gs_silva

Ella and Maurice walking across campus in the November chill

"I'd totally be an extrovert if other people weren't so awful," Ella fumes as she and Maurice walk past clusters of university students.

Maurice "hmms" thoughtfully. He has a lot of work to do on his self-esteem and his perception of his place in the world, but Ella is a few steps ahead of him in the process, so he gets a free ride off of her rants sometimes. Ella herself needs someone to drop wisdom on her, as well, but she also needs to vent the stewing brewing thoughts in her head before they explode. They provide important services to each other.

They were always supposed to be close friends, but for some reason, as soon as I started to write it all down, Ella and Maurice began to lean into the conflict and bickering and stomping all over each other's boundaries. It wasn't until the scene on the airplane that they got over a hump and started to genuinely get along. Now they're where they were supposed to be all along.

What happened on the airplane? Ella confessed that she's asexual but that she thought that she and Maurice would be compatible as partners aside from that. And Maurice assured her that he was still 100% there for her, and he was still marrying Cathy.