Page 73 of Sext Addict

Recognition hit Ellis’s eyes, as if he’d been testing me and confirmed I was reciting the lines from the script. Hope washed over his face, then his expression went blank.

“Those are just lines,” Ellis said, his voice soft, yet firm.

“No,” I insisted. “They’re, I mean, yeah, they’re lines, but they’re not—”

“That’s enough, Tessa. I don’t have time to practice lines with you. I have to work.”

Ellis stepped closer to me, and I caught a whiff of his scent. My knees trembled, and I leaned back against the door to steady myself, the trembling growing stronger when he reached around me to grab the door knob.

“Someone wrote those ridiculous lines from a ridiculous soap opera with ridiculous romances that we both know don’t happen in real life. It’s all make-believe.”

I stared up at him as he sighed, briefly closing his eyes before looking down at me.

“People don’t suddenly realize their love for one another when it’s been staring them in the face the whole time,” he continued. “It’s a trope we studied in theater class and it’s cheesy and cliché and ridiculous.”

He tried to turn the door knob, but I stopped him.

“Then I’ll be a trope,” I said, jutting my chin up in defiance. “And I’ll be cheesy and cliché and ridiculous. I don’t give a damn anymore.”

“Tessa.”

“Because I write the script. Me,” I pointed to my chest. “Nobody else gets to write it for me.” I then pointed my finger at Ellis, jabbing it into his chest as emotion I hadn’t expected poured out of me. “Not you and not anyone else. Me.”

Ellis hesitated. I had gone terribly off script. None of this was rehearsed or practiced. I felt myself flying off the rails per usual, but for the first time in my life I didn’t have the urge to stop or run or leave. I was going to stay right where I fucking was.

My voice was louder, more emphatic, as Ellis just stood there, looking shocked. “I’m going to write the script of my life, Ellis Finley, and I’m going to say whatever the hell I want to say.”

Ellis dropped his hand from the door knob but only to cross his arms over his chest. A hint of a grin tugged at the corner of his perfect lips, and it was only then that I breathed a little easier.

“And what is it that you want to say, Tessa Stewart?”

Well, there I was: on my own, speaking just as myself, my true self. There were no black words printed on a white page to follow, to read aloud, to practice and rehearse and refine. There was no director behind a camera, behind the blinding lights of the stage, behind the casting table. There was no direction, no instruction, nobody to tell me what to say or how to say it.

There was only me. Not the New Tessa. But Tessa.

Just Tessa.

“I want to say,” I started softly, nervously. I cleared my throat and tried to keep my heart rate somewhere below “dying on an elliptical” speed. “I want to say that I—I—”

I was searching for the perfect words, but there were no perfect words. There were only my words.

“I love you, Ellis. And not just as a friend. I mean, I do love you as a friend. My best friend. But I also love you in every other way it’s possible to love another person.”

Ellis’s breath hitched, but he remained silent, so I kept going.

“I’ve loved you for a long time,” I continued, the words suddenly flowing and tumbling over one another. “I think I loved you, whole heartedly loved you, the moment I met you in the dorms the first day of our freshman year. And, well, that was what I wanted to say.”

Waiting for a response was agony, pure agony. I had put myself out there. I had walked off the cliff and I was hanging there, out above the open air, waiting to see if I would fall or if someone’s arms would catch me. Ellis still said nothing and I couldn’t take it any longer.

“So, um, I said what I wanted to say and, well…”

My voice hitched and I turned away to open the door. Then I froze.

No.No.

I wasn’t running away. Not again.

So I turned back to Ellis and even though nerves made my chest feel like there was a heavy rock sitting on it, I said, “Ellis, I said I love you. Aren’t you going to say anything?”