Useless

Chapter 3: You've Arrived

Ellie climbed onto my lap, fresh from a shower. I ran my fingers through her combed, wet hair and rested my other arm on her knees. "Ashley called," she said as simply as if she was telling me that it's looking to snow.

My hand dropped to the couch. "Kerwin?"

"The one and only. What are we watching? A dog show? What's this?" She picked up the remote and flipped through the channels endlessly.

"What did she want?"

Ellie shrugged. She shifted her weight slightly, so I wrapped my arm around her again and pulled her closer to me. She finally rested the TV on Comedy Central. "She's in town for the holidays. She wants to meet up with us."

"Us?" I asked incredulously.

"Spinner and her. She wants us to go out to lunch."

I managed a slight laugh at the irony of situation going on. Ashley Kerwin wanted to have lunch. That is the fucking greatest. "What did you say?"

She looked at me funny for a second. "Why the hell did you think I'm showered before 11 AM?"

My eyes widened in surprise. "Today? Wait, we're having lunch today?"

"There's no time like the present."

"Ellie, I haven't seen or spoken to either Ashley or Spinner since graduation. What the hell are we going to say? We can't tell them the truth." Suddenly, it felt like someone's played a cruel joke and moved my high school reunion up seven years.

She sighed loudly. "You have real problems with the truth when it comes to Ashley, don't you?"

"I take that highly offensive. It takes two to tango, Ms. Nash."

"Maybe Ash isn't giving it up to Spinner. I remember he used to have a crush on me in high school. How much do you think that crush will pay?" she wondered aloud.

I pushed her off of me. "I have to get ready."

"I wasn't actually serious. God don't get your panties in a bunch," she called to my retreating figure. I stuck my middle finger up at her and took off my shirt as I walked into the bathroom.

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The most awkward things in my life to this point could make a street girl blush. Watching as my own cocaine was being confiscated as the dean came to tell me that I needed to be out of the dorms by the end of the day. Waiting for Joey and Caitlin to come home from their honeymoon so I could tell them the reason I wasn't living at the dorms anymore. Every endless day during my 28 day stint in the Sunshine Coast Rehabilitation Center. But still, this simple lunch with Ashley was so much worse and considerably more awkward than anything I've ever been through.

Ellie had been completely silent since her salad came. That left me with the totally undesired position of keeping our "guests" company. Bull. You can't be guests in your hometown. I watched Spinner's hand slide under the table not-so-subtly and fell onto what I hope is her knee. It made me suddenly feel very dirty about myself. Not that I'm jealous or anything, Ash is a real grade A bitch, but I never have wanted to be in the presence of Spinner when he's attempting to get some. He's horribly clumsy, and it's just not right.

I cleared my throat to try to get Spinner's hand back on the table, but it only succeeded in averting his gaze back to me. "So Ash, how is Toby?" I asked.

"He's doing great. He's running around this city like a madman, I'm sure. He's got a new girlfriend I'm going to meet for the first time tonight. Chloe, I think her name is. Something that sounds like a foreign model." I let out a small chuckle picturing what Toby's girlfriend would look like. "I know what you're thinking, but she's gorgeous. I've seen a picture. Toby landed this great job at a computer company right after graduation, and women have just been flocking themselves at him." It hit me like a ton of bricks. Toby is dating some gorgeous model-like creature, and I'm with a stripper. How the hell did this happen?

I took a long swig of my beer. After resting it back on the table cloth, I saw Spinner's smug grin again as he was staring at Ashley. "Great for him," I managed between clenched teeth. "He really deserves it."

"And how is Angela?" Ash asked back.

I despised everything that reminded me of the life I used to have. I despise Ash and Spinner for it now, Ellie for it always, and Angela for it even though she is the one good part about that family. However, due to my stubbornness and Joey's warnings to her, we hardly talked when I did see her. "She's fine," I lied.

Ellie put down the fork and wiped the edges of her mouth with her napkin. "She has a boyfriend, and Craig wants to kill him every time he sees him. What's his name again?" She looked at me and winked. "Chris, that's right. Anyways, she's becoming a lot like Emma Nelson when she was in high school. Always fighting for a cause, that's Angie."

I caught onto Ellie's little game pretty quickly. "Sometimes just like Paige though, right El?" I said, offering my own to this little tale. "Chris and her walking around that school like they own it."

Spinner and Ashley soon joined in our giggling over the story. "Poor thing," Ashley commented.

The rest of the lunch was a blur. Ellie became alive, in some weird way, in her twisted knots of lies and fantasies. Her hand moving up and down my thigh made me somehow realize that I, too, was part of her fantasies. She dreamt me up. Everything else she had to lie about, but not me. She needed me, and, more than that, she wanted me. For one fleeting second, I didn't feel quite so useless. I felt loved.

We said our goodbyes the way that old friends do. I pumped Spinner's hand and we promised that we would meet up again soon. I leaned down and awkwardly kissed Ash on the cheek, but my lips felt raw next to her skin. We saw them off in a taxi, one hand each wrapped around the other and the other hand in an upright waving position. The taxi gradually became totally immersed in the sea of traffic all around us. I wiped off my glasses as Ellie and I made our way back to the car.

"Weird," she mumbled under her breath.

Fine. I could take your bait. "What's weird?"

"Ashley. The last time I saw her, at graduation you know, she told me she hoped the next time she saw me would be in a coffin with sliced up wrists."

I almost stopped her in her tracks. "You never told me that."

She shrugged. "I didn't want to ruin graduation. Especially what you had planned for me that night. Candles. Our initials spelled out in rose petals. That amazing jacuzzi in the nicer-than-most hotel room."

"And the coke."

She laughed. "Yea, all that fucking coke. Graduation was amazing. We should do something like that again."

"I still can't believe Ash said that to you at graduation. She told me that she finally forgave me and she wished me 'all the best.'"

Ellie laughed. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I did."

"Oh," she said laughing more. "Well we did get high that night. It must've not mattered, or I could've forgot."

I shook my head at her. "It's not like it was your fault at all. Ash broke up with me because, well, the reason is slipping my mind right now. It wasn't important. But it devastated me. And there you were, with your fucking amazing legs showing under that bondaged skirt, and all the pot in the world. Ellie, you were the fucking perfect high school dream."

"And now..." she probed.

I grabbed her and kissed the top of her head. "You're perfect..." I meant to say that it's perfect how she fit into my arms and under my head like that, but it seemed fitting that I trailed off. "I wouldn't give you up for anything."

"Not even," she stopped and seemed to search for something to finish her question with, "Ashley Kerwin?"

I spat out a laugh before I can stop myself. "Are you serious? Did you see her in there, all holier-than-thou while letting Spinner feel her up? It was disgusting. Man, if I never saw that chick again, it would be too fucking soon." Ellie bit her lower lip in a nervous habit sort of way. "What did you do, Eleanor?"

She immediately removed her bite from her lip and glared at me. "You don't call me that ever." I shrugged and smiled like a child with a secret. Finally, she relented and sighed deeply. "We're going shopping tomorrow. And you're going to come after work to Kate and Jeff's, and we're all going to eat dinner." She closed her eyes and got ready for my assault. "Please don't kill me."

I sighed deeply and massaged my temples to shoo away the beginnings of a headache. "I'm not going to kill you. Just, why would you volunteer us for that kind of hell?"

"Because Ashley's forgiven me, wordlessly, and she wants to be my friend. I'm not really in the position to turn down friends."

I leaned against my car and pushed her small frame next to mine. "I noticed." I kissed her hard and passionately just because I fucking could.

"Okay, Romeo, that's cute and all, but it's December. In Canada. Open up the fucking car."

She's got a beautiful mouth. It's because she's beautiful.