Backstage Girl

05 | not her forte

Ella hadn't always been in love with Max.

She could remember a time when they were young, and he was just her older brother's best friend. When Max sat around her house eating hot dogs and hiding bugs in her room and annoying her in any way he could dream up.

Of course, Max was never entirely carefree.

Ella hated this part of the story. She tried not to think about it often, because it only made her heart ache.

When they were younger, Max and Louise's parents died in a skiing accident in the French Alps. Max was twelve at the time; Louise was ten. Their older sister, Millie, was fourteen. Ella didn't know details — Louise never spoke about it — but she knew that their only living relative was a grandfather in Canada affectionately deemed "Pops."

Pops was a whisky-slinging, horse-breeding, auspicious man that traveled to roughly 20 countries every year to race his horses. To be fair to Pops, he had no idea that he would have to look after three grandchildren — and he had no intention of doing so.

So Pops shipped Millie, Max and Louise off to Lovewood Academy.

And that's where Ella came in.

She met Louise in her first year at Lovewood. Louise stuck out for a number of reasons: her English accent, her ridiculously expensive handbags (even for Lovewood, where the girls wore Tory Burch and Kate Spade), and also the fact that she never went home. Like, ever. Not even on weekends when the academy let them visit family.

So in October, Ella invited her for Thanksgiving.

And Max and Millie tagged along.

Ella wasn't sure how it happened, exactly, but they absorbed the Bentley children into their family. They began visiting for holidays, and then once a month, and eventually every weekend. Ella's father taught Millie how to drive when she turned sixteen. Her mother bought Max his first guitar. And soon, the Bentleys became a regular staple in their lives.

Ella considered Louise and Millie to be sisters, and she knew Rory viewed Max as a brother.

She just couldn't say the same.

Ella remembered the exact moment that she realized it, too. Her parents took them away to Muskoka for the weekend for Louise's thirteenth birthday — a rare treat, considering that money was always tight — and they stayed in a little cabin on the lake. She and Louise were sitting in the hot tub, reading trashy magazines, and Max walked out shirtless and Ella temporarily forgot how to breathe.

No, really.

She even made a choking noise.

Because, somehow, Ella had never noticed how Max's hips dipped into a little V at the bottom. Or how broad his shoulders were. Or that he had a little white scar, just under his rib cage, from a bike riding accident the previous summer.

And that's when everything changed.

For Ella, at least; she wasn't an idiot. She knew that Max still thought of her as his little sister. Which is why, even though he was sitting so close to her right now that their shoulders were pressing together, Ella knew not to read too much into it.

But God, she wished she could.

"Elle?" Max looked at her quizzically. "You alright?"

"Hmm?"

"You made a weird sound."

Ella felt her cheeks color. "My calves hurt," she invented. "From my heels last night."

Max looked at her quizzically. "Your calves hurt?"

"Well, you try wearing stilettos to a restaurant and let me know how you like it."