We Won't Give Up On Love [Romance/ Slice-of-Life]

[February 14, 2043]

"You look tired, boss," said Ellie, mouth full and chewing very loudly. "It's like I warned you before, taken from my own experiences: there's nothing good about being too popular. You can't stay up all night to chat up chicks."

Cal's tired and slightly irritated voice came from the other end of the table. "Eat your stupid burger."

Ellie and Cal were sitting across from one another in a plush red booth of a somewhat tacky burger joint in the city's central district, a twenty-minute bus ride from the manor. Cal was exhausted from the events of yesterday and hadn't wanted to go anywhere after returning from afternoon classes, but somehow, perhaps due to her enthusiasm or her constant pleas, Ellie had convinced him to turn right around with her and head into the city.

Ellie took another bite of her burger, wiped some mustard off her grinning face, and stuck a finger out at Cal. "You can't pass up an opportunity like this, boss! A special Valentine's deal: couples get sixty percent off burgers! And I intend to eat many, many burgers — nothing stupid about it, dude."

As if to affirm this, she took another strong bite, and a bit of onion jumped across the table and onto Cal's shirt. He gingerly wiped it off. "Is that what we are? A couple?"

She gave him a big thumbs-up. "Yessir. A couple of pals. Besties. That's what we are."

"Haha."

In truth, he wasn't actually annoyed with Ellie, it was merely the way a person would act playfully disgruntled with a friend, though he did feel rather weary. His legs hurt, and there was a slight pressure on his brow that only went away when he lowered his eyelids. He would need to take an anti-inflammatory drug when he got back to Otter Manor, before he started cooking dinner.

"Shit, dinner," he said, glancing at his own untouched order of fries. "I've been slacking lately. I'll only have time to make something simple again. Maybe some pan-fried noodles. Do we have green onions and bean sprouts left? I don't remember."

"Mmm, I don't like too many greens in my food," said Ellie, mouth full again. "I ate enough of them back on Pepper-67 with synthetically-grown proteins. No, see, food like this is something I can bite into and enjoy."

"How can you possibly be thinking about dinner? That's your second burger."

"And I shall have a third soon, just you wait."

He rolled his eyes. "Well, if you still have room in your stomach, I promise you'll like the noodles. They have oyster sauce and dark soy sauce stirred in while the noodles are in the hot pan. It's a dish my sister taught me very early on when she first was teaching me to cook. And it's delicious."

"Geez, alright, I get it. I won't stuff myself."

They sat in silence for a minute. Cal halfheartedly dipped a fry in a swirl of ketchup as a country song from the 2010s played over the restaurant's speakers. It was not an uncomfortable silence, simply one born from the natural lulls of conversation, where both parties awaited a new topic to naturally bubble up from under the surface of uncertainty.

Cal found it first. "How was the planetarium? Did Mel like it?"

Ellie made a face, clapping her black hands together to clear them of bread crumbs. "I think. She was pretty quiet, you know how shy she is out of her comfort zone, but she seemed pretty engrossed by the show. And so was I, admittedly. I love that shit. You know, boss, it'll be three thousand years from now, and humanity doesn't invent anything more cool than light projections in dark spaces. Don't believe it, if you wish. It's the truth. I suppose you can say, in a roundabout way, Mel and I bonded over our shared love of 'theatres.'"

He wrung his hands together. "So there were no problems?"

"No, not really." Ellie shrugged. "Though I must say, there's quite an unspoken resentment from her end. Admittedly, she's working through it, but she still seems to think you and me are some kind of unofficial item or something. That girl's jealousy and overprotectiveness are quite tiring."

"I'll talk to her about it."

"And that's not entirely all on her," Ellie's eyes flashed with accusation. "I can appreciate you're super conflicted and immensely dense, boss, but this is what happens when you keep boundaries ambiguous for so long. People start to nestle into their own ideas. I learned just recently from Ram that, apparently, you and Mel sleep in the same bed?! How the hell else is she supposed to interpret that?"

"Woah, wait a minute," interjected Cal, holding up his hands. "That is absolutely not what happens. Mel is a ghost, Ellie. When she sleeps, she can't control her weightlessness, so she drifts naturally towards the warmest energies in the room… and supposedly, that means my body…"

Ellie raised an eyebrow.

"It's not sleeping together," Cal insisted, though he could feel a bead of sweat on his temple. "She is not physically in the bed. She just floats above and sometimes inside my body… Stop looking at me like that, Ellie. It's not sleeping together. Saying it like that implies something else."

"Whatever, dude, keep digging yourself a bigger hole. Your future girlfriend is going to have a hard time."

"At the very least, I suppose it's good she'll never find out about that night when we got your signal working," pondered Cal out loud, more to himself than anything. "It would be hard to explain."

Ellie's eyebrow went even higher, and she put down the burger she had been preparing to take a final bite out of. "Oh, we're going to acknowledge that? I thought we mutually agreed with telepathy to never speak of it again."

"I don't recall having such a convenient ability," Cal said, wearing a small smile, but it was clear from his uneasy expression that he was having a hard time broaching the topic. "Would you rather we never speak of it again?"

Ellie reached behind her head to tie her plaited hair with a large silk scrunchy, considering his words carefully. "Not necessarily. I'm not shy, after all. You know that. But it was the wrong move on my part. Unambiguously. It wasn't even something I wanted to do. It just felt like a natural reaction to the pulsating emotions I felt at that moment, and you were a person who was close that I felt grateful for. So I suppose I apologize for that. Especially considering we're both…"

She grimaced, waving a hand in the air as she attempted to express a difficult concept. "We're both not into that."

Cal nodded. "You've done it before."

He said it not as a question, but as a statement.

"You can say the word 'sex,' Cal, it's not going to pollute your mouth," Ellie was smiling again, her good humor returning. "Sometimes you act more like a shy maiden than that princess. But yes, obviously. I was on a spaceship for years, almost entirely surrounded by people around my age. Do the math. People hooked up all the time, and as I said, I was very popular — because look at me. Boys and girls, you understand? I want that to be taken into account when calculating my power level."

"You do this a lot," Cal said, half-joking, half-seriously. "Using flippancy to make your experiences seem more straightforward than they were."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Ellie had an amused look on her face. "You're on the offensive today, boss. Did something happen to you recently? Okay, yeah, sure. It wasn't really all that frivolous. Because to me, sex was something I could do with a person I liked if they asked me. Like a favor… or unavoidable maintenance. A funny sort of way to spend the time — and people seemed to like to spend their time that way. For stars' sake!" She clicked her tongue in dissatisfaction, clearly wanting to be clearer with her words. "Nobody forced me to, of course, I would never suggest that, or that I didn't enjoy myself sometimes. It's not like I don't have a libido. But… it didn't take me long to realize… I probably wasn't experiencing it in the same way as others."

She wore a slightly melancholic smile, quite unusual for her. "Look, I had a good youth, Cal. All those people… that I grew up with, that I went to school with, that I eventually began exploring the universe with… they all meant a lot to me. I'll say so to them all when I get back, even if it's not anything quite like romantic love that I felt. But for sure, there was a distance there, and maybe it resulted in some unfortunate misunderstandings. Wei once told — oh, that's that damn prodigy that beat me to the captaincy of the Fifth Cosmonaut Squad who I told you about earlier — anyway, he once told me… and we were never a thing, okay, or even-"

Ellie paused, seemingly realizing her words were getting away from her. She began again. "He told me something that I think about a lot. This was before the final exam, when we were all about to be scored and sorted into various roles in various cosmonaut squads. He said…" She sucked air through her teeth, trying to recall without error. "He said… 'You're hard to read, Elinova. Not because of what you say, but because of what you don't say. I never know what you're thinking, even though you never stop telling me what's on your mind.'"

The corner of her mouth twitched, like the memory upset her. "For some reason, those words popped into my head the day we met, Cal. It was morning, and you were cooking something."

"Pancakes."

"Yeah, pancakes, that was it. And they smelled very good, too. But what I remember most is the way you talked to me. It was hilarious. You were so stiff and formal, like a butler or something, even though you were a bit younger than me." Ellie looked at her burger, which was getting cold. "The humorous side of it died pretty quickly for me in the following days. Honestly, I got a little weirded out by you, boss. The way you talked started to remind me of myself. Not in the tone, because I'm much more charismatic and hilarious, but in the style of the speech. We're both masters of talking forever without saying anything. We can spin a pretty metaphor or turn of phrase — as long as we don't have to reveal to anyone what our true feelings are."

She popped the rest of the burger into her mouth and chewed. "That's what people hate the most, right? A mirror coated in an unfamiliar shade of silver. But now we're besties. Funny how things work out. I guess I'm so cool I can get along with everybody, even with a doppelgänger."

Ellie let out a deep breath, leaned back, patted her belly, and then swung a careless arm over the side of the backrest. "What made you ask these questions? It's pretty unusual for you, isn't it? You never talk about anything salacious. I've never even heard you make a dirty joke."

Cal shrugged, then pushed forward the fries he wasn't eating toward Ellie, which she accepted with a mischievous grin. "I don't know if I have a specific reason or anything," he began. "But I thought it would be a good thing to clear up, once and for all. I think we understand one another quite well, but that's nothing but an assumption if we never actually talk about things."

She leaned forward a little. "And do you have anything to add regarding what happened between us?"

"Me?" Cal looked taken aback, like this wasn't a question he had been expecting. "Only… that I'm sorry for freezing up. It probably wouldn't have ended up being as awkward as it did if I had just been a little more assertive. Actually…"

He stopped, considering something. "Actually, I want to take this opportunity to explain myself."

"Hmm?" Ellie made an inquisitive noise. She had been putting two fries in her mouth so that they would look like walrus tusks. "Explain what?"

"Everything. In the same way you explained everything about your past to me."

Ellie stopped playing with her food, appearing to realize that the mood of the conversation had shifted again. "When you say 'everything', boss…"

"I mean my past. The events that happened to me before I came to Otter Manor. Who that woman was yesterday, whom I know you've been wondering about."

"I'm the kind of girl who doesn't take too much interest in others, remember?" Ellie responded. "But yes… I do admit that caught my curiosity. I didn't buy any of her story about being an old acquaintance of your parents, or whatever she was saying. The whole thing was clearly a cover-up for an alternative motivation."

"I wasn't planning to talk about myself in this type of place," Cal looked around the restaurant, at the stained linoleum floor and grimy walls that smelled of salt, and the service robots that were scampering around with beeping noises, trying to keep everything running and clean. "But I suppose now is as good a time as any to spill my guts."

Ellie bit a fry in half with a ponderous expression. "Let me say something before you do anything, Cal. I truly don't think I'm the first girl from our humble accommodation you should be explaining this to."

"You're not."

This seemed to throw Ellie off. "Oh? Really?"

"Yes," said Cal. "I told Bridget last night, and then when I came upstairs to bed, I told Mel. I didn't get to bed until three in the morning because I had to answer all of Mel's questions. That's partly why I'm so tired today."

Ellie whistled. "Well, I'm glad to see you have a little tact. Hmm, I genuinely did miss something big last night, huh?"

Cal nodded. "I didn't say everything. But I said close to everything. I left out the parts I knew would especially upset them or make them try to take some action. But to you… Ellie… I think I'm going to try to leave nothing unsaid. I'm going to attempt to describe everything that happened, in the order that it happened… without smoothing it over. I want to try to do that. To truly speak without reservation."

She squinted her dark eyes at him, as if trying to reach some answer in his face. "Why? What makes me so special?"

"We're besties, remember?"

She laughed, showing her wide grin of white teeth. "No, but seriously."

Cal bit his lip. "You're…You know what it feels like to put yourself apart from others. To feel bound by the relationships you find yourself in. You're… the most similar to me in that regard, in the way you feel about how you interact with others. That's why I trust you with the full story, without frills or deliberate omissions. You won't pity me. You won't try to do something about it. You'll just listen and accept it. And never speak a word to anyone else unless I want you to. It's as you said before, you're a visitor in this place, ultimately. Which makes you the safest person to tell."

Ellie listened to this explanation without much emotion on her face, but when Cal finished, she nodded slowly. "I get you. Because I don't care to know this, and I don't need to know this. Oh!" Her eyes widened, coming to realize how her own words sounded. "I don't mean that like: 'I don't give a shit about you, boss!' I mean it like… it doesn't make a difference. From my perspective, there is nothing I could imagine you saying that would change anything. Tell me nothing, I'm in your corner. Tell me everything, I'm in your corner. I don't mind either way. That's just the way I roll."

She smiled and tapped him playfully on the forehead with the strong pressure of one of her dark fingers, like a teasing sibling. "I'm your friend, nothing else. None of the other stuff that could complicate things. So yeah, lay it on me, boss. I'm going to order another burger, but I'll listen attentively, don't you worry."

Cal rubbed his forehead. "Ow."

"Come on, that didn't hurt, you wimp. Only.. can I ask one more question before you start?"

"Of course."

Ellie pushed the empty cardboard tray, now absent of fries, back across the table. "Why now? Why tell me now? What changed?"

"Nothing," he replied, simply. "Or a million things. Who knows? You never worry about what drop will finally break the hull, do you — because it's not the one that was important. I probably can't go on like this much longer. The only thing I know is… if I don't tell someone everything, absolutely everything… I think I might shatter. I think I might die for real."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Alright, then. No more questions."

He looked at his phone. "This will take a while to tell in its entirety. At least an hour, probably far longer. I'll text Bridget to start prepping dinner without me." Cal had never done such a thing before, but it felt strangely natural to say aloud. "And Ram is still at Sirius' place, so I'll tell Bridget to keep in mind that there'll be one less portion to make."

Ellie nodded, punching in an order on the electronic pad at the table. "No problems here."

"And…" Cal trailed off, suddenly losing the confidence of his speech. "This… isn't going to be as hopeful and inspirational as your story, Ellie. It's… It's probably not going to be a very happy thing for you to hear."

She nodded. "I could tell by the way you're shaking."

Cal looked at his arms, startled to see she was right.

"Take as long as you need," Ellie said, with an encouraging voice that was much more comforting than Cal was used to hearing from her mouth. "Remember, no matter what you say, it won't matter to me. I'm in your corner, boss. Now and always."

"I'm very grateful for your friendship, Ellie. I'm sorry I have never expressed that directly before."

"Geez," she chuckled. "When you start saying things like that, I do begin getting a little worried. Come on, hit me already, dude. I can't take much more anticipation. And you'll start feeling better when you start speaking."

Cal grimaced. She was right, of course.

Step through a door, he thought to himself. You told Mel that once, didn't you? It's as easy as that. Nowhere safe and nowhere terrifying.

"Okay," He spoke a little more loudly than he intended, before immediately correcting his volume, glancing around himself to see if anyone else had heard. "Okay. At my parents' old estate, there was a garden in the backyard…"