I gnaw my lip as the phone rings, drawing dangerously close to biting through it with each passing tone. I have to answer. I told him I would but now that he’s actually calling...
“Hello?”
“Hey.” Ethan’s voice fills my ear, not soothing my nerves but shifting them. “You answered.”
“I almost didn’t,” I tell him, because it feels like we’re finally done hiding.
“Yeah,” he says, in a way that makes me realize that calling wasn’t easy for him either. “Bauer said you were the one who figured out where I was.”
“He called me,” I tell him quickly. “You said you needed time but I thought maybe...” I lower the phone for a second wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea. “I just... I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
There’s such a long pause that I check the phone again to make sure he didn’t hang up on me.
Nope. Still connected.
“I’m not mad,” he doesn’t add about that, but I can hear the unspoken words as though he did. “I’m actually with him now. At his house.”
“That’s good?”
“Yeah. I mean he said the guest room is mine for as long as I want it.”
“But...?” I know there is one, I can hear it in his voice.
“It’s just different, you know?” I hear a sound like he’s shifting on a bed. “I mean he cooks dinner now and washes dishes. Earlier I overheard him making a dentist appointment for his kid.”
“Okay?” The tone of his voice implies that I’m supposed to be scandalized by this in some way, but I’m not sure why.
“My memories are of him getting high with my mom and laughing at the cockroaches that ran across our kitchen floor.”
“I guess that would be weird. But he’s trying right?” There’s a pause, a long one. “Ethan?”
He laughs but there’s no humor in the sound. “I just realized that you’ve already made this conversation entirely about me and I let you. I always let you. Next you’ll ask me about my mom and my grandparents and I won’t even realize what happened until it’s too late and you’re gone.”
“I don’t always do that.” I tug at the hem of my sleep shirt, wishing I was wearing a lot more even though he can’t even see me. “And you have a lot going on. Huge things.”
“And you don’t?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“Are you okay? With your mom? The wedding is...?”
I twist the opal ring around my finger. “It’s in a couple days.”
I picture his face going tight in the silence that follows. Neither of us mention where he will be in two days.
“Are you going to talk to her before?”
I hesitate and the smile I force doesn’t reach my words. “We’re not talking at all right now. She’s been busy with wedding details, I guess, but it all feels like another excuse to keep us on pause. She’ll marry John, I’ll leave, and we won’t have to deal with anything. I won’t have to tell her what I want and she won’t have to tell me she can’t give it to me.”
Ethan’s silent. For like a really long time. I’m about to say his name again when he says, “Do you really want to live your life that way, on pause? You know what you want, so tell her. Maybe she’ll surprise you, but even if she doesn’t, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself for what happened and acting like you don’t deserve anything good because of that one night.” He softens his voice. “You were a kid who got drunk at a party. That’s what you did. That’s all you did. You weren’t driving the other car. You didn’t run that light. Bec, you didn’t kill your dad.”
He can’t see the tears I blink back, but he can hear the hitch in my breath.
“But if your mom can’t say that, don’t spend your whole life trying to make her give you what she can’t.” He takes a deep breath that seems to steal the air from my own lungs. “Don’t be like me, okay?”
“Don’t be like you?” I almost laugh but hold it back because I’m not sure it wouldn’t come out like a sob. “You always do what you want. Look where you are!”
His voice matches my intensity. “Yeah, look! You think I want this? That I ever wanted this? This made you hate me, and don’t say it didn’t,” he adds, with a ferocity that’s almost scary. “Because I saw your face when I came back and I finally understand how you must have felt every time I went away.”
I can’t hide the tremor in my voice. “It was never hate. Don’t you dare say that.”
“It wasn’t far from it.”
“Yes, Ethan, it was. It was so far from hate that it broke me. You hurt me, and you only did that because what I felt for you was never hate.” That tremor gets worse. “I know I said some horrible things to you the last time we talked—”
“Because I left you alone on the worst day of your life without even a second thought! Are you seriously about to say I didn’t deserve it?”
His harsh truth knocks the wind out of me and my voice is hoarse when I hurl my own truth back. “No, but I don’t get to repay hurt for hurt and expect to feel better. It doesn’t work that way. Even now when I’m mad, I still miss you.” That last part comes out like a confession. “I’m mad that you forgot me and most of all I’m mad that you didn’t have a choice when we were younger and even if you did, I know you’ll always pick your mom even when it hurts you.”
His voice is soft when he finally responds, tired and pained, but not angry. Broken is the closest thing I can compare it to. “But we’re not kids anymore.”
A tear slips down my cheek. “No, we’re not.”
“So, what? We grow up now? You talk to your mom and I leave mine?” His voice gets louder like he’s pressing the phone closer to his face. “Does that fix everything?” He doesn’t give me time to answer and I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. “’Cause it didn’t work out so well the last time I tried. I was just a couple of floors away in the laundry room the day she OD’d. I stayed long after the clothes were dry reading a shitty book that I don’t even remember and watching half the apartment building come in and out. I left her alone knowing exactly what she would do, what I was too tired of fighting.” His laugh is bitter. “See, all this time you’ve been blaming yourself for an accident, but I’ve been blaming myself for something I actually did.”
My heart crashes into my lungs, breaking and shattering like our car that night. “No, you’re not responsible for something she chose. You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“But you could?”
There’s no bite in his words, but I still want to recoil from them.
I hear a voice on his side of the phone, high like a child’s. “You—uh, have to go?”
“No, I—” But we can both hear the noises from his end getting louder. And this call is a poor substitution for what we really need.
“It’s fine. I should go too.”
“Wait.” His voice is suddenly urgent. Then he sighs. “I don’t know about what’s gonna happen tomorrow or after, but I just need you to know, me too, okay?”
The noise, the child is right next to him now, talking to him so that I almost can’t hear Ethan. “What?”
“I miss you too.”