I was trying to nap, couldn't really. It was too hot in here, the couch was too scratchy. And I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd done with Ellie.
Sex with a woman, that was new. And the weird thing was I hadn't wanted to stop. I kept going, feeling her dig her nails into my back, feeling her beneath me, her skin so much softer than all the men I'd been with. It was so soft, like velvet.
But it wasn't right, and not just because she was a woman and I was gay. She was my best friend, my roommate, and now my lover? I was looking to her to fulfill all my emotional needs. Ever since Dylan left. Ellie. She was here, and that made it easy. And I loved her. I mean, you know, loved her like a friend. Or at least I thought. I might be confused.
It was just becoming complicated. I mean, in high school, we were friends. But I guess before we were friends we were sort of…boyfriend and girlfriend? Despite the fact that I was never sexually aroused by her or any girls back then. But she had been my disguise, my lie, a mask of being heterosexual. And I had desperately wanted to be heterosexual because I knew all my friends were, and oh my God my parents. What would they ever say if they had known? So it was easy to be with Ellie and to pretend that I felt more than I did. But that doesn't mean I didn't feel anything. I felt things for her, I was emotionally attached to her even if I wasn't physically attracted to her.
But in high school it had slid into this easy friendship where we saw foreign films and hung out and drank mocha lattes and acted cool. And it was cool. I liked Dylan and she liked Sean, then Craig, then Jesse. And now I suppose we were both reeling from these shattering relationships and we had each other to fall back on. To comfort one another. To melt with, to forget things with, to become fulfilled with.
I could feel the deep scratches on my back, could see the red marks from her nails like crescent moons. Who was she really scratching? Like that old Alanis Morissette song says, 'when I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it,' Was it Craig, maybe? Was I her Craig surrogate? And what void was she filling for me?
I sat up, the nap a bust. Rubbed my eyes. This wasn't healthy, this thing with Ellie. It felt co-dependent. I couldn't grow like this, I couldn't find someone real if she was always so readily available. It was sort of sliding into "Will and Grace" territory.
Ellie came home, said a light breezy "hi" to me and went on her way. She was minimizing it. She wouldn't see the gravity of our situation. We had sex. That was, that was just crossing a line. We had no boundaries.
"Ellie!" I called to her. I heard her puttering around upstairs.
"Yeah!" she called back. I could imagine her course as I heard her footsteps above me. Her room, her closet, taking off one thing and putting on another.
"Can you come down here!" I said. I was fully resolved to tell her that we needed space, we needed to disentangle ourselves. I wanted health. I was striving for it.
She came down, dressed in a different shirt, her red hair straight and shiny and hanging over her shoulders.
"Yeah?" she said, and she wasn't even fully here, fully listening to me. I licked my lips and cleared my throat and wondered just how I would get her to see what was going on.
"Elle, I think things have gone too far,"
Blank look. Ellie likes the status quo lately. She's a bit more self deceptive than she was in high school. No more forcing people out of the closet, no more confrontation. She tended to swallow half truths whole.
