Friends With All the Benefits

39 Ethan

S pring was in full swing in the garden, but Ellie was no longer here, no longer home to enjoy it. It was the third and final week of Ellie’s notice period of her lease with me. The lease didn’t matter any longer to me. I had decided to stop renting out anyway; I parted ways with my property agent and gave him a nice bonus for his good work over the years. Ellie promised to clear her stuff out by the end of this week, and it felt like time was running out to get her to come back to me.

I was now seeing Ellie regularly, but she still didn’t want to move back in with me, and we still didn’t sleep together. I never wanted her any less, and I made sure to let her know every chance I got.

I picked up the slack around the house. It was tidy again, a far cry from my first week without Ellie. There were tasks that needed to be done in the garden before summer arrived. Ellie had told me that I could get rid of whatever was too much work to maintain, but I couldn’t do that. Not when it was all I had left of her with me. Not when I hadn’t given up on her coming home.

My neighbours noticed Ellie’s absence and the nosy old lady next door asked me what I did to lose my missus. Even the bakery staff noticed I had stopped buying for two and gave me pitying looks every time I went in.

Then Mrs Ramon, the neighbour from across the road had rushed over when she saw me out in the garden pruning Ellie’s prized rose bushes. I had only started on one when Mrs Ramon rushed over, begging me to stop. “No, no, no! You’re cutting off too much, and it’s the wrong season. You only take dead flowers off now, and one-third off the bush in winter. One third! In winter! You’ve gone and chopped off half of this side, and you’re going to shock the plant too much with the coming heat. Where’s your lovely Ellie? She knows what she’s about in the garden.”

“She’s…not here at the moment.” I was taken aback at Mrs Ramon’s vehemence at my pruning, but if I was really messing things up, I was grateful she stepped in now rather than after I had gone at all the bushes. I noticed the rose bushes growing a little out of control and thought I’d try my hand at tidying them up. I didn’t know there was a right way to do it, much less a right time. Ellie would have known.

“I know she’s not here. I haven’t seen her in weeks.” Mrs Ramon gave me a pitying look. “Did you two break up? Mr Morris and I were just wondering the other day if you did something to lose her. She’s such a good girl.”

I raised my eyebrows. My neighbours gossiping about us was news to me, and it took me aback to realise they had always assumed that Ellie and I were together. They weren’t the first to do so, and it made me wonder if the only people we had been fooling into thinking we were just friends had been ourselves.

“She’s doing well, and we’re working things out,” I admitted to my neighbour.

Mrs Ramon gave me a judicious nod. “Good. Hope you get her back. Don’t let a girl like that go. A good boy like you needs her. This garden needs her.”

My lips quirked up. “I know I do, and I don’t intend to lose her.”

Ellie belonged here with me. I just had to get her to believe it. It was time to pull out all the stops.