Always, Ella Read online

  Ella.

  The name popped into her head as clear as day. She hadn’t been called by her nickname since the first week she had arrived in Charleston when the other Ella in her class backed her into a corner with her posse of friends⁠—friends Elena would never make⁠—and told her there could only be one.

  The kids in her class had grown up together. Their parents had grown up together. And their parents’ parents had grown up together. Their bonds went back generations, and they had made it clear how out of place she truly was that day.

  It had never felt like that in New York. There were always new kids joining her class at odd times throughout the year. If you were the new kid, you wouldn’t be for long. Maybe that’s why things had seemed easier for her back then and why it was a shock to her system when they first came to Charleston.

  Elena rubbed her eyes and shook her head. Maybe that’s where it all went wrong. When ten-year-old Elena let other people define her. The old, pre-Charleston Ella would never have allowed that. She had spunk. She was brave.

  The old Ella would have dusted herself off and gotten back on the playground already, not wallowed on the sidelines.

  The old Ella knew who she was and wouldn’t bend to anyone.

  Until one day, she did.

  Elena wished she hadn’t given in all those years ago. Maybe things would have been different.

  Every once in a while, she could feel the old Ella stirring about. But Elena knew better. She learned early on that side of her wasn’t tolerated or accepted. If she wanted to fit in here, she needed to play by their rules.

  Yeah, that had worked out great. Maybe it’s time to make my own rules for a change.

  Putting her fingers to the keyboard, she began to type.

  Dear Ella,

  Where do I start? Is there ever really a starting point when you’re lost? Truthfully, I’ve felt out of place for...a while now. But I brushed it off, telling myself that everyone my age feels that way.

  But today I realized how wrong I was, and now I’m wondering if that feeling influenced all my decisions, including my boyfriend, Brad.

  I loved him. Love him.

  I don’t know.

  Catching him with another woman should have shocked me to the core. And it did, a little. But there’s this nagging in the back of my mind that keeps saying I shouldn’t be surprised.

  That’s what’s bothering me.

  The cheating hurts like hell, but it’s the voice repeating over and over that I should have seen it coming.

  I just don’t know how I would have.

  We were happy for two years. He made me feel like I belonged for the first time in a long time. We were about to move in together. How could I have known he would hurt me like this?

  Elena’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at the screen, not truly seeing it. Why was her gut telling her this was expected? Hadn’t he been supportive? Loving? There?

  No. No. And no.

  She pushed back in her seat. Where did those thoughts come from?

  Without thinking, she clicked the button to start a bulleted list and let her heart take the keyboard.

  Red flags:

  Dismissing dream of writing novel

  Never truly supportive when people like Brittany ruined work for me

  Reluctant to introduce me to certain groups of friends

  His parents never warmed up to me, acted like I was temporary;

  She paused before she listed more bullets that were itching to be typed. These weren’t just red flags, these were really red flags. And yet she had ignored them all this time. She continued writing.

  The signs were subtle, he hid them well and played them off, but they were there. What do I do now that I know my relationship was a lie? How do I trust myself again?

  Sincerely,

  Dazed and Confused

  Elena took a sip of her wine as she reread what she’d written. There it was. Out in the open. She’d stuck with a man who didn’t respect her. Who⁠—depending on his situation⁠—would hide her. All those horrible things she thought about herself came rushing back. All the self-doubt. The self-image issues. Her foolish hope that she finally fit in blinded her to what was right in front of her.

  She wouldn’t fall back into that pattern of self-loathing. She pushed those thoughts aside.

  What would Ella do?

  Dear Dazed and Confused,

  It can be hard to come to terms with something like this. You put your trust in someone and loved them, yet they couldn’t do the same. But you need to know this isn’t your fault. Would it have been nice to know he wasn’t treating you the way you deserve sooner? Sure.

  That’s not on you, though. He made you believe one thing but did the opposite. If there’s a lesson here, it’s to trust the actions and not the words.

  More importantly, you need to trust your gut. Judging by what you wrote, it looks like you had a subconscious clue something was off.

  When you have that reaction, pay attention to it. It could save you from a world of hurt and a lot of wasted time.

  In the meantime, embrace the pain. Let it all out. And then find a way to do something positive with your life. You alone control your future. That may seem sad as your heart heals, but when you get past that initial ache, you’ll see a lot is waiting for you.

  I see a bright future ahead for you. All you have to do is reach out and grab it.

  Always,

  Ella

  After an hour of cathartic writing, Elena sucked in a deep, cleansing breath and started to feel a little better. The tears had dried into a crusty mess on her cheeks. She felt gross and restless, but a little less hopeless.

  Walking to her bathroom, she eased her way into the shower and let the hot water wash away the day. She stood there for far too long, her fingers pruning in the process and the water running lukewarm. After, she threw on comfortable clothes and opted to towel-dry her long, thick, dark hair. It would be a disaster when it dried⁠—not quite straight, not quite wavy⁠—but she didn’t care.

  Little things like that didn’t matter when you had no one to impress anymore. She sighed, shaking the negative thought away. She needed a break from her pity party.

  Shuffling back into the kitchen, the worse for wear, she poured herself another glass of wine and guzzled it in a very unladylike way.

  Not a Southern Belle at all, that’s for damn sure.

  Her laptop dinged from the coffee table, pulling her attention from the wine bottle. Her eyebrows knitted in confusion, trying to place the notification noise. It definitely wasn’t for an email.

  Another ding.

  What is that?

  She crossed the living room in three strides and woke the computer, the screen a bright, blinding light in her dim apartment.

  You’ve been mentioned. Click here to see the post.

  Elena scanned the list of notifications on the blog site, another handful saying the same thing. With a shaky finger, she clicked the first message.

  Dear Ella,

  I love my girlfriend, but our families don’t approve because we’re not the same religion. I want to spend the rest of my life with her, but she thinks we should break up because she sees no way around this.

  Elena sucked in a breath, her heart racing. She clicked another message.

  Dear Ella,

  I want to do something grand and romantic for my promposal, but my girlfriend is scared because she hasn’t officially come out yet. How do I help her feel ready to embrace who she is?

  “Oh my God,” Elena hissed. Frantically, she clicked her account details and pulled up her privacy settings. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “Set to Private” remained unchecked in her settings. She could have sworn she did it first thing.

  Another ding indicating a new notification made her blood pressure spike.

  All of these people were desperate for help. All of them waiting for her to respond.

  2

  Elena

/>   “Open up!” Elena shouted as she pounded on the door.

  “I’m coming! Jesus,” she heard a muffled voice from the other side. Seconds later, the door swung open to reveal her best friend, Mae St. Julien. Looking confused, she ran a hand through her wild hair, which was a shocking shade of pink this week. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Elena and Marley pushed inside the swanky apartment of the new complex built on upper King Street. She unhooked Marley’s leash, who immediately sniffed around with curiosity despite having been there a bunch of times.

  “Are you drunk? On a Wednesday?” Mae feigned shock. She was probably enjoying this far too much.

  Elena dropped Marley’s leash on the quartz countertop and ran a hand through her mess of thick waves. “Kinda. That’s not the point.”

  “Celebrating your new client?” Mae guessed.

  Elena rolled her eyes. “No. That’s a story for another time⁠—”

  “Brittany strikes again?” Mae guessed.

  Elena grabbed her friend’s shoulders and shook. “Listen to me! We have a situation.”

  Mae smirked. “What is it this time? Your Lilly Pulitzer pals said your shirt was offseason?” she jabbed.

  Mae was a free spirit. Although born and raised in Charleston to a well-off, well-respected family, she was anything but the Southern angel she was destined to be. A graphic artist, Mae liked to express herself any way she could: colorful hair, provocative tattoos, and an ever-changing wardrobe. Her current phase was some form of nineties grunge.

  On more than one occasion, Elena had seen Mae’s mom clutch her pearls. Literally.

  She had been trying to get Elena to let loose since they became friends in the fourth grade. Mae didn’t understand how hard it was for Elena to fit in, and she had tried hard.

  Elena wasn’t one of them. Mae didn’t get what it was like to be an outsider, and even if she had been one, she likely wouldn’t have cared. That’s just how she was.

  “Brad and I broke up.”

  “Wait, what? You finally got rid of the Ken-doll?” Mae had never been shy about her opinion of Brad.

  Elena nodded quickly. “More on that later. The issue is this.” She shoved her phone in Mae’s face.

  She took the phone and held it away, adjusting her gaze to see what Elena had thrust at her. “Okay. It’s a blog site. So what?” She shook her head in confusion.

  Elena paced back and forth, Marley following along, likely wondering where all this pacing was leading to. “I had this stupid idea to write a letter to myself to help me work out my feelings.”

  “Writing always helps you, though.”

  She paused and pinned Mae down with an exasperated look. “I know.” She paced again. “I thought I set it to private, but it must not have saved, and now people are writing in like I’m the new Dear Abby. I have no idea how they found me.”

  “Looks like someone with a big following reblogged your original post. It has a ton of shares, comments, and likes.” Mae handed back her phone and shrugged. “You can still shut it down. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “But it is.” She grabbed the phone and scrolled. “These people…they’re all going through something. Just like me. They’re looking for someone to help them.”

  “Doesn’t mean it has to be you. You don’t have to answer.”

  Elena bit her bottom lip. “I kinda already did.”

  “You what?” Mae snatched the phone back and looked at the posts, sucking in a deep breath. “I have to admit, your responses are pretty amazing. But really? It’s not like you to put yourself out there like that.”

  “I’m not. Ella is.”

  Mae rolled her eyes. “You don’t think someone will find out eventually?”

  “No one has called me Ella in years. Plus, none of my account information even hints at who I am or where I’m from. I don’t even have an avatar loaded.”

  “So…”

  “So, I can be Ella. I can help people. In helping them, it’ll also help me deal with the Brad stuff.”

  “I know you loved him, but it isn’t a big loss. He never deserved you.”

  Elena paused at that but tried to keep her facial expression even, as she’d learned to do over the years. Deep down, she never felt like she deserved him. She had always waited for the day he would realize it.

  I guess it was today.

  “Maybe so. And maybe one day I’ll see that. But right now, I don’t. And right now, I’m hurt. And sad. And feeling pretty shitty about myself. But answering those people? I felt a little better.”

  Mae leaned in and sniffed. “You sure you’re not feeling a little better because of the wine? What is that? The pinot noir we like from the wine bar under your apartment?”

  “Yeah. Nate gave me a discount. He says hi, by the way.”

  “I’ll have to stop in.”

  “Anyway,” she said, trying to bring the conversation back on track. “I think...I think I want to keep at it. It feels like it’s giving me a sense of purpose. Maybe I can do some good while I work through my own stuff.” Tears misted her eyes again. Her stomach clenched as the visions of Brad lapping up the blonde came rushing back.

  Mae hugged her, a concerned look on her face. “Maybe you’re right, and that’s exactly what you need to help you feel better. Listening to other people’s problems and giving back is super noble. But what about you? Maybe you can tell me about your problems.” Mae shrugged her tiny shoulders.

  Elena swiped away a tear, feeling grateful for her friend. The unlikeliest of pairs, her mother would say, but they balanced each other out beautifully. “You’re great, you know that?”

  Mae moved to the kitchen and uncorked a bottle of wine. She took a gulp straight from the bottle before handing it to Elena. “Now I’m an even better friend. C’mon. Let’s sit, and you tell me what happened. In detail.”

  As expected, the next couple of hours were full of talking crap about Brad and even more wine⁠—more wine than she should have had. As she wandered back home with Marley, well-past buzzed, she somehow found clarity in the booze-induced fog.

  After her vent session with Mae, she saw a glimmer of hope. Maybe tomorrow would be the start of the healing process. It would take some time to get over the betrayal, and it might take even longer to trust her instincts again, but the promise of a new beginning blossomed something inside of her.

  It was the blog.

  Maybe she hadn’t set it to private, but she never advertised it either. In a world where an insane amount of content is produced every second, her blog was somehow discovered in the sea of digital noise. To her, it felt like a sign. People found it, read it, and now turned to her for help.

  As she got back to her apartment and tucked herself into bed, she grabbed her phone to set her alarm. Squinting with one eye to reduce the double-vision, she saw another ten alerts from the blog pop up.

  Mae had urged Elena to sleep on it because this wasn’t normal Elena behavior, and it really had been a shitty day. Diving into this might not be healthy, she had warned, and Elena might see that after her emotions had evened out.

  But Mae didn’t understand there was something more to it. Sure, it was great to help people, but the blog offered Elena something she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  She saw a glimpse of her old self, of what could be. And she liked it. As her finger hovered between the button to delete the blog or to reply, her gut told her what she needed to do.

  3

  Elena

  One year later.

  * * *

  “And that’s how you’re going to stand out from your competitors, plain and simple.” Brittany shined a blindingly white smile before taking her seat. Elena tried not to roll her eyes.

  Mark, head of advertisement, walked to the front of the room. “Thank you, Brittany. Very compelling presentation.” He addressed the two prospective clients sitting at the end of the table. “Now that you’ve gotten a glimpse of what our two top copywriters have to
offer, do you have any thoughts or feedback?”

  Mary, an executive for a prestigious restaurant group that owned and operated some of the finest dining establishments in Charleston, nodded. “I have to say, very impressive work, ladies. As you know, we have meetings with two other agencies next week. Once we meet with them, Chuck and I will weigh our options and get you an answer. We’ll make our decision before the end of the month.”

  Mark’s stance shifted into what Elena recognized as his way to exude confidence. “Fair enough. We look forward to hearing from you. And please, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.”

  Elena shuffled out of the conference room with the rest of the group and beelined it to her desk, trying to get away from Brittany as soon as humanly possible. If she thought Brittany had been bad before, she’d been sorely mistaken. In the past year, Brittany had managed to undermine most of Elena’s projects, causing a boatload of extra work. It had been hell, and despite her complaints to Mark, he did nothing to intervene. Brittany’s methods were locking in clients, and that’s what mattered to him, even if it was causing friction between colleagues.

  “That could have gone better,” Mae commented as she took a seat on the edge of Elena’s desk.

  Although Mae owned her own graphic design business, Elena’s company often contracted with her. Those weeks were Elena’s favorite. Something about having her friend in the office eased her murderous tendencies when it came to Brittany.

  “Leave it to Brittany to diminish all my hard work into nothing. She somehow makes me look like the amateur here. I should feel lucky Mark hasn’t demoted me to the junior position with how things have gone lately.” Her smile was self-deprecating. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Your design was awesome, by the way,” Elena added.

  “Let’s hope they see through Brittany’s bullshit and choose you. That’s one of the best campaigns I’ve seen you do.”