Ellie has been in the bathroom for twenty minutes. Our food is going cold, and I’m getting more wound up by the second. Unable to wait her out any longer, I approach the bathroom and knock on the door. “Red, can I come in?”

Pressing my ear to the door, I listen carefully for any sign she might still be crying. That would kill me. I hear nothing, so I knock again. “Ellie, can we please talk about this?” Even I can hear the desperation in my voice.

The door flings open so fast I have to catch myself on the frame to stop from crashing into her. “Shit, sorry,” I mutter, pulling myself back to give her some space.

She runs her hands down her now fully clothed body and straightens her shoulders. She’s ready for a fight. “Yes, I think now would be a great time to talk,” she says, pushing past me and heading back to the lounge room.

Following after her and not knowing how this is going to play out, kills me. Ellie is the only thing in my life that has always seemed right. From the very beginning she was all I could see, and she still is. If my relationship with Lu is going to ruin that, fuck, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Apprehension and anxiety course through my body making it hard to breath. I cautiously gage her movements, she’s stiff and uncomfortable. It immediately puts me on guard. I wait for her to sit on the far side of my three-seater couch, then I take the opposite end, not wanting to crowd her. But also hoping like hell she can see what this is doing to me.

Ellie licks her lips then twists upper body to face me. “We obviously need to have a chat about your friendship with Lulu. Yes, I remember who she is to you, not that you’ve gone into much detail about that. But I can understand why you wouldn’t want to talk about a traumatic time in your life.” She takes a breath and her eyes find mine for the first time since she exited the bathroom.

I finally relax a little when I see tenderness and compassion shining back at me. I shrug, “It’s not something I like to dwell on. I live in the here and now. I can’t change the things I went through, but I don’t have to keep reliving them.” Talking about the way I was raised is not one of my favourite topics.

I knew this conversation was coming. It had to if our relationship is going to go anywhere and I’ve been dreading it from the moment we met. But I don’t want her to see just heavily this weighs on me. I don’t want to scare her.

Red shuffles a little closer to me and I can’t handle the distance left between us. I need to feel her close. So I reach over the gap and tug her into my side, throwing my right arm over her shoulder along the back of the couch. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just don’t walk away from me. Please?”

Her big green eyes meet mine, insecurity written clear in her features. My heart sinks. “Red, you know how I feel about you is real. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt for another person.” Unable to stop myself from touching her, I graze my fingertips over her cheek. “Lu is special to me. She always will be. But not in the same way you are. The way I feel about you and the way I feel about Lu, are completely different. But both are strong.”

She nods slightly, “I know. But, it’s just…the way you were talking to her on the phone, it sounds like there is more between you two than you’ve led me to believe. I hate feeling like this, Zak, like you’re keeping something from me. I don’t want to think like that, but why else would you shut me down every time I’ve asked to meet her?”

I release a breath, and nod in acknowledgement. “You’re right. But not in the way you’re thinking,” I blurt, before she can get upset again. I squeeze my arm around her shoulder and tug her as close as I can get without pulling her into my lap. “At one point in my life I thought I loved Louisa,” I admit on a sigh.

Ellie’s body solidifies. “Explain,” she demands, pulling out of my embrace and creating distance between us once more.

Chewing on the inside of my bottom lip, I try to find the right words to tell her what happened, without hurting her more than I already have. My shoulders slump when I realise there is no easy way to say it. I can’t even look her in the eyes when I utter, “We slept together, about eight months ago.”

The tension between our bodies is palpable, so intense it’s almost suffocating as it fills the space around us. Not able to stand her silence any longer, I glance to her. Red silk waves hang around her face, hiding it from site. I want desperately to tuck it back behind her shoulder but hold myself in check.

Finally, she breaks her silence, “Eight months ago. We met just over six months ago,” she says, nodding to herself. As if reassuring herself that this was all before we even knew each other.

My throat is dry. I wish I’d put out cups of water or soda with our now stone-cold dinner. Rubbing my sweaty palms up and down my cargo shorts, I confirm, “Yes, it was before I even met you. The second I laid eyes on you, Red, there was nobody else in this world for me, not even Lu.”

Her spine straightens at my admission. “So you thought you were in love with her until you saw me? Is that what you’re saying?” Her tone is cold and my heart rate accelerates.

“Umm…yes and no,” I mumble, unsure how to dig myself out of this hole.

Ellie’s head whips around so she can glare at me. I want to shrink back from the raging inferno blazing in her eyes, but I hold my ground. This is a part of me, part of how I came to be who I am today. Clearing my throat, I explain, “I was already questioning how I thought I felt about her before we met,” I gesture between us. “It’s not like I met you and just forgot about her. It was never like that between Lu and me.”

Tipping her chin to the side, her glare remains fixed on me, she looks like she’s poised to attack at any moment. “No? So, if it wasn’t like that between you, why did you fuck her, Zak?” Pain drips from her tone but her rage is what really stands out to me. If I didn’t know she couldn’t stand to touch me right now, I’d think she was getting ready to murder me with her bare hands.

My eyes widen when it occurs to me that she may see what happened between Lu and I as the same thing her ex’s have done to her. Fuck. Every word out of my mouth just seems to make things worse.

Scrubbing my hands over my face I meet her pained gaze, knowing I need to tell her everything and just hope she sees how this is different than what she has experienced in the past. “We were drunk, she had a huge fight with her boyfriend, and she came here. The guy is a prick, and he’s into shady as fuck shit. He’d gotten rough with her. She knocked on my door, holding a bottle of Tequila and sporting a fresh bruise around her bicep. I almost lost it.” The memory slams into me like a kick in the guts, my muscles tensing on instinct.

I have to grit my teeth and take deep pulls of fresh air through my nose until I’ve reigned myself back in. The emotions that ran through me that night resurface every time I think about it. When I’m calmer, I drop my eyes to the floor and continue, “I wanted to go kick his ass, but I couldn’t leave Lu like that. She’d already drank a quarter of the Tequila before she’d arrived. She wasn’t crying or upset, she was just there. I think she was lost in her own thoughts, lost to the past we had shared.”

Chancing a look at Red’s expression I’m relieved to see the fire that had been burning through her seems to have simmered to a smoulder. It’s still there but not blazing. I reach my hand towards her, hoping she’ll take it, but she doesn’t. Dropping mine back to the couch between us, I keep talking.

“I’ve been protecting Lu since we were kids, it’s what I’ve always done. But somewhere along the line I got confused about my feelings where she was concerned. I mistook my love of her for being in love with her. I can’t even tell you when it happened because I don’t know.” I swallow, my throat dry as a desert by this point, “I need a drink of water, do you want anything while I’m up?” I ask her.

“Whiskey, if you have it,” she deadpans. “I’m going to need it if this conversation lasts much longer.”

Nodding, I push to my feet and take off to the kitchen. I can still see her from here and I keep my eyes on her as I move about the open plan space. Filling a glass with water from the tap, I scull it and refill it, then pull down a bottle of Glenfiddich with two tumblers.

Ellie startles at the loud crack of the ice from its tray. “Sorry,” I mumble as I go about filling the whiskey glasses half way with ice, then gather it all into my arms and return to the couch, placing it on the coffee table.

She’s stopped looking at me, and I hope she’s processing my words. I hope she can see it was just the confusion of feeling so much for another person, from such a young age and without the proper guidance, that made me think I was in love with Lu.

I pour us both a drink then slide Ellie’s towards her. She doesn’t take it until I remove my hand from the glass, then she knocks back the whole thing straight up. Slamming the glass back down on the table, she gives it a hard nudge, sending it sliding across the smooth surface back to me.

Red’s gorgeous face is so torn up with confusion, compassion, and maybe even jealousy? It’s crushing to watch her fight her way through these emotions and not be able to hold her. So I do what I can to ease her distress and refill her whiskey. When I move the tumbler back to her side of the table again I wait to see if she will annihilate this one too, but she takes a small sip, then cradles it between her palms.

In one chug I drink half of my water. “So, Lu was at my house, we got drunk and I blurted something stupid like I’d always wanted to kiss her or something like that. She leaned over and kissed me, and yeah, things progressed. The next morning when I woke up, she was gone, and that was that.”

Ellie’s frown deepens. “What? That’s it? Just like that? You didn’t call her? Try to see her?”

I shake my head, dropping my gaze to the mat beneath the coffee table. “Not right away, I was ashamed and embarrassed. I couldn’t face her. Maybe if she hadn’t of run out while I was sleeping, we could have talked it out, but that’s not how it went down. I called her the next day, and the one after that. Every day for a week straight, I called. Eventually I left her a voicemail, apologising for taking advantage of her when she was in a bad place with her relationship. And basically begged her to forgive me.”

Swallowing hard, I hammer the last nail in my coffin. “About a month later she text me, said everything was fine and it was as much her fault as mine. I disagree, but I wasn’t about to snap the olive branch she was offering. I’ve only seen her once since then, I told you about it. And when you asked to meet her, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t ready to tell you everything and I certainly didn’t want you to see how awkward things between her and I were. I thought in time, things would return to normal and I’d introduce you two, then tackle the subject after you’d met. That way you’d know it was all just a drunken mistake.”

Wrapping my fingers around my whiskey I take a long pull of the amber liquid, closing my eyes as it burns its way down my throat. Keeping my eyes closed, I lean back into the couch cushions behind me, holding my drink steady on my thigh. “There it is. That’s everything,” I tell Ellie, my throat thick with regret. Talking about this shit is fucking exhausting.

Now that this conversation is over, I’m whipped out, utterly spent. That’s everything I have, out on the table for Red to decide if she wants to keep me or not. My chest aches in a way that only losing the one you’re supposed to spend your life with can. I always knew this would be the point where my little Red would either accept all of me, or cut her losses and run.

I’m fucked up, I accept it, it’s part of me. Nobody who grows up in the foster system comes out the other side without their fair share of scars. Most of mine are on the inside, hidden in the darkest parts of my soul. If Ellie choses to stay, she’s going to have to meet my demons, and I don’t know what’s worse: putting her through that, or letting her walk away.