For Us

Elliotte
We All Roll Along
Sean opened the door to his black Escalade for me, and the fucker helped me get in the car, too. It caught me off guard until I remembered the first day we met.

Dear goodness, Stella would kill me if I wasn’t at class soon. As crazy as that bitch was, she drilled me about being late for acting classes. What started out as an extra-curricular fun class turned into a nightmare when Stella decided that I could pursue acting as a career.

I was looking ahead but not really seeing, seeing but not really looking. People came and went, and the door was just ten feet in front of me.

But between the door and me, there was a guy that my body collided into. A really attractive blue eyed guy with muscles like I had never seen on a real person.

The way he looked at me was kinda captivating. His eyes caught mine, and for a second, I felt the air stop in my lungs. Felt the rush of that “love at first sight” moment everyone said wasn’t real.

Was it real? Was I just caught in the depths of the blue of his eyes? The contours of his jaw, the style of his hair?

I hadn’t noticed there was a cool breeze until it hit against my burning face, but I managed to keep my eyes locked in his and smile.

He had to force himself to look away from me so he could help me pick up the binder I dropped. Some of the loose papers had fallen out, and he managed to snag them up before the wind blew them across campus.

I let out a breath. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, and he laughed as he nervously rubbed the back of his head. “I was just headed inside here to see what class is taught there.”

“Theater,” I answered, and I chewed on my bottom lip a little. “You could probably still get signed up for it. Mrs. Stein is furious at the low number of guys in there this semester.”

He walked with me the few steps to the theater building and opened the door, that perfectly straight white smile on his lips. “I’ll go right now.”

Always holding doors for me, carrying my bags. He took care of me, even though it was never anything romantic. A part of me always wanted it to be, and sometimes, I forgot that it wasn’t.

His car was warm almost immediately, and for an added measure, there were ass warmers. I snuggled into the seat and looked at Sean.

I was surprised to find him looking at me, that wide smile on his lips as his blue eyes shimmered in delight. “What are you so happy about?”

He shook his head and looked back to the road, but the smile didn’t leave. “Nothing, El, I just . . . it’s great seeing you again. I’ve fucking missed you. It was three years, but . . . a lot can happen in three fucking years.”

I smiled. “It really can.”

The smile left his face, though, and got replaced with a frown. “So, really, smoking? Why, El?”

“You know, when I got the part, I actually said, ‘Nope, can’t get hooked. Sean would hunt me down and kill me,’” I informed him. “It just happened, though. It’s not like I’m proud of it. Just haven’t had a reason to stop.”

He sighed. “I could never kill you, Sparks. I just wish you would find a reason to stop. Call me selfish, but I wanna keep you around as long as possible.”

“Well, help me then,” I suggested. “I’m good with stopping. Completely down for it. Give me a reason.”

Now, the smile came back in the form of a smirk. “Oh, I’ll give you a reason. Just you wait. If more time with me isn’t reason enough, I’ll give you one.”

I wiggled my eyebrows at him, trying to mimic the weird thing he does himself, but when I was unsuccessful, we both just laughed. “What do you mean?”

He looked to me when we reached a red light and didn’t hold anything back. He didn’t stop his smile, didn’t hold back anything. Just let his emotions swim in the depths of his blue eyes. “Do it for us.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar,” I murmured, and I thought back to the last time he said it.

“No! There’s no use! I’m gonna fail, and I’ll be done with college. There’s no point in even trying.”

As I paced around Sean’s dorm, nervously biting at my fingernails, Sean laid there and watched me, those blue eyes glazed over in thought.

“You don’t believe in yourself,” he said. “You don’t think there’s a reason for you to stay.”

“There isn’t,” I whispered, and a single tear betrayed me and rolled down my cheek. “Everyone’s leaving.”

Sean immediately jumped up to his feet and cradled my hands in his face, but despite how much I loved it, more tears fell from my face. He wiped them off with his thumbs and kissed my forehead in the most gentle of ways.

“Stay for me,” he breathed. “Stay until you get your big break. Make something of yourself, Sparks.”

“I can’t,” I insisted. “Everyone that I’ve ever known and gotten close to in my life is making something of themselves outside of college. Why can’t I do the same?”

“Fucking do it,” he said, and he shrugged. “But El . . . college is your only guarantee. You’re so afraid of failing in life, I can’t even believe you’re saying this.”

He was right, and the fear of failing had occurred to me. Actually, it was biting me in the ass, but that wasn’t the worst fear I had.

“I’m more afraid of being alone. Give me a fucking reason, Boo Bear. Give me a reason, and I’ll do everything I can to overcome this.”

He took my hands in his, and, out of nowhere, began kissing each of my fingers in a delicate and tender way. The way his eyes looked down at me made me realize that this wasn’t just my best friend reasoning with me.

This is something Sean wanted to do for an entirely different reason.

“Stay for us,” he said.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “For us? What do you mean?”

Sean laughed a little and shook his head, and he pressed his forehead against mine. “I’ll let you figure that one out while you’re still in college.”

“What does that even mean?”

Sean shrugged his shoulders, but he kept his eyes on the road. “You never figured it out, I see. I’ll give it a bit more time.”

“I hate you,” I told him, but the truth was, I could never hate him.

He could lie to me. Stab me in the back—even literally, if that’s what he fucking wanted to do—and I would never hate him. I’d be scared as hell of him, and sure, I probably wouldn’t trust him, but I wouldn’t hate him.

It was impossible to hate him. You can’t hate someone you spent so much time loving. Five years of your life spent feeling one way doesn’t just magically turn around to something else.

Would it be impossible to hate Sean? Yeah. Hate and love are so completely different and completely the same that if you do one, I believe it’s actually impossible to do the other. You can say you hate them all you want, and you know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you do.

But for me, it was impossible to hate Sean because I had been so fucking in love with him. Because a part of me still was. I had never let go of it because I was so stuck on wondering, “Well, what if I had told him? What if I had kissed him before he left?” I could never let my feelings go or change.

You can’t love someone then hate them. You can actually not like someone and then love them, and that’s completely different. But genuine, burning hatred can’t be like that.

Genuine hatred requires knowing someone so well that you know everything about them and hate everything about them. All their flaws, insecurities, perfections . . . you know them, and you’re gonna use them against them because their misery is your happiness.

Genuine love requires knowing someone so well that you know everything about them and love everything about them. All their flaws, insecurities, perfections . . . you know them, and you’re gonna make them go away because their happiness is your happiness.

The shittiest part about it was how Sean knew. He fucking knew. Maybe he didn’t know that I loved him so deeply, but he knew that I could never hate him.

Whenever I said I did, he always got this all knowing smirk—like he currently was doing—and said, “You can’t hate someone you’re destined to be with. I mean, you just can’t.”

He would always act so nonchalant about it too that it used to break my heart. I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if it was just some joke to him, something special and real between us, but after he was gone, after Stella was gone . . . I realized that it never had been. We would tease each other, get in these cheesy pick up line wars that either had Stella rolling or worrying for our safety, or we would have moments where we just laid there watching a movie. Acting completely and totally like a couple that just wasn’t a couple.

There had never been a joke hidden in there with Sean. Maybe he didn’t see it the way I did. Maybe he didn’t see it as the start of something more, but it wasn’t a joke.

Stella was right. From the moment she saw us together, she knew something would happen. She knew there would be something more.

And he did it, said the line I had missed hearing. “You can’t hate someone you’re destined to be with. I mean, you just can’t.”

I felt my heart begin to flutter in my chest, but I did a pretty good job of ignoring the zoo in my stomach and looked forward. I watched as we got close to Stella’s place, with Sean and Norm getting through traffic like fucking pros, watched as the city that never sleeps carried on full speed ahead, wide awake, with Stella somewhere in the midst of it all.

For the first time ever, instead of questioning the statement or changing the subject completely, I went along with it. Agreed.

“You just fucking can’t.”

And that seemed to surprise him more than anything, enough that his smirk left and was replaced by a look of utter confusion with a dash of sadness.

“Maybe you have figured it out.”

I hadn’t realized we were there until Sean turned the Escalade off and started unbuckling his seatbelt. His pain didn’t make sense to me—where did that even come from? What was I missing?

Norman surprised me when he ran around and opened my door for me, his lips turned up in a grin. “You know what we didn’t think about, babe?”

My eyebrows rose. “No, Normy. I have no fucking clue.”

“We don’t have a key.”

I rolled my eyes. “You just wanna see me fucking pick a lock again, don’t you?”

“That was fucking cool!” he exclaimed, laughing when Sean looked confused. “Dude, it was so awesome. I had locked the trailer, but she had to get some pants out of there because she had gotten soaked when it started raining. I was in the shower, trailer door locked, and next thing I know, she’s in the house, door’s wide open, and she tells me we have to fucking get a new lock. I wanna see this bitch in action.”

Sean looked a bit uncomfortable as we all climbed out of the Escalade and headed up the stairs to her place. “So you two, like, live together?”

“Sorta,” Norm admitted, and he frowned at me. “I mean, not really. She has a trailer, but she ended up crashing at mine. A lot of her stuff was there, too. So I guess kinda?”

Sean didn’t say anything, just let me pick the lock of the door open with the bobby pin I had in my purse.

“Stella’s gonna be pissed when you tell her she’s gotta get a new lock,” Sean informed me, surprising me with how quickly he went from acting strange to laughing.

“I only broke Norm’s lock because I had to use my pocket knife,” I admitted. “I can get in without destroying this one.”

It didn’t take much wiggling around to get the door unlocked. The deadbolt was a bit more challenging, and the bobby pin was done for when I finished, but I got it and opened the front door.
Ash was waiting by the front door, ready to growl or yelp. When she saw it was me, she started getting excited and jumping around, barking happily while Norman and Sean filed in behind me. It was hard to do, with Ash jumping around, but I closed the door and kicked my way too high heels off.

I made my way into the kitchen with Ash shadowing me, and I opened up the fridge. What I found wasn’t surprising in the slightest bit.

Very little food, mostly alcohol.

I pulled out a bottle of blue tequila. It had been opened, and the bottle where there was no tequila was clear. It was strange . . . I had never seen blue alcohol before.

Then again, I hadn’t been much of the drinker.

I brought the bottle in the living room, where Sean and Norman had already made themselves at home. Ash had left my side to go sniff Sean, but she didn’t growl at him or bark. Only sniffed. Since she already knew Norman, she didn’t care much about him.

Norman stood in the living room by the window, which he had cracked a little, and puffed away on a cigarette. In the midst of talking to Sean and breaking into Stella’s house to steal her tequila . . . I hadn’t thought about smoking. Seeing Norman do it, however . . . .

It was tempting, but I knew Sean was watching me. I knew he was waiting to see what I did.

Every part of me ached to pull out my cigarettes and light up, but I didn’t. Instead, I focused on something else, something even better.

Sean’s eyes shimmered when he saw me resisting. It was just the beginning. I knew that, but it was a start.

But you need—no.

I held the bottle of tequila up with a grin. “Fuck, Sean, have you ever seen a blue bottle of tequila?”

“You’re not drinking tequila tonight,” Norm laughed, his face turned towards the window so the majority of his smoke went outside. “As much as I’m sure Sean would love it, I’d rather not see you naked again.”

I thought I saw Sean’s eye twitch a little, but my eyes narrowed when I looked to Norm. “Whatever. You didn’t see hardly anything. I hate you, Norman. I wanna try tequila, but you never fucking let me.”

“He’s probably right,” Sean informed me. “You’d get naked, and Norm clearly doesn’t wanna see that again.”

He seemed to choke over that word, again, but Norman didn’t notice and just laughed in agreement. I noticed, though, noticed the way his eyes tightened, too.

What was I missing?