The Bride (The Bride #1)(30)

Then once I was in my room, I suddenly felt like shit. I didn’t want to bang every guy in town. I didn’t want to be some slutty girl. I wanted to…

Be normal.

But I wasn’t. I was Weird Married Ellie.

Some days it sucked.



*

Jake

A few days before Thanksgiving



“Hey, we have to decide what we’re going to do for Thanksgiving,” Ellie told me.

She was sitting across the kitchen table, cutting her steak, and I thought—I hoped—that things were starting to get back to normal between us. It had been a few chilly days after the whole porn incident.

“What are our options?” I asked.

“The Pettys invited us over.”

“Perfect. Mrs. Petty means good food.”

I looked up. She was pushing peas around on her plate, biting her lower lip.

“You don’t want to go to Mrs. Petty?”

“Well, Chrissy also sort of asked if… I wanted to go to her place. You know, hang out and stuff.”

It was odd, but something sank in my gut. “You don’t want to spend Thanksgiving together,” I realized.

It was our first major holiday. Or family holiday. The first real holiday where she would be missing Sam hard. We’d had great Thanksgiving open houses here at Long Valley for years. There was no way this day wasn’t going to back up on her. I needed to be there for her.

Unless she didn’t want me. Unless she wanted Chrissy.

“No. I mean... I do. Want to. It’s … I didn’t know if you thought that was important or not. Like maybe you wanted to do something else. With someone else.”

“Who the hell else would I want to spend Thanksgiving with?”

I hated this. She had an agenda. I knew she did, but instead of coming right out and saying it she had to girl that shit up.

That’s right. I said it. Girl that shit up. If that made me a sexist I had to own it.

“I don’t know. A girlfriend I don’t know about. Maybe that girl you met in Missoula.”

We were will still talking about Missoula. This was a problem. A potentially big one, but I wasn’t going to let it get that far. Simple and basic. That’s how I liked pretty much everything. Including my Thanksgiving.

“I don’t have a girlfriend. I want to spend Thanksgiving with you because you’re my family. I want to go to the Pettys because neither of us can put together a decent Thanksgiving meal and we both know it.”

She beamed at me and I knew I had said the thing she wanted to hear, but I wasn’t sure which part.

“Okay. I’ll let Mrs. Petty know we’re coming.”



*

Later that night, in my bed, I stared up at the ceiling. Sleep eluded me completely.

Ellie was checking out porn. Ellie was hedging around to find out if I had a girlfriend.

This was not good. We were not that. We were something else entirely and she had to know that.

I closed my eyes and thought, I really hope Ellie isn’t thinking about having sex… with me.



*

Ellie

That same night



So I was thinking about having sex with Jake.

In my defense, there were a number of valid reasons.

He was hot.

He was my best friend.

He was the one person I trusted most in this world.

He had a nice penis. I know because I did compare (sorry Jake) and thought his was way better than anyone else’s.

I liked him.

I also loved him.

I was married to him, so I was pretty sure it was legal even though technically I was still under eighteen.

It was a bad idea. I knew that. I knew how I was supposed to think about him. I knew how he thought of me.

It was probably a phase. Or a crush or something totally teenager.

I’m sure I would get over it.

Soon, I hoped. You know, before he divorced me.





Twelve





Jake

Christmas Eve





One hundred and eighteen days left.

It was Christmas Eve and we were at Howard and his wife’s open house party. Ellie had said I should buy a bottle of nice wine, so I did. We walked up the steps together and I rang the doorbell and Mirry, Howard’s wife, opened the door with a big smile.

A lot of the neighbors were there. Their heads turned toward us. Ellie got the sad smiles. I got the I-did-the-right-thing smiles. These weren’t the people who thought the salacious things about us, because these were the people who had known us our whole lives.

Howard came up and clapped me on the back.

“How’s the ranch?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Good to hear. And Ellie? She keeping her grades up along with all the extra ranch work she’s doing?”

“Three point six. I won’t let her get below it.”

“You won’t let me,” she said as she joined us after taking off her coat and leaving it on the coat rack near the door. I had braved the cold for the twenty-foot walk to the door. I hated taking my jacket with me where I went, because anytime I did I invariably forgot it and had to go back.

“Try again. I earned my GPA because I work hard at it. A decision I make.”