Disclaimer: K… I don't own Rob and I have no money.

Rating: I'll tell you when it changes.

Author's Note: Wow, I've gotten farther than I expected with this story. Ok… here's the frth chapter that I slaved over. I hope you like it. Tell me what you think in the reviews, especially if you haven't been reading it. K. Here's the next chapter.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Chapter 4: Confessions

"So… what do you think about Rob?" Stephanie questioned Ella, attempting to be as subtle as possible. She failed miserably.

"Well Miss Nosy… he's ok," replied Ella, knowing that wasn't what Stephanie wanted.

"Ella!"

"Ok, ok. He's ok," Ella laughed.

"Ella!" Stephanie shrieked again.

"I'm serious. I dunno. I haven't known him that long!" Ella reminded her friend warily. Suddenly Ella found her sparkling toes, which were revealed through her open-toed heels, more interesting.

"What's wrong?" Stephanie asked, her tone changing from prodding to concerned.

Ella snapped her head back up momentarily before allowing her gaze to return to her toes.

"What's wrong?" Stephanie repeated herself, moving from her chair to the couch next to Ella.

"I like him," Ella muttered quietly, keeping her eyes downward.

Stephanie became confused. "And that's a bad thing because…"

"Just because!" Ella snapped. "Sorry," she apologized immediately after the words escaped her mouth. "It's just, a lot happened since we moved."

"Well it was been about 16 years," Stephanie pointed out. "We're old!"

This earned a small smile from Ella. "Hey! I'm younger than you! I'm only 25," Ella teased.

"Well you'll be 26 like me soon. In what, a month and a half?"

"Yeah. July 19th. Then I'll be old like you. But you'll be 27 in September," Ella said in a singsong voice. Once again, her gaze fell to the floor.

"Come on. What's so terrible that it's got you this worked up?"

Ella sighed. If she was going to talk to anyone about this, it might as well be Stephanie. Though it had been 16 years since they last saw each other, Ella still felt at ease with the other woman. "Well, you remember the reason we moved was 'cause my dad got a really great job in Boston?"

Stephanie nodded, signaling for Ella to continue.

"Well the job fell through. We had a house that we could only afford to pay off for another few months. And we couldn't go back because someone already bought our old house."

"Yeah. I remember them. Their kids were such brats! But continue."

"So we put the house up for sale. Someone bought it. We moved into some dinky, trashy apartment. Then a few months after that, my mom left him… left us." At this point, Ella's eyes shimmered with tears. She dabbed her eyes with her fingers, stopping the drops of water from falling.

She slowly continued. "I became depressed and started doing drugs after I finally accepted that my mom wasn't coming back. I remember that I kept telling myself for about… 4 years that she would come back. She just needed some space. But that never happened." Fresh pools of water were barely held back.

"I even tried to commit suicide once. I slit my wrists when my dad was at work. He came back and found me, barely alive, and took me to the hospital." The tears were trying to escape their confinement. "It took a while for me to recover, but I did. I had to go to counseling for my depression. They gave me pills and I got over it. Took a while, but I got through it. I stopped the drugs, got my grades up in school, and even got a boyfriend. We went out for about 9 months until he dumped me. Afterwards, he started spreading rumors that I was some easy whore. I was tormented for the remainder of my junior year. Guys harassed me constantly. Then my dad and I moved back to Connecticut. We didn't live anywhere near you though. So my senior year was good. I got into a pretty good college.

"Then I met this guy. I had dated, but it never led to anything serious. At least until I met this guy. I was 21. He was 29." Ella took a deep breath. "He beat me." Finally, her tears spilled, streaming down her rosy cheeks. "I put up with it for three and a half years."

Stephanie wrapped her arms around her friend, rocking her soothingly.

"He said it was all my fault. Everything that went wrong was always my fault," Ella sobbed into Stephanie's shoulder, dampening Stephanie's expensive designer top. Stephanie didn't care.

"Oh, Honey. You poor thing," Stephanie rubbed Ella's hair, trying to calm her down.

"He would constantly bring other women to the apartment we got after being together about a year. He always told me that I wasn't good enough for him and that I was lucky that he would have me." She stopped.

Instinctively, Stephanie knew that she wasn't telling her something. "What happened?"

Ella looked up at her with puffy eyes. "He started bringing the women home after about five or six months of us living together. He told them I was his sister and they'd sleep together in our bed. The first time he did it I stormed out of the apartment. I went back a few hours later, planning on dumping him. I started my little speech to break up with him. Then he hit me." Ella continued to talk but her words her undecipherable from her sobbing.

"Oh my God," Stephanie said to herself. She should have kept in touch with Ella. Maybe she could have helped, or even helped prevent it. Small things can make the biggest differences.

Her words slowly became understandable. "I don't know why I put up with it for so long. I guess I was so scared of him. I just, I couldn't believe how he changed. He used to be one of the sweetest guys and then he turned into such an asshole. But he kept hitting me and then he started raping me and threatening me. I just couldn't leave."

Stephanie exhaled. "It's not your fault Honey. No where near it."

"I should've been stronger. I should have hopped on a plane or something! But I didn't want him to hurt my family. I've seen his friends and I've seen him workout. That alone scares me!"

Stephanie hushed her. "You can't blame yourself for something that you can't control."

"I should've done something sooner though! He hit me for two years before I called the cops on him!" Ella shouted, standing up. "I should've done it the first time he hit me!"

Tears sliding down her cheeks, Stephanie pulled at her friend's arm, getting her to sit back down.

"He was arrested and he's in jail. I didn't bother learning the details. I wanted to forget everything about him as soon as I could. That was about a little over a year ago."

Stephanie sighed. "Rob's a good guy. He wouldn't hurt anyone."

"That's what I thought about… him," she said, refusing to speak his name. "But look how that turned out. I admit it; he's a nice guy. But that doesn't mean he won't change. I'd be ok with us being friends, but I don't know if I wanna take it any farther than that."

"So what about you two going out tonight?" Stephanie asked.

"I'm just gonna tell him I'm tired. The flight and the show were a lot or something like that."

"Ella, you can trust him."

"I don't need you telling me about who to trust!" Ella snapped. "I'm sorry if I had a traumatizing experience. You go and have an experience that scars you for life, then I'll talk to you about trust." With that, Ella turned and stormed out of the office.

"Damn it," Stephanie muttered to herself, following Ella. "Wait!" Stephanie called out.

Ella ignored her friend and went into the bathroom, soon followed by Stephanie.

Ella had sat down on the couch when Stephanie saw her. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "You're right. I have not idea what you went through and have no right to talk to you as though I do."

"I know I'm right. And I'm not saying that to sound arrogant anything. But it's true. I have spent so many hours with a therapist talking about this. I've talked to other friends that I went to college with. They all talk the same way. They have no idea how this really affects a person. You can't fathom how useless those therapists really are," Ella laughed through her tears.

Stephanie smiled and sat down next to Ella. "I'm just saying, if you wanna give a guy a chance, give the chance to Rob."

"I'll keep that in mind. But I'm still not ready for another relationship. He's a sweet guy as far as I know, but that's about all I know."

"I'll make you a deal. You go out with Rob, and me and Paul will go with you," Stephanie suggested. "Safety in numbers right?"

"Fine," Ella sighed.

Stephanie squealed and hugged her companion.

"Will you stop being such a baby about this?" Andrew complained.

"When you stop being such a pig I'll stop being such a baby!" Stacy shouted back through the door.

"Come on Stace. Just unlock the door and we'll talk about this," Andrew attempted to negotiate.

"What's there to talk about? How you've been hitting on random girls for the past two weeks? How you talk about other girls to the guys with me right next to you? How you've been ignoring me lately? Is that what you want to talk about? 'Cause I don't know why you'd wanna talk about it 'cause it's only gonna hurt your case even more!" Stacy yelled irately.

Andrew slid down the door and sat on the floor. He began throwing his head back in forth, banging it noisily on the door. Suddenly the door flew open and he landed on his back, his head coming in hard contact with the concrete floor. Scrambling to his feet, he saw Stacy turning a corner. "Stacy!" he called out running after her.

"That's him," Chris said, pointing to Rob, who was talking to Rob.

Kylie looked him over. He was the best looking wrestler she had met yet. "You have good taste," Kylie complimented Chris.

"Ok," Chris said. "I'll leave you to your work," he said, leaving Kylie.

Brushing a few strands of dyed blond hair out of her face, Kylie strutted over to the table Rob was sitting at. She pulled out a chair and sat down. "Hi," she said. "I'm Kylie." She then leaned forward and stretched out her hand, her top giving Rob a view of her cleavage.

"Rob," he replied, taking her hand. Noticing that she wasn't going to make any effort to talk to Paul, Rob introduced Paul as well.

"Hi," she said curtly, then focusing her attention back on Rob. "So I hear you're single."

"Divorced," he corrected her.

"Oh, that's too bad," she sympathized coyly. "You must be awfully lonely," she commented. Under the table, she slipped her foot out of her backless heel and stuck her foot between Rob's legs.

Rob immediately stood up feeling her foot resting against his crotch.

Paul looked at Rob oddly.

"I just remember that I… need to… go talk to Glen," Rob stuttered, leaving the table.

"He's not usually like that," Paul assured Kylie.

"Whatever," she said, standing up and leaving Paul at the table alone.

"Sorry," Trish apologized.

"You should be, you stupid bitch!" Kylie shouted.

"Excuse me. You should watch your mouth and where you're going," Trish replied coldly. "Who the hell are you anyways?"

"Kylie Tompkins. The WWE's newest diva," Kylie replied haughtily. "So you better watch where you're going next time. And by the way, that makeup looks absolutely atrocious and your clothes are so tacky," she sneered, walking away.

Trish glared daggers into the back of the woman. Suddenly she was bumped into again, this time by Stacy.

"Sorry Trish," she called back, walking past her petite friend briskly. Andrew soon followed. When he saw Trish, he stopped.

"Maybe you can help," Andrew said to the blonde.

"What'd you do now?" she questioned.

"I said some other chick was hot and Stacy got pissed."

"Aren't you smart" Trish teased.

"Listen, I don't know what's gotten into her lately. I mean I've said other girls looked good in front of her before, but she didn't care. She knew that I always thought she looked better."

"A girl can only take so much of her boyfriend gawking at other women," Trish pointed out. "Besides, no girl wants to hear her boyfriend talking about how good some other girl looks."

"She should have told me that then!" Andrew shouted in frustration. Women were a species of their own to Andrew.

"She probably didn't want to sound like the jealously paranoid girlfriend and have you get mad at her."

"Why would I get mad at her?"

"'Cause you're an irrational male," Trish responded cheekily.

"I am not irrational."

Trish gave him a "puh-lease" look.

"Ok, so maybe I can be irrational sometimes. But if it bothered her, she should've said something."

"And you as her boyfriend should have noticed that something was wrong."

"How was I supposed to know something was wrong? I still act the same I did four months ago and so does she!"

"Maybe she thinks the relationship's not going anywhere."

"You women are so… difficult! First you act like nothing's wrong. Then you get mad at us when we don't notice anything's wrong when you act like there's nothing wrong!"

"You're just supposed to know these things, Drew."

Andrew sighed.

"Just let her cool off. When she wants to talk, she'll talk to you."

"K. Thanks Trish."

"No problem. But now, I need my venting."

"My ears are yours," he replied, leaning against the wall.

"I just ran into that new diva. What a bitch! She thinks she's God's gift to the WWE. Who the hell does she think she is telling me that my makeup is 'atrocious' and my clothes 'tacky'? Has she looked in the mirror lately? She looks like she dipped her face in orange paint."

"Stacy didn't like her either," Andrew said to Trish.

"If she acted half as rude to Stacy as she did to me, then that doesn't surprise me."

"I think you need to cool down before you hurt someone," Andrew grinned.

"Watch it or that someone will be you," she warned him with a smile.

"I'm so scared," Andrew laughed.

Trish glared playfully at him. "I'll show you scared," she threatened, balling up her fists.

Andrew began to run and Trish was right behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Ending Author's Note: K. There ya go. Now go and review! And thanks to all the people who already have!