I can’t help but smile when I look out my window the next night and see a familiar tall, dark shape coming out of the Kellys’ house with a squirming cat in his arms.
I try not to look like I’m hurrying as I hurry down the hall and out the front door. Ethan hadn’t responded to my text earlier, but I know Eddie gets on his case if he’s on his phone at work. Besides, seeing him in person is so much better.
I breeze down the ramp, letting the momentum carry me across the walkway and onto the driveway so my hands are free to gather my curls up into a loose ponytail. That smile stays on my face until I see...
Neel.
He stops, seeing me too. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
I squint one eye at him. “So you’re not stealing Ethan’s cat?”
“No. I’m—” But Old Man’s yowl drowns out whatever else he was going to say. The cat twists himself like a pretzel to break free from Neel’s grasp and darts off into the darkness.
“Looks like your nefarious cat-stealing plan’s been foiled...by the cat itself!” I dramatically bring the back of my hand to my mouth and gasp. It’s either that or laugh. There was zero chance he was ever getting Old Man anywhere he didn’t want to go.
“I wasn’t stealing anything.”
I drop my hand. This is the first time I’ve seen Neel since the movie night at my house. Normally we see each other at least a few times a week. Even if it’s just dropping off orders or picking them up, we find a way to turn them into more. Except for these last two weeks he hasn’t once asked me to hang out and I haven’t felt like I could ask him.
Lately, whenever we’ve texted, we’ve ended up talking about anything other than the friendship I hope we both still want to salvage. With a mental grimace, I realize just how often we’ve been defaulting to the topic of Ethan. It’s not like I’ve been asking for updates while they are at work or anything, but Ethan is the biggest part of our lives that overlaps right now, so it’s just felt easier to talk about him. Although in hindsight, maybe it was just easier for me.
“Look I’m—” I start to say just as he begins, “Hey, so about the other night—”
We both kind of laugh, but even that feels strained.
“I never wanted to hurt you, ever,” I say, finally feeling brave enough to bring this up now that we’re face-to-face.
He nods. “I know.” And he says it so kindly that a sigh of relief leaves me.
“Then can we just go back? Forget that it was awkward or weird and just be friends again? ’Cause I’ve really missed you.”
Neel’s expression twists, just slightly and just for a moment, but I recognize pain when I see it. “I’m gonna need another minute, some space, you know?” My stomach bottoms out and he must see the reaction in my face because he’s quick to add, “Not forever. I could never do that, but,” his voice slows and he pauses before saying almost too softly to hear, “I need it not to hurt and right now it still does.”
He could’ve hit me and it would’ve hurt less. There’s nothing I can do but nod and blink too fast.
A bush ruffles to my side and I catch a glimpse of Old Man, grateful that he’s once again providing a distraction from an uncomfortable situation. “Um, I know you and Ethan got into a fight, but really? His cat?”
Neel hears the bush too and whirls, apparently trying to develop the superpower of night vision as he squints underneath. “No, we’re good. I was being stupid and kind of took it out on him, but we talked and decided we’re better at fighting Eddie than each other.”
I fold my arms. “Then what? And how did you get Mr. and Mrs. Kelly to let you walk out of the house with Ethan’s cat in the first place?” My arms tighten as I ask the question and a half-formed answer tries to take shape in my brain.
“I was just supposed to feed him. That’s all.”
My fingers dig into my sides. “What are you talking about?”
Neel squat-walks over to the nearest bush to look beneath it. “Ethan got some text when we were leaving the site. I don’t know who it was from or what it said, all I know is one second he’s standing there looking like the world is ending and the next thing he’s running to his car, flat-out running, and yelling at me to take care of his cat while he’s gone. Do you have any idea—” Neel halts when he turns to look at me, at the utterly still and unmoving thing I’ve become. “He didn’t tell you?”
My head moves left to right, once.
Neel stands, any search for the cat abandoned. “Well, maybe he’s coming right back. Maybe...” Neel’s voice trails off because he can’t even convince himself. There’d be no need for Ethan to ask Neel to feed Old Man if he was only planning on a quick trip.
“It’s his mom,” I say, staring off at the bush beyond Neel. “She must have texted him, needed him.” My voice goes cold as another possibility occurs to me, one that makes any thought for myself and Ethan leaving me like this again completely vanish. “Or something happened to her and a hospital or some other authority contacted him.” My gaze shoots to the Kelly house then to Neel. “What did they say? Are they packing?” If something is wrong, like drop-everything-and-don’t-even-come-home-first-wrong, then they have to be going too. I start pushing my chair toward their house, but Neel moves to block my way.
“No, I don’t—” He twists to look at the quiet, mostly dark house behind him. “They were on the phone with him when I got there. It didn’t sound like...you know.”
I dig for my phone with hands so urgent that I almost drop it.
No missed calls. No texts. The one I sent him earlier is still unread.
“Anything?”
“No.” I go back to being that unmoving thing. Except for my eyes which blink up at Neel.
“His grandfather just kept saying, come home and they can talk...so, um, I don’t think anything is wrong, not like you were thinking.” He’s having trouble holding my gaze. “And then it sounded like the call got dropped, so maybe his phone died or something...but I’m sure he’ll reach out when he can,” Neel says. “Once he gets wherever—”
“California,” I say, as my vision goes blurry. “That’s where he’s going. That’s where he always goes.”
Neel shifts on his feet, his discomfort heavy and thick in the air around him. “His mom has got some issues?”
“His whole life,” I say.
“He, um never really talked about her.”
“He did to me. I’ve been helping him look for her.” I shake my head. “Or I was until he asked me to stop.” I glance at the Kelly house and imagine Ethan’s room the last time I saw it with his search wall. “Just last night he told me he hadn’t found her, but I guess something turned up today.”
His mom turned up, somewhere, somehow, and she needed him. That’s all it took for him to become that little boy again, the one who dropped every good thing in his life to try and safeguard hers. A knot forms in the pit of my belly.
His grandparents could have been a good thing. His job at Good & Green could have been a good thing. His friendship with Neel and possibly Mathias could have been so good. And me. I was trying to be good. I was trying to be his maybe and trying so hard to find a way past maybe. I shift my head down as that knot reveals edges, sharp and serrated, when those thoughts slice into me.
One.
By.
One.
Ethan could have started a life here with dreams and a future full of people who could have loved him so much if he’d just stayed.
But he’s never been able to think that way, to look at his mom and feel anything but responsible.
For not making it better.
For not keeping her safe.
For not saving her life.
“You okay?” Neel’s face shifts in front of my own, sweet and concerned.
I silently shake my head. I don’t know what I am, but I know what I want to be.
“I’m trying to be mad at him, you know?” I wrap my hands around my phone, squeezing to feel something besides the pain stabbing inside. “To take off like that and I’m the last to know. He thought of his cat before he thought of me. I’m only finding out now because I saw you through my window and thought you were him.”
Neel’s face falls a little hearing that, but even though I’m the one hurting him I can’t find enough energy to feel sorry for him as well as myself.
“Why can’t I be mad at him instead?” I don’t mean for my voice to crack, but it does and then Neel pretends not to hear it. “He promised he’d never leave like this again, that he’d talk to me and say goodbye. He promised he’d be here tomorrow.” The anniversary of the worst day of my life.
But he won’t.