5 Ethan
A s expected, Ellie was the perfect housemate. Even before she got the property manager’s okay to tackle the garden, she had already bought little planters and started a herb garden. “I can’t live without one to cook with,” she told me.
Inside the house, she was neat, she was clean, and she was organised. So organised. And the best thing was, she loved to cook. She loved to cook a lot.
That morning, after I took Ellie to the bakery, she went to the shops and came back with two bags full of groceries. I had already allocated space for her stuff in the fridge and pantry, and my place came with all the cooking implements I could need. My mother made sure I was well stocked before she let me move out of home on my own.
“I’m going to make some cottage pie tonight for my dinner,” Ellie told me. “I’m not sure if you have any dinner plans, but I could make extra for you if you’d like.” Then she paused, then shyly added, “You did buy me lunch.”
My plans involved walking to the main strip and going to the local pub, aptly named The Local. I really needed to eat out less and save more money for the mortgage, but sometimes it was just too hard to cook for one. My previous housemates all took care of their own meals. Dave, the slob, lived on a permanent diet of fast food. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if he threw away the burger wrappers after he was done, instead of leaving it all over the dining room table and floor for other people—namely me—to pick up.
“Dinner would be amazing,” I told her. Ellie’s offering to cook for me was an improvement to my housemate situation by leaps and bounds.
The cottage pie she ended up making was the best I had ever had. The mince and sauce were beefy and savoury and hit every spot a hearty pie could hit, and the mash on top of the filling was on a whole new level. It was fluffy and creamy and covered with grated parmesan cheese that gave the top a satisfying crunch when baked. Every bite was like a party in my mouth. Ellie had even snuck shredded kale into the mash topping, but somehow it worked. I never walked away from a meal feeling more satisfied or more healthy.
No wonder Hannah could look past Ellie being the third wheel when she stayed with her and Callum. I ate more pie than needed, and Ellie had made a lot of pie.
“Do you always make this much food for yourself?” I asked her. She didn’t look like she ate that much.
“Oh, I do it, so I have leftovers to bring to work.”
Oh shit. I dropped my fork. I had been eating Ellie’s work lunches.
Ellie saw my horrified expression and laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Have as much as you want. I’m used to cooking for two, and I can always make more.”
Then her face dimmed. She was thinking of Nat.
“I will never kick you out,” I promised her. She didn’t know that as her landlord, that promise held that much more weight, and I intended to keep it. “I can’t anyway. You’re a tenant fully protected by your tenancy contract and the law.”
Then a thought occurred to me.
“Did you have a similar tenancy contract with Nat?” I asked. “If you did, she shouldn’t have been able to evict you.”
Ellie shook her head. “She never wanted to draw up one, and it had never been necessary. And I know that contract or not, she couldn’t legally evict me on such short notice. But I just couldn’t stay there any longer.”
I remembered that day at the bar when Ellie had shown up looking like hell right after Nat kicked her out. The memory still made me angry.
“What the hell is the deal with Nat and Andy?” I wanted to know.
Ellie sighed.
“You know Nat’s engaged to Andy, right?”
I nodded.
“Andy’s her first boyfriend.”
My eyes widened. Nat was stunning. I was surprised she had been single for as long.
Ellie heard my unanswered question and filled in the blanks. “Andy was the most persistent of all the men who pursued her. Nat doesn’t like to get out of her comfort zone. It’s not that she’s shy; she just can’t be bothered most times. Andy was the one guy who didn’t take no for an answer, and he eventually wore her down. You probably don’t see it, but I’m the more social of the two of us.”
Oh, I could see it all right. Ellie wasn’t the life of the party like Joyce was, or the chatty, nurturing heart of the friend group like Hannah was, but she was always friendly and approachable. She projected a quiet confidence, and it wasn’t a surprise that she was as competent as she came across. I was eating the results of her competence now. I suspected that with a best friend as beautiful as Natalie was, Ellie had to find some other way to shine.
Ellie kept talking. Her expression grew dark. “At first, I was happy for her. He made her happy, you know? Then the possessiveness came out. At first, it seemed attractive. Nat certainly loved how much it made her feel wanted. But then he started calling her non-stop every time we went out without him. I couldn’t have a conversation with Nat without being constantly interrupted by needy phone calls and text messages. I know love can make someone crazy, but I thought it was too much.” She lifted her eyes to me. “Unless I’m wrong, and I have no right to think so because I’ve never been in a relationship like that.”
I leaned back in my chair with a frown. I had been in relationships before, and while I could be needy, I was never that smothering. “You’re not wrong, Ellie. That’s way too much. But that can’t be all, can it?”
Ellie shook her head.
“Nat has a bunch of colleagues who live in the same area, and they set up a carpool to work. It was a great idea and saved so much time and money for the lot of them. Andy forbade her from continuing with the carpool because there were a few male colleagues in the bunch, so Nat had to drive herself to work every day through horrible traffic. And she had to come back home right after work, so Andy would know she was okay and not cheating on him.”
“What the hell?”
“Nat’s really pretty. You know that. Andy was paranoid that someone else would steal her away from him, no matter how much she assured him she didn’t want anyone else.”
I rolled my eyes.
“And he keeps telling her to dress better, to wear more makeup, to use branded handbags.”
“Was he going to buy her said handbags?”
Ellie shrugged. “He said he couldn’t afford it now, but she could, so she ought to do it. Plus, he was up and coming in his career as a lawyer. He needed her to look the part of a lawyer’s wife. And Nat earns enough to buy herself nice things.”
I made a face. The guy was one hell of a catch.
“The one incident that pissed me off the most…” Ellie’s face hardened. “…was when Nat was in a minor car crash and broke her arm. She was in rehab for a few months and wasn’t allowed any physical exertion—doctor’s orders. Andy acted like she wronged him. He…” Ellie’s jaw clenched. “He had the gall to complain to me that he hadn’t had sex for all that time, as if she owed him. I don’t know what he was smoking to think that I would ever sympathise with him.”
There was disgust and fury in her voice. I couldn’t share her sentiments more.
“When I told Nat about it, she just told me to chill, and that was his right as her boyfriend. That I would never understand because I wasn’t getting any.” Ellie tried to hide it, but it was obvious Nat’s words had hurt her.
“It sounds like they both deserve each other,” I muttered darkly.
“Then they got engaged,” Ellie continued. “Andy told Nat he wanted her to quit work and become a stay-at-home mum once they got married. But I know Nat has worked really hard for her career. She likes what she does, or so I thought. It shocked me when she told me she was going to do as Andy asked. It was as if all her ambitions had become Andy’s, and the person Nat used to be disappeared just like that.”
I knew Nat worked as an engineer, but I also knew many women left the workforce of their own volition once priorities shifted in life.
“It’s her choice, isn’t it?” I pointed out. “People change.”
“I know, I know. It just blindsided me, that’s all. I wasn’t happy, but I told her I’d support her in whatever she wanted, but that’s not what caused the blowup.”
Ellie’s gaze grew distant. “I was out for dinner with Hannah one night when I thought I saw Andy looking real cosy with another woman. Hannah didn’t see a thing, so I had no one to back me up. But I know what I saw. And I couldn’t just let it lie, so I told Nat, and everything else I didn’t like about Andy all spilled out. Nat did not take it well.”
“It sounds like Andy’s possessiveness was him projecting his own infidelity,” I murmured.
Ellie nodded. “I thought so too.” Then she sagged. “But that wasn’t the reason Nat kicked me out. After our blowup over my accusing Andy of cheating, Nat forbade me from talking about him.”
“Let me guess; you didn’t listen.”
Ellie shook her head. “I did worse. I can get a bit stuck on problem-solving when I see a problem that needs fixing, and I approached it way too strongly. I put everything I thought was wrong with Andy in a bullet list, put it on a clipboard, and went to confront Nat with it. You remember that clipboard.”
Yes, I did. It had been a thing of glory, but I doubted that Nat saw it that way.
I winced, but I got it. I could be that way too and sometimes missed the forest for the trees. No wonder Nat didn’t take it well.
I missed reading Ellie’s full list at the bar the other day, but I remembered the gist of it. The bullet points and highlights stood out most of all to me.
“Oh God,” I wheezed. I shouldn’t have laughed, but I could just imagine it. Ellie, with a serious look on her face, hair in a bun, approaching her best friend with a clipboard full of things she hated about her fiancé.
“I get why you did it, but the clipboard and the bullet list were a bit much.”
“ I know. ” Ellie’s face crumpled. “Nat set a boundary, and I crossed it, and now it’s cost me my friendship with her. We’ve known each other since we were in kindy, you know?”
There was a deep, abiding sadness in her voice. Friendships like that were meant to go the distance, not go bust up over some guy who didn’t even deserve it. Natalie broke Ellie’s heart, and it hurt to see it.
“She can’t realistically expect to date a douchebag and expect no one to say anything about it,” I argued, trying to make Ellie feel better.
Ellie’s gaze grew distant. “After I calmed down from being kicked out, I went to look up guides online on how I could have done better. Everything I found told me to be supportive so that I could keep Nat in my life and be there for her when things went sideways. I should have done my research before I confronted Nat, but now I’ve messed everything up. And Andy genuinely loves her. What if he gets better? What if I jumped the gun before they could sort it out between themselves? I stuffed up. I should have stayed out of it.”
Of course, Ellie would go and do a postmortem on the whole situation using Google.
“Ellie, it’s a complex situation. You can’t be expected to do everything perfectly, and even if you did, there’s no guarantee Nat wouldn’t have reacted the same way anyway,” I reasoned.
“Maybe I could have done things differently. Then I wouldn’t have lost her.”
From where I sat, it looked more like Nat had lost Ellie. Ellie had spoken up because she cared too much. Ellie had tried , and she had been gentle about it until she couldn’t, but I knew it wasn’t helpful to point it out right now, not when Ellie was still raw over her friend’s rejection.
“Ellie, you’ve still got us. Hannah and Joyce love you. Callum too. We may not have known you for as long, but we’ve got you.”
Oh damn, was Ellie tearing up?
“Thank you. You have no idea how much it means to me.” Her voice cracked. A hand went to wipe her eyes, and she quickly got up from the dining table and started clearing up.
“Let me.” I stopped her. “You cooked. It’s only fair.”
But it wasn’t enough.
“I’ll make dinner tomorrow too, with enough for leftovers for work,” I promised. I wasn’t sure what else I could do to comfort Ellie, but this I could do.