Page 79 of Ellie Hayes and the Himbos
“Yeah. I got into the habit of…” I grit my teeth.Shit.Every formulation of what I’m about to say sounds so demeaning. But it’s what I have. “I’d try to work around it, initiate sex, even when I didn’t want to. To, I dunno, have sex credit banked for when he’d want it while I was having a flare-up and would turn him down? I know it’s stupid—”
“What’s stupid is that he’d try to fuck you while you were in pain.”
I blink. There’s a dark edge to his words that I’ve never heard from him before. It isn’t scary, just surprising. And for me.
“It’s pretty deep-seated,” I explain. “The endometriosis symptoms started in college. Just painful stretches around my period. I’d refuse sex with any guy I was dating. It became a deal-breaker pretty quickly. But with Cole, I thought I had someone who would stick around anyway.”
A bittersweet nostalgia sweeps over me. “He was really supportive early on. It was like we were trying to crack the case together. He’d come with me to doctors’ appointments, helped me research. But naming what was happening to me didn’t do anything to fix it. The pain was still there. Treatment options are limited, and they only do so much, anyway. There’s still unpredictable, sudden pain regardless of where I am in my cycle, justblinding.”
Ian lets out a sympathetic sound, his hand still smoothing over me.
“So much of my relief was having something specific to point to; any symptom mitigation was gravy. For Cole…” I shrug. “Nothing changed as far as what we could do, physically. But it did take away something that we had in common. After so long, it was like the mystery of it was all we had. Once that was resolved, we didn’t have anything to align against. And we started to drift. Those cracks I mentioned.”
“Which I was a dick about,” he says, plainly.
“It was a dick move,” I agree. “There’s more to the condition than just pain. The scar tissue, especially in cases as severe as mine, can make getting pregnant difficult. Or impossible. There are surgeries to, ah, clear the path, but it’s not likely that anything would happen without major intervention.So,” I manage, and force a smile. “That was in the background, too. Just one more thing I couldn’t provide.”
“You don’t know—”
“I’m not willing to hope,” I say, with enough iron that Ian stiffens. Seconds pass, the silence getting heavier, and my heart rate climbs. I feel a spiral coming on, like the panic in the bathroom, that I’ve fucked things up by being difficult, by asserting, and—
Ian squeezes my hip. “Okay. So.” He gifts me a half smile. “You were drifting?”
I nod, grateful for the out. “I felt guilty because he’d already stuck by me through so much, and that was around the time that I decided to leave teaching and pursue my own business. I had a lot of guilt about that, too, having to take so much time to build up my backlist of lesson plans and try to get the word out. That’s when Ireallystarted compensating. I did everything around the apartment. Prioritized his interests, his plans and activities.”
Despite the bummer of the recall, I can’t help laughing. “That’s my villain origin story! I’d already been type A, but trying to prove to my boyfriend that I was worth keeping around turned me into a controlling nightmare.”
Ian scowls, his hand going still. “Ellie, you’re hardly a nightmare.”
“Ah! I’ve fooled you,” I say, laughing again, but it had been nice to hear.
“You’re inflexible when it comes to theEllie Knows Bestangle,” he says, hand beneath the robe shifting to hold on to my hip. “But it’s only annoying because you’re right so often.”
“My cross to bear,” I say.
Ian smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Did he ever ask? If you were okay?”
“What? Like, with sex or with anything?”
He frowns. “Sex, but,shit, I’d hope anyone’s partner would ask how their day was.”
“He would. But even that wore us down. At a certain point, ‘How are you?’ became indistinguishable from ‘Can I fuck you?’ Which was exhausting. For both of us, I’m sure.”
I worry my bottom lip. “So I’d initiate. Even when…” I grit my teeth, bracing for the admission. “Even when there was a degree of pain. More than a degree. And he could assume I was okay because why would I have gotten the ball rolling if I wasn’t?”
Ian’s eyes are dark. “He still should have asked.”
I shrug. “And I should have been honest. By the end, I suspected he knew and was waiting for me to say something. Calling my bluff.”
Which only made me hate him. And myself.
I run my nails up and down the length of Ian’s forearm, zigzagging a trail in the dark hair. “It ruptured something. I couldn’t trust him. And I’d given him reason not to trust me.”
I frown, realizing the truth in what I’ve said. I’d never considered the damage that had done to my relationship with Cole, certainly not my role in it. But the same way that relationships don’t just happen to people, their endings don’t, either. Both take effort. Or neglect.
“Is all this why you said you were sad? In the bathroom, that first night,” he clarifies. “You said you were a lot of things, but mostly—”
“Sad. And scared.” Another pang of guilt skitters across my conscience ahead of the half-truth I know I’m going to share, but it’s already more than I’ve ever admitted to before. I can almostconvince myself it’s enough.
