Chapter 6 Ben
Ella, it turned out, wasn’t great at keeping her emotions from showing on her face.
Her eyes flashed wide in what looked like panic as I answered the call.
But shit, it was too late now. This was going to be bad enough as it was.
If I answered only to hang up on my mother, I would never, ever hear the end of it.
“Hi, Mom.” I said. “What an unexpected surprise that you immediately called me.”
“Show me the girl,” she said. “That picture could have been taken with some rando eight months ago.”
“I need to pose with a newspaper to show you the date like this is some sort of hostage situation?” Hell, it was beginning to feel like one.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Ella’s eyebrows climbing up her forehead like they were almost surprised right off her face. Great, she hadn’t been here ten minutes, and my mom was about to scare her off.
Or maybe I was. My temper was starting to show, and being around a large, strange, angry man wasn’t something a lot of women were comfortable with, for good reason.
I hit the mute button. “Sorry,” I told her. “My mom drives me crazy sometimes.”
She immediately seemed to relax. “Oh, I fully understand. Do you want me to go?”
It was sweet of her to offer. I was tempted to say yes, but then Mom might show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night if I didn’t give in to her demands.
I cringed. “Actually, do you mind if I show her that you’re here?”
Ella smiled in response. It only looked a little strained. “I don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry about this,” I told her. Again. I was beginning to sound like a broken record.
“It’s okay.” She pulled her hair over one shoulder and composed herself. “Ready.”
I unmuted the phone and looked at my mom. “If I do this, you’ll stop, right?”
She nodded.
I swiveled the camera toward Ella and then back to me again, trying to get this over with as fast as possible.
Mom glared at me. “All I saw was a flash of orange. Was it the fire, or her hair?”
Ella pulled a few strands up and stared at them. “Orange?” she mouthed.
Well, this was a complete nightmare.
“Mom, you’re being ridiculous,” I said. And then, to Ella, “Your hair isn’t orange.”
Dad forced himself into the frame on my screen. “Just show us the girl, Ben. Your mother has her bags packed.”
If not for Ella, I would have flipped the fuck out. Worrying was understandable, but this level of emotional manipulation crossed a line.
Anger burned through me like a fire, one that threatened to roar out of me if I didn’t get ahold of it.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Slowly.
Twice. When I opened them again, Ella’s face filled the small box in the corner of the screen, indicating that my parents could now see her.
I must have turned my phone away without realizing it, and Ella, nice person that she was, stepped up and decided to diffuse the situation.
She waved at them. “Hi. I’m here. Now. It wasn’t a picture of some rando from eight months ago.”
My parents got closer to their camera, their faces filling my screen.
Dad grinned ear to ear. “Oh, so she is real.”
“Last time I checked,” Ella said with an answering smile.
“And she’s pretty. Isn’t she pretty, Hani?” Mom said.
I snapped the phone back to me. “She is literally standing right next to me and can hear everything you’re saying. Please don’t embarrass her.”
“Ahem.” Ella reached out and covered my hands with her much smaller ones.
With a surprisingly firm grip, she swiveled them so that the camera was once again facing her.
Only then did she let me go. “You’re not embarrassing me.
Ignore him,” she told my parents. “Now, what was that you were saying about how stunningly beautiful I am?”
She managed to surprise a laugh out of them.
“And you’ve got a good sense of humor too,” Mom said, smiling brighter than I’d seen in weeks. “No wonder your cards are so funny.”
Ella glanced up at me with a ridiculous, self-congratulatory grin on her face, managing to look like she was swaggering while standing completely still. “This is doing wonders for my ego.”
My parents, right on cue, laughed again.
Mom was the first to sober. “How’s he doing?” she asked Ella, as if I wasn’t standing right here.
Are you fucking kidding me, Mom? I wanted to shout.
She trusted the word about my wellbeing from a stranger she just met via FaceTime more than my own assurances that I was fine?
I was so over this bullshit. What would it take for her to back off?
I honestly didn’t know anymore. Maybe my therapist would. I made a mental note to call him later.
Ella snuck a look at me. I’m not sure what she saw on my face that made her chew on her lip. A second later, she looked down at the phone, back at me, and then held out her hand.
I gladly passed it to her.
She plastered on a huge grin and lifted the phone.
“He’s doing great!” she said. She was so upbeat about it that even I believed her.
“He’s a hit with us locals, and my dogs already love him, which is saying something, because they’re tough judges of character.
And this place is coming right along. The floors came out so nice, and the kitchen is going to look like one of those HGTV dream kitchens when he’s done with it. You guys must be so proud!”
“We really are,” Dad said.
Mom remained silent, and I knew it was because she wanted to press the issue.
Ella didn’t give her a chance to. “What’s the weather like there? Is it sunny? Do you still have leaves on the trees? Is it warm?” She lowered her voice and pulled the phone in close, expression forlorn. “Please describe what warmth is like. I’ve forgotten.”
Another round of chuckling rang through the speaker before Dad indulged her. “It’s in the mid-seventies, with a nice breeze off the water.”
Ella closed her eyes and made a pained face. “My jealousy. It burns. The high here is twenty today. And that’s a warm snap for this time of the year. Two weeks ago, it was minus fifteen.” She gazed deeply into the camera. “Please think of us kindly when you look upon the sun.”
My parents laughed at this. Again.
Across the room, Fred let out a small woof and clambered to his feet. Ella swiveled the phone around to face the dogs and spent the next several minutes introducing them to my parents. She even had Mom say a few commands to see if the dogs would obey them over FaceTime. They did.
Mom told me I should think about getting a puppy now to keep me occupied when there weren’t any other humans around or housework to do.
I made a non-committal sound in response.
It was the best she was going to get from me right now.
Then Ella was through the door and into the kitchen, showing my parents the final choices for the finishes before taking them on a tour of what I’d already done to the space.
I leaned a hip against the doorjamb, crossed my arms over my chest, and watched her expertly distract them. I should have let Jack introduce us sooner. Maybe I could have avoided all this drama with my mom.
Ella exhausted renovation talk and moved on to other safe subjects. A ten-minute conversation followed that I barely took part in. Soon she was saying goodbye and telling my mom that, no, she would never dream of letting me spend Christmas alone.
Her expression changed from ebullient cheer to apology the second she hung up. “I’m so sorry,” she said, handing my phone back to me. “I have no intention of forcing you to hang out on Christmas if you don’t want to. And I’m also really sorry for totally steamrolling that conversation.”
“Ella it’s -”
“But your mom looked so worried, and I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable or upset, because you looked like you were upset.
Kind of mad, but also kind of sad, and maybe like you didn’t know how to react.
Not that I’m an accurate judge of your expressions.
We just met, after all. But I mean, like, in a general way you looked like that.
So of course I did that thing I always do and completely took over everything and made it about myself, because I can’t ever just shut the hell up and let other people talk when I feel awkward.
” Her shoulders drooped like all the air had gone out of her. “I’ll just go now.”
“It’s okay, Ella,” I told her.
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. I’m really sorry, Ben. I had no intention of doing that.”
“I’m grateful that you did.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“My mom has been having…” Am I really saying this right now? Guess I must already trust her. “…trouble, dealing with me being so far away after my brother’s death. She’s worried that something might happen to me, like it did him, and she won’t be here in time.”
“Oh,” she said, voice small.
“When I left, she said she’d respect my need for space, but hasn’t.
At all. And it’s been coming between us.
If you hadn’t taken over that call, we probably would have gotten into another argument.
It’s like she can’t hear me tell her I’m okay.
For whatever reason, hearing it from you seemed to help her some. So really, thank you.”
“You’re welcome then?”
I nodded at her.
“And also, I’m sorry. That’s a shitty position for her to put you in.”
“Thanks. It is.”
It was nice to hear someone else vocalize that. It made me feel less irrational for getting upset. Like it was just a normal response to an overbearing parent and not an uncontrolled mood swing brought on by early-onset CTE.
Sam padded over to me and pressed his wet nose into my palm. I looked down at him, grateful for the distraction, and scratched the spot just behind his ears. He closed his eyes and sighed in doggy bliss, leaning his full weight into my leg.
“Aaand, you’re now his new best friend,” Ella said.