Bad Influencer by Kenzie Reed

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jillian

Bronwyn furiously paces the living room floor.

“You’ll wear a hole in that carpet.” My voice comes out all croaky because I cried all night and also didn’t sleep at all. I waited until I got to my car before I started crying, at least. I’m proud of myself for that.

Bronwyn waves her eco-friendly reusable metal straw, then jabs it violently in the air. ”If I weren’t a pacifist, I’d use this to disembowel him.”

I manage a smile.

“If I weren’t a pacifist, I’d feed him into a wood chipper.” Her brow furrows in thought. “Although, you know… that would make excellent compost, right? Because I’m also an Earth warrior.”

I choke down a snort-laugh. Ari, sprawled out in the recliner, nods approvingly.

She’s been ranting about Elliott for the last twenty minutes, ever since I gave up on sleep and staggered into the living room at 8 a.m.

“For someone who’s a pacifist, you have a lot of gruesome ideas.” I glance at Ari. “Be nice to her,” I warn him.

“Always. And not just because I love her.” He winks at her. “She’s the scariest pacifist I’ve ever met.”

My head throbs dully. I press my fingers against my temples. “Edith sent me a message this morning. Trevor’s apparently quit. And even though he’s the one who blackmailed me into this, I know he did it with good intentions, and I’m freaking furious at Elliott. I can’t believe he was such an absolute jackhole.”

“A dingleberry on the buttcrack of life,” Bronwyn agrees.

“A bastard sandwich,” Ari chimes in. “With bastard sauce. Rotten bastard sauce that’s gone bad after being left out in the sun too long.”

“That was beautiful. You’re a poet and didn’t know it.” Bronwyn flutters her eyelashes at him. I think that’s maybe a little too generous, but they’re carrying out their jobs as supportive best friends to perfection, so I keep my mouth shut.

The home phone rings, and we all turn to stare at it. “It’s coming from the home of the enemy,” Bronwyn says. “It says Bradford.”

She picks it up before I can stop her. “Fuck you!” she yells into the phone. “You shitheel! My friend is not a cheater, you twatmuffin! Come over here so I can kick your ass! But I’m going to do it in the street because you’re not allowed in our house anymore! And you need to do it before 9 a.m. because I have to go to work!”

“You can’t be a part-time pacifist, you know,” I say reprovingly. “That’s like being a part-time vegetarian. Either you are or you aren’t.”

“Yes you can,” Ari assures her, and gives her a supportive thumbs up. “You can be whatever you want to be.” Seriously, she could toot in church and he’d think it was the most wonderful, adorable thing ever. Must be nice to have someone always in your corner like that.

I hear a calm female voice answering Bronwyn. “This is Wisteria. And that wasn’t good for your karma. But I approve anyway. Can I talk to Jillian?”

“Oh, hi, Wisteria. You’re the girl with the sage, right? Rocking the blue hair? The one we met at the park opening? I will see if Jillian’s here.” She looks at me, and I nod. “She says she’s here,” Bronwyn tells Wisteria.

“Subtle.” I grab the phone. “Hello, Wisteria. What’s happening?”

“I was going to ask you that. Elliott came storming in last night with an aura like a dark rain cloud. He snapped at both his parents, which he never does. He said something about you and Trevor, and something about women in general, so I kicked him right in the chakras, but I don’t actually mean chakras. It’s another word that’s not coming to me right now.”

“Cojones?”

“That’s it!”

“Huh. No kidding? I somehow thought you were a pacifist like Bronwyn.”

“Why? Not all cosmically enlightened people are pacifists. Sometimes harmonic vibrations need a little fine tuning. With my foot.”

“Okay, you’re speaking Martian again, but in answer to your question, what happened is Elliott actually accused me of dating him for his money and cheating on him with Trevor. And beyond that…” I blink back tears. “Beyond that, I’m not ready to speak about it. If that’s how little he thinks of me, then I guess I never knew him at all.”

Saying the words makes me nauseated. I really did believe I knew him, in the special way that people in love know each other. Like Pansy and Theo know each other. Like my mom and dad, like Ari and Bronwyn, all achingly perfect for each other. I thought I knew his very soul. So where did all this hate and jealousy come from?

From a stranger.

“It’s not how little he thinks of you. It’s how little he thinks of himself. It’s just based on some bad past experience.”

“I guess his ex-fiancée really did a number on him.” I shrug listlessly.

“Not just her. He was in love with this girl Amber in high school, and she basically did the same thing that Lauren did. They were dating, and he left for college, and she sent him an incredibly nasty text saying that she’d been sleeping with other people all along and she was glad he went away so she wouldn’t have to dump him, he was so boring he made her want to jump off a bridge, and she’d only ever dated him because of who he was, but even that wasn’t enough for her. Totally out of the blue, apparently.”

“Yeah, Cameron mentioned something about that. Elliott never told me about it, though.” I guess he’d have to care about me to actually really open up and share.

“Well, Elliott doesn’t like to talk about it. It really messed him up for years afterwards.”

“Good.” I sniffle hard. “I’m glad that happened to him. He deserved it.”

“You don’t really mean that,” Wisteria observes.

“No,” I say sadly. “I don’t.” The thought of Elliott being in pain just makes me even sadder.

“Well, I’m sorry that happened to you guys. I hope we can still be friends. You’ve got a pretty aura. It’s all sparkly.”

“Thank you, I think? Anyway, yes, of course we can still be friends. I’m just going to be MIA for a little while. I texted my resignation to Nowhere Special. I don’t want to risk running into him. And besides, I worked there for almost a year now, that’s way longer than my usual run.” I end that with a bitter chuckle.

I can hear Elliott’s voice in my head telling me not to put myself down like that. But then, Elliott’s the dipshit who basically called me a cheating ho because… because why? I still don’t understand what happened back there. It seems really out of character for him. I mean, he always acted a little jealous when guys were checking me out, but never once did he accuse me of anything inappropriate.

Something’s bothering me about all this. Something’s whispering at the edges of my consciousness, and I don’t know what, but I feel like there’s more going on than I know about. In the end, though, all that really matters is that I opened my heart to Elliott, and he went from “I can’t get enough of you” to “Get the hell out of my life” like someone had flipped a switch inside his head.