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Needless to say, driving to get Ellie did nothing to help my hatred of the famous O’Hare International Airport. Quite the opposite, in fact. The road was full of reminders of all my many grievances, like the distance, the terrible congestion of the road, and the other small or not so small frustrations built into that route. I felt my blood pressure gradually tick up with every moment in the driver’s seat. My entire body was overtaken by that anger. My hands clutched the steering wheel, only relaxing when the white-knuckle grip grew unbearable, and I had to release it. But after a brief break, the tension would force the grip again. It was quite the cycle, a back and forth I did nothing to control. There was nothing I could do about it. I was trapped out on that road, stewing in my own misery, until I finally pulled up to the airport, cutting a more imposing and striking figure against the gray skyline.
The smell of exhaust cut differently in the cold air. Or so I imagined. It felt like the smell had a strong bite as it seeped into my car. It bothered me at first, but when I finally saw Ellie on the curb, alone wrapped up in her winter coat and wearing a large backpack with a small suitcase at her feet, that thought couldn’t have been further from my mind. It was focused only on her, on the ecstasy of finally seeing her after so long apart. I was seeing land for the first time after drifting for so long in the ocean. Ellie wasn’t that land, per say. She was the lighthouse. She was the promise, the hope, the sort of thing you take for granted because someone else takes care of her.
A different type of unease set in. This one turned my stomach in a different direction. I felt sick, but this time I could breathe and pull myself together in the moments before she saw me.
Her face lit up when she did. Her hand raised in a small but enthusiastic wave as I tried to maneuver the car closer to her. While doing so, another car swerved in front of me, and a pedestrian stepped onto the road with no thought to their safety. But a quick tap on my brakes saved lives both times. With that muted sense of triumphant, I pulled up in front of Ellie and her still glowing face. I smiled back, or I tried to, but mine was laced with the guilt and shame of the prolonged silence. There were clumsy apologies on my lips, carefully rehearsed in the last hour on the road. I climbed out of the car fully ready to present one if not all of them, but before I could, Ellie’s body slammed against mine in an eager embrace. Her arms then joined in, wrapping themselves tightly around my body. They locked into place. Not only did she pull me against her chest with the sort of incomprehensible joy and enthusiasm that I had always hoped for, but she squeezed me tightly as a silent refusal to let me go.
It was something I had always wanted, but I struggled to enjoy it. The intensity behind the embrace created a problem I couldn’t ignore. My lungs knew what it was like to breathe freely now, and they refused to go back to the old restrictions and jails. So in response to the constriction, they voiced their objection through a tight pain in my chest. To them, it didn’t matter that this was a hug. They would not tolerate this. I hadn’t earned their trust back yet, even with my inhaler in my pocket.
Reluctantly, I cleared my throat and choked out a half-formed plea for release. “Asthma,” I said.
Confused, Ellie pulled back. “What?”
Immediately, I took a deep breath. My lungs filled fine. There was no rattle, but an uneasiness remained as a fog in my mind.
With a sigh, I explained, “It’s confirmed. I have asthma. And had a really bad attack a little while ago.”
The joy drained from her face. She grew pale and stammered, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I hurriedly added with a nonchalant shrug. “I’m just not in bear hug territory yet.”
With a quick click of my key fob, the trunk popped open, and I reached for her small suitcase. Ellie actually packed her bag properly. It was balanced and easier to lift than mine had been. I was going to compliment her on that. But she wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. Her mind was stuck on what I had said.
“Bloody Hell, Mia,” she said softly.
I almost tried to say that it was fine, but it wasn’t fine. I had almost died. And even though she didn’t know that, she still had a reason to be concerned. That concern froze her in place while I closed the trunk. The sound of it slamming shut did nothing to awaken her. That wasn’t what she was looking for. She needed something specific, some sort of comfort or confirmation that I was okay.
“I have an inhaler now,” I told her. “Whole nine yards. But if we’re going to have that conversation. We have to do it in the car. The cold air and exhaust fumes are not helping anything.”
I walked over to the passenger side and opened the door for her. Her eyes followed my every step, and I wondered if I looked any different to her now that I could consistently and reliably breathe. Honestly, I felt different, but there was more to it than just that. But we didn’t need to go into the whole thing. Or I didn’t want us to go into the whole thing. It seemed dangerous, really.
“After you, m’lady,” I said, half-jokingly as I played up the dramatics on this small act of service.
The flourish should have been funny enough to earn a slight chuckle, but Ellie didn’t laugh. She silently stepped into the car, setting her backpack at her feet. As she did so, I cringed. I didn’t offer to put it in the trunk with her suitcase or in the backseat with the memory of my near-death experience. That would have been the polite thing to do, but I hadn’t thought of it. And now it seemed too late.
So I tried to push through my fumble and casually jogged to the other side of the car. I knew to move quickly, so that the street attendants wouldn’t have a reason to come for me. I understood why they would. Everything at O’Hare needs to keep moving. It was too big of an airport for any preventable delays. And yet, there were always delays. Life didn’t care what the O’Hare staff needed from it.
When I climbed into the car, I was immediately washed in Ellie’s probing gaze. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as a wave of anxiety pulsated through my body in response, but I choked down my reaction. I tried to mask my discomfort. I had no right to complain. I had brought this on myself, and it was time I paid for my sins.
“I have a car now,” I started.
Something had to be said, so I said something. It just so happened to be the least noteworthy starting point for any conversation between the two of us. Ellie likely didn’t care about that new car, even if she was sitting in it as I pulled away from my personal hell (i.e., O’Hare) and out onto the road.
“And asthma,” she pointed out.
Without thinking, I answered, “Yeah, well, technically I’ve had that for a while. It just wasn’t diagnosed.”
That wasn’t comforting. In fact, that was probably the worst way I could have answered. Effectively, I was saying that I’d constantly been in danger, a time bomb that walked next to her whenever we got lunch together. And of course, that sort of thing does not go over well.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
It seemed like the right thing to say, but Ellie shook her head. “You apologize too much,” she reminded me. “Just tell me you’re okay.”
“Yeah, I’m fine now,” I said. I reached down and patted the inhaler in my pocket. “I’ve got what I need to be fine and stay fine. I’m okay.”
The conversation lulled as I pulled onto the I-90. My heart rate quickened as I merged with traffic. This was something I had never done before, and Chris hadn’t prepared me for it. There was no way he could have. He had no clue this was coming. I hadn’t realized the day trip would take this turn. If I had known, I might have accepted his offer to come just so he could drive this portion. Or maybe not. I still felt torn about him and Ellie being in the same car. There was likely a reason for that, but I tried to not think about it.
Ellie kept quiet as we drove, likely sensing my fear and tension at this point in the drive. It would have been hard to ignore. But it took no time at all for us to hit traffic, a full stop on the road, bumper to bumper as the occasional horn sounded in the distance.
“Fu–” I started to say but stopped myself before the word fully slipped out.
Ellie didn’t mind swearing, but there was still something sacrilegious about doing it in her presence, about polluting the air around her with a frowned-upon word. But she likely wouldn’t have noticed either way. She was focused on the traffic, on the lack of movement we would likely see for quite some time.
“At least, we’ll have a chance to talk,” Ellie mused.
Fuck. “Yeah, there’s that.”
But even with that acknowledgement, we didn’t say anything at first.
After another minute completely sitting still on the road, Ellie finally said, “I don’t think I’ve ever ridden in a car with you.”
I sighed. “Driving is horribly impractical in Chicago. And I hate it, admittedly. But that was the best method of travel today.”
She nodded. “What did you forget?”
“My speakers. One of the very few possessions I care about.”
“Oh.”
My fingers drummed on the steering wheel as I eased the car forward. “Honestly, I was barely able to get by without them, and I just finally snapped and decided. Looked into buying new ones, but it was this whole thing. Also, I like the ones I have. And Chicago isn’t that far from Dustford.”
I didn’t look at her while I spoke. That was probably mildly insulting, which I didn’t want to be. I hated the idea of being like that to her. I didn’t want to mildly insult her or in any way make her feel bad. As a matter of fact, wanting to avoid that had been my entire identity before this trainwreck. And I still managed to mess it up from time to time.
“Still not a big fan of driving,” I said, as if that could somehow serve as an apology for being rude without it actually being an apology because, as Ellie said, I apologize too much.
I could tell that bothered her. I did not want to bother her.
It was a delicate line to tow, but I might have missed the mark. Ellie shifted in her seat. I could hear the movement, but I didn’t have it in me to look at her. While I could feel her concern, if I didn’t look at her, I could bask in my own denial, right? But that wasn’t a sustainable arrangement despite how appealing it seemed because at the same time. I didn’t want her to feel unseen or ignored. I knew how terrible that felt. I wouldn’t wish that on her. So I had to break through the moment.
I glanced at Ellie. “I don’t know what to say,” I confessed.
With visible agitation, she shrugged. “Neither do I, Mia. I thought this was going to be a good chance to catch up, but then you just drop that you had a bad asthma attack a while ago. The first I’m hearing of it, which just drives home the point that we’ve hardly talked since you left. And before that...”
Ellie trailed off. It wasn’t a sentence that was serving her, so she let it go, releasing it into the smog of city traffic. I could swear I saw it fly away. But then she sighed and collected herself again. She became the Ellie I knew so well: the ever in control, ever beautiful picture of modern femininity and a girl boss attitude.
“The last time I talked to you in person,” she stated, slowly and carefully, leaning forward as if she were ready to yell at me, “when I was in your apartment, you didn’t know if you wanted to take the fellowship. You were leaning in that direction, but you hadn’t decided. And you wanted more time to think about it. Then, literally the next day, you’re quitting like a mad woman and walking out of the office, telling Aidan to bugger off, and...”
Her voice started to break. My heart went with it. While she pulled her voice back together, I let the pieces of my heart drift away.
She said, “And you didn’t tell me. You didn’t say anything to me. I had to find out from Perry when I went to check on you.”
“Why were you checking on me?” I asked because of course my brain was only latching onto the thing it cared about, the small phrase or gesture that suggested some sort of connection between the two of us or the taste of her affection that she had offered me.
Ellie’s back slammed against the seat. “You just had the worst day of your life. Fucking hell.”
I stammered out, “It didn’t even break the top ten, to be honest with you.”
She turned back to me, mouth slightly open and eyes tearing into me. “That is not funny, Mia.”
“I’m not being funny.”
As I finished that sentence, I eased the car forward again. The small bits of movement were promising, I supposed. They were scraps of hope that we all wouldn’t have to abandon our car and go walking down the road. But once that was done, I turned to Ellie in time to see the tears forming in the corner of her eyes.
My heart broke again. In fact, it shattered, and suddenly, there was nothing left in me at all.
“I’m not being funny,” I repeated with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know what to say. Ellie, I kept warning you that I was always dealing with something, some sort of crisis or panic. It would vary, but there was always something. And for the longest time, I had to deal with all of it on my own. And you came along, and you were helping me, and...”
I knew what I wanted to say, but it was the sort of thing I couldn’t say. So I settled for something else. I said, “And you made it less bad. You made so much in my life, less bad, Ellie. By sheer virtue of having you there that shitty day, it sucked so much less.”
A car horn sounded in the distance because of course it did. Of course the universe had to find some way to warn me that I was walking into the worst possible turn for this conversation. But to be fair to me, I didn’t take that final turn. Ellie did.
“You and I haven’t spoken since I told you about Ramone,” Ellie laid out in a cool, measured tone.
I drew a blank at the name. It seemed important, but I had no clue who she was talking about. I didn’t know a Ramone, did I? I didn’t think I did. I couldn’t remember a face.
But she did, I suddenly realized. She was dating him.
“What was that about, Mia?” she asked, point blank.
I could have blamed the asthma, right? My breathing decline lines up with when she told me, or it would look that way if that was the story I told. It would have been such an easy way to settle the matter. Who can argue with, “I was in the middle of a health crisis,” especially when that health crisis had previously come up in a completely natural way earlier in the conversation? It was easy. It was partially accurate. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. And as upsetting as I found my silence, Ellie took it even harder. She hadn’t asked as my friend or out of any curiosity. She needed the answer. For her own sake.
And without that answer, her dread continued to build up inside of her. Her emotion, normally kept in check in true British fashion, finally burst out. “Jesus Christ, Mia,” she exclaimed, “are you in love with me?”
My heart twisted. The shock of the question cut into my chest, and my heart was doing its best to dodge the blow. It didn’t matter that the movement caused some discomfort. It was the lesser evil.
I choked out, “What? Why would you ask me that?
“Ramone thinks you’re in love with me.”
Fuck Ramone, I wanted to say, but that only promised to make everything worse, so I didn’t say that. I said nothing. That also made everything worse.
“Is that what this is?” Ellie demanded. “Fucking jealousy? Is that what destroyed our friendship?”
Ellie never yelled. Her voice couldn’t do it. It was designed–whether by God or nature–to be on the softer, more delicate side. Right then, she got as close as she ever would get to outright screaming at me. But she didn’t have to achieve that unreachable standard to make her point. I could still feel each and every word despite her volume.
I did love her, but that wasn’t what destroyed our friendship. It was me. Entirely me. And I wouldn’t blame something else for it. I was better than that. I could take ownership of my bullshit, but the desire didn’t make it any easier to explain.
Once again, I eased the car forward, and in that small gap of time, my brain misfired. “The coffee pods,” it made me say.
Ellie sighed in pure exasperation. “What about the coffee pods?”
“They came with a note, didn’t they? We never talked about the note.”
Now it was her turn to struggle to remember something. The wheels turned in her head for a moment while she searched for the memory. And in that time, I gathered some of my senses.
“The only thing I did wrong,” she started to recite, weakly.
Her voice was so soft that I saw space for my own. As she let the thought drift, I took it in my own hands. “...was believe I could ever be a functioning person,” I finished. “I’m sorry.”
Ellie let out a small sound of disgust. "That's it. That's all you have to say. This is just some botched attempt at being a person. Whatever that means."
I winced. "Yes," I said, feeling the single word echo through the air between us.
Ellie shook her head. My answer wasn't good enough for her. Realistically, nothing about me was good enough for her. She deserved better or more.
"I don't understand," she cursed. "I still don't understand."
"I was desperate."
That was also a lackluster answer, more a placeholder than anything meaningful.
Ellie’s fire was reignited. "Why? Why were you desperate? I never, NEVER, did anything to you. I have been nothing but supportive of you. So how could you be desperate unless you were in love with me?"
Without thinking, I struck the truth I didn't know was there. "Because I needed you to think I'm a good person."
The world stopped for half a second. Seemingly out of spite, the cars in front of us began to move. We weren't inching forward anymore but actually making progress on this journey. And we both went silent because we didn't know how to manage in this new situation. Could I handle driving and holding this conversation? Was it worth trying? For a moment, neither of us were sure what to do. But the silence created a more intense suffocation than the asthma ever did.
As I slowly started forward, I cracked. "You are the wisest person I know. And the warmest. And you have the rare and special skill of being able to see right through every single façade people try to put up. So if you thought I was a good person, then I must have been. It didn't matter that I didn't feel like one. Or that I could come up with an argument that I wasn't. You knew more than me. Your word was law."
The sentiment might have been nice, but Ellie found it unacceptable. She argued, "So you tested my patience. Constantly. You acted insane just to see what I would do."
"I told you I was desperate," I reminded her. "Ellie, I..."
Right then, I almost took the conversation to that next level, but I knew that it wasn’t right. It would only poison the memory of everything that came before.
With a sigh, I shook my head. “Did I ever tell you how my dad died?"
"Heart failure," she replied.
That must have been what I told her, even if it wasn’t the full truth. It was close, though. It was the cause of death written into my dad’s destiny had I not gone into the river. It was listed as an extenuating factor in his death when the Filipino authorities did their investigation. That was the detail I gave her because I was too scared to give her the full truth. I didn’t want to lose her, so I lied in some desperate attempt to hold on. However, that my grip was wholly irrelevant or maybe even the reason I lost her, so I decided it was finally time to be honest.
"His heart failed when he...” I started over, not liking that sentence only after I got a taste of it in my mouth. “I fell into a river when we were visiting family. Dad jumped into the water to save me, but his heart was in the early stages of congestive heart failure, and the jump into the river and trying to swim just pushed it over the edge."
Ellie said nothing. Her mouth was ajar, but nothing came out.
I seized the opportunity to ramble. "I think I just assumed that if you thought I was a good person then his death would make sense. It would be for something. For this good person that apparently brought value to the world. But yeah, I've realized that wasn't fair to you. You can't fix me. And you can’t heal wounds that I routinely reopen."
A strained calm overtook us. Its origin was unknown. Through its silence, I heard Ellie take a deep breath. I listened for some secret message in the action, but of course, there was nothing to find. My hands stayed on the steering wheel and in firm control of the accelerating car, but I wanted to reach out to her. My eyes largely stayed on the road with the exception of a stray glance in her direction every now and then, but I wanted to stare at her, to study every muscle and line on her face to know exactly what she was thinking. My mind remained focused on her, but I wanted to be anywhere else.
Ellie broke the silence, her frustration seeping out. “What do you want me to say?” she asked. “Do you want me to tell you that you’re a good person? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve done that, and we’re still in this mess.”
I flinched. “I know I’ve done good things, right? And then I implode. And I don’t expect you to know what the balance sheet says. Or not anymore anyway.”
I thought about what Professor Evory said. I thought about how he would probably say the exact thing to Ellie about me if she had been his student, if our histories had been rewritten in that almost unimaginable way and she were the one in the hospital bed having to account for her intense devotion to me. She couldn’t hold herself accountable for my ledger, for my life, or for my value. She couldn’t romanticize me by overlooking my dysfunction at the behest of her emotional attachments. She couldn’t deny herself the liberation of realizing that I was just a human being, doing what I thought was best with the tools and abilities I had. She couldn’t do what I did. She couldn’t be me.
It sucks to be me. I knew that. Why would I wish that on her?
“You don’t–” I started to say.
I started to try to absolve her of whatever perceived obligation she had. I earnestly tried to free her from me, but I was an idiot for thinking for a moment that Ellie was ever as helpless as I was.
“It doesn’t matter,” she declared with her usual sense of authority and confidence. “It doesn’t matter what I think. You chose this. You chose to push me away, repeatedly, and I kept thinking that if I just did or said the right thing, you’d pull your head out of your arse. But you’re not going to, are you?”
I couldn’t answer that.
“You need a therapist,” she informed me.
“I had one,” I replied. “But...”
And there we were again. We were at another point in the conversation where I could be unflinchingly honest, thereby putting Ellie in a terrible position, recontextualizing everything that passed between us, or I could lie by omission. I could hold the truth close to my chest just like I had so many times before. I could shove it deep down by my lungs and hope that somehow wouldn’t bite me in the ass. The decision seemed easy. The whole thing was deceptively simple, really. Obviously, I would just keep lying, holding Ellie at arm’s length, and telling myself it was for her benefit. But then I glanced over at her. I saw the furrow in her brow and the cracks in her eyes. She was owed the truth. She deserved it. She needed it. And I was denying her that. For what? A relationship that likely was already on life support?
I took a deep breath in. “But–hypothetically–the therapist I was seeing for a while wasn’t exactly thrilled that I was hiding from my anxieties and all the difficult shit that makes up life by chasing the affection of... someone. Someone who is very special to me who probably will never return those feelings but is still the greatest light in my life that I could have ever asked for.”
“Oh,” Ellie whispered.
It was a single utterance that could not be decoded or picked apart. There was no way to know what she was thinking.
I filled the silence with everything else I needed to say. The truth was complicated, and it would take a while to pull out all the different threads. I said, “And I thought it was okay because I didn’t expect her to like me back. I knew I didn’t fit within her life, and I was okay with that. I was okay with the occasional moments of warmth and affection even if it wouldn’t be anything more because I still had her. I would take her in any form or capacity. I just wanted her. She was enough just as she was.”
Ellie opened her mouth like she had something to say, but I was so afraid of what those words might have been that I charged on anyway.
“And, you know, I envied that about her too. That she was enough. She made the world better by being in it. She made my life better by being in it. So I wanted to hold onto that relationship no matter what, but apparently–according to that therapist–that’s not what you’re supposed to do in that situation. You aren’t supposed to stay unflinchingly devoted to an unrequited love without any sort of boundaries or limits. You aren’t–and this was news to me–supposed to pour yourself completely empty out of love for someone who you know can’t love you back.”
“It had to hurt to hold on like that,” she whispered.
“See, it didn’t though,” I confessed. “Or at least, I knew losing her would be more painful. And the greatest pain of all would probably be her thinking that everything in our friendship was a lie. That everything I did for her I did to just get in her pants or something. Hurting her like that would have to be the greatest pain of all. Because I know it wasn’t like that. I know I love her, and I’m just happy to love her. Full stop. Also, I’m dating someone now, so clearly everything is fine. And I’ll get over it. But I didn’t need some fancy professional telling me that I had to give up one of the few rays of sunshine I had in my life in the name of peace of mind. So when she tried, I imploded. Again.”
For a moment, we both waited for something else to happen. A fender bender would be ideal, something not life threatening but still able to cause a commotion that would pull us away from the conversation. In the absence of something like that, we were stuck holding on. And while any therapist worth their salt would see this talk as necessary, that didn’t make it any easier.
“I’m...” Ellie started to say, but just as her answer was about to leave her mouth, she realized she didn’t like it. And maybe it’s because it wasn’t something she was ready to say. I wanted to think there was some hesitation on her part, like she did love me enough to not hurt me but not enough to know what that would mean.
She finally said, “I think she would feel lucky to have you in her life. This person you love.”
“Yeah,” I choked out.
“And I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to suffer like you have been.”
If I wasn’t driving or if the car wasn’t moving, I would have closed my eyes. There was no other way to soften the blow. But for both of our sake, I had to take it at full force.
“She’d probably want to tell you that you deserve to be happy,” Ellie added.
I nodded. “She’s said as much before.”
“And she’d probably want you to go back to therapy. To give it another try.”
“Yeah, my mental health is a crapshoot.”
“Then do something about it,” Ellie insisted in her soft but firm way. “Like you finally did something about your asthma.”
“Yeah,” I thought. “And hey, this isn’t going to almost kill me like the asthma did.”
“What?”
Fuck.