Chapter 9 Ella #2
Yes, that’s probably what she thinks, Ben.
“Why is Ella at your house at,” she checked her watch, “six fifty-five in the morning?”
“She came over to drop off my Christmas present,” he answered, much better under pressure than I would be.
“Hani, come say hi to Ella,” his mother called.
Ben groaned. “Of course Dad’s up too,” he said beneath his breath.
“She still over there?” I heard his father say.
“Sorry,” Ben mouthed at me.
“It’s fine,” I mouthed back.
I hobbled over to him and leaned against the cabinet so we were both in the camera frame.
Looking back at us on the screen were his parents.
It was easy to pick out the features he had inherited from them.
His skin color was a mixture of both, several shades lighter than his father’s and darker than his mother’s.
The shape of his eyes and their hue came from his mom.
He got his wide nose and square jaw from his father. Eyebrows from Mom. Hair from Dad.
Hani’s eyes crinkled up at the corners when he smiled, just like Ben’s did. “He’s not holding you there against your will, is he?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” I didn’t laugh, but said. I leaned closer to the phone and dropped my voice. “Send help.”
As I hoped, they lost it. God, these two were easy.
Ben assumed an exasperated expression. “Please don’t encourage her.”
His parents laughed even harder.
I looked up at him. Our eyes met, and we grinned like co-conspirators.
His mother caught it. “I will gladly encourage anyone that can make you smile like that, Benny.”
“Benny?” I asked him.
“Don’t even think about it,” he told me.
In the small insert on his phone screen, my grin transformed into an expression of pure evil.
It looked vaguely familiar. Right. Willow made this same face when something diabolical popped into her head.
Now the troubling question: had I taught it to her, or had she taught it to me?
I was a little worried it was the latter.
One day she would rule us all.
“Don’t tease him too much, Ella,” Ben’s mother said.
I raised my hand in an approximation of a salute. “Scouts honor.” The look on my face was a dead giveaway for how full of shit I was. I really needed to get better at mastering my expressions.
“We can talk about the lawyers later,” Hani said. “You two have fun with each other.” Just in case we missed the innuendo, he winked.
Ben quickly hung up and turned back to the coffee maker. “Well, they think we’re sleeping together.”
I stared blindly at his back, mouth agape, unable to rid myself of the mental image that just popped into my mind.
***
“Megan, can I talk to you?” I asked my sister several hours later.
Stacey just left the living room to take a shower, much to my relief.
I’d been waiting – impatiently – to talk to Megan alone since getting back from Ben’s, trying to do it in an organic way, so I didn’t offend Stacey.
I didn’t care if Megan turned around and told her wife every word I said, but part of this conversation might be awkward for Stacey to hear, and I didn’t want to subject her to that.
Megan muted the TV and turned toward me on the couch. “What’s up?”
I shot a look toward the bathroom and then scooted closer to her, lowering my voice. “You remember that roommate you had freshman year of college?”
She nodded. “Beth.”
“Were you in love with her?”
She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes.”
“But you two were really good friends.”
“Also yes.”
“How the hell did you manage that?”
“Honestly?”
I nodded. As much as she and I sometimes bickered, she was the only person in my life that I could have entirely frank conversations with, stuff that I wouldn’t say to anyone else, and I doubted that she would either, maybe with the exception of Stacey.
She was the one I talked to about losing my virginity.
The one who threatened to kill the first boy that broke up with me.
“I managed it by fucking other people,” she told me.
Well, all right then. “Did that help?”
“You betcha. It helped me see that there were other fish in the sea, queer women who I could have healthy relationships with, instead of an unhealthy one-sided obsession with the straightest woman to ever straight. Eventually I got over my romantic feelings for Beth and moved on, without torching our friendship. We still keep in touch.”
“Damn it,” I said. “That’s not really an option for me. There aren’t enough other people to sleep with up here. Well, ones that I would be interested in sleeping with, anyway. Because those that I would be, I already have.”
All two of them.
Maybe I could lower my standards. My friend Jen said Nick Haskell had been pestering her about me. So what if he was missing a few teeth?
“What’s going on?” Megan asked.
I sighed. “I have a massive crush on a friend that I think will only ever see me in a platonic way.”
“The mysterious Stan?”
I nodded. I didn’t bother telling her not to tell anyone else, because now that she knew how I really felt, she would never do that.
“Well, shit,” she said. “Sorry for teasing you about him in front of everyone like a total asshole.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know at the time.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t like you back?”
“Because he hasn’t so much as flirted with me or even looked at me with anything other than friendship. Also, he’s totally out of my league.”
“Out of your league? Really? Since when do you have low self-esteem?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that. I guess I didn’t mean out of my league.
I meant that the world he comes from is so different than ours.
” The last woman he was associated with in the press was third in line for the throne of a European country.
I had no idea if the rumors were true or not, but the point stood.
“What do you mean?” Megan asked. “He from the south or something?”
“I can’t really get into it,” I told her. “Sorry.”
“Okay, fine. Tell me some of his flaws.”
I sat there for a solid minute in silence.
Megan finally broke. “Seriously, Ella? The dude has nothing wrong with him?”
“No? At least nothing that I’ve seen so far?”
“Or are you just living that deep in crushville?”
“Legit possibility.”
“Okay, so say you break down and tell him how you feel. What do you think would happen?”
“I think he might want to stop hanging out. I don’t think he’s looking for anything other than friendship.”
“And how would that make you feel?”
“Like abject shit. The last thing I want to do is alienate him. He really seems like he needs a friend right now.”
“Good,” Megan said.
I stared at her. “Please elaborate on how abject shit is good.”
“Because that gives you something to focus on.”
“Yeah, so I’ve tried to focus on similar things when I’m around him, but every time I look at his face, I just -” I lowered my hands to either side of my hips and mimed my ovaries exploding.
Megan frowned. “What is that supposed to be?”
“All of the eggs getting released when I’m in his presence. He is the best-looking man I’ve seen in real life, by, like, a lot.”
“Is that the bias of your crush speaking?”
I shook my head. “Nope. If I showed a picture of him to anyone interested in men, they would try to lick the photograph.”
Megan stared at me. “Damn.”
“Welcome to my hell.”
She chewed on her lower lip for a second, the same way I did when I was deep in thought. Funny how alike we were in some ways, even though we weren’t related by blood. It lent credence to nurture over nature.
“I think you should hang out with him more,” she said.
“In a ploy to win him over with my stunning good looks and irresistible charm?”
She smiled. “There’s that self-esteem.”
“Megan, seriously.”
She threw her hands up. “I am being serious. When I first met Stacey, it was a struggle to keep from mauling her in public.”
“Stacey is, admittedly, gorgeous, so I get it.”
“And I still think that, but the more we hung out, the less overwhelming being around her was.”
“Because you were mauling her in private?”
She grinned lasciviously. “Oh, I mauled her privates.”
I fake gagged. “Too far, Megan.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Think of it like music. You know how you do that annoying thing where when you hear a new song you really like, you play it on endless repeat for a week straight?”
“Yes,” I said, ignoring the jibe. Our rooms were right next to each other’s growing up. I could see now how that habit would be annoying.
“Why do you do that?” she asked.
“Because of what the music does to me. How the sounds sweep me off my feet and fill my head with images. Music to me is transportive. It makes me feel in color, if that makes any sense.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t, but that’s not the point. What happens if you listen to that song three months later? Do you still feel the same way you did that first week?”
I had to think about it for a minute. “No. Or if I do, it’s to a much lesser extent.”
“Maybe Stan is like music. The more you hang out with him, the less his physical beauty will overwhelm you. You’ll get used to it, like I did with Stacey. And in the interim, he might manifest a character flaw or two to distract you away from his seeming perfection.”
“That might actually work.”
She grinned. “Good.”
“But what if it doesn’t?”
Her expression fell. “Uh…call me and we can try to figure something else out?”
“Deal,” I told her.