“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing today?” Ethan asks, stuffing one of our last In-N-Out fries into his mouth as we idle in the parking lot.
It’s Saturday, the sky is perfectly clear, the sun is blazing, and we just demolished a couple of animal-style burgers and chocolate shakes. I had him wait in the car earlier while I dashed into Walmart for supplies and he keeps leaning over to try and peek inside the bag at my feet.
I smile around the straw of my milkshake and push him back. “What, you don’t trust me?” When he straightens, I catch sight of his list of names just barely sticking out of his pocket. Somehow, I ended up completely monopolizing the night before at my window and we didn’t even talk about finding his mom. I wait for more than a prickle of guilt to stick me, but all I keep coming back to is that when I peeled back another layer of my past, someone was there to hold me for the first time.
“Considering the last time we did something on your list you ended up stabbing me a million times with a needle, not so much.”
“You know it’s not an actual list, right? I’m just coming up with stuff in the spur of the moment.”
“Wow, why am I not comforted?” He offers me a fry.
“How’s it healing, by the way, your tattoo?”
“Better than the last time.” Ethan lifts his shirt to show me and it’s not half bad. You can definitely tell it’s a sun now. “Let me see yours.”
I shift as much as possible and push the edge of my shorts down just enough to reveal the flower he tattooed. “You can say it. It looks a million times better than the one I gave you.”
“I worked on the better canvas,” is his response. And when I glance up at him I think I catch the tiniest flush in his cheeks. Mine warm too and I cover the tattoo again before clearing my throat.
“So did you bring your ski mask?”
He side-eyes me and then leans in so fast that way more than my cheeks heat, his arm reaching...past me to open the glove box and reveal the ski mask inside.
“Wait, you weren’t kidding about the ski mask?”
Ethan and I stare up at the two-story Spanish-style house—the very locked two-story Spanish-style house.
“It’s not technically breaking in,” I tell him, wheeling up the driveway. “I just don’t have a key.”
“That’s the actual definition of breaking in,” he says, but he follows right beside me. “Who even lives here anyway?”
I thought it was fairly obvious. There’s a funky terrazzo tile walkway leading up to a front porch and a fountain against the wall with a stone dog peeing into it. The walls on either side are painted with brightly colored flowers and best of all there are no steps to get inside.
“This is Amelia’s house?” He answers his own question after all. “These murals look a lot like the ones covering the outside of your workshop. Does she paint too?”
“Her husband, Mathias. Want to see his studio?”
Ethan’s head snaps in my direction, unable to hide his excitement at the prospect. “Can we do that? Can we do any of this?”
“They went to visit friends for the weekend and won’t even know we were here.” I move to the garage door and punch in the code on the keypad. “Voila!”
I let Ethan give himself a tour of the garage-turned–art studio since I wouldn’t know what I was looking at anyway. There are walls of paint and canvases, brushes and scrapers and all kinds of things that I don’t know the names for. Maybe Ethan doesn’t either, but it doesn’t stop his grin from growing the more he looks.
“I would kill to have a space like this,” he breathes some minutes later.
I close the garage door to block out the heat and sigh happily as the A/C kicks on. “I’m sure he’d let you come by sometime. I’ll have to introduce you guys.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Mathias is really cool.” I plop my bag on a counter next to a giant paint-stained utility sink.
“Will he still be cool after he learns we broke into his house?”
“He’ll never know.” I’ll tell Amelia, of course. She’ll be happy I did something fun. I slowly remove the contents of the Walmart bag one by one. And this will be fun.
Ethan comes closer, but his footsteps slow as he sees what I brought. “That’s just for you, right?”
“What? There’s no needles.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You tried to get me to do this when we were kids and that was one of the only times I said no to you.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a kid now,” I say, opening the first box. “And you also don’t care what Laura Sitton thinks about you anymore, so...”
He leans against the counter beside me. “I had a crush on her for like two days.”
I scoff. “Okay, sure.”
He picks up a bottle of electric blue hair dye. “This is gonna stain everything...and...” He eyes the sink and floor and all the years of paint staining them. “Right. At least tell me it washes out?”
“Okay. It washes out.” It does wash out, but it’s more fun to make him sweat.
His face scrunches up in a comically pained expression. “Fine but you’re first this time.”
I shimmy at his consent. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
He gives me a crooked smile. “Yeah, me too.”
The sink is a little high for me to reach the faucet comfortably, so it works out for me to lie on the counter and have Ethan wet my hair. He does a good job, running his fingers through the long curls without snagging, and I tell him so.
“I’ve washed my mom’s hair a bunch,” he says, turning off the water. “It’s a lot nicer when there isn’t vomit dried in it.”
I sit up slowly, taking the towel he offers me. It had been a nice moment, sweet even, but I guess just for me. I didn’t have anything negative to compare it to. “You should have said something. I could have figured out another way.” Or thought up something different for us to do.
“It’s not like that,” he says, moving to stand closer to me and reaching out to brush at a loose tendril of wet hair. “I mean it’s not the same.” He frowns softly. “I wasn’t thinking about anything besides you.” He lowers the strand and steps back just as my pulse kicks up.
As kids, he was always thinking about something else. We could be having the best day ever and I’d still feel like he was only half there with me. My heart begins beating faster when I realize I haven’t felt that at all with him today. I drop my gaze to his chest, taking in the faster rise and fall, and my heart starts galloping.
He really means it. He was just thinking about me and breathing that little too fast because of it.
I suddenly feel like I’m sitting a hundred feet off the ground instead of just a few.
Ethan must feel it too because he takes another step back along with a deep breath. “Guess it’s my turn, yeah?”
I don’t even know what kind of sound I would make if I tried to talk, so I just nod and scoot down to give him room at the sink.
He dunks his head under the faucet and after that we take turns scooping the hair dye out of the jar and working the color into our hair. There aren’t any mirrors in Mathias’s studio, so we help each other catch any spots we miss. Slowly, we get back to the lighter mood we came in with. My heartbeat still likes to speed up whenever his hands linger on my skin too long or I have to lean in close to him, and it’s somehow scarier than it was before because I know I won’t get to have it forever.
“Alright,” I say, setting a timer and placing my phone down. “Now we wait.” Ethan is sitting beside me on the counter, his hands curling around the edge on either side of his legs and almost but not quite brushing mine. “You could look around more.”
“Or?” He angles his head at me, bringing our faces closer together. There’s a drip of blue dye inching toward his eyebrow and I lift my hand to thumb it away in possibly the stupidest move I’ve ever made.
Because I have to lean closer—scary-heights, heart-hammering, too-warm, too-much-but-nowhere-near-enough close. And Ethan is right there, leaning too, the hand between us turning to ghost up to my side.
I have maybe one moment to decide, to meet him in the middle and let us fall together or pull back and grab onto the edge for dear life. I know what I want—I can practically taste it—but I also know how it feels after the impact, to be left alone and hurting.
There’s no room for wanting there.
Instead of reaching for his face, I shift to his pocket and the paper I saw earlier. “We could work on this.”
Ethan doesn’t breathe at first, still staring at me before forcing his gaze to the paper. The hand that was almost wedged between us moves to take the paper, then he’s nodding and standing. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Not sure how much we can find in forty-five minutes, but yeah. That’s definitely what we should do.”
Turns out we could do a lot in forty-five minutes, like find out the cafe Ethan remembered is still there and even owned by the same couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Dos Santos who ran it when Bauer worked there. Mrs. Dos Santos remembered Bauer and felt bad about having to fire him.
“Don’t have a lot of rules but not coming to work high is one of them.”
“So you let him go?” I asked.
“Shame. He was one of our best line cooks too.”
“And his real name was...?”
“Stephen.” Her voice shifts and the first note of suspicion enters it.
“Right.” I mime for Ethan to write that down. “I always forget that.”
“Who did you say you were again?”
I hadn’t. She’d been chatty from the start and I’d just bluffed my way through the conversation until we landed here. “Just an old friend. I’m hoping to track him down.”
There’s silence from her end of the phone and I don’t look at Ethan, not wanting to see his expression when I’m about to blow it here. “You don’t sound grown up enough to have old friends, honey.”
I close my eyes, unsure how to answer her.
“Mrs. Dos Santos?”
I open my eyes at the sound of Ethan’s voice.
“Who’s this?”
“I used to sit at your counter all the time as a kid, reading paperbacks. You always brought me free fries. Sometimes a slice of pie.”
“Oh, I do remember you. Scrawny little thing you were. But you don’t sound so scrawny anymore.”
“He’s not,” I say, earning a laugh from her and a raised eyebrow from Ethan.
“Well, good for you, sweetie. I bet he’s really handsome now too.”
Ethan smiles waiting for my answer.
I smile right back. “Yes, ma’am. Though the blue hair is something of an acquired taste.”
He laughs, light and easy and safe.
“What was that last part?” Mrs. Dos Santos asks.
“Nothing.” Ethan touches his hair and examines the blue that comes away on his fingertips. “I’m hoping you might know how I could get in touch with Bauer or maybe you know someone who does?”
“Well, now, I heard he was working at another restaurant a few years ago. In fact, I think he’s still there.”
I grab Ethan’s arm in excitement. “Nearby? In La Jolla?”
“Oh yes, now what was the name again...?”