“So that was Ethan.” Amelia is waiting for me back in the shop right by the door when I get back inside.
My face flushes a little. “That was Ethan.” I move to the lathe and the meteorite I’d left in there earlier.
“He’s cute.”
“I know.” Safety glasses, safety glasses...where...?
“He’s really cute.”
“I know.” I add a singsong tone to my voice, and finally find the glasses...in the pocket of the utility apron I’m wearing.
“Oh, I know you know.” Amelia glances back toward the entrance. “I’m trying to decide if he knows.”
“If... What?” I spin to face her.
She waves me off until I turn back to the lathe. “Childhood friends reunited after years apart, each having overcome their own personal tragedies, and discovering that time has made them both superhot.”
I audibly groan.
“What?”
I can hear the laughter in her voice as I reach to turn on the lathe, but instead of ending the conversation, she just raises her voice to compensate for the machine noise.
“You know this means he’ll either be the greatest love of your life or the one you end up warning your granddaughters about.”
“Those are my only two options, huh?” I’m only half paying attention to her though. Meteorite is hellishly expensive and Amelia really will take it out of my pay if I ruin this commissioned wedding band. I don’t want to take off too much and now I’m worried that I should have used a collet instead of a three-jawed chuck to hold it in place.
“You should have used the collet,” Amelia says. “You’re putting a lot of pressure on those three points. And yes, those are your only options.”
I ignore her and pray that the tiny piece of meteorite hangs on just a little longer... “Ha!” I present her with the machined-out—and still intact—meteorite. “You do not, in fact, know everything.”
“Next time use the collet.”
Embarrassment tugs my chin down a fraction. “Yeah, I know.” It’s mostly luck that it didn’t crack.
“I’m just saying to keep an open mind. You’re not with Neel anymore, right? Or are you? I can never tell.”
“We were barely together and we both agreed we’re better off friends.” That’s maybe stretching the truth a bit. We never had an official conversation about what we were. The lines between friendship and more-than-friendship just blurred a few times—okay more than a few times. And blurry was really kind of amazing for a while.
Neel was the first guy I felt comfortable being with after my accident. I didn’t have a million insecurities racing through my head when we kissed. I just got to want someone and feel wanted in return. Neel treating me like I was exactly enough, more than enough, helped put that broken part of me back together and let me feel whole, at least in that way.
But blurry wasn’t good for either of us in the long run. It turned into too much and at the same time not enough. Thankfully, we stopped it before either of us got hurt and our friendship is stronger than ever. And if he occasionally gives me a blurry look, I know he doesn’t really mean it any more than I do. It’s just a bit of the past forgetting that it doesn’t fit with our present.
Amelia offers little pointers here and there as I continue working with the meteorite, but mostly she questions me about Ethan.
“So how much are you already in love with him?”
I side-eye her. “He’s been back for less than a week.”
Amelia stares at me, waiting for an answer.
“And he’s not staying.”
“Why? Because that’s what happened when you guys were kids? You did notice he’s not a kid anymore, right? Maybe he’ll get to make his own decisions this time.”
I bite back a response about how Ethan decided he was leaving again before he even came back. There’s no point in expecting anything to change just because we’re older. The door pushes open again and I don’t appreciate the way my heart rate picks up as I turn thinking—hoping?—it might be Ethan coming back.
Mathias, Amelia’s husband, strolls in with a squirming toddler in one lean, tattoo-sleeved-and-freckled arm along with lunch for his family in the other. Luis squirms even more when he sees Amelia and practically dives out of his father’s arms the second he’s within her reach. She covers the squealing baby’s face with kisses then gives Mathias an entirely different kind of kiss, the kind that makes me suddenly very interested in the file I’m holding.
“You want to go see your Be-be?” Amelia’s voice takes on the quintessential baby talk style as she expertly wheels toward me, alternating her arms so she’s always securely holding her son. “Tell her all about how you’re going to be a big brother.”
“No!” My gaze bounces back and forth between them as I reach for Luis and happiness bubbles up inside. “Seriously? Wait, wait. When?”
Mathias rubs Amelia’s stomach. “Little Accident is due in, what, eight months?”
“Seven and a half, and I don’t like that name,” she tells him.
“I thought it was Little Life Destroyer you didn’t like?”
“Oh wow,” I say. “So you just found out. Am I the first to know?”
“Everything looks good so far.” Amelia exchanges a soft smile with her husband that is almost more intimate than the kiss I’d witnessed earlier. “But we want to wait a little longer before telling people, you know?”
Amelia’s spinal cord injury, a little higher than mine, doesn’t have any bearing on her ability to get or stay pregnant. Still, women miscarry early on for all kinds of reasons. But another baby! And Luis is just over a year old.
When Mathias takes Luis into the office to eat, Amelia’s hand absentmindedly falls to her belly and a little smile plays at her lips. “I should be scared and overwhelmed and worried about a million things, and I am, but also—” her hand rubs a small circle “—I can’t wait to hold Little Accident.”
“I heard that!” Mathias calls.
Amelia drops her head in her hands. “Problems for future me. At least I have you here. When I’m a wheeling whale you’ll practically have your run of the place.”
A sharp stab of panic jabs inside me thinking about how far away from here I’ll be by then if my mom has her way.
Amelia misreads my reaction and points a finger at me. “No boys when I’m not here.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“And especially no way-too-cute-boys-who-you-are-already-way-too-into.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Amelia has four younger sisters and sometimes forgets that I’m not one of them.
“Wait,” she says, her eyes going wide as though she’s just remembered something vitally important. “Wasn’t he your first kiss too?” Amelia’s grin grows to show all her teeth when I still and don’t answer. “In your tree house. It was raining too, wasn’t it?”
Okay, I had obviously told her that story way too many times. “I don’t really remember.” Lies and she knows it. It had just started raining. And the sunset was magic. We might have been the most awkward thirteen-year-olds on the planet but somehow the kiss wasn’t.
“Makes you wonder what the second kiss will be like,” Amelia calls over her shoulder as she leaves to join her family.
I roll my eyes at her back even as I’m smiling, grateful to be thinking of something significantly more pleasant than possibly leaving for college at the end of the summer. As far as first kisses go, it hadn’t been too bad. And I would be a liar of epic proportions if I said I hadn’t thought—briefly—about what it might be like to kiss Ethan again, now, with his longer hair brushing my cheek and his hand lifting my jaw...
Amelia drops something and the metal clang off the concrete floor sends the fantasy screeching to a stop.
We aren’t those same kids in my tree house and we never will be again.
And Ethan’s already got his bags packed, ready to leave the second we find his mom.