Four

Silas

"You told him I had a bad breakup?"

Ellie looked up from the tiny bed in her dorm room. How she slept comfortably with so many stuffed animals and pillows was beyond me. You'd think she'd knock those suckers to the floor, but no, she just sinks into the plush herd.

"Well, technically, you told him with that poem of yours. But yeah, I might have said as much. I'm sorry. Maybe it wasn't my place, but Archie said Adrian really needed someone, that he'd... We thought..." Ellie grinned. "You two would hit it off together."

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes as well as a bit of frustration. I couldn't be angry with her because I knew her heart was in the right place. Not to mention Adrian was a dream.

"I know, I should have minded my own business, but it was Archie's idea."

"You and Archie, how long..."

"We met over the summer. Out at Lariat; the country-western bar."

I nodded, not because I'd been there but because she'd been trying to drag me along on several occasions, but the combination of straight guys, beer, and country music seemed a horrid combination. I declined on principle.

"So, you two have been what...dating for months and you haven't told me?"

"I didn't want to jump the gun."

"It's been months," I reiterated. "You know how I feel when you try to play matchmaker."

I watched her shrink into herself. "I said I was sorry. Like I said Archie wanted Adrian to..."

"This Archie guy... he's a good guy?"

Ellie nodded with a smile. "He really is."

"Good. I'm happy for you. But ... I don't..."

"I know. I shouldn't have, but he's been worried about Adrian."

"Why?"

"Why, what?" She absently stroked a plush lion that was pressed between her and the wall.

"Why's he worried about Adrian?" I sat on the edge of her bed, nearly inundated by a cascading avalanche of stuffed animals.

Ellie shook her head.

"What? You can't tell me, but you can set me up with him?"

"Adrian's a good guy."

"You don't even know him."

"Yeah, ok. But Archie...". Ellie shook her head again. "I'm sorry, Silas."

It was my turn to shake my head. "It's okay. He does seem like a good guy. I'm just surprised you shared my break up with them."

"Your poem was a dead giveaway."

I grinned. "El, I wrote that years ago and you know it. Plus you're the one who told me to read it."

"Yeah, but you haven't gotten closure."

"Are you playing shrink, cuz my parents pay $200 an hour..."

"Yeah, but I do it for free. And then we get pancakes. Does your shrink get you pancakes?" She shook her head with a comically sad little smile to answer her own question.

"Free therapy and green pancakes. What is that, like positive reinforcement?"

"Exactly so, my good sir!" Ellie plopped back against a mound of pillows.

"Is that your subtle way of saying you're hungry?"

"No. Well, I'm hungry, I'm always hungry, but... I've got a lunch date with Archie. I don't want to be one of those girls; gets just a salad and picks at it." Her cheeks grew rosy as I laughed.

"A salad? I've never seen you eat a salad. Is this serious? You and this Archie guy?"

Ellie shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. It feels serious to me but... He's ..." Another shrug as she grabbed a stuffed alligator and hugged it to her chest. "Part of me thinks he's..." She arched her eyebrows as if to telegraph something I should know already.

"He's...?"

"He's really close to Adrian. So, I can't help but wonder if maybe he's hung too close. I mean, don't get me wrong he has all the right moves and has no hesitation ... doing stuff, but I just have this nagging feeling that there's something there."

"You think they messed around or you think you might have to compete for his affections."

Ellie was shaking her head, working on a perplexed expression. "No," she said with uncertainty. "It doesn't feel like that. It's just..." She shrugged. "I don't know. There's just something off, I guess." She shrugged. "And you know me, I have to know everything, or I start to go ..."

"Crazy?" I suggested. "Cuz I do know that."

"No, I was gonna say, go all Nancy Drew. Trying to get to the bottom of things." She stuck her tongue out at me. "You ass."

"So, ask him. Easy peasy. I'm sure it's nothing. I didn't get any type of vibe like that."

"Yeah, but I've got...."

"A sixth sense about these things. I know, you keep telling me." I nodded with exaggeration.

"So, give me a little credit, will ya?" She whacked me with her stuffed alligator.

Ellie did have a remarkable sense of things. I think it's one of the reasons she went into psychology in the first place. To figure it out. She's very empathetic and sympathetic; almost too much so, sometimes. She'll put on someone's shoes, so to speak, and take that proverbial walk and feel what they might feel or think what they might think and then project that on future actions. Of course, in the end, it's still through her perspective.

"You've been wrong before Ell. It's not out of the realm of possibility that you're just wigging out because you really like this Archie guy and you don't know what to do. Maybe you're looking for an out."

Ellie studied me. "I think your shrink is rubbing off on you. That was very insightful."

"I'm not just a pretty face, ya know." I poked at the dimple in my cheek.

"Who says you're pretty?"

"My mirror." Normally that's when she says something like it's a funhouse mirror, but she just hugged the alligator tighter staring at it as if communing with it. "El?"

"Huh?"

"Is there something you're not telling me?"

She shook her head. "No. Not really. I was gonna ask what you thought of him, but...."

"But?"

"But you keep calling him this Archie guy, so I get the idea that you don't like him."

I turned on the bed so I could face her. I tugged the tail of the alligator in her arms. "No guy is ever gonna be good enough for you, as far as I'm concerned. I'm feeling protective, that's all. While you may have a sixth sense about other people, you, tend to turn a blind eye to what's right in front of you, sometimes. Especially when it comes to a guy you like. This Arch..."

"See?"

"You're right. You're right. I'm sorry. Archie does seem like a really good guy. If he makes you happy, that's all that really matters."

Ellie nodded, contemplating my words then took a deep breath. "Okay. Enough about me and Archie. What about you and Adrian? I saw you holding his hand."

My shoulders dropped and I shook my head. She liked to exaggerate. "I wasn't holding his hand. I was pointing at him and he grabbed my finger. That's all."

"That's all? Sounds kinda Freudian to me."

"Well to paraphrase ol' Sigmund, sometimes a finger is just a finger. Nothing phallic involved, thank you very much."

"Well, first off, the quote was attributed to Freud, but it doesn't sound like something he would have said, because everything was a symbol; be it phallic, oral, or oedipal..." She waved her hands in the air. "Never mind that... Second, I wasn't there, in the room, so to speak," Ellie shrugged, "but it looked like more than that. From where we were sitting, it looked like you two were the only people in the world. Archie said you were lost in each other."

"Oh. Archie said, huh? He doesn't seem like the romantic sort."

"I know. which is why it surprised me when he said it. He looked at me and smiled and said, 'We did good El, we did good.' I swear, he looked like he was gonna cry. He's a romantic. It's just buried, deep down inside."

"Maybe you bring it out in him," I remembered how he reacted when she gave him the thumbs-up after assessing our situation up close. He beat on the steering wheel, proud and jubilant.

"Aww. I take it back, you're not an ass." Ellie's a romantic, though it's been diluted a bit after several semesters of psychoanalysis mumbo jumbo. There are terms for everything, everything's been quantified; the mysteries of love and infatuation have been labeled and defined. Being a romantic myself, I find it all very, unsettling.

El considered me, fingers her chin. "You seem odd this morning."

"How do you mean, odd?"

"Well, we start talking about Adrian and before I know it, we're talking about me and Archie. I steer us back to you and Adrian and you somehow segue back to me and Archie. Feels a little bit like avoidance to me."

"El, sweetie, I've already been to my shrink this week, maybe you can psychoanalyze me another time. Plus, it appears as though I'm gonna have to have pancakes all by myself."

"Is he already wigging you out?" She did parenthetical bunny ears around wigging. "To use your technical terms."

"No," I spoke abruptly which piqued her curiosity.

"Interesting."

"It's not interesting. I know that face, El. Don't read into my expressions or how quickly I answered your question or the fact that he grabbed my finger."

"Okay. Okay." She held up her hands in surrender. "So, what'd you guys talk about while we were gone."

"The usual. Coming out stories."

"You told him? You don't share that."

"Pajamas and everything. It's easy to talk to strangers when you have nothing invested." I grinned, recalling his expression, his attentive gaze, the way it felt telling him.

"Interesting."

I rolled my eyes. "What, now?"

"Nothing." She tried on a look of ambivalence and failed miserably.

"I know that look. Spill it."

"You look smitten," she confessed.

"Smitten? That's ridiculous... I'm not..."

"Are you sure?" Her eyes rounded, punctuating the question.

"Of course. I don't even know him. How can I be smitten?"

El shrugged. "I don't know but you are. It's kismet." She clapped her hands together and held them to her chest. She must have been skipping some of her psych classes because the mumbo jumbo is wearing off.

I closed my eyes, perhaps in an attempt at refusal. "We just met. How can I possibly be smitten."

"I don't know. I just have a..."

"A feeling? Of course. Then it has to be true."

"Why are you acting like this? It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. A wonderful thing."

"I think you're jumping the gun a bit."

"Or maybe, you're just gun shy?" She smiled and crossed her arms, proud of her play on words. "Efram really did a number on you."

"That was years ago."

"And you've avoided a relationship ever since. Why'd you read that poem out of all the ones you've written."

"First, you picked it, remember? Read this one, Silas, I love this one," I mimicked. "Plus, it's cathartic."

"Why do you need catharsis, now? Right after meeting Mr. Perfect?"

"Oh, so he's Mr. Perfect, now, is he?"

"As I said, you two were lost in each other. Just the two of you, together, oblivious to the world around you."

I sighed. "El, you're hopeless."

"Which does not negate the fact that I'm right. I am a matchmaker extraordinaire! The queen of matchmakers. I want a crown."

"I thought it was Archie's idea."

She nodded. "It was. It was. But I pulled it off."

I watched her, wondering at what she said. "You pulled it off?"

"Yup. Though I imagine that poem of yours might have had a part in it."

I winced at that.

"What? Despite your protests to the contrary, it's good. A bit rough maybe, but that's to be expected. You were going through major angst when you wrote it. It bares your soul."

"Is that why I had to wait for..."

"Timing is everything, Silas." Ellie looked at her nails. "I knew they were on the way and then they were parking. It would take you a minute to get your mojo on and boom..."

"You practically shoved me on the stage then ran back to your seat like a loon."

"Sometimes, destiny needs a little... nudge. Besides, everything worked out, perfectly. Better than perfect."

"Better than perfect makes no sense. How can you be better than perfect?"

El shrugged. "I don't know." She picked up a matching pair of plush swans and smashed their beaks together, making kissy noises. "But, in 50 years when the two of you are in the midst of your happily ever after, you can tell me."