A/N: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders. The Horrible Crowes own "Ladykiller."

And you must've met a man
Tall and handsome at that
Who must've put a spell on you, baby
Must've kept coming back

Pony looked around the hallways for Wade the Monday after prom, but never spotted him, even at lunch. He called him when he got home from school, feeling guilty he hadn't called sooner, but his mom said he was busy. Pony hung up the phone, remembering that it was Ellie's fault any of this had happened, and he had nothing to feel guilty about other than the fact that he hadn't warned Wade about her.

He only knew she was back from Windrixville because Darry told him she had stopped by. He only rolled his eyes and walked into his room, surprised she had come back at all. He knew she was their friend, and he should try to understand, but he just couldn't. Anything that involved that girl and Dallas Winston was something he didn't even want to understand. She was known for doing stupid things for that hood, but walking out on Wade at their prom was the lowest thing she could have done. He didn't care if she felt bad about it, either. She needed to feel bad about the stupid things she did.

When he saw her between classes the next day, he turned the other direction, taking a longer route to class that ended up making him late, but he didn't care. The last person he wanted to talk to was Ellie. It couldn't last forever, he knew that much, but he figured he could make it last as long as possible.

He nearly ran right into her when he was walking out the front doors to go to lunch. It seemed to surprise her just as much, but by the time she called his name, he was already outside. He acted like he didn't hear her, and she didn't follow him.

XXX

Ellie considered skipping school another day, but she knew from experience that the longer she avoided everyone, the harder it would be. It turned out to be even worse than she expected because Wade wasn't even there. She tried to talk to Pony, but he flat-out ignored her.

People stared at her in the hallways. Not a lot of people, but enough for her to realize she was the subject of gossip at Will Rogers. She was used to that, but usually it was because of who her friends were. Now it was because she was the girl that left Wade Wilson at the prom. She noticed one girl in particular that she remembered from the bowling alley. Sheryl something. She remembered her mostly because she had been flirting with Wade. Sheryl stared after her the longest, and Ellie could practically see her planning on winning him over. She suddenly realized that that girl probably wasn't the only one. Wade wasn't the most popular guy at school or anything, but he had a lot of friends and, now she noticed, plenty of admirers. Those girls staring at her thought she was an idiot for what she had done, and she couldn't exactly disagree.

After school let out, she wandered around town. She knew where she needed to go; it just took a long time for her to realize how much she didn't want to go.

Finally, after agonizing over it for at least an hour, she walked to Wade's house. She rang the door bell and waited, a knot welling in her stomach that was threatening to make her sick. After the longest minute of her life, she finally took a deep breath and walked back down the steps away from his door. She had almost reached the sidewalk when she heard the door swing open.

"Ellie?"

She turned around to see Wade's mother at the door. She tried to say something but nothing would come out. She cleared her throat and walked back up to the house.

"I came to talk to Wade."

"He isn't here right now." Mrs. Wilson, who had always been so friendly and welcoming to her, looked stern and unforgiving. Her lips were in a tight line, and Ellie didn't want to know what she was thinking.

"I just thought, since he wasn't at school …"

"He didn't feel like going. He's down at the church with his father."

"Could you tell him that I'm so– "

"I'm afraid you'll have to tell him yourself."

Ellie nodded before she turned away, unable to come up with anything else to say.

"You know, Ellie," Mrs. Wilson called after her, "I'm not sure what happened this weekend because Wade wouldn't talk about it, but you should he's hurt pretty bad by whatever it was."

She couldn't bring herself to face his mother again. She just kept walking, unsure of how she was going to bring herself to face Wade.

XXX

Ellie had considered walking back home, and almost did, until she realized Mrs. Wilson would probably mention that she stopped by. When Wade realized she had deliberately avoided apologizing to him, he would just see it as another betrayal, and she had betrayed him too many times already.

When she approached the church, she found that it wasn't just Wade and his father. There were a handful of people out in the church hard, landscaping and planting flowers.

She spotted Wade easily enough, even with his back to her and his cowboy hat on the ground beside him. She wasn't sure she could go through with her apology, but once a couple of the church people noticed her standing there, she didn't really have much of a choice.

He was raking up a dried up flowerbed when she walked up to him.

"Wade?"

He froze for a brief moment before he kept working, and she thought he was going to ignore her like Pony had ignored her. She could feel her cheeks turning red as the other people tried to watch them without actually watching them.

Wade finally leaned the rake against the side of the church building and turned around to face her.

"What do you want?"

He just wasn't the same person when he wasn't wearing his hat and a grin.

"I just wanted to talk," she said.

That wasn't exactly true, though. What she wanted was for him to tell her it was all okay. That she had a lapse of judgment but he loved her and forgave her.

He stared down at her, an unforgiving look on his face, not unlike the look his mother was wearing earlier.

"So talk."

In the entire time she had known Wade, he had never been short with her. He had always been kind and patient even when she hadn't been so kind and patient with him. The clipped words he was using with her now made her tongue twisted.

When she didn't immediately start talking, he wiped sweat from his brow and reached for his rake again.

"You weren't at school today."

He didn't turn back to her. "Yeah. So?"

"You never skip school."

"You do it all the time. What's the big deal?"

It was a big deal because it was something Wade never would have thought about doing before she did what she did, but she kept that to herself.

"I'm sorry," she finally said.

He dropped the rake and let it hit the brick wall again. "For what?"

"What?" she asked, confused.

"You're so intent on apologizing. You might as well tell me what you're apologizing for."

She swallowed hard and couldn't look at him when she said, "For leaving."

"No," he said, a bitter smile tugging at his lips. It was a smile for somebody like Dally, maybe even Tim, but not for Wade. "No, you can do better than that."

"For leaving with Dally."

"Are you actually sorry you left with him? Or are you just apologizing because that's the right thing to do?"

She stuttered and stammered and still couldn't get any words out before he cut her off.

"That's what I thought. I don't want your apology if you don't really mean it." He started to turn back to his work but spun back toward her. "Actually, I don't want your apology even if you do."

"I'm sorry that I hurt you. I didn't mean to."

"Maybe you didn't mean to, but that don't change what happened. Why'd you just leave like that?"

"I don't know. I'm not used to this kind of thing."

"What? Ditching your boyfriend at prom?"

"Having a date that would care that I left."

"Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?"

She looked down at Wade's cowboy hat sitting on the ground. She was more embarrassed than she remembered ever being before.

"Because you know what, Ellie? I do feel sorry for you. I feel real sorry for you."

She didn't say anything because it wouldn't have mattered what she did say. He wouldn't believe any apology she could muster up, and she couldn't blame him for it either.

"Did you sleep with him?"

The question caught her off guard, and she glanced around to see if everyone else was listening to their conversation. To their credit, the church volunteers acted like they weren't.

She couldn't even bring herself to answer him. It was impossible for her to explain to him what Dally meant to her. How it was so easy for her to just drop everything just because he showed up. He couldn't possibly understand what seeing him shot and then disappear had done to her.

"It's okay," he said. "You don't even need to say anything."

"You knew," she said, finally getting up the nerve to look at him again. "You knew about him and me."

"Is that your excuse? Just because you two have some sort of messed up history that doesn't make any sense, that makes this okay? I may have known about you and him, but I know about us too. I know that I loved you. And that didn't mean a thing to you."

That wasn't true, though. It meant a lot she didn't understand at the time. It actually meant so much more when Dally refused to come home with her.

"That's not true," she said but it only came out as a whisper. She felt completely leveled under his accusing glare.

"Don't think I didn't notice how you never told me that you loved me too. I knew you didn't, but that didn't change how I felt about you. Not until this weekend anyway. Is he back in Tulsa for good now?"

She shook her head. "I don't think he's coming back."

He had that bitter smirk on his face again. "All this just for a couple days with him?"

She had to swallow back tears as she shrugged her shoulders.

"Can you tell me the truth about something, though? And I mean it, I want an honest answer out of you for once. What if I said we could go back to the way things were before he showed back up? Would you stay with me even if he came back to town?"

She knew the smart decision was to hold onto Wade for dear life. He had a future. She had a future with him. He was safe, and he had loved her at one point. Dally offered her nothing.

He took in her silence and nodded a little. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

"But we can't go back to the way things were," she said.

"Yeah, I know." He wiped at his face again, wicking the sweat away. "Tell me something else, Ellie. Were you just biding your time with me until he came back?"

"No," she said, although she didn't know how to convince him. "I just never thought he'd come back."

The cloud that came over Wade's face told her that was the wrong answer, and she immediately regretted saying it.

"Goddamn it, Ellie." He didn't quite yell it, but it was loud enough that she jumped, and the few people around them didn't hide their interest in their conversation anymore. She had never heard him swear before. "I can't believe you had the nerve to come here. Just go. Just leave me alone."

For a few seconds more she stood there staring at him. The world blurred as her eyes brimmed with tears. She turned away before he could see them spill over. She got away from the church as fast as she could.

XXX

There was a knock at the door, and Two-Bit leapt off of his bedroom floor and ran for the door. Carolyn said she might stop by and Two-Bit was looking for an excuse to stop cleaning up the junk in his room and boxing it up. The idea of moving was a great one in theory; the reality was unbearable.

Instead of Carolyn at his doorstep, he found a somber looking Ellie standing there. He didn't even know she was back yet.

"Hey, El."

"Hey, Two-Bit. Are you busy?"

"For you? Never," he said, standing aside and ushering her in. He was about to lead her to the living room, but Lucy came in from the kitchen with a giant bowl of ice cream and sat down in front of the TV. He steered her to his bedroom and shut the door behind him.

"I didn't know you were back," he said, sitting back on the floor where he was before. He was going through a pile of junk from under his bed. Ellie slid a few things out of the way and sat down across from him. She looked upset and he realized that for whatever was coming, she usually would have gone to Steve to work it out. He tried to think like Steve, but he couldn't bring himself to be that moody.

"I got back Monday."

"Oh," he said. "Everything okay?"

"No."

"What happened?"

"Everything was fine at first, but then he was just so different. I felt like I knew him and didn't know him all at the same time. When it came time to leave, he said he wasn't going to come back."

Anger filled his chest, but he kept it down. Looking at her now and thinking about what probably went on in Windrixville had Two-Bit thinking that Dally just plain used her.

"I'm sorry, kiddo."

"You were so right about him. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. I don't even know if he was different in a good way or a bad way."

"Did he say why he wasn't coming back?"

She shrugged but didn't look at him. "It's because of Johnny."

"He talked about Johnny?" Two-Bit asked in amazement. Dally hardly talked about anything in jail.

"Not really, just enough to mention why he wouldn't come home."

Now he was confused.

"He won't come back because of Johnny?"

She started to say something a couple of times, but stopped herself. Finally, she said, "I think he feels like anyone can just die like that."

And then the waters cleared. Two-Bit felt chills. "And we know how he handles stuff like that."

"I know."

"He's scared to come home."

She nodded and said, "I think so. I kept feeling like I was intruding there. Like he didn't want me to be there even though he brought me."

"At least you know where he is, you know? You can go there and see him. Maybe he'll come around and move back here."

Even as he said it, he wasn't sure he should. Sitting in front of him was a girl who looked like she'd been through hell and back.

"He may as well now."

She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

"Wade?" he asked.

A couple of tears spilled over and she wiped at her cheeks. "He's so mad at me. I didn't even know he could be the way he is now."

Two-Bit moved over so he was sitting beside her and put an arm around her. It wasn't her best move to take off with Dally and ditch Wade at prom, but it was already in the history books.

"I broke him."

"You didn't break him."

"I did. You have no idea how sweet he was, and now he'll move on hating me and thinking every girl is just as awful as me."

"First of all, you're not awful. Second, it doesn't have to end like that if you don't want it to. You just need to choose who you want to work on – Dally or Wade."

All she did was shake her head. He had no idea which one was hers, which one she wanted. Which one she loved. He thought maybe part of her believed she couldn't abandon Dally, and the other part really had grown to love Wade. So much of him still rooted for his buddy, and if Ellie chose him, he would stay in her corner. The problem was he was starting to realize what Wade really meant to her. Wade was exactly what Darry and everyone else already knew and rooted for. Wade was a good kid and exactly what she needed.

"I don't think there's much to work with no matter who I pick." She leaned into him. "Why do I always make the dumbest decisions?"

He rested his head against hers. "Everybody makes dumb decisions. Hell, I should be the poster boy of dumb decisions. It'll be okay, though. It isn't the end of the world."

She nodded, but he wasn't sure she believed him.

XXX

The longer he worked on his hands and knees after she left, the more pressure he felt escaping. He had literally spent hours feeling like the whole damn thing was his fault. Maybe if he had stood up to Dallas Winston or not let her dance with Pony, she never would have left. There was always something he could have done to make her have stayed.

But as Wade worked in the dirt and sweat under the early summer sun, he started to realize that he had already done everything he ever could have. He paid attention to her, bought her things, told her that he loved her. And agonizingly waited on her. Everyday had seemed like a struggle for her attention, and now he was trying to figure out exactly why he had done that. Why on earth had he cared about a girl who only cared about herself and some hoodlum that wouldn't even acknowledge her?

It still hurt. It made him angrier than he had ever been, but he would use that to remind himself to never let anyone steal his heart like that ever again.

'Cause I can smell him in your skin
I bet I taste him in your blood
Must be all the young boys, baby
Ladykiller got the two of us.