Housemates

Chapter 28

Ellie knelt in the ute’s front seat, and watched Mia and Rose, and felt out of place. She didn’t know Rose, and didn’t know Mia especially well yet, and had no idea of the right thing to do.

She wanted to help, and didn’t know how. She decided a gesture might be better than nothing. She reached down, and got one of the unopened water bottles she’d just bought at the shop. Rose had asked for one when they left, and might still remember, and might appreciate that Mia and Ellie cared enough to bother.

She might even still be thirsty.

Ellie thought it was better than nothing.

“Hey,” Ellie said, and held out the bottle. “Um, we got this, if you still want some…”

Rose looked for a moment, and Ellie almost thought she’d done the wrong thing, and somehow trivialized what Rose was feeling, but then Rose took the bottle, and smiled, and seemed grateful.

Smiled through tears still on her face that she wasn’t bothering to wipe away.

Rose opened the bottle, and sipped a little, and Mia let go of Rose so she could. Mia kept rubbing Rose’s arm, though, while Rose drank.

Rubbing her upper arm, quite familiarly.

Ellie watched, and wondered.

She wondered how well Mia and Rose knew each other, and how close they actually were. She wondered why Amanda had assumed Mia was on Rose’s side, and why Amanda had reacted so badly to Mia touching Rose. Because Amanda had reacted badly, if the whole thing with closing the door and telling everyone to go away was related to Mia’s hug.

Ellie knelt on the seat, wondering all that.

Then she was suddenly horrified at herself.

She was jealous. It had taken her a moment to realize.

She was jealous of Rose, and she had no idea why, except that it was somehow because Mia was rubbing Rose’s arm.

Ellie sat there, a little shocked at herself, trying to make sense out of it. Trying to work out why Mia comforting Rose bothered her so much. Ellie wasn’t like this. She didn’t let herself be like this. But right now, apparently, she was.

Ellie thought. It wasn’t exactly jealously, she decided. Not jealously about Mia having sex, and not some kind of jealously that meant Ellie didn’t want Mia touching Rose. It was something else. More an odd kind of envy of Rose and Mia’s past, and of what Mia might once have done with Rose, or what Rose might have meant to Mia.

Ellie thought some more, and after a moment understood.

It wasn’t jealousy at all. It was realizing there must have been other women before her.

If not Rose, then someone.

It hadn’t occurred to Ellie until right then that Mia might once have flirted with someone else the way she did with Ellie. She had to have flirted with someone else, at some point in her life.

Ellie was upset by the idea she wasn’t special.

Ellie had been acting like what she had with Mia was some unusual thing, and that Mia wouldn’t do what she was doing with Ellie with just anyone, but Ellie didn’t actually know that was true.

Perhaps Mia had with Rose. Perhaps Mia’s life was a string of flings like she was having with Ellie, over and over. Perhaps she found Ellies, and made them want her, and did what she did, and then later, for some reason, she came back and helped them move house.

Which didn’t make any sense, except that it did. Just enough. It felt just true enough it hurt.

Ellie knelt there for a moment, wondering if she’d misunderstood, and whatever this was with Mia, she was taking it too seriously.