Free Back To You by Jessica Mastorakos

point that weekend, so he didn’t want one of them to blow it before
they even left the table.
    “Take a walk with
me?” He asked Olivia in a hushed voice, staring into her eyes. He was taking
advantage of the distraction his mother had caused with the rest of the family.
    She looked all too
eager to get some time alone with him. “Definitely.”
    Mills helped her
up from her chair in a show of chivalry, and then took her hand. He led her
through the tables, toward the edge of the water. The sun shone off the surface
of the small lake behind them.
    I looked down at
Ellie. She was watching the scene unfold with stars in her eyes. I didn’t
really think marriage was for me, and I definitely didn’t believe in marriage
at eighteen, but I had to admit that Mills was as sure as he could be about
this. He’d been relentlessly bending my ear about how much he loved Olivia for
the last three months, so if anyone could make this work, they could. The
entire pavilion erupted into applause, and I smiled at Ellie’s white knuckled
reaction when Mills dropped to one knee.

 
    Chapter Seven
    Ellie

 
    “Thanks again for
inviting us to come out with you guys!” Olivia said as she and Matt climbed
into the backseat of my car.
    “No problem. It’s
great that we’re all from San Diego so we can hang out.” I glanced back at my
new friends, excited at the prospect of hanging out with Olivia more often. I
didn’t have very many girlfriends. It wasn’t because I didn’t want girlfriends,
but all of the girls I hung out with from high school were catty and always
finding some way to cause drama. I hoped Olivia wouldn’t be like that.
    “So whose party is
it?” Matt asked, settling into the seat next to his new fiancé.
    “It’s just this
guy we went to high school with,” Spencer answered him. “I thought Ellie was
going to throw me a welcome home party, but apparently she couldn’t be
bothered.”
    I playfully
swatted his arm. “Hey! I put a lot of effort into your going away party; so don’t
act like I don’t care.”
    “Yeah, yeah,
yeah,” Spencer rolled his eyes with a smile. “I’m just glad to have ten whole
days before we have to go to combat training.”
    “I hear that,
bro.” Matt said.
    “So, Ellie, is
your boyfriend going to be in town anytime soon?” Olivia asked, leaning
forward.
    I shook my head.
“Not for a while. I think he’s coming down for Thanksgiving though, so I’m
excited for that.”
    I really had been
missing Tim. More than I thought I would. It seemed like only yesterday that I
was questioning the future of our relationship, but as soon as I watched him
drive away I realized that the old adage about not realizing what you had until
it was gone started to ring true. I had never put much faith in long-distance
relationships, though. Now that I was in one, I knew it was going to take a lot
of work on both sides to make it last. The important thing was that I really
did want it to work.
    The night before
he left, as I was lying in his bed after we made love, he told me that when he
graduated he wanted to marry me. He wasn’t proposing. He was simply telling me
that he planned for us to be together. I had been surprised by how happy the
idea of marrying Tim had made me, and I knew that he would be a great husband
and father. He was just so, stable. I wanted stable. I was sure the feeling in
my stomach had been excitement, not unease.
    “Well,” Olivia
continued, pulling me from my thoughts, “I’d love to meet him sometime. Maybe
he’ll be here at some point when Matt is here, too, so we can double date.”
    “Yeah, and I’m
sure Hawk can find a girl to bring and we can make it six.” Matt added,
reaching forward to pat Spencer on the shoulder. “Right, buddy?”
    Spencer grunted in
reply. He was scrolling through Facebook’s newsfeed on his phone, probably
trying to catch up on things that had happened while he was gone. I wondered if
it was weird for him to see that his