She's Too Naive

Chapter 9

“Will you please shut up,” Lee whined from somewhere on the floor. The rest of us grumbled in agreement, exhausted from staying up this late.

“Okay, okay fine,” Tristan muttered back. We were all on my basement floor, spread out in various sleeping bags and blankets. My basement was pretty decently sized, but only part of it had carpet so we all squished together on the small space. I rolled over, trying to get more comfortable and found myself staring at Rosen. I could dimly make out his facial features, from the small light left on in the bathroom and noticed he was still awake. I smiled slightly at him and his lips tugged up into a smile of his own.

“Thanks for staying,” I whispered so quietly it was more like I was mouthing the words than actually speaking them. He nodded in response, managing to understand what I said.

“If I was you, i’d be pretty freaked out too,” He replied quietly. My smile grew as I tried  to imagine Rosen freaking out. “but seriously, if you’re ever in trouble or something is wrong you can call me. I’ve had a lot of training in self defense like you saw in the alley,” He looked away from my gaze at the mention of the alley. We hadn’t brought it up since the party, and I had decided to trust him on that he called the police.

“You seemed so calm at the time,” I said quietly, recalling how at ease Rosen had appeared. He acted like he knew exactly what he was doing.

“On the outside yeah. On the inside I thought I was going to pee my pants,” He grinned, and I let out a whispered laugh into my blanket. “That was the scariest moment of my life, and I thought I had dragged you down with me,” His face lost some of the humour, a more serious gaze traveling across his features. I heard a shuffling of blankets from nearby, causing Rosen and I to tense up.

I didn’t even have the time to process the foot on my back, before I was shoved forward(most likely leaving a nasty rug burn) and tumbling into Rosen. Both of us made a startled noise as I found myself pressed against his chest, Lynn’s foot still firmly planted on my back.

“Just make out already and shut up, jeesh,” Lynn mumbled, half asleep. Rosen scooted over slightly to give us some more room, and I tried untangling my legs from the blanket. Lynn rolled towards her boyfriend, throwing an arm around him before going still.

“Sorry,” I whispered when I accidentally elbowed Rosen in the stomach. We both tried to refrain from giving in to the amusement of the situation, as he helped me get the blankets resituated so they weren’t wrapped around me.

“It’s alright,” He replied back in a hushed tone. He glanced around once at my snoozing friends, before resting his head back on the pillow and giving me a sleepy smile. “goodnight Ellie May,”

“Goodnight Rosen Parker,” My eyelids were heavy with fatigue as I looked at Rosen one last time before closing them.

 

***

“You promise to call if you need something right?” Lee asked again. I nodded and let out a exhausted yawn. Lee and Lynn were the only two left since Tristan had to be home and Rosen had to leave super early to do some stuff. I awoke when Rosen got up, but he just gave me a small smile before I turned over and passed out again.

I rubbed my eyes to get rid of the sleepiness as I watched, from the porch, Lee’s car back out of the driveway and down my street. As I returned back inside I  was faced with a sudden loneliness I hadn’t felt since my parents left me alone to take my sister to college. The house was eerily quiet after being filled with the sounds of laughter and rowdiness from the night before.

I picked up a forgotten waterbottle and tipped the leftover contents into the sink before tossing the plastic into the recyclables. My feet echoed against the wooden stairs as I climbed my way to my room, the last one letting out a squeak as I got to the top. When I pushed the door to my room open, I was relieved that everything had stayed where we put it last night when we cleaned up the mess left over from the break in. My sheets were nicely tucked into the edges of my bed, and I desperately wanted to crawl beneath them and sleep away the day.

 

All my friends were busy today, leaving me no choice but to spend the hours hidden away in my house.  As I sat down on my bed with a sigh, I decided on doing something that would decide where I was going with my life.

It was time to look up some colleges.

I grabbed my laptop, a pen, and some scratch paper to begin the tedious journey of figuring out what I wanted to get out of my life in the next couple of years. As I opened up the screen and stared at my blurred reflection in the blackness, I realized I needed to find out who Ellie Charleston was and where she fit into this world.

 

Three hours later I closed my laptop and flopped onto my bedspread with an aggravated groan. I now had three pieces of paper in front of me, all listing different colleges and different majors. When I did some research on google, a lot of people said that you couldn’t go wrong with a business degree. But business didn’t seem like my forte. I despised all the business classes I had taken so far, and squeezed by each one with a C. There were a lot of different suggestions on what I could get into, but nearly every place said the same thing: Do something you like. The thing was, that was my problem. I didn’t know what I liked or disliked. My whole life i’d lived listening and believing people who told me what I liked. Sure, there were a lot of things I enjoyed doing better than others, but there wasn’t something I truly had a passion for.

I knew many people went to college as undecided, but the truth was I was still undecided on which college to go to. Did I want to leave South Carolina and go out of state? I had never been to any big cities and hadn’t even gone out of the state much. I didn’t even know if I liked to travel.

Something new seemed exciting yet completely terrifying at the same time. That terrifying side is what held me back to making the choice of going out of state. What If I got too homesick?

All these questions and fears I had nagged me for the next hour as I just sat on my bed and thought.

Why couldn’t life be easy to figure out.

Thanks for reading! More of a filler chapter, but gives us some more inside on Ellie and her thoughts :)