Ethan is there outside the shop when Amelia and I come out to leave a few days later. I must make some kind of sound in my throat because she halts midway down the ramp to crane her neck and look at me.
“What? What’s wrong?”
But I can’t look away from Ethan and when she follows the line of my sight, she sighs and releases the death grip she has on her push rims and glides the rest of the way down.
“Hey,” he says, when I follow behind her.
“Hey.”
“Hey to all of us,” Amelia says. “And what brings you here, Ethan?”
He tears his gaze from me, flicking it to her then back to me as though the answer should be obvious.
“Ah, to be seventeen and not need a reason for anything.” She pushes toward her car.
When she’s far enough away that I don’t think she’ll hear us, I tell Ethan the thought that has been plaguing me since the tree house. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”
Ethan steps closer to me. “You saw me yesterday.”
I shake my head, dismissing his accurate but also totally inaccurate response. “Leaving on your way to work.”
“I told you I wouldn’t just leave.”
“I know, but...”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Ah, but I would. “Is that why you’re here? To make me feel bad? ’Cause I was doing fine all on my own.”
“No.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ve just been thinking about some things.” Not looking at me, he asks, “Why’d you do it?”
“Lie about—?”
“No.” His gaze lifts to mine and I can see how bloodshot his eyes are. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “Why did you drink with her? You never liked her, and as far as I can tell you wouldn’t have wanted to be around her any longer than you had to. So then why spend, what, an hour or more with her?”
Surprise hits me and I respond without thinking. “How did you know it was that long?”
“Because I’ve been there with her. She likes to talk when she drinks.”
Oh.
He presses when I don’t respond. “You’re not gonna tell me?”
I don’t want to. He was so upset before and I don’t want him to feel worse, about me or any of it. Ethan and guilt go together like...well, like me and guilt. I don’t want to give him an excuse to bury himself in that feeling any deeper than he already has.
But then he goes on, answering for me. “I was really mad when I figured it out. So mad I even had my bags and Old Man in the car.”
I wince, imagining how absolutely gutted I would have felt to find him gone like that. “Why didn’t you go?”
“I told you I wouldn’t—”
“Lie to me,” I finish for him, unable to keep the tremble from my voice. “That’s why? Is this your goodbye then?”
“No.” He looks down, his head shaking slowly. “I didn’t leave because I don’t want to anymore. And you don’t have to say it. I know you drank with her so I wouldn’t have to.”
I bite my lips when my eyes flood. “I’m sorry. I know it was wrong to make those decisions for you, but I couldn’t help it. I remembered you talking about getting sick like her and I didn’t want you to have to go through that again, but I don’t know that’s what would have happened. Maybe...” My voice trails off when the saddest smile I’ve ever seen lifts Ethan’s face.
“She brought it with her, Bec. Told you it would make you feel better, didn’t she? Like floating and flying at the same time?”
I don’t have to nod, and it breaks my heart how he knows exactly what she said. “How old were you?”
“Does it matter?”
And it doesn’t matter that he’s not leaving. I’m gutted anyway. “Alcohol?”
“Do you really want to know?”
No. Not at all. “If you want to tell me.”
He steps closer, tipping his head so his hair falls forward to hide his face. The blue has almost completely washed out. “I still need to work through a lot of that for myself. I don’t think I’m ready to go there yet. I just—”
“It’s okay.” I don’t need him to justify his reasons, especially not when I woke up this morning thinking I might not ever be this close to him again. “We don’t have to go there, but I’ll always be here, you know?”
“I know. That was the part of this I couldn’t reconcile until, well, until I did.” He brushes his hair back and his gaze stills on mine. “I know you thought you were protecting me back then, but I’m not okay with you lying to me. You can’t—” he clears his throat “—not again, okay?”
I swallow. “I won’t.” He’s not the only one who hasn’t slept well in days. There’s only so much of that situation I can blame on being a kid, especially since it took me every one of these last few days to understand what I’d set in motion. I’d told him not to feel guilty for my actions or for his mom’s, but I’d given him an impossible task. Of course he would blame himself, more so now that he’s forgiving me. It’s so much easier to hide in anger and he’s letting that go.
For me.
And all he’s asking for in return is honesty.
I allow my head to dip down for barely a second before urging it back up and facing him. “You were right to call bullshit in the tree house. I thought about those lies all the time until it felt like that wall wedged between us, but I could have told you the truth at any point before then. I waited until I needed it, until it was the only thing I had left to keep you away.” I suppress that need skittering through me now when he draws closer and sits on the low railing beside me. “Because I couldn’t have pushed you any other way.”
“You don’t need to though.”
He wants it to be simple, but he knows it isn’t. Even if he finds a way to stay, I don’t know how I can.
“But we can take it one day at a time and maybe...” But he trails off because neither of us knows what maybe looks like.
“Maybe,” I say, trying out the word and finding it a lot less scary than I thought. Maybe isn’t now or nothing. It isn’t never.
Ethan shakes his head, half smiling at me. “You were right too, about us avoiding fights when they came up. I don’t think we should do that anymore.”
That’s what I have to let go of. Throughout our childhood, I learned to bite my tongue and hold things back, anything to keep from ruining what little time we had together with angry words and bruised feelings. Those weren’t the memories I wanted him to take when he abruptly left.
“So if we fight...?”
He gives me a look that forces my mouth to quirk.
“Okay, when we fight...?”
He catches the frame of my chair and angles it so we’re knee to knee. “We’ll come back like this and we’ll find a way through.”
I don’t know if he realizes how much he’s asking from me. I have to trust him not to leave, to still be there in the aftermath, however long it takes to get there. Does he understand?
His hand flexes around the frame of my chair, as though he’s fighting not to draw me closer.
My chest rises and falls with a breath. And I nod.
Ethan’s full smile is magic when it comes. It starts with his eyes, the light brown melting into amber. Then his lips twitch as though he’s reluctant to let his mouth lift up but knows it’s a lost cause. There’s the tiniest flash of teeth before he gives in and a grin overtakes his entire face.
Even little girls dream about smiles like that.
“You want to get out of here?”
“More than you will ever know.”
He laughs when I beam up at him. “Good, ’cause I don’t know what I would’ve done if you had plans.”
“Oh wait,” I say, scrunching up my face. “I’m supposed to have dinner at Amelia’s.” I glance over my shoulder and she takes that as her cue to join us.
“Any chance you’d bail on her?”
“Hey. We have Call of Duty and long, pensive stares at my house too,” Amelia says, then laughs at her own joke. “Or you, know, I could always ask Mathias to throw another steak on. You’re a meat eater, right, Ethan?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a starving cowboy.
Amelia pretends to shudder, talking to herself as she opens her car door. “I’m a ma’am now? I’m officially ma’am age?”
I duck my head to hide a smile, then ask Ethan, “So?”
“Yes.” He points a finger at Amelia’s car. “That.”