24. Eli
24
ELI
H aley said she didn’t want to report Preston for attacking her and almost raping her. Nor did she want me to seek revenge and go after him.
Reluctantly, I had to agree. I understood why.
Like the dean told me, it would be a case of her word versus his, and we all knew who had more sway in that regard. But I also had to respect Haley’s insistence not to speak up because of what happened to her sister. Natasha had been given a date-rape drug and was raped one night, and no one took her word for it either.
The Feldstones wouldn’t be believed in Marsten, and it reiterated how badly I hoped we could get out of here together to start somewhere new as a couple away from the prying eyes of everyone in town and on campus.
Ever since Preston went after Haley, I made sure she was never alone. If I couldn’t be with her, then Davina was. Or Finn. I enlisted a couple of other decent guys on the football team to be on the lookout for her too.
I also ceased staying at my dorm as often—at least not alone. Haley slept over, or I went to her house when her aunt wasn’t there.
“It’s not that she doesn’t approve of you,” Haley said one day on the way to class a couple of weeks after Preston’s attack.
“It sure seems like it,” I replied. I had yet to forget the dirty scowl Aunt Cindy gave me when she saw me kissing Haley goodbye near the parking lot.
“Okay, she doesn’t approve of you.” Haley frowned, as though she wished she could take it back. “But that’s because of our past.”
I nodded, hating that it was true.
“And she wouldn’t approve of anyone. She doesn’t want me to get involved with someone and then not be able to get out of town like I’d planned.”
Which is kind of happening…
Haley and I were definitely involved, and already, we were considering options to change how we’d leave town, as in she wouldn’t take off on her own to live near Natasha in the city, but we would together.
All week, I’d been waiting anxiously for word on the status of all the complaints Mr. West had put in. And it seemed like I would still be waiting. The committee that was in charge of reviewing whether I should be expelled had yet to reach a conclusion. According to one of the student workers who was listening in to a couple of the committee members talking about the incident, they felt that Mr. West was overstepping his power to request my expulsion. Their hang-up was the fact that I crashed that car off campus property. I wasn’t misbehaving on the college campus. And that was true.
Unfortunately, my parents caught wind of my pending troubles.
I didn’t know if a letter was sent to them or if they hacked into my emails somehow. One way or another, word got out to them from the college and the scholarship’s group of chairmen.
As expected, they were pissed about it.
And also as expected, they were very vocal with their opinions.
I avoided their texts and didn’t take their calls. I didn’t have the time to deal with the usual routine of their talking down to me. I had to study and wait on the edge of my seat for word about whether I would be expelled and if I would have to pay back my scholarship.
Ignoring them and avoiding them was probably my biggest mistake, though. When they couldn’t get my attention via texts or calls, they escalated it to popping in on campus.
They found me at the dorms again, waiting in the lobby since they couldn’t get up to my floor since security was on the lookout from the last time they tried to let themselves in.
And the second they spotted me, I told myself to grin and bear it. To deal with them, let them think that they were in control, and then they’d go.
“I’ll be damned if you throw your future away for another one of those Feldstone sluts,” my dad said with his chin lifted high in the air.
“She’s not a?—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think of her,” my mom said. “She’s clearly taking advantage of you, and you’re not even thinking straight to realize it.”
“She’s not?—”
“She’s just like her mother,” my dad said. “And her sister. And she will ruin your life if you don’t man up and think with your head for once.”
“You are doomed if you stick with a girl like her.” My mom jumped in as soon as my dad stopped talking. Between the two of them, there was not a single break in their criticism.
I hated how I bullied Haley, and I was prepared to show her each and every day how much I regretted it. I explained why I had, and while that didn’t excuse it, it was a reason. My parents had no reason to judge Haley. No reason whatsoever. Like the rest of Marsten, they stuck with prejudices and that was it. That was all they’d make room for in their small minds.
“You think you’re going to shack up with some tramp like her and you’ll still have a future?” my dad demanded. “You are already in trouble with this car you destroyed and the threat of being expelled, and you make her a priority?” He flexed his face, wincing as if he struggled with the urge to smack sense into me.
I didn’t need his version of sense.
I knew exactly what I wanted and needed.
Haley had more of a place in my life than they did.
“You don’t even know her,” I argued quietly, fully aware that anything I said wouldn’t change their minds.
“Are you suggesting we meet your little whore?—”
I held my hand up and gave my mom a look that suggested she should shut up immediately. “She’s not a whore.”
“She’s—”
I gave my dad the same hard stare. “Haley is a good person. She is generous and loving.”
My dad fisted his hands and lifted them, as if it were a wishful thought to use them on me. “Stop thinking with your dick, dammit!”
I shook my head. “I’m not.”
When it came to Haley, I was thinking with my heart. My soul. All that I was.
Because I loved that sassy brunette who survived my bullying. I was completely in love with that bold girl who would always fit so perfectly with me.
Even though they ranted and complained, mistaken that my presence meant I would hear a word they said, I backed up with a smile on my face.
Finally admitting that central truth, that I loved Haley, I felt freer. I felt whole and able to get through any hard challenge like losing my chance of graduating.
With Haley in my life, I felt like I could handle anything that came my way.
And as I backed up, I wondered when the time would be right to tell her.