24

Ethan’s apartment is on the third floor of an industrial building on a tree-lined street. There’s a stack of mail waiting for him on the table outside his door because the last time he left, he thought he was just visiting his parents for a few days. He opens his door and we walk into a large kitchen with stainless steel counters. There’s a single coffee mug by the sink and I resist the urge to race around in search of his mess.

His phone rings as soon as we’ve closed the door. “Hey, Barb,” he says. “Yeah, I’ve been in Beechwood. I’m just here for the night.” He grabs a dish towel and starts drying the dogs off. “For how long? No. Barb. Do not get on a ladder. I’ll be right there.”

He hangs up and pulls a nine-volt battery out of a tidy kitchen drawer. “I’ve got to go change the battery on Barb’s smoke alarm. It’s been chirping for two days, and she’s just been waiting to hear me walking around my apartment.” He shakes his head. “Let me get you something dry.”

“Okay, thanks,” I say, and I notice I am clutching my hands. I don’t know how to act, alone in this apartment with this man about whom I have way too many feelings.

He unleashes the dogs, and Brenda follows him into his room. The interior walls of the apartment are exposed brick, and a full wall of windows looks out over the street. His taste is simple: a rust-colored couch, a Lucite coffee table, a plush cream-colored rug. Once again, I try to imagine how this Catherine person ever decided she didn’t want to wake up here with this man every single day.

He comes back in sweatpants and a dry T-shirt, the top of his hair still a little wet. He hands me a stack of clothes—plaid pajama bottoms, a blue T-shirt, and thick socks. “Go ahead and change in there. I’ll be right back. Leave your stuff, I’ll throw it in the dryer.” He reaches out, as if he’s going to kiss me goodbye, but then doesn’t.

I walk into his bedroom and take a deep breath against the closed door. His bed is covered with a dark gray duvet and there’s a brown leather chair in the corner with not one piece of laundry on it. I undress in the en suite bathroom and put on his cozy clothes. I towel-dry my hair, roll up the pajamas at the waist to keep them from falling down, and give in to the fact that I’m not going to turn this look into something attractive.

I turn my back on my reflection and whisper, “Mom. I’m sleeping here. With him. Are you following this?” She doesn’t reply. I start pacing, one step in each direction. “I’m having feelings, Mom. Feelings!” The least she could do is chime in right now with a little encouragement. But, nothing. “Okay, fine, don’t answer. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. But don’t watch.” And she laughs, the big Massa-Cheez-Its laugh, and that makes me laugh too. I roll my wet clothes into a neat pile and carefully conceal my Costco underwear and my beige bra between my shorts and my T-shirt. He doesn’t need to see that again.

He’s back from Barb’s when I walk into the living room. “Gorgeous,” he says. I curtsy and hand him my clothes. He disappears through the kitchen. I sit down on the couch and pull my knees up to my chest. I take another deep breath. There is nothing to fear from Ethan. It’s the way I am feeling that terrifies me. I am like a live wire. I want to take my just-kissing rule and burn it to the ground.

I watch the tops of the trees dry outside the window. Ferris is sniffing every inch of the apartment, as if maybe he’s looking for the mess too. Brenda curls up on a sheepskin dog bed, and Ferris joins her and fills all of the available space. How uncomplicated it is with dogs. They like the smell of each other. They do not perceive a threat. For dogs every moment is just that moment.

I hear the dryer running and Ethan is in the kitchen. “I guess I’ll have a glass of wine if we aren’t going anywhere,” he says. “Want one?”

“Okay, thanks.”

He brings me a glass of red wine and sits next to me. The tips of my socked toes are under his pajamaed thigh.

“It’s all so grown-up,” I say.

“Oh God, not you too. Ali, I’m thirty-six years old. Of course I own a couch.”

“I know. I don’t mean that. It’s just that this place has kind of an eligible-bachelor vibe.”

“I guess,” he says.

“Do women like this?”

“Do you?” He turns to me, and his face is serious.

“I do. It gives me a good feeling, like you’re in total control.”

“I’m not,” he says, and holds my gaze.

I’m feeling a little out of control myself, and I clutch my wineglass for something to do with my hands. “If that woman with the St. Bernard could see you here, she’d go nuts.”

“I’d never let that dog in bed with Brenda,” he says.

I take a sip of my wine and look down at Ethan’s socks on my feet. “It’s weird to think about actual dating,” I say.

“What’s weird about it?”

“Just being in a whole relationship. Sex. It’s been a really long time.” I just said “sex.” I heard myself say it. It is the word that is bouncing off the walls of my mind, and it just slipped out of my mouth as its own sentence.

“You’re the one with the rules, Ali.” He’s looking right at me, his arm resting on the back of the couch. His body language is casual, but what he’s saying is not.

“Yes,” I say.

He smiles a half smile and studies his glass for a second. He twirls it around a few times before he speaks. “I’ve wanted this for a long time. Since I was fourteen, actually. Since the first time I ever cleared your plate at the diner. You were at the back booth with your mom drinking a vanilla milkshake through a straw, and I thought, God, that lucky straw. That’s how long I’ve wanted you.”

He breaks eye contact and looks out the window. When he turns back to me, I don’t know what to say. I put my wineglass on the coffee table and take his glass from his hands and place it there too. I take one of his hands in mine.

Ethan squeezes my hand. “But I need you to decide what you want.”

His eyes are intense with feeling, and I have the sense that I am looking right inside him, like he’s shown me his heart. He has made himself more than naked, and he’s not shying away from it. He waits, and I look back at our hands. I take a second to enjoy the feel of his hand in mine and the sound of light rain outside the window. The quiet of this room and the space he’s giving me to decide how I feel. It’s been a long time since a man has worried about what I wanted. And it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted something this much.

I stretch my legs over his and scoot close enough to rest my head on his shoulder. I breathe in his delicious smell, now mixed with summer rain. He holds me there and runs his hand over my hair. I think I should say something, or he should say something, but I just want to feel the motion of his hand along my hair, hear the sound of the breath he takes when my lips brush against his neck.

“Ali,” he says. I raise my head from his shoulder and his face is inches from mine. He puts his hand on my cheek and runs his thumb over my cheekbone. “You haven’t answered my question,” he says.

“Yes,” I whisper into his mouth. “I really want this.”

He pulls me onto his lap, and his hands tighten on my hips to keep me there. He kisses me, and it’s different. It’s a runaway-train kind of kiss, and all my self-talk about slowing it down has silenced. I can no longer hear the rain outside or feel the couch below me. The outside world has dissolved into particles so small that they are meaningless.

When his mouth is moving down my neck and I am clutching the top of his sweatpants, he says, “Are you sure?”

“Sure,” I say, and move to kiss him again.

“Sure’s not yes,” he says, pulling back.

“What are you talking about?”

He takes both of my hands in his. “I just— I don’t want you waking up with regret, like we got ahead of ourselves and then things are weird. I really want this, but I’m not moving backward from here.” He gives my hands a squeeze. Like our entwined hands are the “here” to which he refers. A new place.

My body is on overdrive, but he’s being serious. I look down at our hands together and then back into his eyes. I have seen him today, and he is so much more than I thought.

“I won’t regret it,” I say. There’s no part of my body that agrees with stopping.

“You don’t know that.” He leans back and runs his hands through his hair in a way that’s really not helping me want this less. I put a hand on his chest, and he catches it. “We’re in sort of a fantasy here. This isn’t your life, we’re two hundred and fifty miles away from your reality. You’ve had two glasses of wine.” He brings my hand to his lips. “If you still want this tomorrow, when we’re back in Beechwood in the light of day, then I’m all in.”

“I’m a hundred percent sure I will.” Negotiating for sex was not on my bingo card for this trip to Devon.

He shakes his head, like he has more to say but thinks better of it. He stands and offers me his hand. “My fourteen-year-old self is literally screaming at me, but I’m going to tuck you in and then take the dogs out one last time.”

“In the rain?” I get up, reluctantly. I can’t believe this.

“Yes, this is my final act of chivalry of the day,” he says, leading me by the hand to his room.

He pulls back the covers of his bed and I climb in. He covers me up and leans down to kiss me again. His lips are soft, like they’re promising me something. I want whatever that promise holds, and as I feel him pull away, I raise myself up to keep it going.

He rests his forehead on mine. “I must really, really like you,” he says. I hope so, I think.

“You could stay in here, with me,” I say, one last plea. How delicious it would be to spend the night in his arms and wake up to the warm smell of him, already close.

“I don’t have that kind of restraint,” he says, and squeezes my hands. He gets up, turns out the light, and shuts the door. I hear him take the dogs out. I place my fingers on my mouth and replay the day, his face in the rain, and then replay my entire life from when I was sixteen and drinking a milkshake, totally unaware that I’d just set Future Me up for the way I’m feeling right now. I hear him come back inside and go to the living room. He has not changed his mind. I roll onto my side and imagine tomorrow, the possibility of the two of us picking this back up in Beechwood.

Oh my God, my kids. I sit straight up. This is another nightmare I have, of course, where I’m far away and can’t get to them. The car won’t start, I can’t make the phone work. But this is real. I am four hours from home in another state, and Pete’s bringing them home at ten tomorrow morning. I text Ethan: You still awake?

Ethan: Yes

Me: I just remembered I’m a person. What’s our plan for getting back to Beechwood?

Ethan: I set my alarm for 4:30, we’ll leave by 5, get you there by 9

I can’t believe anyone ever tried to tell me this man is unreliable. Me: Oh okay, thanks

Ethan: Are you freaking out yet?

I smile at my phone. Me: just about my kids

Ethan: I’ll get you there on time. Good night

Against all odds, I fall asleep.