A shorter piece of Ellie’s hair is loose from her clip, softly curling behind her ear, along her neck. My fingers twitch thinking about playing with it. I curl them into fists.
I’m feeling a little at a loss here, like I might be fighting a losing battle. She didn’t backtrack on her response to my hockey question, which means Ellie likely has something against hockey players. Or professional athletes, I’m not sure which. Guess all I can do is focus on whatisin my control.
“Ellie?”
She snaps her head up to look at me, eyes steady on mine.
“I’m sorry I lied.” She opens her mouth to say something, but I continue before she can repeat what she said before. “I know you said I don’t owe you anything and it was only one night, but Iamsorry I decided to withhold that information. I promise I won’t do it again. I’m an open book for you, okay?”
Even though the offer is genuine, I am hoping it might influence her own response to this next question.
“Are you up for telling me about what happened with your ex?” I hedge. “Feels like the proper thing to talk about on a second date.” I smile to let her know I’m referencing our conversation last night and to lighten the mood a touch. The side of her mouth ticks up and I feel like fist-pumping the air.
She scrunches her nose and softly kicks her foot against the rug, deciding to focus on that instead of me. It’s almost a full minute before she responds.
“Have you ever had the ‘do you want kids’ talk with previous girlfriends?”
The question catches me so off guard I feel frozen to my seat. Ellie looks up at me, patiently waiting for a response. Have I had that conversation? Yes. Has it gone well? Not really. I’m not sure where she’s going with this, so I guess honesty is the best policy, given what we’ve been discussing. “With the serious ones, yeah,” I tell her.
“And you were honest, right? About what you wanted?”
I take a beat before I answer, thinking through all those conversations. “Yes.”
Ellie nods, like she expected that answer. “Josh was not.”
“Ah.”Josh. She mentioned the name last night and it didn’t really bother me. Today though?Fuck Josh. I could hazard a guess at which side of the coin Ellie is on, but I’m almost nervous to get to that part of this conversation given how it’s gone previously for me. I settle on something safer. “How’d you find out he was lying?”
Ellie’s mouth twists to the side before she talks. “His friend accidentally outed that he got a vasectomy. Thankfully he got it before we were together, but I didn’t find out until last August. And by then we’d been together for three years and had several discussions on birth control, kids, our future, all that stuff. None of which was truthful apparently.” She looks at her hands, which are now in her lap playing with a hair tie on her wrist.
“Did you find out why?”
“Why he lied?” She picks her head up and I nod in answer. Ellie shrugs. “I mean, he said he just figured I’d change my mind, or maybe eventually he would feel differently and get it reversed. And maybe he would. But it’s hard to trust someone again who can keep up a lie for so long. That takes a lot of…intention. And it’s not like he lied to get in my pants or something. We didn’teven have those conversations until a little further into our relationship.”
Ellie gets up from the couch as soon as she finishes talking and wanders to the kitchen directly in my view. She opens a cabinet and stretches on her toes to grab something.
“Water okay again?” It comes out slightly muffled from where she has her head behind the cabinet door.
“Sure, thanks.”
She produces two glasses and brings them to the sink, filling them from the filter she has there. I’m guessing her sudden trip to the kitchen is her way of closing that part of the conversation. Her next question confirms it.
“So an open book, huh?”
I wait for Ellie to look at me before I respond. When she does, I incline my head. “For you.”
She finishes filling the glasses and puts one in each hand. She walks them back over toward me and sets one on the coffee table with a low thud. I watch her curl back up on the sofa and take a sip of her water.
“What would you like to know?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLIE
As I sit facing Matt,I’m hit with the sudden realization that my description of “celebrity handsome” was freakishly accurate. Because Matt Anderson isn’t just a professional hockey player. He’s afamoushockey player. Like,household namehockey player. And he fucked me against my shitty shower wall in my tiny one-bedroom apartment last night.
I try to bury the unfounded, retrospective shame, but my earlier Google search was quite…illuminating. The hat he’s wearing? That brand endorses him for millions of dollars a year.Millions. Matt isrichrich.
And worse? He’s known as the most charitable hockey player to date, literally. Which means I have maybe one of the nicest hockey players to exist apologizing to me for trying to be normal for one night. And it totally makes sense, everything he said. He even hasmefeeling bad forhim. Mr. Richy Rich.
