Chapter Seventeen - Ella
I told myself over and over to move on with my life, to erase everything that had happened. I even deleted my Facebook profile, trying to get rid of everything connected to Tristan. I threw myself into studying, but I couldn’t really focus on it. All I could think about was Tristan. Every time I thought of him, a fresh wave of shame came over me and I wanted to hide forever. I never wanted to leave my house again.
I kept thinking of his security team looking me up, seeing all those conversations and messages, maybe even printing them out and passing them around the palace. I could picture them laughing at me, the girl who’d confessed her sex fantasies to the prince. Some of them were probably getting off to them, the others whispering about how a woman who said things like that, who had a mind like that, could never be royalty. They were probably right. I’d been tested to make sure I was still a virgin, but what was that compared to what had been in my head, to what everyone now knew? What was once, I thought, hidden behind a fake profile, was now attached to me, to my name and face, forever.
I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t imagine what Tristan had thought of me, what he had maybe always thought. I could never marry him now, after all that. It ruined everything, ruined those few days we’d spent together when I thought maybe I could. When I’d thought I could be someone a prince would want, that Tristan would want. Now I knew I’d only been fooling myself. Nothing about Tristan, or about Frederick, had ever been real, and the pain of losing them both was too much.
I was miserable and heartbroken in a way I had never been before. I wanted to be able to move past it, to shake it all away as a mistake I could walk away from, but he was always on my mind. I kept thinking of his handsome face, the way his eyes looked when he smiled, the muscled lines of his body, the things we’d talked about, the way he’d made me feel. I could hardly get through a few minutes without seeing the sex we’d had in my mind, without remembering what it felt like to have him inside me, remembering the taste and feel of him.
No matter how low I was feeling, remembering made me wet and aching for him. I was so turned on, and so angry with myself for it, so embarrassed. I had had sex with him, and he had probably known the whole time who I was, had known I had said those things, wanted those things. I was sure he had only picked me from the festival because he knew. He probably thought of me as a ridiculous, naive girl, someone who would be easy to get into bed. I imagined him laughing at all those things I said as I typed them, those erotic thoughts I had confessed. He had probably thought a girl who would say those things to a stranger online would surely have sex with a prince after only one conversation.
He had been right. I was that girl, and I didn’t know how it had happened. I was so raw with humiliation, so jagged and exposed that I didn’t know how to feel whole again. I had always been in such control, excelling at school and at most things I tried, but I felt now like none of that mattered, like I was nothing but a spectacular failure.
On top of it all, I couldn’t help but miss Tristan terribly. I had never felt so close to a man, and the loss of him, of what I’d thought we had, hurt terribly. It made me feel like I could break down and sob at any moment. I did, several times, unable to stop the waves of sadness that overtook me, paralyzing me.
In high school, a boy named Craig had broken my heart and humiliated me. He’d cheated on me, carrying on with another girl for months before I found out. I’d been so hurt and felt like such an idiot for ever trusting him, for wasting my time, that I’d cried until my eyes were puffy and my throat burned. But compared to this hurt I was feeling now, it was nothing, like comparing a scraped knee to an amputated limb.
After Craig, Gretchen had been there. She’d helped me feel better, and she’d helped me plan all sorts of revenge that we hadn’t actually gone through with. She’d encouraged me to confront him, and I had. I’d yelled at him right in the high school hallways, and it had helped. It had made me feel less like a victim, less like he had broken me. I thought about calling Gretchen now, as she had left me several messages wanting to know how it all went, but I wasn’t ready to talk to her. To explain it, I’d have to tell her everything, starting with the Facebook profile, and I just wasn’t ready for that.
I knew I’d have to tell her eventually, but right now, I couldn’t imagine saying any of it out loud to anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, about anything, except for Tristan. I desperately wanted to talk to Tristan, but I also never wanted to talk to him, or about him, ever again. I wanted to hide away until it stopped hurting so much, until I stopped feeling so bad.
I didn’t know how long that would be. It felt like I’d never get over this. That I would never get over Tristan.