Friends With All the Benefits

34 Ethan

E llie wouldn’t let me drive her to Nat’s place. In fact, she told me it was probably for the best if we had no contact for the next few weeks until she was ready to get her stuff out of her room. She was only gone a few hours, and already, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I called my sister. Joyce was good friends with Ellie. She might know how I could get her back. Hannah would too, but that was a phone call for later. Talking to Hannah was just as good as talking to Callum, and I didn’t fancy hearing him tell me “I told you so” just yet, no matter how much I deserved it.

“Hello, brother,” Joyce purred into the phone when she picked up.

Something in my sister’s tone of voice put me on high alert, but I had questions I wanted answered. I dove straight into it.

“What the hell happened last night?” I wanted to know. “Wasn’t Ellie supposed to be on her date? How did she end up at Nat’s?”

“Ah yes, how was your date, brother?” Joyce’s voice turned dangerously silky. “Did you get everything you ever wanted?”

“I damn well didn’t.” Something in Joyce’s tone made me sit up. “Wait. What do you know?”

“Everything.”

Blood drained from my face. What the hell did Ellie tell her?

“Well, not everything. Just enough to know that you and Ellie have been hooking up for months and I didn’t know! Do you know how Mum will react when she finds out? She’ll kill you for letting Ellie slip through your fingers, but maybe she’ll warm up to your new squeeze. Eventually.” There was a sneer at the end of that sentence. It was nice to know that Ellie had Joyce in her corner, even if Joyce was my sister.

“Don’t you dare tell mum, and what do you mean new squeeze? There is no new squeeze. I fucked up and I need to get Ellie back. That’s why I called you.”

A snort came from the other end of the line. “You deserve to lose her after you’ve been stringing her along all this time.”

“I wasn’t,” I snarled. “She told me she didn’t have feelings for me any longer. Everything else just happened. I didn’t realise how I felt for her until it was too late.”

“You can’t be that much of an emotional numpty, brother,” Joyce sounded incredulous. “You’ve had girlfriends before.”

“Yeah, but none of them were friends before we started dating.”

“And how do you know you have actual feelings for Ellie now? Are you sure you aren’t confused about that?”

“Damn sure.”

“How so?”

“I…” I took a deep breath. “It hurts to not be around her. It hurts so damn much, okay? All I can think about is Ellie. All I want is Ellie. The house is so damn empty without her. I wanted this place so much, and now, it means nothing without Ellie in it. It’s not a home without her. I’m…I’m empty without her. She told me she needed space and that she’s moving out, and it feels like I can’t breathe!”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Joyce was taken aback at my rant.

“Wow. Okay,” my sister finally spoke up. “Did you tell her all that?”

“I tried, but she doesn’t believe me.”

“Why not?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“She told me you didn’t feel the same way about her, but that’s obviously not the case. So what did she tell you?”

“She said that I was in lust, not in love with her. That this will pass eventually.”

“Will it?”

“No!”

“Hmm. Ellie’s not wrong, you know?”

“She is.”

“No, what I meant was she’s not wrong for thinking so. After all, you two were hooking up without anybody knowing, like she was your dirty little secret that you didn’t care for anyone else to know about. Although Ellie is honestly the least dirty person I know.”

I snorted. Joyce had no idea how dirty Ellie could be. But she had a point. Ellie had said the exact same thing.

“You may have been sleeping together, but you didn’t make her feel wanted.”

I started to protest that I did. Then it dawned on me—I did, but only in bed, but that was something I wasn’t going to admit to my sister.

“Ellie comes across as super competent and super put together all the time, and she usually is, but sometimes I think it gets tiring for her to always be that way. Ellie’s always had to be her own best advocate. No one’s ever put her first in her life. Did you know her parents threw her out when she turned eighteen for no fault of her own? They just got sick of paying for another mouth to feed, and to think they’re supposedly upright pillars of the community—a judge and an engineer. I wanted to blast them over social media, but Ellie wouldn’t let me. And then her so-called best friend went ahead and kicked Ellie out earlier this year. I wouldn’t have gone to help Nat if I were her last night, but Ellie’s always been too good a person to let Nat flounder on her own.”

“What exactly happened last night?” I wanted to know. “Ellie never told me before she left; she just said she was going to stay at Nat’s for a while. I thought she was out on a date last night. What exactly happened with that guy? Do you know? And how the hell did Nat come into this?”

Joyce huffed and then answered my questions. She told me how Ellie had gone on her date to distract herself from the fact that I was on mine, and it had been the most anticlimactic date in the world where the topic of conversation had apparently been me . She didn’t go home with the guy. She had seen me with Renae, and that broke her, so much so that she went on a bit of a drinking binge last night. At least Hannah and Joyce were with her, staying with her even when Nat called her wanting her help yet again and Ellie had to go over to her old place to calm Nat down or something. I was grateful to them for that.

That guy Rafe had never been the other guy in our non-relationship. Renae had never been the other woman. It had always been Nat because Ellie was a good person who always tried to do the right thing, the kind thing for her friends, even if they took her for granted. If I had any right to be angry at Ellie for anything, it would be for that.

“I need to tell you something too.” There was guilt in my sister’s voice. “I let slip that you’re Ellie’s landlord. I didn’t know she didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

At least that explained how Ellie found out. Joyce’s mouth was going to get her into trouble she couldn’t get out of one of these days.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Or last night?” I demanded even though I knew it wasn’t fair to Joyce. I didn’t know what I would have done. Maybe I would have gone over to Nat’s and taken care of Ellie. Maybe I wouldn’t have stayed up all night, imagining a scenario that never happened at all.

“I don’t know. Oh wait, I didn’t because no one knew about the two of you,” Joyce lobbed back. “No, wait. Turns out Callum knew, and Hannah knew because he tells her everything, but I didn’t know.”

“Callum didn’t know until recently, and he told me I had to figure it out before I messed things up.”

“He was right. You should have. And why the hell were you hiding it anyway? Anyone with eyes could see there was something between the two of you. We were all rooting for you.”

Were they? Had that something between us been that obvious? Maybe I had been the only one who had been blind after all.

“I thought you’d figure things out. After all, you live together.” Joyce sighed. “You’re a much bigger idiot than I thought, and I already think you’re a huge one.”

“Thanks, Joyce.”

“Anytime.”

“What do I do now? Ellie said she needed space from me, but I don’t want to risk losing her if I give her too much space. I don’t know what to do.”

“Give her time, but not too much time. I think a few days should do the trick. I’ll be checking in on her anyway, and I’ll let you know if she’s thawing towards you,” Joyce promised. “When she gives you that chance, don’t you dare fuck it up.”

“I don’t intend to. But, Joyce, what can I do?” I begged, desperate for a lifeline.

“Honestly, I don’t know. But you two were effectively together all this time in all but name. If you can’t figure it out, no one can help you.”

Joyce was right. It was up to me, and I damn well wasn’t going to let Ellie go without a fight.