Eloise by Kelsey Ferrell

Eloise | Kelsey Ferrell

Waiting for the guy to arrive was always my least favorite part. I was leaning on the edge of a concrete wall in front of a coffee shop, one of the new ones in town. Ben was coming from “over the hill,” which is what we said about anyone who drove into Santa Cruz via Highway 17. 

The last text had said: I’m on my way now! Looks like it’ll be 45 minutes. Now at minute 41, I felt self conscious with every car that drove past, knowing that any figure gazing through the windshield could be Ben. It had been many years since I’d enjoyed a date, so I felt that statistically, chances were this one with Ben would go well.

When we first started talking on Tinder, I’d been the one to turn the conversation suggestive, but it had been Ben who had asked me what special things turned me on. 

Like a kink? I replied.

Yes, he messaged, what could I add that would make this better for you?

I kind of think I might have an impregnation kink, I responded. 

I’m actually really into that too, he said.

He said he’d never told anyone about it before; I hadn’t either. 

It’s a tough one to backpedal from if not taken well, he wrote during one of our late night conversations. 

Haha, I know right? I replied.

To be clear, I absolutely do not want a kid, he texted.

Me neither, I said. And it was true, kind of. 

There was only one person I’d wanted kids with: my first boyfriend, the only boyfriend I’d ever had, Theo. 

“Do you want to have kids with me?” I had asked him repeatedly. “Someday,” he had always replied. This was maybe a lie, maybe not. It felt true, but with a fancy East Coast college picked out, he was already planning his future without me. 

“Imagine seeing me holding a baby, and it’s ours,” I said to him. The way he looked at me was a little nervous, but he seemed to care about me enough to play along. “Would you help me take care of it?” I asked. 

“Of course I would,” he said, “what do you think I’d do, leave you on your own?”

“I hope one day we live in a house together, and you come home and see me sitting in a rocking chair with my shirt undone feeding a little baby we made together,” I said. The house was already built in my mind, painted yellow.

“What do you think when you close your eyes and imagine that?” I said, gazing up at him from his mattress, my head propped against my arm.

“I’d be happy to see your boobs,” he said, turning away from his computer screen to smile at me.

“I could show you those now,” I said, “What about the rest of it?”

He looked off into the distance thoughtfully. “I guess the words I would use to describe that would be that it seems emotionally attractive.” 

After our breakup, he came back to town in the summer. We made plans to get lunch at the diner we had been regulars at back when we were together in high school, perhaps both under the delusion that we could be friends.

“You know how I was never certain about wanting to have kids?” he said to me. 

“Yeah,” I remembered, stirring a cup of tomato soup. 

“Well, I figured it out. I really, really want kids.”

I have no doubts that the love Theo and I shared was so deep it changed me on a chemical level; the oxytocin we cultivated together steadied my nervous system in a way that no amount of yoga or xanax ever could. Of course, I lost this when he left. And I wondered, later, if his admission that he wanted children now that he no longer had to picture me as their mother was the moment testosterone and cortisol began to overload every single cell in my body. It struck me as a kind of Shakespearean irony that after this conversation I developed polycystic ovarian syndrome, otherwise known as PCOS, otherwise known as the leading cause of infertility.

When the doctor said, “you’ll have to work with us closely when you decide you want to get pregnant,” I didn’t react. No one was in the waiting room to join me when I exited. I walked to the parking lot alone. I drove home alone. When I opened my front door, no one else was there. I laid in bed by myself and thought of the name I carried in the back of my head for a future daughter. Eloise. 

***

I shifted my weight against the concrete wall and glanced at the coffee shop behind me, then at my phone.

Let me know when you park, I typed, I’m wearing a blue skirt. Ben replied moments later. I just did! I’m wearing salmon colored pants. I suppressed the cringe that salmon colored pants brought forth. He rounded the corner moments later and we hugged. I realized it had been months since anyone had hugged me. 

“I thought you might not recognize me with a shirt on,” I joked.

 “I can still tell your boobs are nice even when they’re covered,” he laughed.

 I was grateful for a compliment on my appearance. The telltale signs of PCOS were acne, hair loss from the scalp, facial hair growth, and weight gain—50 pounds, in my case.  “In case you’re wondering why I’m so pretty,” I used to say when explaining it to people. 

Ben had seen my naked photos though— recent ones too, not just Kelsey’s Greatest Hits— so I knew he knew what I looked like, and he wanted to fuck me. That’s why he was there.

“How’s packing going?” I asked. “Are you bringing fly fishing gear?”

We were both on the precipice of moving out of our parents’ houses. We shared the shame of lingering in our childhood bedrooms for an intolerably long period after getting our degrees. I was going to Los Angeles, and he was going to Alaska. 

“I’m not homesteading,” he laughed.

He bought a sandwich and I bought a salad; I nearly always did that, because when I was younger I read The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, wherein a character mentioned that a salad was the best meal to order on a first date. 

“Do you want to eat at the beach?” I suggested. Though as a local I didn’t go there too often, I knew people from over the hill loved the beach. “Natural Bridges is really close.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll drive. I know that beach.”

It was a quick drive; we could see the glimmering ocean from where we were before he even started the car. The road took us past my old school and I gazed at its empty front lawn.

There was a group of seniors that had always eaten lunch at the edge of that lawn. When I was 13 I wanted nothing more than to be like them; they had a celebrity status earned by their car keys and ability to kiss each other without blushing. The biggest event of eighth grade had nothing to do with any of us eighth graders: two of the seniors had an unexpected pregnancy that provided endless struggle for the two of them and endless entertainment for my friends and me. Lunchtimes were spent watching Hailey and John eat together on the grass or fight in the parking lot. At the end of the first semester, right before the baby was born, I watched across the lawn  as John rubbed Hailey’s stomach for a while. At some point he slid his hand up and started rubbing her boobs instead. Hailey laughed, John smiled just for her, and across the lawn my heart ached in a way I’d never felt before. Of course, now, staring at the lawn, the memory was replaced by the knowledge that Hailey and John weren’t together anymore; they hadn’t been in years. 

“There’s usually parking down this street,” I said, pointing Ben away from West Cliff Drive and down Swanton Boulevard. “Don’t enter the gate or you’ll have to pay.”

He parallel parked without difficulty and we exited the vehicle to walk to the gate, where the cement turned to sand. 

“Look at the bridges; did you know there used to be three?” I asked. 

We looked out at the ocean where the lone stone arch stood, a result of millions of years of geology, the only one still standing after storms collapsed the others.

Ben was charming and our banter flowed as easily in person as it had over text. He had been my favorite recent Tinder match; he wrote the longest paragraphs and talked the most about going down on me.

Theo was the only reason I even knew there was such a thing as women receiving oral sex. When my high school friends talked about sex, they’d usually whine that they had given some guy a blowjob, and now some other girl was giving him blowjobs, and now they felt sad. I knew more girls who had had abortions than girls who had experienced cunnilingus. But the day I agreed to try it, Theo passionately dedicated himself to the task for an hour, and at the end I shrieked in newfound ecstasy. I spent the rest of high school walking around feeling very sophisticated knowing my boyfriend was better than everyone else’s. 

When I got to college, I was certain that when I slept with someone new, they could make me feel the same way. But each guy I slept with at best left me baffled as to how such similar mechanics could be so unsatisfying. At worst, they left me downright traumatized. Theo had always paused and asked, “Are you ready?” before he entered me. Everyone else just assumed I was ready. Slowly my dating life turned into sleeping with people on the off chance it might be fun, as a way to mimic something I’d once loved. Like a chess master who had retired, I still played an occasional game with someone I knew was no match for me.

***

The wind on the beach had picked up, and I had finished my salad.

I stared at Ben’s mouth while he chewed. 

“I’m having a great time,” I said to Ben, “and I think we could have an even better time in the hotel room you booked.” 

He grinned immediately. 

“Let’s go,” he said. 

In the car ride, Ben mentioned again that he was tested a week ago. He texted this the night before, but I thought it was hot that he was extra conscientious.

 “Everything was fine, I’m clean,” he said. 

“Me too,” I said.

“So, do you want to use a condom today or do you want to go without?” he asked. “I mean, it turns me on to actually cum inside you, of course. But I brought some and understand if you want to use one. We can just pretend.”

“I think we’ll be fine without one,” I said, surprising myself. “The IUD is super effective. They say it’s more effective than getting your tubes tied.” Besides, I’m probably infertile. 

I’d gotten the IUD after being with Theo for five months. I was still a virgin when I went to the clinic— the speculum did the honors of popping my cherry. Because Theo had flown to Istanbul for vacation, I went to the clinic with a friend.

The pain when my cervix opened was so immense that I fainted, woke up, threw up violently, and then lost consciousness again. When I woke up the second time, my friend told me I’d been out for 45 minutes. 

When I left the clinic I video chatted with Theo.

“The doctor said that the only other time a cervix dilates is during childbirth,” I explained to him. “That’s why it’s so painful.” 

 I waited for his response, but he had fallen asleep on-screen. There’s a ten-hour time difference between California and Turkey. It was late. He was tired.

***

The queen-sized bed at the Ramada Inn had a sizable stack of pillows atop it, and the fabric of the duvet had a luxurious sheen under the soft lamplight. The room faintly smelled of lemon and the floors were so unscuffed they had to have been recently installed. 

I took a seat on the bed and cocked my head at Ben, who was still standing. “Did you think I looked hot when you first saw me today?”

“Yes, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice how hard I was staring,” he said.

“Do you want to come kiss me?” I asked. 

He was a good kisser, which surprised me. Usually I hated kissing the guys I slept with. I’d only ever liked kissing Theo. It just felt wrong with everyone else. But Ben felt the closest to right. With other guys, I usually stopped the kissing after a few seconds and asked them to do something else—anything else—as long as it wasn’t kissing. But I let Ben kiss me for a really long time. 

“Can I kiss you somewhere else?” he asked.

He was really good at kissing somewhere else. He was so good at it that I remembered how much I missed it the past six years. I wondered if this was going to be the pattern of rarity for the rest of my life: getting eaten out by someone who actually knows how only once a decade. 

“That was so fucking hot,” he said 45 minutes later. “Can I do it again?”

Okay, twice a decade. 

When I finished he raised his head and told me how good I tasted. He kissed me. He asked me if I could taste it on him. We both smiled when I said yes. 

“I can’t wait any longer,” he said. “I want to be inside you. Do you want me to get a condom or are you still okay with not using one?”

“We don’t need to use one,” I said, laying back with my legs closed. 

He leaned forward towards my body.

 “Tell me what you want,” I said to Ben. 

“I want to be the one you let finish inside you.”

“Tell me it has to be me,” I demanded. 

“It has to be you,” he affirmed, pressing his skin to mine.

“I’m ready,” I said quickly, as he leaned in. 

“God, you feel good,” he said. “I’m going to fuck you so hard that there’s no way you don’t get pregnant.”

  “You want to be the one to do that to me?” I asked.

“I’ll feel so powerful knowing that I did that to you,” he said. 

“Then fucking do it to me,” I said. 

His breath went heavy as he came, and he stayed inside me until I told him my hips hurt.

“I’m cold,” I told him as he finally pulled out and laid next to me.

“Come here, I’ll hold you,” he said, opening his arms. I ducked into his embrace and felt the warmth of his bare skin. He pulled up the blanket and ran his warm hands against my back. He was a lot taller than me, and I felt comforted and protected leaning my head against his chest. I used to ask guys to tell me I was safe when they were inside me. 

“Just tell me I’m safe with you,” I’d say.

“Um, you’re safe?” they’d say.

“With you,” I’d add.

They didn’t like telling me that. I was pretty sure it made me look really pathetic so I stopped asking. 

Ben reached over me with one arm to check his phone. 

“Dude, we’ve been here six hours,” he said. 

“I can’t believe you spent half of it eating me out,” I said.

“Of course I did, that’s the best part,” he said.

“It is?” I asked. It was fun to make him say it over and over. Besides, I didn’t know how many years would pass before I’d get to hear it again. 

“It’s seriously my favorite,” he said.

He started putting his clothes on. 

“Is it getting dark outside?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I gotta get back home. But don’t worry, I’ll drop you off at your car.”

He drove me back to where I was parked by the coffee shop. It was now closed, dark with chairs overturned on the tables. He was nice enough to get out of his car and walk a few yards to mine to say goodbye.

“That was really fun,” he said. 

“Tell me if you’re ever in LA,” I said.

“I will,” he said. 

“I hope you mean it,” I said.

“I would never pass up the chance to taste you again,” he said, and he kissed me goodbye, leaving a hint of just that to linger on my lips. 

The sky got darker and darker as I traveled down the highway. When I reached my parent’s driveway, I looked up at the stars as I slowly exited my car, comforted that they’d been blinking down at me my whole life and sad that I was going to lose them in the light pollution of Los Angeles. 

When I opened the front door, the dog barked and my parents glanced up from the television. As usual, my dad sat on the couch and my mom sat on the floor. I never saw them both on the couch at the same time, not even at opposite ends. 

“You’ve been gone all day,” my dad said.

“Yeah, I was hanging out with friends,” I lied. 

I reheated leftovers and ate them in the kitchen. There in the dark, I tried to think about whether a life with Ben seemed desirable, if I could slip into that fantasy. I wanted to want him more than Theo, to become enamored with a different impossibility. But my visions of him were strangely ersatz, the difference between the two of them troublesome rather than refreshing. 

“But wouldn’t it be possible to love someone else, even if it were different?” said my therapist. Judy, the one I had in college.

“If it’s different, then it’s no longer love. Being different makes it something else.”

Judy looked a little disappointed. We’d been having this conversation twice a week for three years and she’d never been able to make me feel any hope.

“Being without him feels like when you have a really long day and you just want to go home,” I said. “You know how that feels?”

“Yes,” said Judy.

“I have that day everyday,” I said. “But I can never go home.”

In the dark kitchen, I pressed my fork against a piece of pasta. In my mind, I’d already opened the door to the yellow house in my head. I went there often, knew it well. I saw Theo in the kitchen, making us dinner. I raised more pasta to my mouth and imagined it fresher and hotter, made by him. My mom walked into the kitchen.

“Are you really going to eat all of that?” she said. 

“I had salad for lunch,” I said truthfully.

I watched her walk back to the living room to sit on the carpet again, where she did sit-ups as the TV flickered.

***

I drove down to Los Angeles at the end of May. 

Moving south was supposed to mean finally feeling fulfilled: my first grown up job, a place where I could pursue my dreams, a queen-sized bed. But I got fired from my job as a legal assistant after a few months. My blood work got worse; I was at risk for diabetes. “50 percent of women with PCOS get diabetes by the time they’re 40,” said the doctor. My skin erupted in eczema. I didn’t look anything like my dating app photos.

I got hired at a cat cafe in West Hollywood. When someone came by to collect a cat they had adopted, I always picked up the cat and held them to my face. “You’ve had a very long day, and it’s time to go home,” I’d whisper. 

My time in the city was punctuated by doctor’s appointments. I was touched often, but only by latex gloves. The little black dots on my ovaries frightened me when I saw them on the ultrasound. They looked like boba pearls spilled inside my body. Every single one was an egg that would never mature. As I counted past twelve on the screen, I realized I had lost more than a full year’s worth of fertility. 

My shifts at the cat cafe got harder to bear as I grew attached to an orange and white cat named Poppies whom I could not afford to adopt on my minimum wage salary. I wasn’t working the day he got adopted. I’d whittled my dreams of companionship all the way down to delivering a whisper, and even that was out of reach.

I left Los Angeles after exactly one year to go to graduate school, landing in yet another new city for yet another fresh start. Two weeks in, I lay sweating under my ceiling fan in the desert heat, too hot to do anything but look at my phone. When I scrolled past a meme about hotel sex, I decided to send it to Ben. He replied right away. The haha reaction. Good memories, he said. How are you?

Good, I said. I got into my first choice grad school, the first quarter just started. 

What! That’s awesome! I’m so excited for you.

How’s Alaska?

It’s beautiful. He sent some photos of the Northern Lights. There was a girl in one of them, under the arm of a guy. The lighting on the back of their heads was dim but he looked tall like Ben. I was pretty sure this was sent to gently inform me he was seeing someone. I was glad I could see so little of her in the image that I couldn’t compare our bodies.

I stared at the green beams in the sky of his photo, thinking about how our night together was just as evanescent. I hope you like it up there. Enjoy the last of the sunlight!

Let me know if you want to text at night sometime ;), he said. 

I pressed the question mark reaction for the photo with the couple in it.

Those are my friends!!! I’m not in that photo! he said.

Hahaha, okay! Yeah I’d love to text you at night. I still think about that day in the hotel, I confessed.

I still look at our old messages sometimes and touch myself to the memory, he said. I’ve never had the guts to bring up that kink with any other girl. 

You should have texted me for new messages, I responded. 

When do you ovulate? he said. 

I hesitated for a moment.

Send me a screenshot of the app that tracks it. I wanna know what date. 

Haha are you serious? A screenshot? I typed back.

That or a photo of your beautiful body. Either one would be hot. 

I scrolled through Kelsey’s Greatest Hits and sent him a photo. 

He heart reacted.

October 15th, I added.

I’ll remember.

When the night came, I looked up the local animal shelter website while I waited, gazing at pictures of cats. I paused at each one: fat, orange, fluffy, gray. With each one I looked at, I wondered if the name Eloise fit. The sky continued to darken. There was only a one-hour time difference between California and Alaska. But it was getting late. I was getting tired. I stared at the time right up until 11:59 pm. But I never heard from Ben again, and Eloise just doesn’t seem to work for a cat. 

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