The Anklebiters

Hayley tapped her fingers against her phone, desperately aching for contact with a real friend after everything that happened at Alex’s house that afternoon. She chewed on her bottom lip anxiously, feeling violated yet almost at peace with the events that occurred. She shouldn’t have done that with Alex today. No, no, no, her mind kept repeating through it. She was such a bitch, the biggest bitch on the planet. She kept reminding herself that the whole ordeal wasn’t wrong, but she had only just discovered her true feelings of liking Alex. She wasn’t in love with him as he was with her, making her the biggest asshole ever.

She had sex with a boy who loved her, when she did not have that hard of significant feelings.

The ringing on the phone finally stopped and just as Hayley was about to hang up, she heard on the other line, “Hello?”

“Tay?” She sniffled, trying to hide her girlish tears as much as she could. She shouldn’t be crying, but she was.

“Hayley?” Tay heard her friend’s almost inaudible sniffs on the other end. “Are you okay?”

Hayley quickly wiped away the tear that was about to fall down her cheek. “Can you just …” She sighed, trying to pull herself together as images of that afternoon flashed in her mind. “Can you come over?”

“I’m … kind of with Abi right now.” She hesitated before asking, “Can I bring her with me?”

“The more the merrier.”

---

Tay and Abi hopped up the last step of the staircase to Hayley’s room. Tay knocked on the bedroom door before going in, seeing their friend huddled on her bed and staring out her window. She didn’t even register their walking in. “Hey, Hayles …” Tay slowly approached her and then sat on the bed.

Abi sat on the other side and offered the orange-haired girl a warm smile. “What’s up?”

Hayley finally turned to them, allowing them to see her tear-streaked face and even more of those tears falling down her usually flushed cheeks. She smiled softly to her friends, whose faces were purely nervous. Soon, Hayley’s smile faltered into a frown and she let her head fall onto Tay’s shoulder, sobs racking her body. She stained the brunette’s shirt with her tears, and even Abi joined in on the big embrace they had created.

“I―I … hate what I’m doing … t―to him …” Hayley cried into Tay’s tee.

Tay and Abi massaged her back, and after a few minutes, Tay finally asked the dreaded question: “Hayles,” she muttered, “what exactly happened?”

“It’s not about what happened!” Hayley shrieked, throwing her head back up and exposing her tired red eyes. “Everything is going wrong, guys. This w―wasn’t supposed to happen … I wasn’t supposed to … develop feelings.”

The girls finally under stood what this was about. Abi murmured, “Well, it happens to everyone, even when we don’t mean to.”

“Yeah,” Tay agreed, “you don’t have to feel bad about it.”

“No, you don’t understand!” Hayley’s head fell into her hands and rubbed at her eyes violently. “I l―lied. I still lied when I said I loved him because I’m not … sure. I feel bad about everything. Everything that happened today shouldn’t have when it didn’t mean as much to me as it did to him. I broke the one rule and fell for him, but I’m not in love with him so I shouldn’t have …” She glanced at both of her friends’ confused expressions before she finished. “… Slept with him.”

Both of the girls’ eyes went wide. Abi started fiddling with her hands, clearly confused about what she could do about this. After a moment, Tay took Hayley’s hands in hers and muttered, “I don’t care what happens, Hayles. We need to tell Taylor how this is affecting you.”

Hayley rubbed at the bottoms of her eyes. “But―”

“This situation is only going to get worse. We need to tell her.”

Hayley looked to Abi for help, only to see the girl nodding with her friend. A sigh later, she finally said, “Fine. We can tell her tomorrow.”

Notes

If you're also a fan of my other story, A Casual Affair, you should know I've been kind of in a rut with that lately and I've been having trouble with writer's block for it. But I already have the whole plot thought out for this story so that's why it's been updated more frequently than the other!
And awwwww, sad Hayley makes me cry :( I never actually originally planned for Hayley and Alex to get together with this but now that I did, I kind of ship Haylex again like I used to. Another ship to add to the list of many xD
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Rock on \m/