Return To You: A Small Town, Second Chance Romance

20. Ethan

twenty

Her eyes widen and her mouth sets in a fine line. She jerks her face away from my hand. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” For the life of me, I don’t understand her.

“Look, Ethan. We’re adults. We still have chemistry. I’m not going to deny it. But don’t try to gaslight me, okay? Out of respect. I don’t resent you for what you did. I know you thought I was too young for you. I know older girls were more interesting to you. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt at the time. It hurt like hell.” She takes a shaky breath. “I’m over it, because it’s been so long, but it’s insulting to me that you—”

I clench my jaw, keeping my anger in check. “Hold it. Hold it right there. I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Are you insinuating I wasn’t faithful to you? Because that’s absolute bullshit.”

“Ethan. You weren’t.”

Twelve years ago, Grace and I found ourselves alone in the tiny projection room of the church basement. I was home from college, it was youth night, and whoever was in charge asked me to show Grace how to operate the projector. I was only going to show her how to start and stop a movie, and get out of there in less than a minute. But once in the tiny, cramped room, barely large enough for one person, when I’d leaned over to show her, my body cupping hers, she’d turned around and stood and laced her hands around my neck and then my hands fell naturally on her hips as she pulled herself to me without any hesitation.

She’s too young. What are you doing?

Then she’d whispered something that felt very Hollywood-y to me: “What are you waiting for? Just kiss me.” And she’d closed her eyes, mouth half-open.

When I hadn’t kissed her right away, she’d stood on her toes and molded her open mouth to my closed one, pulling my chest to hers, her heartbeat fast like mine.

Stop right there. Right now. She’s too young.

“It’s just a kiss, you idiot,” she’d whispered sweetly against my mouth. “There’s nothing wrong with a kiss. I want it and I know you want it. Right?” This last word was tentative, full of doubt, scared.

Of course I wanted it. And I wanted her kindness, and her spirit, and her soul. I wanted Grace, all of Grace. Yet I had to let her down. “Grace, I’m too old for you. You’re only sixteen.”

She’d sighed, amused, a small smile painted on her face. “So you’re saying your feelings will be different once I’m eighteen?” She’d set a hand on my beating heart, daring me to tell her I didn’t feel anything for her.

I pulled my hands off her hips. “My feelings won’t be different. But maybe yours will be. I can’t do this to you—with you—now.”

She’d pulled away from me, her eyes shiny.

It hurt me to be hurting her. “A kiss with you will never be just a kiss, Grace. It will always mean more to me. And now… now…”

“I get it. I’m too young.” She’d stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind her, leaving me… heartbroken. Why did doing the right thing with Grace need to be so painful?

Two years later, I was home from college for the summer before joining the Air Force. After a night swim in the river with a group of friends, Grace and I found ourselves alone on this very bridge.

“You remembered my birthday,” she said to me. Our steps were tentative, teetering on the bridge, the uneven planks pushing us together, our reflexes pulling us apart.

She’d turned eighteen a few months ago, and I’d sent her a card from college. “Of course I remembered your birthday.” My voice strangled in my throat. Did she still want me? I felt so vulnerable. She couldn’t possibly, right? I mean, I barely ever saw her now. Not one-on-one, for sure. Every time I was in town, I’d see her at the farm with Haley. She’d even worked there the summer before, and again during Spring break, she was there bottling syrup. But she didn’t make eye contact with me. She didn’t ask for help with math or physics like she used to. She didn’t ask me about my college classes like she did before that time in the projection room. I had let her down as softly and gently as I could, yet it seemed I’d broken our connection in an unredeemable way.

Since then, it seemed she had blocked me out.

So yeah, when I sent her a birthday card? I was hoping she’d get that what I was telling her. That I was still thinking of her. That I knew she was no longer sixteen. Or seventeen. That we could be something, if she still wanted to.

I was hoping she was still waiting for me. Because I sure as hell had been waiting for her.

I can’t remember who kissed who first on the bridge. But man, did we kiss.

And more. That summer was magical. Perfection.

Until it ended brutally, in more than one way.

Ten years later, Grace stating as a cold fact that I wasn’t faithful to her is a load of bullcrap that I’m clearing right now. “How can you say that?” Same for all the other bullshit she just said about girls older than her being more interesting to me. “You were everything to me. You were it, Grace.”

I run my hand in my hair, take a few steps away from her. Yeah, maybe I’ve been dreading this. Dreading knowing what got her to break things off with me, when I thought we were doing so well. I was wrong, clearly. I’m seeing now I’m not really over the breakup. Not over her.

And I can’t say that seeing her now—what she’s become? It hurts even more, knowing she should have been mine. Should have stayed mine. I stand back in front of her, fists on my hips. “We had something real, Grace. I never cheated on you.” Did someone put that in her head? Who? And how could she believe them? How could she not talk to me, at the time?

She shuts her eyes briefly, tears rimming her lashes, but she stays in control of her voice. I’m going to take a wild guess here: she has a long practice of trying to hide her feelings. “Stop doing this. I saw you, Ethan. And I told you, I under—”

I crowd her space. I want to feel her body under mine when she answers me. I want to hear her heartbeat. Feel the breath coming out of her mouth. She and I were as good as one, once. What happened? “What do you think you saw?”

She sighs, acting exasperated, but the pain in her eyes is real. The tremble at the corner of her mouth doesn’t lie like the rest of her tries to.

Finally she sets her gaze on me. “You know,” she starts slowly, “I never told you I was sorry… about Ashley.” She crosses her arms and shakes her head.

Fuck. Is she going where I think she’s going?

She continues. “I was young and stupid, obviously, but also extremely selfish and self-centered. I mean…” She looks at me sheepishly, then turns around, her back to my front, looking at the water flowing past us instead of straight into my eyes. “I actually believed all that stuff about us being together forever.”

My heartbeat picks up.

“So much time has passed, but I’m sure you still miss her. I guess I just wanted to say I was sorry for your loss. And-and-and I should have told you at the time, but, of course, I was too busy being self-center—“

Yep. It’s that boatload of crap again. “What the fuck are you talking about?” The power of my voice, the fact I’m stomping away from her, makes her turn around to face me.

She sighs and crosses her arms. “Ethan, look. I know you always meant more to me than I did to you… I mean, look at me with my box of mementos… how stupid is that?” Her eyes turn liquid. “But it doesn’t mean that I can’t… empathize with…”

Does everyone in this town believe Ashley was my actual girlfriend? And does Grace actually, really think I would be seeing another girl when I had her? Who does she think I am? This is so screwed up.

She narrows her eyes on me. “Ethan? Are you… are you okay?”

“No. No I’m not okay.”

She widens her eyes at me.

“What makes you think she and I had something going on?” And what makes her think I loved her less than she did me?

“Ethan, please. I saw you. I saw you with her.” Her throat bobs as she swallows with difficulty. “It’s okay. I was young and… I mean she had to be more interesting than me, I get it. I totally get it now. I wish, that night, I hadn’t lashed out at you the way I did.” She gives me a small smile. “I mean, what you did wasn’t cool, but hey. I get it.”

My blood turns cold as understanding dawns on me. I remember those last moments with Ashley. Looking back, they’d been blurred by Grace’s brutal breakup minutes after—and now it all makes sense.

After Ashley ran away from the party with Justin, after they were caught in an accident, after Ashley died and Justin almost died, too, trying to save her, I ran that evening through my mind a million times, seeing every little thing I could have done differently, every opportunity I didn’t take to make a difference. I wished I could have been that butterfly wing flap that changed the outcome. That prevents a succession of totally unrelated and seemingly innocuous events from turning into utter tragedy. Turned out, my rejection of Ashley was what had set that chain reaction in motion. “You saw what exactly?”

Grace’s eyes mist again. Ten years. Ten fucking years and now I’m finally going to get the truth. And she’s been hurting all this time. “Ethan…” she pleads.

“Let me guess. You saw her throw herself at me—”

She turns her head away from me and takes a shaky breath.

I take her chin gently in my fingers and force her to look at me. “You saw her throw herself at me—”

“She kissed you.” Her chin wobbles, the pain still fresh after all these years.

“And I told her she couldn’t.”

Grace shakes her head. “You took her hand and walked into the darkness. With her, Ethan. You kissed and…”

We didn’t kiss. “She was a little high and strung out. She came onto me. I didn’t want to make a scene, so yeah, I walked her away from the party and told her… I told her I had someone. That…”

“That what?”

I take a deep breath. I don’t know how Grace is going to take this. For the little that I know the new Grace, I’ve noticed she can be very strong, like when she’s running her business, but she can also be so fragile. And my inkling is, when it comes to our past, I’m dealing with fragile Grace.

I also don’t know what her recollections are. Memory is a strange thing. Constantly alive, evolving. We reconstruct events that did or didn’t happen in a way that suits our present needs.

“That I never had real feelings for her.” I’d always wondered, to this day, if those were the words that sent her over the edge. If I’d said something different, would she have reacted better? Stayed at the party? “Before you and I were together, before… we started being together…”

“Just spit it out, Ethan. There were other girls,” she says, and the way she says it nearly kills me. The defeat in her tone? I hate myself for that.

Reminding myself she was fourteen—a child—when I left for college, I feel a little better. “Ashley… was one of them. But. I hadn’t been with her, or anyone, since you and I… opened up to each other about our feelings.”

She gives me a sad smile, but I know she believes me. “I thought—I thought you were doing me… a favor.”

A favor? “What the fuck, Grace? How could you think that?”

Her mouth distorts and she looks away, pulling her arms tighter against her chest.

“Grace, talk to me.”

“No,” she whispers. “You talk to me. You tell me the whole truth, Ethan. About how you felt back then. Don’t sugar coat it.” She wipes her face and looks at me. “I’ll feel better once I know I wasn’t making it up. That we had something good back then. It would really help me feel better about myself. Not as crazy.”

“What do you mean, crazy?”

“After you left, I thought… I’d sort of made you up. I mean, made up who you really were. Fantasized something—someone that wasn’t real.”

I don’t know where we’re going with this. I need to set the past straight, but I don’t know what the future holds for us. Grace is so special and so beautiful and so fragile emotionally. I see now I’ve wounded her badly.

“I was shattered when you broke up with me. That’s who I was. I didn’t understand it—I do now. And with Justin’s accident—and the part I indirectly played in it—I just needed to get the hell away from it all and stay away.

“I wish I’d come back sooner to Emerald Creek. I wish you and I would’ve talked. But with Justin in the hospital… my life seemed on hold. I should’ve talked to you before leaving. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Tears are streaming freely down her cheeks. “I ruined everything, didn’t I?”

“How can you say that?” I run the back of my hand against her cheek, and this time she lets me. “You’ve always been the best part of me, Grace. Always will be.”

She widens her eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying a part of me is still that boy on this very bridge hoping you still want him. Another part if me is this grown-ass man wondering how the hell life passed him by and he let the best woman on Earth get away.”

“Ethan,” she breathes.

“And another part of me is wondering how the hell he got lucky enough to be standing right here again, with this very woman just inches from him, her beautiful eyes on me.”

“Ethan.” Her voice is barely audible. “What are you saying.”

“I’m saying things are different and yet they’re the same. I’m saying I’m angry we were too young to see our errors and fix them. I’m saying it’s too late for us to have the life we thought we’d have, but fuck me if I’m going to stand here and not tell you how hard I’m falling for you all over again.

“Now before you say it’s just the memories this bridge brings about, or the way that the moon lights your beautiful eyes, or whatever other BS excuse you’re gonna find to push me away, hear this. If I were to meet you right now for the first time, never seen you before, you’d catch my eye. First time we speak, you have my attention. All of it. Ten minutes with you—I’d be falling for you. Not kidding, Grace.”

Her breath stutters, she crosses her arms, her gaze darts right and left like she doesn’t know what this is all about.

“What I’m really trying to say is, I want to kiss you.”

She shuts her eyes softly, her throat bobbing when she swallows. “Then kiss me. What are you waiting for?”

I cup her face with both my hands and feel her melt under my touch. She opens her eyes and twines her fingers on my nape, pulling herself up to meet my lips. Eyes half closed, we stay like that, suspended in time, our breaths mingling, our mouths not quite touching. I can’t believe this moment is real. I’m half expecting it to end here. She’s going to change her mind. Someone will drive by, breaking the magic. A phone is going to ring. The bridge is going to collapse.

“What happens after we kiss?” Grace asks, and I feel her retreating already. It’s like I can see all the blocks she’s coming up with as to why this is not a good idea. The painful past. The future with no place for us.

Fuck it.

This is the present.