mom over the past couple of days. It was very evident that Ellie was lacking her favorite confidant now that she had resorted to telling Lisa about her mom.

“But I don’t have any reason not to answer other than not wanting to which makes me feel guilty,” Ellie sighed in defeat.

Lisa chuckled, “You’re used to Alex being there to keep you from phone calls.”

She didn’t miss the way Ellie perked up at the mention of Alex before she went back into her complaining tone.

“And I didn’t get to talk to him yesterday and he had something he wanted to talk to me about,” Ellie whined, “I’m going crazy trying to figure out what it could be.”

“He said he wanted to talk to you about something?” Lisa asked, “Did he say it was important?”

Ellie groaned, “I don’t know, he just asked me to remind him.”

Lisa chuckled at her friend, “Well I’m sure you’ll be able to talk to him about it tonight.”

“Let’s just hope so,” Ellie agreed.

---------------------------

“Sebastian I am going to feed you to the Rottweiler across the street,” Ellie growled finding Sebastian with one of her socks in his mouth.

Every time she lunged at him he would run away obviously thinking that this was all just a fun game. Ellie was just hoping that when she got it back it wouldn’t have holes chewed out of it, he’d already gotten rid of one sock last night. She wrestled with the dogs for a while still trying to get her sock back. It wasn’t until Payton caught on to what she was after that he pinned the smaller dog for Ellie. She got her sock and took it to the laundry room relieved to find that he hadn’t chewed any holes through the fabric.

Ellie sat back on her couch wondering what she could come up with to pass the time today… she was having a pretty hard time until she spotted her guitar. She had hardly had time to play it unless she and Alex were goofing around. Finding that she had absolutely nothing else to do she picked it up before laying on her back across the couch and began strumming the strings not really trying for a specific chord.

She smiled at the familiar sound and knew that it had been stupid for her to quit before. She should have just gotten over the loss of her first guitar no matter how important it had been to her and bought a new one.

Brady had tried to get her to several times, but she had just laughed it off or acted like she didn’t want to play anymore… though she couldn’t remember a time where she had wanted to do something more than playing guitar or just some form of music.

So she laid there letting her fingers find the right chords as she hummed along.

A text message lit up her phone from Alex.

get on Skype lady!

Ellie rolled her eyes and sat up opening her computer and signing on to Skype. She’d only had it open for a few moments before Alex was requesting a video chat.

“Could you be any more impatient?” she asked laughing at him as she answered his call.

Alex smiled sheepishly, “I haven’t been able to talk to you all day today and we didn’t get to Skype last night,” he justified.

Ellie rolled her eyes. He’d only been gone for three days, but she completely understood his eagerness.

“What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked remembering him asking her to remind him about it, “I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure it out.”

He laughed, “Oh right,” he said, “I wanted you to tell me about the friends with benefits deal you had.” He sounded so casual as if this is something that they talked about all the time.

Ellie didn’t take it as easily, blood rushed to her cheeks so fast she would have compared it to a hot flash. She covered her face with her hands hoping to keep Alex from seeing but by the sound of his laughs she figured she was too late.

“Why on earth do you want to know about that?” she asked peeking through her fingers to see his lopsided grin on her computer screen.

Alex shrugged, “I’m curious,” he reasoned.

Ellie couldn’t help but be embarrassed, she wasn’t even sure why she said anything about it before.

“It hardly lasted a week,” she commented taking her hands from her face and waving away the subject, “It really isn’t anything worth talking about.”

“Then you can tell me who it was with,” Alex suggested trying to get her talking. He already knew that once she had given a little information she would feel the need to clear everything up.

Ellie pulled at the ends of her hair as a blush took her cheeks again.

“It’s not like I’ll know who it is,” Alex teased her trying to get the information out of her.

A groan escaped her throat and Alex eyes widened.

“Oh, so I’ve heard of him,” Alex concluded practically shaking with anticipation.

“Alex, can we never talk about this?” Ellie begged hoping that Alex would let it go and they could talk about some other mortifying event from her past.

“Definitely not, you have me interested,” Alex explained resting his chin on his fist and waiting for Ellie to spill the story.

Ellie chewed on her lip trying to think of a way to get out of this, but she was coming up short. She took a deep breath and hoped that Alex wouldn’t think of her differently.

“It was Collin,” she sighed giving up.

Alex’s eyes bulged and a disbelieving smile broke out across his lips.

“Collin?” he asked dismayed, “The kid that taught you how to play guitar and your grandma told you had a crush on him? That Collin?” He was laughing probably from shock by Ellie’s assessment.

“Yes that Collin,” she confirmed reluctantly.

“How old were you?” he asked trying to piece together time and figure out what could have happened between the guitar lessons and friends with benefits.

Ellie laughed at his confusion and decided she better just go ahead and tell the story.

“It was nearly a year ago just a few months after breaking things off with Hunter for good,” Ellie began trying to figure out what information was necessary to the story.

“I’m sure that made Hunter very happy,” Alex grinned unashamed of his enjoyment in the idea of Hunter getting upset.

“His happiness had nothing to do with it,” Ellie shrugged, “I’d been hanging out with Collin a lot and he was a good friend. All of our friends always joked about me losing my virginity to him and one night it just sort of happened.”

She hoped that was enough information for Alex so they could move on but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

“Oh give me a break,” Alex scoffed, “Sex doesn’t just happen,” he argued, “decisions were made.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, “Well maybe I don’t want to get into the whole story,” she countered.

“Elle!” Alex exclaimed pouting like a child.

“This is so embarrassing!” Ellie whined pulling at her clothes, this wasn’t the kind of thing that she was used to talking about.

“I’m not asking for a play by play,” Alex commented, “What’s the big deal.”

Ellie huffed, “I was terrified,” she admitted, “That is what the big deal is.”

Alex chuckled smiling softly, “Everyone is scared their first time no matter what they say.”

“It wasn’t even that,” she corrected, “I was scared of Hunter.”

Confusion crossed Alex’s face again and Ellie knew she would have to explain.

“He was sending me all sorts of weird messages and I felt like he was always after me the only place I could go that he didn’t know about was Collin’s. I actually stayed there most nights when Brady wasn’t at the apartment for me to stay with. The messages became more threatening and sexual and I didn’t want to go to the police because it would just end up in the gossip columns of the local newspaper. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing my virginity to Hunter, especially not by force and it came up in conversation with Collin,” Ellie shrugged hoping that was enough to go on.

“And from there it just turned into booty calls?” Alex speculated.

Ellie rolled her eyes, “basically we could barely hang out alone, which was really both of our faults so we called the whole thing off. We didn’t want to ruin our friendship over sex.”

“Gah you lost your virginity to your first crush how am I going to compete with that?” Alex wondered out loud jokingly.

Ellie chuckled, “You seem awfully sure that there is a competition,” she teased.

“Ouch, Elle, those are my feelings you are trampling all over,” Alex countered clutching his chest.

“It is oddly quiet on your end. Where is everyone? And please do not say they are actually there,” Ellie was already blushing at the thought of anyone other than Alex hearing her ridiculously embarrassing story.

Alex chuckled, “Everyone is out for a night on the town and I decided to stay in,” he winked at her through the computer screen and for some reason it gave her butterflies.

“Opting out of an exciting night on the town are you feeling okay?” Ellie asked jokingly.

“Separation anxiety getting the best of me,” he reasoned shrugging his shoulders.

“I don’t think that applies,” Ellie pointed out giving Alex a doubtful look.

“Sure it does,” he argued.

Ellie cleared her throat, “In other news I’m going to kill Sebastian.”

Alex’s face turned to mock outrage, “Not the puppy!” he shouted.

“If he eats one more sock he’s sleeping with the fishes,” she responded with mock resolve.

Alex laughed, “He’s eating socks?” he asked through his giggles.

Ellie glared at Sebastian as he waltzed by without a care in the world, “Yes he’s eating socks, and the little brat took out one of my favorite pairs.”

“I have dog crates at my house if you wanna pick them up to keep him in, while you’re out,” Alex suggested, “that way he can’t get into your things.”

Ellie waved it off, “It isn’t that big of a deal I’ll just keep the doors to my room and the laundry room shut when I’m not here to keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll give him a good talking to when I come back for the hometown show,” Alex promised.

“When is that again?” Ellie asked hoping that it was a lot closer than it seemed.

“In a little over a week,” he replied, “the weekend before Thanksgiving.”

Ellie made a face at the thought of going home for the holiday. She would make an excuse to stay in Baltimore but with Alex on tour she really didn’t have much of one.

“How are things with your mom?” Alex asked gathering that was what the face was about.

Ellie sighed, “Bad as always,” she replied smiling.

Of course the rest of the conversation revolved around the subject of Ellie’s mom. Ellie insisted that nothing she did would help the situation while Alex insisted that she should make an effort to be nice in the very least.

Ellie really didn’t know why Alex was so concerned about the state of her relationship with her mom but she didn’t mind as long as it kept him talking. She missed seeing his face as much as she hated to admit it, even if it was though a video chat as he lectured her on her short temper with her mom.