Thank you so much: SolitudeMyLove, HarrylovesGinny09, nightmares,and,dreamers, EZRIALoVeforever12, violin27, PrettyLittleBethany, OnceAWildcatAlwaysAWildcat, EzriaAddicted, Bite-Me-I'm-Irish, StarWriter101, and Pretty,glee,liars! Love you all!
I know the comments the students say in this chapter are really rude, but I had to make them like that for the rest of the chapter to work.
"Hey guys," I smiled as I walked over to Emily's locker where Spencer, Hanna, and Emily were all talking. They were huddled over each other's phones looking at something on them.
"Aria…" Spencer said cautiously. "Have you seen this?"
All the girls looked up from their phones at me, with fear written all over their faces.
"Seen what?" I asked, nonchalantly, as I reached for Emily's phone.
I gasped as soon as I realized what the picture on the screen in front of me was of. In bright colors, was a picture of Ezra and I kissing in the coffee shop from the previous day. My arms were wrapped around his neck and Ezra's hands were resting at my waist. And it was extremely obvious who the two people were.
"How the hell did you get this?" My breathing suddenly became ragged and I started to feel dizzy.
Exactly how Emily got the picture suddenly struck me. It was from A. I was wearing the same black tank top in the picture that I had been wearing the day before. The person who took this picture was in the coffee shop with Ezra and I yesterday. A was there, in the same room as me, and I was completely oblivious to that fact at the time. If only I had paid a bit more attention and looked around the room, I could have figured out who A is!
"A sent me a text yesterday while I was with Ezra while we were there. It said…" I told the girls as I pulled my phone out of my purse and opened up the text.
"Watch what you do in public… it may be more public than you think. –A" I recited to the girls with a groan.
"Well A took a picture of the two of you and decided to send it to everyone in the school." Emily said, holding up her phone displaying the picture.
"What?" I gasped, as my heart skipped a beat. The whole school now knew about Ezra and I?
A group of girls passed by us and pointed to me. "Yeah! That's her! She's dating Mr. Fitz!"
I felt my eyes welling up with tears as more and more students started crowding around Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and I, and continued making comments about me.
"There she is! That dirty little slut!" A boy in my Math class laughed as he walked by us.
"I wonder how many other teachers she's hooked up with!" A blonde girl from my Chemistry class exclaimed at me. I stumbled backwards, away from the crowd.
"If Mr. Fitz likes younger girls, I wonder if he'll hook up with me!" One of the girls commented.
"Don't you girls have something better to do than pick on people who are better than you?" Spencer unexpectedly snapped towards them all as she stood in front of me, covering me from their view.
My phone suddenly started ringing. Hanna, Spencer, and Emily, all watched me as I looked at the Caller ID: Ezra.
"Hello?" I said quietly into the phone, trying to hide the fact that I was crying.
"Aria, do you want to stop- wait, is everything okay?" Ezra asked, somehow realizing that I was crying.
"Ezra." I whispered, as tears continued falling down my face. "I-"
Spencer grabbed the phone from my hands and started talking to Ezra.
"Remember when you two kissed last night at the coffee shop?" Spencer said, not giving anyone time to fool around. "Aria told me about it, but that's not the point. Someone took a picture of the two of you and sent it around the school."
I grabbed the phone from her hands after she said this. I knew that Ezra was going to flip out. We had planned on taking baby steps and letting a few people find out about our relationship at a time. We most certainly did not want everyone in Rosewood to find out all at once! I did not know if either Ezra or I could handle that amount of gossip about us at the same time.
"My mom is definitely going to know about us by the end of the day. I'm so sorry, Ezra." I whispered, cupping the phone in my hand against my tear-stained cheek.
"She works here! She might know within the hour!" Hanna corrected me, as she threw her hands up in the air.
I shot her a glare.
"Sorry." She said quickly, looking down at the ground.
"They're talking Ezra. They're all talking." I whispered into the phone, as I looked around the hallway at all the students who were watching me.
"I bet she's talking to her teacher right now!" I heard a random girl exclaim as she passed by us.
"Do you think they've done it?" Her friend asked, giggling as the pair continued walking past us.
"It's Mr. Fitz! They probably couldn't wait to get in each others' pants!" The first girl laughed.
"Did I just hear that right?" Ezra cried from the other end of the phone. "Aria, I-"
"Ezra I can't do this." I whispered, interrupting him. "I mean, I've been talked about before, but never like this!"
"Want me to come pick you up?" Ezra asked sincerely, as I heard him shuffle some papers around on his desk in his office.
"Come on, get in here." Hanna led me into an empty classroom and Emily closed the door behind us.
"Did my English teacher actually just ask me if I wanted to skip school?" I chuckled into the phone as I leaned against the corner of one of the desks in the front row.
"I'll take that as a yes?" Ezra asked hopefully.
"Definitely. I need to get out of here." I sighed, looking around the room. It then struck me that this was Ezra's old classroom. Which also happened to be my mom's new classroom.
"I'll be there soon. Just hang on." Ezra replied.
"Bye." I hung up the phone and looked up at the girls.
"Why does this have to be so hard?" I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Why can't A just leave me alone and let Ezra and I come out to Rosewood in our own way?"
"Come on, Aria. It's A. They want to do whatever they can to ruin our lives." Spencer said as she started rubbing my back soothingly.
"It's like, just as soon as things were finally working out for the better for Ezra and I, A had to go screw it all up." I said angrily.
My phone chimed a moment later. I picked it up from the desk next to me to find a new text from Ezra.
E: Where are you?
I quickly responded, telling him that I was in his old classroom.
I closed my eyes, so thankful that Ezra was here. I was going to get out of this awful place and the nightmare of this day was finally going to be over.
"Aria," Emily said cautiously, causing me to open my eyes again. "Did you tell Ezra to come to this classroom?"
I nodded, not understanding what the problem was.
"All of the students are going to see him walking down the hall! What if they say something?" Emily cried.
Before I could comprehend this, Spencer had dashed out of the room.
"Where the hell did she just go?" Hanna cried.
I shook my head. With Spencer, you never knew what that girl was up to.
"Is she okay?" I heard Ezra's voice ask as he appeared in the doorway a moment later, with Spencer beside him.
I jumped up from the desk and ran into his arms. He immediately wrapped his arms around me, holding me close against his chest, as he buried his face in my hair. I closed my eyes and inhaled the delicious scent of his cologne. I knew everything was going to be okay. I was here, safe in Ezra's arms. No one anyone said about us was going to change the way I felt about Ezra and these students were most certainly not going to tear us apart, no matter how much they did not like our relationship.
"I'll be right back." Ezra whispered to me, releasing me from his embrace.
I took a step back, to see Spencer glaring at the door with her hands on her hips. There was a crowd of students standing outside the door, watching us from the little window.
Ezra gave me a small smile, before leaving the room. He closed the door behind him, and I could see all the students who had been standing in front of the door were now fearfully looking at Ezra. Spencer came over to me and started rubbing my back, while Emily gave me a comforting hug. Hanna grabbed Emily's phone and started looking at the picture of Ezra and I again.
At that moment, I was secretly so thankful that Ezra used to be my teacher. I knew that if he had not been, absolutely no one would have listened to whatever he was saying out there.
The door suddenly banged open and to my complete surprise, Ella walked in.
"Mom." I whispered, looking up from Emily's shoulder as tears streamed down my face. Spencer continued rubbing my back soothingly, while Hanna kept studying the picture of Ezra and I on her phone. Emily was in just as much shock as I was.
By the look on Ella's face, clearly she knew about the text that had gone around.
"Would you like to tell me what's going on?"
"Her mom caught her!" I heard a voice exclaimed, pointing to me, as they walked past the classroom.
Ella sighed as she walked back over to the door.
"Could you excuse us?" She asked the girls, gesturing for Hanna, Spencer, and Emily to leave.
Hanna, Spencer, and Emily shot me sympathetic glances as they quickly shuffled out of the room.
"Aria, what's going on here?" She asked me. I clutched my phone tightly in my hand, deathly afraid of what Ella was about to say to me.
Suddenly, the door opened again and Ezra walked in.
"Aria, I-" Ezra froze in place as soon as he realized that we were no longer alone.
I leaned against the desk nearest to me as tears continued falling down my face.
"I'm so sorry, Ezra." I whispered. There was no point in calling him Mr. Fitz anymore. My mom had obviously seen the picture of Ezra and I, meaning she knew about us completely.
"So it's true." Ella said, emotionlessly, as she watched Ezra intently.
"What's true?" Ezra asked, his eyes wide. I closed my eyes, letting more tears spill down my face, as I waited for the moment I knew was coming.
"That you're dating a student?" She paused for what seemed like forever. She continued when neither Ezra nor I responded. "And said student just so happens to by my daughter?" Ella asked him, as she pursed her lips together.
Ezra's face completely drained of color as he turned to me with a panic struck look on his face. I looked down, too ashamed at myself to meet his eyes. This was my entire fault. If I had not been so pushy about wanting other people to know about my relationship with Ezra, we never would have gone to that coffee shop yesterday, A never would have taken that picture, and my mom would not have figured out about us like this!
"Yeah." I whispered. "It's true." I bit my lip as I looked up at my mom with glassy eyes. Her fingers were clenched into fists at her waist, her face was slightly red, and she had so much hate reflected in her eyes, that it hurt me to look into them.
She was furious, to say the least.
Cliffhanger, sorry! The next chapter will have her whole reaction… plus some other things :) Hope you guys liked this chapter, and PRETTY PLEASE REVIEW! :D