Off-Limits Roomates

1. Ella

1

***Ella***

“ H e was face down in someone else’s vagina, Mom! He had to pull himself out to look at me!” I paced in front of the window in my cheap motel room. Outside I could see a few guys loitering in the parking lot and I watched what definitely looked like a drug deal go down. Hurrying back to the other side of the room, I shook my head and tried not to think about how I wasn’t sure the flimsy lock on my door would hold if anyone even pushed the door too hard.

“I just hate when men slip and fall into other women’s vaginas. You know, that’s never happened to me. Not even once. Not a single man has ever tripped and landed in my vagina. And it’s not like I’ve been keeping my legs closed tight. Not during these dry and trying times.”

I stopped pacing and grimaced. “Mom.”

She laughed her belly deep laugh that usually made everyone around her laugh along. I just wasn’t in a laughing mood. “Sorry!”

A text came through on my phone and I had her hold while I read it and replied. “I got a hit for a potential room. Talk to me while I go out to the car? I’m less likely to get murdered if I’m on the phone, I think. Or something like that.”

“Ella! You can’t say things like that to me! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” She groaned. “Honey, just come back home. This is all too much. You can take off a semester and transfer back to Penn in the spring.”

I ground my teeth together. “I’m not letting Billy cost me an entire semester of school.”

“Then maybe I should come there. I could rent a place and we could live together again. You know how much I miss you when you’re gone. I could even enroll and take a few classes. It could be just like that movie we watched together about the mom going back to college with her daughter. They had so much fun together, Ella! We could go dancing!”

“Mom! I already had to see my boyfriend eating out another woman today. I can’t handle any other trauma.” I grabbed my purse and keys and held my breath before opening the door and rushing out to my car. No one looked up from what they were doing. I might as well have been invisible.

“I heard a door. Are you in your car? Are you okay? Ella?”

“I’m fine, Mom. Apparently no one is all that interested in me, even the guys doing drug deals in the parking lot.” I started my car and locked it, just in case anyone decided I was worth a look. I put Mom on speaker and loaded the GPS with the address I’d been given.

“Oh, Ella, people want you. I want you.” She laughed. “Just in the clingy mother way, though.”

“You’re going to give me nightmares.”

“Sorry. Anyway, tell me again about how Billy was going down on this other woman.”

I pulled out of the lot, careful not to disturb the guys arguing about their dealings. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. I want to hear it all again so I can come up with an appropriate punishment for the asshole.”

“Fine. I got here a day early to surprise him before classes started. I went to his house and one of his frat brothers let me in. I should’ve known something was up when the guy just giggled and ushered me in. Billy was in his room with the door wide open, eating some pretty blonde woman out. It took him a while to notice me, Mom. I was just standing there in shock. Then, he tried to chase me out to talk to me but he had vag breath and some of his frat brothers were standing around watching. So I throat punched him and got out of there.”

“What?! You didn’t tell me you throat punched him! Way to go, Ella! I-” She grunted. “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

“Of course. I would never throat punch anyone, even if I wanted to.” And I’d really, really wanted to throat punch Billy. “I’m so embarrassed, Mom. I came all the way here to be with him. I left my dream school for this. I took a chance on him and he’s been cheating on me for who knows how long. I hate him. I hate him so much.”

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” She snorted. “Do you know how many times I’ve been cheated on? I don’t want to give you any negative views on men, but men cheat and men kind of suck, baby.”

I turned onto a service road next to the interstate and continued following the directions. “Mom, I don’t want to be mean, but you had me with a man who disappeared as soon as the responsibility showed up and you’ve dated a long line of losers since. What negative views are you worried about giving me that you haven’t already?”

“Hey! That’s not nice. They weren’t all losers.” By her silence I could tell she was about to say something I wouldn’t like. “Speaking of the one who wasn’t a loser… You know Vaughn goes to school there. You could always call him for help. I’d feel a lot better about you going to Vaughn than I do about your little motel spot.”

I laughed. “Vaughn? You want me to go to Vaughn? Are you crazy?”

“You don’t have a lot of room to be choosy, Ella. Your step-brother might be your only option.”

“He’s not my step-brother, Mom. You and Paul got divorced so long ago.” I shuddered. There was no way I was going to call Vaughn. Not a chance in hell. “I’d rather go crawling back to Billy.”

“Shut your mouth. You better not!” Mom’s raised voice was a clear indicator that I’d struck a nerve. “We don’t do that in this family. No Daughton woman has ever taken back a cheating loser. If that starts with you, I’ll disown you.”

I turned away from campus and looked up at the houses as I slowly drove. The farther I got away from campus the worse the houses looked. “That should show you how much I want to call Vaughn. Also, don’t threaten to disown me. I’m too old to become a parentless kid. I wouldn’t handle it well.”

I pulled to the curb so I could say goodbye to Mom before pulling into the driveway of the house I would hopefully be moving into. I flipped up my visor and glanced around, always conscious of my surroundings. Too bad that didn’t translate into relationships.

“Mom?”

She didn’t complain about me cutting her off, probably able to hear in my voice that I wasn’t doing great. “What is it, Ella Rae?”

I heaved out a great sigh. “Why didn’t I see the signs? I finished my first year at Penn with a 4.0 GPA. I’m a smart woman. Yet… I really thought Billy loved me. I moved here for him. How could I have been so stupid?”

She matched my sigh. “You weren’t stupid, Ella. You trusted the person you were supposed to be able to trust. He was your first boyfriend. Your first everything. You followed your heart and I don’t want you to lose that, baby. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to trust. It’s just also a very dangerous thing at times.”

“Don’t talk about my first anything. I can’t handle that.” I groaned and let out a frustrated scream. “I hate feeling like this. This isn’t a productive emotion.”

“Funnel it into finding a new place to live because I’m not going to be able to sleep if you don’t get out of that motel room. It feels like I’ve already lost my only kid to the seedier side of life. I’m not cut out for mothering a high-risk child, Ella. We each have our limits and we need to respect that.”

Dropping my head forward on my steering wheel, I couldn’t help agreeing with her. “You’re right. I’ll figure it out. Just because campus housing is full doesn’t mean there aren’t a hundred other great options, just like the one I’m going to see now. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.”

“I hope so. I’m minutes from flying there to live with you.”

She was just crazy enough to do it, too. With a shudder, I sat up straight and locked eyes with a guy jogging down the sidewalk next to my car. I momentarily lost track of what I was thinking as he came closer to my car and I noticed the way his bare chest muscles flexed. “Wow.”

“Wow? Wow, what?”

Tall, muscular, and tan, the guy jogging towards me was stunning. He had bone structure that would’ve made Captain America jealous and a knowing smirk loaded and ready just for the moment he caught a woman gawking at him, I was assuming. As soon as he passed me, I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding.

“Ella Rae Daughton? What is it?” Mom sounded like she was getting frantic on the other end of the call. “Answer me, child, or I’m seriously booking a flight right now!”

I shook my head at myself. “Sorry, Mom. I just… I got distracted.”

“By what?”

“By nothing. I’ve got to go, Mom. I think this neighborhood might be okay, after all.” If the guy who just jogged by lived there, it was a nicer neighborhood than I’d thought. He looked like he was captain of the rowing team. “I love you. Don’t come here! Okay?”

“Rude.” She blew a raspberry. “I love you, too. Call me later and update me.”

I hung up and looked in the rearview mirror to see Mr. Rowing but he was already gone. Not that it mattered. He could’ve jumped on the hood of my car and flexed his impressive pectoral muscles in my face and I still wouldn’t have been interested. Not after Billy and his public cunnilingus.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself for being on. I needed a place to live. Fast. The last thing I wanted, besides living with Billy, was Mom showing up on campus and screaming my name to find me. That was the only thing that could embarrass me more than Billy’s cheating.

I got out of my car and life smacked me again as I stepped onto the sidewalk. I heard a deep shout a split second before I got hit by what felt like a train. I waited to hit the ground but found myself clinging to sweaty muscles mid-air instead.

“Whoa, there.” Mr. Rowing grinned down at me, white teeth on full display with deep green eyes sparkling in the sunlight. “You okay?”

“Where did you come from?” I looked around, belatedly realizing that I was still clinging to him. Forcing myself to let him go, I took a step back and looked around. He really had appeared out of nowhere.

“Right now or in general?” He put his hands on his hips and his stomach muscles flexed.

Taking a step backwards, I cleared my throat and forced a smile. I had to get away from his muscles and his pretty eyes. My brain scrambled to find a witty reply, but the moment his smirk deepened, every clever thought I had evaporated. I was officially fluent in gibberish. “I’m, uh… really late. Bye!”

Turns out, I didn’t need Mom’s help to embarrass myself—I had that covered. As I bolted away like a raccoon on meth, I mentally added ‘Learn how to run like a normal person’ to my to-do list. Because clearly, life wasn’t going to give me a break any time soon.