Drew's POV:

I nearly bolted when I saw her walk down the stairs with him. I hadn’t really seen her since our last argument. Sure, she had been at the house from time to time, but it was a big house, and whenever one of us would enter the room, the other would leave it. Even though I wanted to leave, I had no reason too… And she was blocking my path anyway. To get out, I would have to go through her.

I wasn’t planning on talking to her. I figured I could sit quietly and nobody would notice really. But then I saw how she and Seth were acting around each other… I saw how she looked at him. I had seen that look before, Ella used to look at Jason like that… And, I remembered sadly, she used to look at me like that too. For the most part I viewed Ella with contempt, someone who made my life more stressful and painful than it needed to be, but still relatively easy to ignore. But now… Now I was angry. How could she move on like that? Why did she hold on to Jason for so long, and then just throw me away like I was trash?

The answer became clear to me: because Jason was a dick to her. Everyone knew that nice guys finished last, and here I was, living proof of that. It made me want to be confrontational with Ella, it made me want to hurt her. Maybe that would finally make her love me back, but even if it didn’t… Well, it would feel good to get even.

I realized how stupid that sounded, and shook my head to get those thoughts out. Lately I was so quick to get angry, and I had to work really hard to keep my anger in check. I did tell Ella to move on. And I was with Christi, so obviously it looked like I had moved on too. This shit with my Mom was really getting to me. I wouldn’t let myself really go off on her like I wanted too, to tell her exactly what I thought of this whole marriage thing, but that left all this unresolved anger. Then I ended up feeling guilty for being angry at my Mom. She just wanted to be happy, why was that such a bad thing? But then I got angry again… Who was she, making me feel sorry for her? She could have been happy with me. She didn’t want to fight for me.

It sounded a lot like the way I felt about Ella… Sure, I told her to move on, but she didn’t try to stop me. She could have been happy with me…

I never really knew anymore if it was my Mom I was angry at, or Ella, or a little bit of both. I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t transferring feelings from one to the other. I was so confused, so fucked up… And the only one I wanted to talk too was Ella.

I heard the group talking about a week away at the place Drew and Ella just came back from, and I watched Ella grow uncomfortable at the thought of spending a week with me. This caused my thoughts to cloud and the anger to move back in again. Why was it so horrible to be in the same house with me? We used to be best friends, and now she couldn’t even stand to look at me? What was up with that?

So even though I didn’t really want to spend a week with her either, I busted every excuse she had. I could tell by the way she looked at me that she was angry, and I got a strange feeling of satisfaction. She had no excuses. We would be forced to spend time together.

They started making plans for when and for how long, and the guilt sunk in all over again. It was a cycle, it just went round and round and never ended. Guilt, anger, regret, guilt, anger, regret. I really wanted to stop, but I had no idea how.

Christi and I left shortly after, and went back to her place. I was clearly distracted, but Christi was so busy going on and on about how excited she was to spend the week away with me, she didn’t notice.

The thing about Christi is when we were alone, I really believed I could easily fall in love with her. She had a lot of the same values that Ella did, but she was also her own person. She was more independent than Ella, she needed more space than Ella did, and she was way more aggressive than I had ever seen Ella be. She was actually the one to kiss me outside of the club that night, and she pretty quickly initiated sex as well.

Though, honestly, sex with Christi was mind blowing, and always made me forget about anything but Christi. She had a smoking hot body, and she was not afraid to tell you what she wanted, which usually bordered on the kinky side. She liked it fast, hard, and rough. Hair pulling, spanking, and a little name calling. Ella had been my first, but Christi was a great teacher, and honestly, she blew that one time with Ella out of the water. I always found after sex with Christi, my anger dissipated a little. So it never failed that when I was feeling angry, I tried to get into Christi’s pants.

She usually let me. Today was no exception, and as she blabbed on and on about the weekend away, I walked up behind her, grabbing her hips and pulling her to me. I knew she could feel me against her back, but she ignored it, and didn’t stop talking. I went for the back of her neck, which I knew was her spot, kissing it so it was moist, and then blowing on it. I felt her shiver, and even though she didn’t stop talking, she did start grinding her butt against me.

“You’re so fucking hot.” I said, low in her ear. I knew this was another spot of hers, and as I talked, I kissed and nibbled on the outside. “Look what you do to me…” I pressed my dick against her.

“Well..” She said, breathless as I ran my hands up the front of her body. “I guess we’ll just have to take care of that…”

I needed that. I needed to be wrapped up in Christi and not to be thinking of anyone or anything else. Nick’s words from earlier in the weekend disappeared, Ella’s face when she looked at Seth no longer existed. I didn’t think about my Mom or what her upcoming wedding meant, it was all about Christi, her body, her moans, the feelings she made run through my body. I worked hard at returning the favor, and the louder her moans got, the harder I got, the closer to release I got.

I was back to the place where I could very easily see myself falling in love with her. I liked that place.

After we were finished, I was all ready to cuddle down for a little bit. But Christi was already up, pulling on clothes.

“Hey, let me ask you something…” I said, tucking my arms behind my head and making no move to get up. I liked laying in the afterglow… I always felt the most calm and at peace after.

“Yes?” Christi said, pulling on her bra and walking to her vanity. She studied herself in the mirror, pulling her curly hair back into a pony tail.

“Do you like me?”

She looked over her shoulder, laughing. “You think I do that kind of stuff with guys I don’t like?”

“Well, I don’t know you that well…” I said, smirking. She shot me a playfully dirty look. “I just meant that… Well, I mean, like now. We’re done. Most girls want to cuddle, and you’re up and getting ready for the next thing. If it’s independence, I’m fine with it. But I don’t want to fall for you if you’re not feeling it too.”

Christi set down her brush and came back and sat beside me on the bed.

“My parents divorced when I was young… I watched my Mom fall apart. So. I guess I’m you’re clichéd ‘don’t depend on a guy because my daddy disappointed me’ type of girl. But I like you. Trust me, I do.” She laid back down, resting her head on my shoulder.

“My parents are divorcing.” I said, quietly.

“Really?” She asked, glancing over at me. “I don’t know what’s harder… Having your parents be married for so long only to call it quits, or having to go through it when you’re little…”

I shrugged. “I think it’s one of those things where one isn’t harder than the other, they’re just… Different. I mean my parent’s split was pretty calm. It’s not like they argued a lot or fought a lot, and I haven’t been put in the middle…”

“Still doesn’t make it any easier. It’s like your foundations being shaken. Your whole life things are one way, and then all of a sudden… Everything has changed. Did they give you a reason why they’re splitting?” She asked.

I shrugged, not sure I wanted to get into it with her. But, then I remembered how I felt a few moments ago. Maybe the reason I hadn’t felt exactly the same with Christi as I did with Ella was because Christi didn’t know me like Ella.

So I dived into the story, talking about the car crash and how my Mother reacted after the twins died. I lead up to the whole random wake up call where she decided that to be happy she had to leave us behind, and the wedding, and all that jazz. The more I unloaded on Christi, the lighter I felt, the clearer my head became.

“Oh Drew, I’m so sorry. You should have told me.” Christi said, rolling over to hug me.

“To be honest I just don’t like to talk about it. I don’t want to deal with it. And then there’s this stuff going on with Ella…”

“What’s going on with you and Ella?” Christi asked, looking surprised. I, in turn, was surprised by her surprise. She hadn’t noticed the extreme tension between us? But then again, we rarely saw each other anymore.

“She and I are just fighting.” I said with a shrug.

“About what?”

I didn’t know what to tell her. To be honest, I didn’t really know what we were fighting about.

“I dunno. She just thinks I’m being a dick lately.”

“Are you being a dick?” Christi prodded.

I shrugged again. “I don’t know. I didn’t think so, but honestly with all this crap with my Mom… Well I’ve just been so pissed off about it. I might have taken it out on her.”

“Do you think… I dunno. That maybe she’s jealous? Of me? I mean you two were best friends, and I know that when Seth first started dating… It was hard on me. You did say she was your first real relationship.”

“I don’t think she’s jealous. I mean she looks really happy with Seth.” I didn’t look at Christi. Didn’t want her to look into my eyes and see that I was the one who was jealous.

“She does look happy, doesn’t she?” Christi said, laying her head back down on my chest. “You know, I used to hate all the girls Seth brought home. But she’s good for him, I can tell. And she handles his weird family situation well. Seth looks happy too. I bet they’ll be engaged before the year is over.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. “What makes you say that?”

Christi shrugged. “I know how badly Seth wants to get married, which I know is rare in a guy. He wouldn’t do it just to do it, but… If he meets the right girl, it’s not going to take him long.”

I sat there, holding her, trying to come to grips with this. Would Ella say yes? Would he really ask.

“Besides, I know he really wants Chloe to be there. And to be honest with you, I don’t know if she’s going to hold on much longer. I hope so, but…” She trailed off, quiet.