The Great Escape
AN. Thank you to xHalosandwings, RKO.I.F, Chain Gang Princess, imlikeeayeebaybay, Grits0205, VolcomStoneBabe, xTwistedxImperfectionx, Katie2007, Cena-Wilson-Crazy, TJ Sparkles & Nessa for reviewing the last chapter.
Thanks very muchly :)
Chapter Twenty-Five – Change, Change Everywhere
THE GIRLS
"...And then Layla told him the reason she hadn't been able to complete the assignment was because she had a family emergency to deal with. You could see he was wary, but eventually he accepted the excuse. It took all I had not to laugh out loud; I mean, we both knew she was too busy hooking up with Miz to concentrate, right? She's been slutting about with him so much recently..."
Lips pressed tenderly against the green straw of her drink, Maria forced herself to nod as she took a slurp of her Starbucks drink. She and Michelle were spending their free afternoon together, and were supposed to be sharing a deep, meaningful conversation; in reality—while the latter of the two believed they were casual and cool—the other girl was trying desperately to keep up with the facade.
Especially considering all her thoughts were focused on the kiss she shared with Randy Orton just a few days ago.
That damn kiss. Why did it have to be so wonderful and keep reminding her of what could have been the start of a magical relationship? Why did she have to remind herself to avoid him after each class in order to fight the urge that told her just to grab him and kiss him? More importantly, why couldn't she quell the desire she felt with every thought of him?
Each question seemed to point to the same answer: Michelle McCool.
"Maria?" Her voice cut softly into her thoughts just a moment later, and a hand was waved in front of her face. "Are you okay?"
Snapping back into reality once more, she turned to face her friend, a sympathetic expression masking her features. "Oh, yeah...sorry about that. I keep blanking out, I know—it's just...you know, important tests next week."
"Don't worry, I understand." She rolled her eyes playfully, and spoke again after taking another sip of her chilled drink. "I don't think it'll feel like Christmas until I'm actually home again."
"I know, right? It's like they just want to pile all these exams on us before the break just to remind us of what we're going back to." The redhead giggled. Flicking back a few curled strands of her bangs, she stared out at the campus grounds again. "But I have to say...as much as I love this place, I'm looking forward to heading home for a couple of weeks. I've been feeling homesick recently."
"I think everyone has, really. Though I..." Michelle paused for a moment, biting down on her bottom lip. It was only after she was prompted to continue that she did. "Though I wonder what it's going to be like. Randy and I have been a couple over the holidays for so long. It's going to be so weird going home and telling my parents about the split—they still don't know. I didn't have the heart to tell them...to tell them the dream couple they've spent forever making future wedding plans for is no longer together."
As she adopted a look of utter hurt, Maria found herself sympathetic for the second time today. She patted her friend's shoulder soothingly; it seemed like the blonde wasn't getting over Randy Orton, not just yet anyway, and needed all the support she could get in the difficult task of doing so.
"Speaking of Randy, have you heard from him?"
The question was spoken ever so casually, but was tinged with a polite need to know. She thought she noticed this but soon shrugged it off in a What-am-I-thinking? way. "No, sorry. I see him in class but that's about the only time—even then, we're not really allowed to have conversation. I'm too busy focusing on the class anyway."
This wasn't entirely true. Feeling bad for lying like that, she sucked in a breath, trying but failing to get her mind not to think about their classes together. Randy always sat behind her in each, his presence ever obvious whenever she attempted to focus—much too hard—on the professor standing just twenty feet away from her.
But his presence was too strong to resist and more often than none, she found herself peeking a glance at him when notes were meant to be taken instead. In the odd moment that he caught her eye, looking up to find her eyes stuck on his face, she would simply bite her lip anxiously and turn back to the front.
There were things that definitely needed to be sorted out between them, but she simply couldn't bring herself to talk to him privately. Not when Michelle needed her more than ever, anyway.
Michelle's smile ebbed away the guilt she felt. "Don't worry about it, Maria. You two were friends but I don't expect you to keep up with it out of loyalty."
She hooked a brow, somewhat confused. "What do you mean?"
"Well...correct me if I'm wrong, but when I was introduced into the picture, I brought you and Randy closer together. You were friends before but you hanging out with me got you to know him a little better. So...what I'm saying is, you don't have to see him anymore now that we're not together."
"Oh okay, I think I can understand." Maria nodded.
She understood perfectly. Michelle thought she and Randy were only friends because she was the deciding factor in their relationship staying intact. But she was certain of a fact that perhaps her friend didn't know: her and Randy were close friends more than anything, and a break-up between the favourite couple wasn't going to change that.
Maybe our kiss will. She thought dejectedly. Now that I've given him mixed signals, that ought to do it, huh Maria?
"So what are your Christmas plans then?"
"Oh. Well I thought I'd spend it with my family, obviously, and then—"
The girl was to be interrupted when Jeff walked up to them, greeting both students with a lazy wave and a nice smile. Michelle nodded in response while Maria grinned, that infectious smile warming her friend's own expression.
"Hey Jeff!" She greeted him enthusiastically. She hadn't seen or spoke to him in quite a while, and it surprised her now by how much she'd been neglecting him in favour of other problems. "What's up?"
"Can we talk please...in private?"
The semi-serious look he offered her had her confused for a moment, and she turned to excuse herself, only to find Michelle was already waving her away. Jeff took her by the arm and walked them both along a familiar route, towards the patch of grass they'd sat on quite early in the semester, when the sight was new and they were gathering all the glorious images of college with fascinated eyes.
There, he sat her down. "Eve told me about Randy."
Sighing, Maria couldn't help but to shake her head. "Of course she did. I told her that in confidence, you know."
"But you know you can trust me so it's all good, yeah?"
"I'm sorry for not telling you about what happened between us, Jeff." She apologized—even as he laughed at her, she still felt annoyed with herself. "It's just been...hectic recently and I didn't know what to make of it myself. I still don't know what to make of it."
"I'm not hurt that you didn't tell me. I'm sure you would have done eventually. But this is you we're talking about," he nudged her playfully, "and we both know that your head is stuck up in the clouds on most days." They both shared a soft laugh. "All I want to know is, are you happy with him?"
She took a moment to think about the question. To really think about it. Away from his probing gaze, she stared out at the campus grounds—if someone had told her she'd be facing these problems just a few months into her stay, she would have laughed in their face. "I know I could be." She nodded eventually, the faintest of smiles crossing her lips as she turned back to him. "Jeff, I really like him. He's like...I'm not going to say perfect, but he's right for me. You know? I think I may be in love with him."
He nodded back, then waited for another moment or two. Taking in a quick breath, he allowed a smile to tug at his lips. "So why are you still hanging out with Michelle and acting like nothing happened between you and Randy?"
"Because," she whined, "Michelle is a good friend of mine! Why doesn't anyone understand that? I can't betray her by going after her boyfriend just days after they split up."
"Ex-boyfriend, Kanellis. And from what Eve told me, he was the one who went after you. So don't deny yourself of happiness just because you feel guilty. You deserve this more than anyone I know."
"That's sweet." She told him. "But...I just don't know. It would feel so wrong. Well...it feels right being with him, but I just don't think I can do it to her. She's so deeply in love with him and I'd feel like a complete bitch if I—"
"Owned up to your feelings and allowed yourself a moment of happiness?" He hooked a brow in her direction. She sighed, deflating. "C'mon Maria, she'll understand. Who is she to mess with true love, huh?"
She shook her head lightly. She simply couldn't see herself breaking her close friend's heart, even if it led her to a brand new relationship, and one she wanted. It wasn't in her to be so callous—she'd rather see the blonde happy, squashing her chance to be, than heart-broken once more.
"Hey," she suddenly piped up when something came to mind, "Candice came to speak to me in the library awhile ago. She said something intriguing."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"She said you'd already moved on way before her." Brows furrowed in confusion, she shrugged. "Do you know what that means?"
Jeff looked down for a moment. She could have sworn to have seen him smile softly at the ground. Then, as if he'd never made the gesture, he glanced back up, into her eyes. "Don't you worry about it. I think we should focus on you and the matter of Randy Orton."
"You're hiding something from me...but whatever, it's okay." A beat later, she cracked a grin. "You're so persistent, you know that? I love that about you."
As she rested her head lightly on his shoulder, peering out to the throngs of students passing them on that warm afternoon, Jeff gave a chuckle. "And I love you, too," he muttered, but mainly to himself.
As soon as she reached her dorm room, Mickie took to the daily ritual of bumping her head, albeit softly, against the closed door that led into it. She repeated the gesture for a moment longer than usual, twirling around the single gold key in her hand as she did so; more than anything, she wanted to erase the day she'd just had. Knocking out a few brain cells would have to do as well.
"You losing your mind too?"
Caught in the act, she stopped quickly, brushing wisps of her brunette hair away from her face as she angled her head to look at the visitor. She found Adam staring back at her, unsurprisingly enough. She offered a tiny, polite smile. "You could say that."
Truth be told, she was losing her mind. If she had to look at Punk one more time and then have to remind herself he wasn't hers to look at, she seriously didn't know what she would do. Her heart quite literally hurt with each glance at him; was it supposed to be so difficult to move on from a previous relationship? Surely she was supposed to have forgotten all of his traits by now, and not remember them so avidly. Right?
She didn't know. What did she know about the opposite sex? Absolutely nothing.
Cradling the key in her hand, she nodded to Adam. "Sorry about Ashley—she's acting more stubborn than usual."
This was true. It was coming to a point where she was rather worried for her best friend. Ever since the blonde had found out about he and Candice, she'd locked herself away from any real emotion and kept to herself—more than ever, it seemed. She was intent on living her own secluded life without any help from others.
"I take it she's not inside." He half-asked, half stated. It was a fairly obvious statement to go along with. "Of course she isn't. Again."
The brunette was beginning to feel very sorry for the guy. He was trying to make a huge effort to speak to her, and with every small opportunity he got, he blew it just by being near to her. She didn't allow him a single moment to explain himself; it was clear to everyone that she was completely through with him.
As sorry as Mickie felt for him, she also admired him. Adam wasn't giving up on her. He simply wouldn't let himself. If only she had the same courage and mind-set as him to deal with Phil...
Dejectedly, she offered a half-smile. "Sorry, Adam. Do you want me to leave a message for her? I can't promise she'll listen to me, or even acknowledge I've been talking to you, but I can try to—"
"Don't worry about it. Thanks for asking though," added the Canadian, and she nodded. "I'll just...try again later."
He began to walk away from her, a defeated air about him. She cocked her head to the side as she watched him. Her own thoughts, one in particular, wanted to prevent him from leaving; it was screaming out to her, begging her to finally let the facts be known to him.
"Wait!" She called before she could stop herself. He turned just a moment later, and she sighed warily as her eyes caught his. "...There could be something I could tell you. Well, there's something I should tell you. About her, I mean. It might help your case to know."
"Sure," he shrugged, "Anything. What is it?"
"You'd better come inside."
As he followed her in and she shut the door, she had to pause for a moment. Am I really doing this? Am I really about to betray Ashley's trust in me? But she knew she had no other alternative—her friend needed help, and this was how she knew best how to give it.
Adam glanced cautiously around the room until his stare settled on Ashley's side of the room. A smile curved his lips before he could stop it; this was a typical Ashley mess, and he surprised himself with how well he knew her to know this.
"So..." He turned to find Mickie leaning against her desk, surveying her surroundings with a cold air about her. She was clearly uncomfortable with the topic at hand. "There's a reason—a solid one—as to why Ashley is the way she is. She doesn't like to play the bitch because she can...it's because she has to in order to protect herself."
Eyes narrowing in concern, he shrugged. "What are you talking about?"
"Okay," she clasped her hands together firmly, "I'm going to tell you something, Adam, and I'm going to trust you not to talk to anybody else about it. It's something fairly big about Ashley, and if she ever found out I was telling you about this, I know she'd kill me."
"Must be pretty spectacular. You have my word, Mickie. What is it?"
She felt her own emotions begin to stir. Though she was hesitant to tell the painful story to a new person, she knew it would do her good to air some of her opinions on the matter. It was a way of release and, having never been able to get Ashley to open up on the situation after it happened, it could only help her to re-tell the story to someone else. Furthermore, she trusted Adam. He would understand, she knew.
"Back in high school, Ashley was raped..." It was the easiest way to begin the story. The look of shock that spread across his face, a look so unfamiliar to his person, told Mickie that she was doing the right thing by letting it out into the open. This only prompted her to move on with the story, before she lost all the nerve she had to do so. "It was by some guy she was in love with at the time. He pressured her into sex and when she said she didn't want to do it, he...well, he forced her."
"Fucking prick." He uttered, folding his arms over his chest. This explained so much about her. Almost too much. "So she's never recovered?"
"I'm not sure how you do. That night...when it happened...I held her in my arms for the entire night. We'd never been so close as we had then." The memory returning to her, she looked down, swallowing lightly. "She was just shaking everywhere. She was wide-eyed, unable to go to sleep. I'd never seen her so helpless. And I just felt so, so bad.
"And then, of course, she started blaming herself for it. She said if she hadn't led him on none of this would have happened. It killed me to hear her speak that way about herself. It was far from her fault, but she was intent that it was her fault. It wasn't right."
"Has she stopped blaming herself now?"
"I think she knows she has too." She nodded. "But she won't speak to me about it. Not at all. Whenever the subject comes up she just closes down. She thinks she's already dealt with the problem when, in reality, she's just ignoring it. I'm worried for her, Adam. And I really don't know what to do about it."
An uncomfortable silence passed between them as she was allowed time to recover from telling the traumatic story and he was given it to process all the new information. Both were upset with what they had to deal with; the facts were just so blindingly there and unavoidable.
"How about..." A new voice followed the pause and both turned suddenly, hearts racing as Ashley came into view from the now open door. Her key was still in the lock, her gaze balancing in-between the two. There was no sarcasm etched on her face. Merely hurt. "How about you go behind my back and tell the one person I really don't want to know my worst secret?"
Mickie instantly took a step forward, her defences up. "Ash, listen to me. I had to tell him—I knew you weren't going to."
"And why do you think that is, Mickie?" The blonde questioned. She ignored Adam as he opened his mouth to defend the brunette, and simply stared at her best friend in disbelief. "And why do you think it's your business to tell anyone, let alone him, what happened in my past?"
There was another moment of silence.
Then, Ashley seemed to explode with emotion. Slamming her key down on the table, she glanced around the room wildly, her eyes filling with unshed tears as she tried—tried so hard—to understand what was going on. But she couldn't. Never did she think this would happen. And with this in mind, she pressed her hands on either side of her head and pushed, as if trying to contain herself from something misunderstood.
"You know," she muttered eventually, turning into their horrified looks, "I never thought...I never thought my best friend, my fucking best friend, could be such a BITCH!"
Tears filled in Mickie's eyes, too, and she took another step forwards towards her. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! But I had to tell—"
She was cut off almost immediately.
Ashley raised her hand before she knew what she was doing, and slapped the taste out of the brunette's mouth. It took her only half a minute to realize what she'd done and, as she stared at Mickie, who'd recoiled into a shy posture while her curls protected her hidden face, she blinked away her tears.
"Mickie, are you okay?" Adam asked, in total shock of the events. He turned to the other girl in the room and shook his head. "What the hell's wrong with you? She was only trying to help!"
Why was she being made to feel like she was in the wrong? She'd trusted Mickie with her secret, and now it had been given away. To him. Just like that. "Go to hell!" She yelled at him as Mickie rushed past her, out of the door.
Adam followed and, just like that, Ashley was left alone to finally release her tears.
Eve snuck another peek at her phone as she turned away from her coursework. Was it crazy to imagine Matt's name flashing up on the screen, alerting her of his ever-existent presence with a call? Or was she simply not coming to terms with her recent break-up?
A sigh escaped her lips.
She missed him. She missed everything about him. While she knew a relationship on long-distance grounds would never work out between them, she couldn't help but to question what would have happened had they never broken up. They both loved one another and cared for each other; was it really so complicated to deal with?
And why was she being reminded about what she lost each time she saw The Miz and Layla pass by? Mike didn't fool her in the slightest—his 'very much in love' act somewhat amused her, actually. But she could also tell he was really trying to like Layla like he'd liked her.
She felt that, given time, a genuine relationship could form between the two. She didn't quite know how she felt about it; it would take a while to absorb the information.
For now, she felt rather alone. It was hard to be without a boyfriend, and the sympathy given from Mickie and Maria was too much to bear. It wasn't the end of the world as they told her, she knew, but it still hurt to know that something she thought was so precious could be torn apart so easily.
A sudden knock at the door distracted her from the depressing thought. She stood to her feet, all too grateful for whoever was standing behind it. She needed an interruption to her hardly wonderful life.
"...Ashley?" But the last person she expected to see was staring back at her when she finally answered to the call. "What are you doing here—and why have you got your stuff with you?"
"Alright, I already talked to Maria about this and she agreed." The blonde spoke in a rush, her eyes red from crying. Eve had never seen her like this before. Concerned, she listened to Ashley lick her lips before saying, "So if it's okay with you, can I be your new roommate?"
As I told you on Twitter, some major shit just went down ;) Hope you liked it!
Up next is Ashley's chapter. (I've already written it out so review if you want the chappie up quickly!)