"Ellis! Ellis! Please! I have an emergency!"
Ellis whirls around in her chair, expecting a full emotional breakdown. What she's confronted with is a frantic Emily, but not on the scale of boyfriend trouble. "What's wrong?"
"Ms. Kauer found out that David's really been writing my English essays, and now I have to write my own!"
"No, I'm not going to write them for you," Ellis states flatly, turning back to Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Emily throws herself on her bed hopelessly. "I know. You're ten times smarter than David anyways, and all the teachers recognize your style of writing. But maybe ya could give me a skeleton-outline sort of deal, like what should I argue and stuff, and then I'll fill it in with crap. So it'll still be my words and I'll be doing most of the work."
Ellis rolls her eyes. "Critical thinking is half the work, honey." Emily rolls onto her stomach, nailing Ellis with the huge puppy eyes. Ellis grins back fearlessly. "I'll do it, but because I love you, girl, and not because you're naturally manipulative."
"I love ya too, boo." Emily is suddenly lively and spirited. "I'm going on a date with David, tata! By the way, the paper's due tomorrow."
"WHAT?"
"Info's in my English binder in my backpack. Love ya!" Emily whizzes into the bathroom and locks the door.
Ellis throws her hands in the air in exasperation. She should have seen this coming, after all. And Emily had probably waited until the last day to tell her anyways, knowing that Ellis was a terrible procrastinator. Besides, Ellis doesn't do outlines—she does short paragraphs. Something that Emily had probably taken into account as well.
They know each other too well.
Ellis digs through Emily's backpack, pulls out the right binder, and scans over the assignment. It's a simple expository essay and a million thoughts spring into Ellis' mind, but she decides to dumb it down a bit and choose a straightforward approach that Emily can comprehend and explain easily.
As soon as she pulls up her laptop, though, her phone buzzes with a text.
i never thanked u for the weekend makeover, Sunshine says.
No prob, Ellis texts back. i have personal exp looking like i'm 10 instead of 16, but emily really helped me out with that.
i know i felt more mature with ur help. Thanks :) saturday was really fun, even if my original purpose there didn't work out :(
marissa n bryce?
u have good memory :) yeah, bryce seems to like marissa... but i have another friend who's liked marissa for a long time. and we're trying to get them together. u said that emily was bryce's ex...?
Ellis considers this for a moment. Bryce gets a girl that he won't dispose of so easily—Ellis only cares because it might hurt Emily to see a girl that's lasted as long as she did. After all, Emily had been Bryce's longest girlfriend: fourteen months. And two of those months had been with crap from the previous ex, until Emily finally bit back and ended her. Now Marissa here has the potential to last longer than a couple weeks... and her friends don't want her to fall for Bryce. But maybe, by working with Sunshine and her friends, she and Alex could split Marissa and Bryce... and get Bryce and Emily back together.
"Ya writing that paper yet, hon?" Emily calls as she bustles out of the bathroom, perfume drifting faintly off her pretty features accented by slight makeup: full lips, long dark lashes, straight black hair. "I'll see ya in a few!"
"I hate you," Ellis drawls.
"I love ya too."
The door closes, and Ellis picks up her cell phone again. so u have a plan?
"You missed an awesome weekend at the club," Blaine sighs, sprawled on Cameron's bed when he enters the room. "We didn't even get drunk and it was awesome."
"I heard you went to The Nightrose." Cameron makes a face. "And that it was all sweaty guys using Halloween as an excuse to go crazy insane."
"I'll protest that statement by saying that I got a bucket of water dumped over me. Not my fault," Blaine grins. "Weren't you supposed to be tutoring Emily?"
"She went on a two-week anniversary date with David. Her roommate told me." Cameron tosses his book bag carelessly onto his bed; Blaine catches it before textbooks can knock the breath out of him. "It'll all good, anyways—her parents pay me a fixed amount, so it's their money she's wasting."
"Sweet deal. So, I need to drop by McKinley High tomorrow to help a friend. Cover for me?"
Cameron drops into his office chair and flips his laptop open. "Let's hope your success rate is better than mine."
Blaine sighs—Cameron's gone on two trips to McKinley High, and neither of them succeeded in winning Marissa back. There's not a lot he can say to Cameron to make him feel better, but at least his roommate's trying again. If at first you don't succeed... "Hey... where are your glasses, by the way?"
"Don't need them. They were fake."
"Right. Never would have guessed, seeing as I've never seen you without them," Blaine shrugs. "Why wear them if you can see fine without them?"
"I don't know," Cameron replies quietly. "I really don't know."
It's almost eleven at night when Damian finally figures his mom probably won't be coming home within the next couple hours; it isn't work that's holding her back. He doesn't really want to think about what she's probably doing. Or if she'll even come home at all. If she'll show up tomorrow in the same clothes she wore today, trying to pretend that nothing's happened and that there isn't this big awkward divide between her and her son when he stares at her accusingly and she just looks away.
...Anyways, Damian has the house to himself for a few hours at least, so he sneaks onto his mom's computer. His mind and his heart are tangled up in each other and he doesn't know what to think anymore, but there was always one person he could talk to. Somebody who could help him untangle whatever he had on his mind.
His mother wouldn't approve. Maybe half the reason why she dragged him to another continent was to get him away from that one man who Damian always looked up to for guidance. Damian really wasn't that emotionally close to her, after all. If he needed to vent, he'd go out on the field and kick the ball around with his father.
The phone rings on. And on. And on. Until Damian hangs up, feeling lonelier than he has ever before.
"Hey Sam! What's up?"
Sam's out walking the streets late at night, trying to clear his head and is surprised in several ways. One, that somebody else is out walking this late at night. Two, the speaker is much shorter than Sam, even though he's riding a bike: Matheus. Three, they haven't spoken more than two sentences to each other since Sam became the school's quarterback. Or more like, Sam ignored Matheus in keeping with the status quo.
But there's nobody watching now. So why does he find it hard to talk to his former friend? He plasters a smile on his face; he can't help it if he sounds slightly patronizing, but Matheus' shorter stature encourages it. "What are you doing out so late?"
"I live around here, and I'm just going down to the local store to grab a gallon of milk." Matheus slows down to walking speed, just barely keeping his balance while keeping the bike in motion. "What about you?"
"Just clearing my head," Sam says ambiguously. Matheus really doesn't need to know that Santana just satisfied all of Sam's wildest fantasies in a skanky motel room right next to the local convenience store. The girl really knew what she was doing; even after having been milked dry, Sam's still riding a hormonal high as he walks home.
As if Matheus read his mind, he asks, "When did you and Santana happen?"
Sam immediately jumps to the defensive. "What are you talking about?"
"We weren't friends very long and I don't know you that well, but this needs to be said: Santana is a bad idea."
Sam's hackles rise. Who's Matheus to denounce his girlfriend, especially when they aren't friends? "What the hell do you know about it? We're in a relationship because we're in love."
Matheus bristles from the unspoken insult: he's never been in a relationship, so he wouldn't know about the intricacies of chemistry between two people. In response, he snorts derisively. "You can't be serious. Santana doesn't do things for love. Not the love you were looking for when you went after Quinn with a promise ring."
Sam's face twists—that's a painful memory, so he lashes out at Matheus. "She was the one who cheated," Sam growls. "I didn't break any promises; I was faithful to her up until—"
"Until Santana offered you her big twins, right?" Matheus finishes. "But that's not the point; you gave Quinn the promise ring because that's what you're looking for in a relationship, right? Complete devotion, and never pushing her for more than a kiss. So what the hell are you doing running over to Santana?"
"Maybe I felt like a change of pace."
Matheus considers this, but skepticism is written all over his face. "Okay; as much as I find it difficult to believe that somebody would switch relationship views so drastically—"
"Why the hell are you sticking your nose where it doesn't belong?" Sam interrupts with no small amount of incensed annoyance.
"I would be out of line if this were just your business," Matheus retorts, "But as it is, there are other people's hearts are on the line. It's not just your problem."
"Who?"
Matheus answers indirectly with another question. "What were you doing during Glee practice earlier? Brittany tells me Santana skipped Cheerio practice too."
This Matheus is not the quiet, easygoing kid Sam met his first days in the halls of McKinley High. This Matheus is demanding, fierce, powerful, the leader-type that Sam tries to emulate. Even now, through a haze of anger, Sam feels an undercurrent of some other much more turbulent emotion, one that made him submit under stronger boys back at his all-boys school in California. That's an old emotion, one that he wants to run from... but Matheus is on a bike, so he plants his feet. "It's none of your effing business."
Matheus is offended. Good. Now back off. "Hey, I'm just telling you, friend to friend: Santana doesn't give; she takes. She's using you."
"We're not friends," Sam snarls, as his anger, ambition, defiance, and desire swirl in a confusing mess in his mind and his heart pounds in his ears.
And then he runs.
Emily goes straight from the dorm door to the bathroom. She slams both doors as hard as she can, startling Ellis out of the homework concentration bubble she's placed herself in.
Here we go again, she sighs. "What'd he screw up this time?"
Emily doesn't reply. The sink turns on.
Ellis returns to typing. Damn, she did end up writing the entire paper. Five pages worth of excellent, grade-A+ material. Ms. Kauer will definitely be suspicious. Ellis saves a copy onto a thumb drive just in case, then begins to delete whole sections out the paper so Emily can fill it in herself. It's 11pm; Emily's used to going to bed at 2am anyways, so she has plenty of time to fill the blanks in with her limited reasoning.
By the time she finishes removing the meat of the essay, which produces the desired skeleton-outline, Emily has stepped out the bathroom in a tight white tank top and sweats, her pretty face clear of makeup. Ellis doesn't take her eyes off her computer, waiting for Emily to open up when she's ready.
"I screwed up."
This draws Ellis' attention. Emily admitting she was in the wrong? Impossible.
Emily buries her face in her pillow and doesn't speak for a minute or two. Then: "I'm not happy with David."
Surprise, surprise, Ellis thinks.
"And I won't be happy with anyone ever, not until I get over Bryce."
"What happened?"
Emily raises her head from her pillow. "I pushed too many buttons and David fell apart."
"But then you'd be coming back to me saying he screwed up, that he was too sensitive or too fragile or too weak or something. Who beat some sense into you?"
Emily laughs weakly. "Ya know me too well, chica. Alex did. He happened to be working a shift then."
Ellis whirls around in her chair. "You guys went to the Broiler Pot for a two week anniversary?"
"It was David's idea," Emily moans. "And he still paid for everything, even though he walked out on me."
"Until you wrap things up with Bryce," Ellis advises, "Nobody can live up to your expectations."
"Yeah? So how am I supposed to talk to him when he won't even look at me? When he always has some girl hanging off his arm?"
Ellis walks across the room to sit on the bed next to her best friend. "This is the part where we get a lot of help."
"Lindsay? I know it's sort of late at night... and that you're usually in bed by now, but I just wanted to say that I'm sorry."
There's silence on the other end of the line. Samuel doesn't really know what to say beyond the initial apology; he's more of the guy to let everything slide, but from what McKynleigh told him, Lindsay's going through a rough time right now.
"You have an amazing voice," Samuel continues, "And I'd assumed that you'd totally be comfortable with singing in front of your friends. Especially when a particular somebody—"
"It's not that way," Lindsay snaps sharply, which brings Samuel up short. "I don't like him, he doesn't like me. End of story."
Samuel almost laughs out loud, but he catches himself. "Are you kidding me? No, wait, are you kidding yourself?"
"So you caught me," Lindsay snarks. "So maybe I was just too obvious. But it was a mistake. Just like every other mistake I make because I'm destined for Lovely Never After with people who never want me back the same way."
Samuel takes a moment to process this. "You're saying... that you don't think Damian wants you?"
"Not want. 100% commitment: that's what I'd do for him, but he could never do that," Lindsay croaks bitterly. "He already has a girlfriend."
Samuel's stomach drops. As an observer, he's seen Lindsay and Damian grow closer over the past couple weeks—he and McKynleigh had even set bets on how long before they got together. But then Lindsay started drawing into herself and McKynleigh started talking to Lindsay more and Damian flirted with Lindsay even more obviously and Samuel watched everything go down as an observer from the outside, because nobody included him in their interactions.
But if Damian has a girlfriend... then why would he flirt with Lindsay? From the past weeks Samuel hung out with Damian, Samuel knows that Damian's not the unfaithful type. Not even close; Damian's on the other side of the spectrum in that he's completely devoted.
"No way," he argues. "Damian would never cheat on anybody. He's a good guy."
"I saw him with his girlfriend at the fair," Lindsay states bluntly. "After he ditched us for the show choir performance, I didn't find him again until an hour later... and he was right next to the stage holding her. ...Just holding her. Like nothing else mattered." Her voice cracks. "But then... but then... he came back to us fifteen minutes later... and he pretended like..."
"Maybe she was just a friend," Samuel counters.
Lindsay laughs. "Fat chance. You know how Damian is. He avoids close physical contact with pretty much everybody, and when we tackle-hug him, he freezes up like he's been electrocuted. There's no way he'd cuddle with any other girl unless he was already intimate with her." Lindsay clears her throat, and when she speaks again, her voice is strong and level. Samuel is aware that Lindsay's raising her mental defenses, because she's breaking out the big words and speaking with a more sophisticated tone. Fakeness: Lindsay's greatest defense mechanism. "I know he's interested in me and it cuts me deep every time I'm around him... but that doesn't matter anymore. Even if he broke up with Marissa and is somehow available, I just don't have time for silly love games anymore. I quit."
"You're going to quit... loving."
"I don't have the time. I never have any time. I don't have time to play video games, I don't even have time to sleep as much anymore, and I definitely don't have the time to waste on people! No boys, no girls, no Damian. Case closed." A small pause, in which Lindsay takes a breath, regroups, and calms down. "Thanks for checking up on me, Sam. You're a good friend." And then she disconnects.
Miraculously, she answers. It is Damian's eighth Skype call; but he's more than surprised she picked up anyways.
Her dark brown hair is an unruly mess. Ashley looks like she just tumbled out of bed; she probably did, as Ireland is six hours ahead of Ohio time. Her green eyes are soft though, even as her hard voice rebukes, "I'm not supposed to be talking to you."
"I need to talk to somebody," Damian answers vulnerably.
Ashley's composure breaks. "Are you alright?"
"...I can't—"
"I swear, if you start crying, I'm going to disconnect this call."
Damian grins mirthlessly. "No, I ain't gonna break down. I just... there's this... I..."
Ashley sighs. "Spit it out, Damo. School starts in an hour." She peers into the screen. "What time is it there anyways?"
"Past midnight," Damian responds.
"Wow, Damo's pushing his bedtime... this must be pretty serious." Ashley leans back. "So? Why are you calling me?"
Damian takes a deep breath. "There's this girl."
Ashley leans back in her chair and groans softly. "Ugh... you remember the whole reason why we're not talking?" Damian doesn't reply, so she continues. "It's because you're a house plant."
Damian's eyebrows shoot up into his head. "Say that again?"
Ashley leans forward and stares him in the eye. "You're a house plant. If somebody tries to move you from one pot to another, you want to shrivel up and die. Don't get me wrong; we're still friends... but if we talked like this every day, you wouldn't put down your roots. So I'm going to disconnect this call, and you're going to go out in the big wide world of America, forget about me and Troy, and make friends you can play football with." She leans back in satisfaction, having made her point. "You say there's this girl? Don't let me hold you back. Go for her."
"She looks like you," Damian whispers quietly. Ashley freezes, and Damian surges forward, having broken through her rant. "She was playing footy. And at first glance she looked exactly like you. It's what drew me to her... and then we became friends, and then it became something more, but I don't know if it's because of Lindsay or Ashley. I don't know. It drives me insane, that I might love this girl not for who she is, but just because she looks like you, and I—"
"So if you like her now, then those it really matter how you came to like her in the first place?"
"Yes. No. Of course. It's not the right reason. The whole foundation is faulty."
"Love is love."
"Love is not that simple."
"If you want to make it complex, go ahead. Have fun."
Damian groans and smacks his forehead lightly against the tabletop. "I ain't... it's not... either way, she's slipping away. And that's the thing: I didn't even realize how I felt until she started giving me the cold shoulder. And now I'm stuck not sure whether or not these feelings are real or—"
"You can't feel fake emotions. Listen to me, Damo. You're thinking too hard. Stop thinking about it. Forget about me and what I look like and how you've never beat me at football and what we used to do every summer. Forget about the first date, the first kiss. Forget about us." Ashley takes a shaky breath, and that comforts Damian slightly. Ashley's good at straight-up, brutal honesty, but it's nice to know she actually feels something too. "Leave us behind and don't look back, because you're on your own now and you're never coming back, like your mum said. You are never coming back to Ireland. We are a part of your past now, and you're not living if you try to live in the past."
"I ain't—"
"Don't interrupt me, Damo. You have never won an argument with me either, have you? So just shut up and listen." She must see the broken expression on Damian's face, because she softens her tone. "It's just tough love, sweetheart. You're supposed to take it personally. Stop thinking about what you left behind; it's all behind you. Don't think about it; just do it. Live it."
Damian buries his face in his hands, and in the darkness cast over his eyes by his hands, he sees yellow autumn leaves.
The reflection of the sun off her golden chandelier earrings. The smell of her wafting around him. The pressure of her arm hooked in his. Her laugh as they joke about the rigged carnival games. She turns back and calls for McKynleigh and Samuel to hurry up. She talks to him, and he listens to the gentle lilt of her American accent. Her billowy blue shirt ripples in the breeze, contrasting with the dry leaves that crunch underfoot. Her feet deviate slightly to step on promising leaves, and she giggles when they crunch satisfactorily. Her eyes sparkle when she looks up at him and he looks down at her, but then he realizes they aren't green and he wants to pull away.
She notices the change in his body afterward; he's stiffer, not as relaxed, and she drops his arm to surprise Samuel, who's concentrating on a carnival game. He loses, but he dares her to try... and $25 later, they've won a beanie baby cow. Damian carelessly gives it to Lindsay and her eyes sparkle again as they meet his...
Two hours later, she won't even look at him. And Damian realizes a piece of his heart is missing.
"Great, now you've finally offed him," groans another voice. "You can kill people by breaking their hearts."
"Shut it," Ashley hisses.
Damian looks at his two best friends, separated from them by thousands of miles and eight hours. "I love you guys," he says weakly.
"You better," Troy growls. "We'll probably have to run to school now, since we missed the bus."
"Bull," Damian laughs weakly. "You live two blocks away."
"Have you seen Ashley's bookbag?" Troy protests. "Half the time she dumps it on me so she can keep up with her girlfriends."
"Is this case closed?" Ashley asks gently, pushing Troy out of the screen so Damian focuses on her. "Promise me you'll put us behind you. That you'll leave what happened between you and me in the past. Get over it; come to terms with it. And keep moving on." She locks eyes with him, intense green reminding him that Lindsay has brilliant blue eyes. It's one of the first things Damian noticed. It set her apart.
"I promise."
Author's Rant
Math and relationships: one's logical and the other is anything but. Guess which?
So I hope you haven't all jumped ship on me. It's been too long since the last update, but I'm finishing up midterms and I GOT A 100% ON MY ANATOMY MIDTERM! THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE EVER GOTTEN A 100% IN COLLEGE! I definitely deserve it, since I've poured my life and soul into this class every single day of the past two weeks (also why I haven't been writing).
But anyways, in apology for making y'all wait so long, this chapter just over 4000 words (whew!) Thanks to all of you who've stuck with me! So, this story is sitting at just over 90,000 words and has 860 reviews; you don't know how happy this makes me! And I promise, when you all reach 1000 reviews, I'll write another double-post (or at least try to post at a reasonable time)!
Gah, I hoped that wrapped up the Ashley subplot. I don't intend to visit Damian's past again, unless this doesn't make sense. From now on, it'll just be Damian's future (with Lindsay hopefully… only time will tell.) Glee-TGP integration continuing with Matheus and Sam… also shifting the focus to Emily-Ellis-Sunshine. And a bunch of other people. On the other hand, Project GCAMBT will have to wait just a little bit longer!
Thank you all for being so patient… but now I must return to school :(
