Love Always, Ella

Chapter Two

Ella

December 5th, 2017.

    This past weekend we had our winter formal. The week beforehand I was having lunch by myself like I always do before Chase Adkins, quarterback of our football team, came over to the table. I had a huge crush on Chase at the time. He's got these piercing blue eyes and his hair is this shaggy blonde that all of the girls would die to run their hands through. Anyways, Chase came up to the table and asked if I would go to the formal with him. I asked him several times if he was sure, but I should have looked behind him. Maybe if I had I would have seen the rest of his table laughing their heads off.  I didn't do that though because I still believed that there were good, genuine people out there, Chase. I thought maybe in this terrible world there would be one genuine person who wanted to make my day.

    I spent hours on my hair that night. Two days before that, my mom had spent all of her paychecks on that one dress for me. It was a knee-length black one with a ton of silver sparkles plastered all over the place. It was perfect until you ruined it, Chase. Do you know how many hours I spent crying that night when you never showed, or even realize how much what you did affected me? Did you hear them taunting me at school this past week? Of course not, Chase. Because while I spent hours crying that night, you got praise from every single one of your friends who more than likely dared you to do this to me. Maybe it was your idea. I'll never know.  I've made the decision to drop out of high school and finish my last year at home now though. It wasn't all because of you, just everything piled up together into one.

I'm not sure why I'm writing as if I'm speaking to you, because you will never read this, but I guess I'm writing a letter to let you know how much you hurt me. Not for you to ever read, but for my future self to read. Because I'm the one that has to live with this painful memory, not you.

~

    Last week Aaron called to tell me that my first day would be today. I'm running a few minutes late, but that's probably because I spent about twenty minutes looking at how this dress made my body look like an egg. Thankfully the apron covers my stomach, so that's why I'm even showing my face right now. There's a girl behind the counter, and when she sees me she gets this huge smile on her face, little dimples poking out on her cheeks. She's got bright red hair that falls to the middle of her back in ringlets. I'm guessing she's around my age, and when she walks over to me I notice the freckles that are crossing her nose and onto her cheeks.

    "You must be Ella!" She says excitedly, clapping her hands together. "I'm Jessica."

    "Hey." I smile back. I wish I were better at meeting people, but I'm not bubbly like Jessica. I'm not outgoing or cheerful. I'm just me. Jessica looks like she's a cheerleader because she has this bounce in her step everywhere she walks. I wish I could look like that. Confident and fearless.

    She giggles and sticks her hand out to me. "I'll be training you today. I've been a waitress here for the past two years. I love it." She gushes, and then giggles again once I shake her hand. Jessica is starting to annoy me. "We're working the morning shift, so it shouldn't be too busy."

I follow her over to the registers, and as she begins to teach me how to run the credit cards I start to become more nervous. I'm going to have to talk to these people sitting at the tables. I'm going to have to become Jessica. These customers are going to expect me to be talkative, outgoing, and assertive. I'm none of these things.

"When we open you can just follow me around to see how things work, okay?" She asks. I realize I have no idea what she just said about running cards. "You seem nervous."