The Embrace of Evergreen (Unexpected Love #2)

Chapter 1 - EthanBlue

Chapter 1

Ethan

Maybe this time…

Maybe this time, we'll order the same drink when we meet at a quirky little café and instantly bond over the fact we both spend too much money going to coffee houses even though we order simple, bitter, black cold brews or shots of espresso instead of overly complex, pale, milky monstrosities.

Maybe this time, the conversation over dinner will flow so smoothly that we’ll order the soufflé that takes forty-five minutes to cook and still find ourselves lingering long after we’ve finished. We’ll be the last ones in the restaurant,and the waiter will have to drag us away from gazing into one another’s eyes by clearing their throat so that we'll finally pay the check and let them go home .

Maybe this time, he'll nervously reach out to lace his fingers between mine on the walk through the parking lot in the warm evening air, and goosebumps will course up my arm as electricity skitters across my skin simply because we touched.

Maybe this time, he'll kiss me good night when we reach our cars, and fireworks will explode through the indigo sky when our lips meet as his palm tenderly cups my jaw.

Maybe this time, the sex will be so earth-shattering I'll forget my own name, and it will feel like I've found the other half of my soul.

Maybe this time, he'll call.

Maybe this time won't be a disappointment.

Maybe this time, I’ll feel something resembling attraction.

Maybe this time, I’ll actually want him to take me to bed.

Maybe this time, I won't end up alone.

Tonight is not…this time.

It never is .

I’ve stopped counting how many times my dates have ghosted me, even after I thought our time together had gone relatively well.

I’ve stopped counting how many times things have actually gone well enough that I’ve managed second or third or fifth dates only to have it all fall apart anyway.

I’ve stopped counting how many times I’ve tried with every fiber of my being to convince myself that I’m attracted to the person sitting across from me because, realistically, they are attractive, and I should want to touch them. To be touched by them. I should want to linger over a meal and let my fingers dance lightly across their forearm as we lean in toward one another. I should want to send them flowers and wonder what they’ll be wearing the next time I see them. It should make my heart race when I see their name pop up on my phone.

Some small part of me still believes that if I just try hard enough, things will fall into place the way they seem to for everyone else. Some part of me still believes it’s possible for me to connect with someone romantically. That I’m capable of falling in love. Objectively, I know the part of me that believes those things is probably wrong. Hundreds of experiences over the course of fourteen years should be enough to convince me to admit that. I just don’t want to.

I’ve been in love before, and I cling to that fact with frighteningly intense desperation as I try to convince myself that I’m normal. Okay, so I’ve only been in love once, and it was so long ago that sometimes I wonder if I’ve forgotten what it actually felt like, but I know I’m not making it up. I know I haven’t simply deluded myself into believing I was normal once upon a time. I know that for at least one brief, shining moment, I wasn’t this fractured. I know that for the blink of an eye, the world and everything in it felt like magic.

I know love exists. I know it does because when I’m lying in bed alone at night, I can still feel it. I know deep in my soul that I’m capable of love. I have to be. I loved Jordyn. I love him still. It’s a softer thing than it once was. It’s not a rush of lust and attraction swirling like fire through my veins, but it still hums quietly in the background of my soul like the gentle rustling of tender green leaves on branches that sway in the warm summer breeze. Even though the way I love him has changed as the years have passed, it’s still with me. Its existence offers me hope, even though sometimes I think hope might be a dangerous thing.

When I sit alone at night after returning from yet another failed date, sometimes I wonder if Jordyn was my only chance at love. Without him, I’m not sure there is a happily ever after waiting for me.

I miss him.

It’s been nearly fifteen years since I left, and I still miss him. I miss the way my heart raced simply because we were in the same room. I miss the way I couldn’t tear my eyes from his face as I studied the way his mouth moved when he spoke and how the deep, rumbling sound of his laughter would vibrate through my body. I miss the way I would so eagerly anticipate our next meeting the moment we parted and the bright summer days that were spent running through the woods, climbing trees, and throwing rocks as we spilled our deepest secrets and called one another “best friend” as teens. I miss the all-too-brief moments when I sat quietly at the edge of his life and watched him in class and on the football field as we got older and he found his place in the world. I miss the stolen glances that made something in my stomach lurch and my legs tremble as I began to realize that what I felt for him ran deeper than simple friendship.

I miss the cautious touches that lingered on one another’s skin as we explored a new facet of our relationship once we realized the other felt the same way. The gentle, tentative brush of his lips across mine never failed to steal my breath and test the limits of my seventeen-year-old heart’s endurance.

We never had sex, but there have been so many nights when I’ve lain awake on my own, wondering what it might have been like if we had. What it would have felt like if he touched me…if I had touched him. Sex has never felt the way I imagined it would with Jordyn. Every time I’ve had sex, it’s been painful or frustrating or disappointing. Usually, all three. So I’ve given up trying. I haven't attempted to have sex in five years and four months .

I don’t know why I cling to hope. I don’t know why I keep trying to fall in love again. I’d probably be better off if I just gave that up as well.

I'm absolutely unsuccessful in my attempt to fight back the burn of tears as I struggle to dig my keys out of my pocket and open the door locks quickly enough that none of my neighbors will see me. Ms. Gallager no doubt heard me walking up the two flights of stairs and is on her way to accost me in the hall to talk about her cat or her most recent health episode or what happened on her soap operas today, and I just can’t do it tonight. I can’t paste on a smile and ignore the fact that I want to burst into flames or throw myself off a bridge or crawl under a rock to curl up and wither away.

Less than ten seconds after I finally win the battle with my keys, step into my apartment, and close the door behind me, I hear her door crack open only to shut again quickly. She’d been waiting for me, just as I thought. All I’ve managed to accomplish by avoiding her tonight is doubling the amount of time she’ll hold me hostage in the morning, but right now, I can’t bring myself to care.

I turn and sink down with my back against the door, no longer able to hold back the flood of tears as I collapse into a pile of ruin on the scuffed tile floor with my heels against my ass, my arms wrapped around my knees, and my face buried against my chest. My lungs constrict, and my throat burns as I shudder and struggle to find oxygen and try not to listen to my own pathetic whimpers echoing through the room. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep trying so hard and wanting so badly and failing so miserably. I wonder for a moment what would happen if I just never moved again. If I just died right here in this spot, how long would it take for anyone to find me? Would anyone even care when they did? Unlikely. I have no one.

I have no idea how long I rock like a child on the cold, hard, unforgiving tile floor before the waves of loss and grief and heartbreak over the fact that I’ve failed yet again finally subside. It’s not like it matters how long I sit in a tiny, useless pile while sobs wrack my body and despair crushes me in its tight, unrelenting grasp. I have nowhere else to be.

When I finally raise my head and wipe the snot and tears away from my sore nose and swollen red eyes, I’m no longer sad or upset or hurt. I’m simply numb. My head drops back against the door with a louder-than-expected thud as I gaze around the apartment. For some reason, in my wiped-out, emotionless, dissociated state, it feels like I’m seeing it through the eyes of a first-time visitor, even though in the two years I’ve lived here, no one else has ever entered this space. It looks like…nothing .

My home is as generic and forgettable as is humanly possible. The apartment complex’s designer might very well have won world-class level awards for “most suffocatingly bland design of the century.” The walls are a sickly beige, the carpet thin and performative rather than cushy and comfortable, and the tile and kitchen cabinets are both the same odd shade of not-quite white that shows off scuffs but not fingerprints or footprints. The rooms I can see from my position on the entryway floor, the kitchen and living area, are small and perfunctory. The rooms I can’t see, the two bedrooms - both the one I actually use for sleeping and the one I use as an office - along with the single, tubless bathroom, are more of the same. Dull, sad, lifeless spaces that have less personality than Swedish prison cells. The furniture is tan and cream and generic. It’s not interesting or overly comfortable, but it came with the apartment, and I’ve never bothered to replace any of it. There’s no art on the walls, and the bookshelves and entertainment center hold only a small television, stacks of books, and a few tiny, struggling-no-matter-what-I-do plants. There are no photos or trinkets or sports memorabilia. There are no pet dishes or fluffy quilts knitted by a grandmother. There is nothing that indicates an actual person might reside in these spaces. There are no sculptures or knickknacks or paintings. No water fountains or blown glass or hand-thrown ceramic vases. I love art. Why don’t I own any art? Have I really gotten to the point where even owning art feels like more happiness than I deserve? Has it really come to this ?

I tell myself that I’m so focused on my job that I haven’t bothered to decorate because my time and energy are better spent elsewhere. I tell myself it doesn’t matter because I rarely stay in the same place for more than a year or two. I tell myself that I’m happy constantly traveling rather than putting down roots. It takes every ounce of mental strength I have left after my teary post-date session of self-pity to pretend that I believe myself.

I make a good living. I can always pay my bills on time, I have a comfortable cushion in my savings account, and for whatever it’s worth, I’m considered a specialist in my field. For nearly a decade now, I’ve been in the fortunate position of getting to pick and choose my work projects as an independent consultant rather than having to work for a large, soul-sucking financial firm. Why am I living like this? Nothing about this apartment says I’m successful. Nothing about this life feels successful. Nothing about it is even moderately happy. Nothing about it is actually…living.

Clearly, I need a change.

My current employment contract should wrap up in about a month, and as soon as this job is complete, I need to leave town. It’s not the first time I’ve hoped a new city might mean a new start. I’ve spent fourteen years traversing the country, hopping from place to place and job to job, looking for…something. Whatever it is I think I’m looking for, I didn’t find it in Arizona when I first struck out on my own as a headstrong eighteen-year-old with a heart full of pain and the hope that a new place wo uld magically be the beginning of a brilliant new and exciting life filled with love and adventure. I didn’t find it in Chicago after that or in New York, San Diego, or Saint Louis. I haven’t found it during the past two years here in Austin either. Maybe it’s time I give up on the idea of a new start. Maybe it’s time I stop looking for love and sex and romance and happiness. But even with my burning, tear-reddened eyes and broken, hollowed-out shell of a heart, I don’t have it in me to quit just yet. I’ll give it one more try. One more job. One more move. One more attempt to build a real life for myself before giving up. Some part of me is still holding out hope, no matter how dangerous that is.