The Embrace of Evergreen (Unexpected Love #2)

Blue

Blue

Maybe I should have taken the time to hit up one of the clothing stores in town so that I could grab hoodies, but I couldn’t just leave Ethan there wondering where I’d fucked off to for half an hour. Maybe I should have just stayed at the table, and we could have made the best of it and eaten our food quickly when it arrived, but he’d looked so adorable and pathetic sitting there trying his best to smile and not shiver even though he was clearly freezing to death. Should I have gotten only one blanket and curled up in it with him? Probably not. Should I have taken half of his food without asking? Unlikely. Do I regret spending our entire afternoon on the cold, misty wooden deck of a pub, drinking and laughing like nothing in the world existed other than me and Ethan? Not for one single second.

Ethan is everything that I’ve avoided for years. He’s everything that’s dangerous and risky and terrifying with his perfectly muscled shoulders and eyes as green as deep wood ferns. He’s quiet and kind and sexy, and even though I’ve promised myself for years that I’ll never fall in love again, that’s what’s happening, and I can’t seem to stop it no matter how many times I tell myself that he’s nothing more than my new friend. I know that love isn’t real. I know that falling for someone just means that, somehow, I’ll end up hurt eventually. The only real question is how badly. Still, it’s hard to believe that Ethan would ever treat me the way my past boyfriends have. I don’t think that he has a mean or vindictive or sneaky bone in his body. It’s a pointless thing to ruminate on no matter how I feel anyway. He hasn’t shown any interest in me, he hasn’t mentioned dating anyone else, and it was only too obvious that he was shocked and maybe a bit appalled when Evie talked about the way I normally pick up someone new to fuck every Friday night. Well, the way I normally used to anyway.

Even though I know Ethan is everything I shouldn’t want and everything I can’t have, I’d been happy to linger at the pub until we were almost late for Gabriel’s show. I’d been happy to laugh as he wrapped the tie-dyed blanket around his shoulders as we made our way down the sidewalk. I’d been happy to grab his wrist so that we wouldn’t get separated as I dragged him through the crowded streets toward the pavilion at the water’s edge in the center of the town’s park.

Standing with Ethan’s shoulder pressed tightly against mine as the crowd cheers for Charlize and Gabriel, there is no way to describe what I’m feeling other than…happy. We cheer and scream and clap along with the crowd as they take their final bows. We whoop and laugh, and I can’t tear my eyes away from the gl orious sight that is Ethan when he’s relaxed and content and carefree. I watch him from the corner of my eye until the next performer strums the first chord on his guitar before I take his wrist once more and drag him through the throngs of people and back down the crowded street. He doesn’t ask where we’re going. He simply allows me to cling to his arm and guide him to the wood-fired pizza place half a block away. There is a line snaking out the door long enough to stretch past four neighboring shops, but he doesn’t say a word when we walk past the line, and I press him up against the building’s large glass window with a smile and tell him to wait for me. I don’t want him to wait for me. I don’t want to leave him standing here even for a moment. I want to press my body against his and thrust my tongue into his mouth so deeply that the patrons on the other side of the window should have to pay us for the show we’re putting on. Instead, I pry myself from his side with a grin and slip past the crowd of people that nearly blocks the door.

I visit this town a few times a year, and I’m a sucker for anything that offers piles of cheese and way too many carbs in one shot, pizza included, so I always make a point of stopping here when I’m in town. It also just so happens that the fact the owner and I spent one wild and steamy night together a few years ago means that I was able to place a pre-scheduled pick-up order and bypass the line even though they don’t take call-ahead orders during festivals. When I catch Chad’s eye, he takes the time to bring me a handful of boxes personally, even though the place is absolute madness. He leans over the counter and offers me a kind smile and a kiss on the cheek in lieu of a hello since it’s too loud to attempt even a brief conversation, and I head back out the door. While quick one-night-only fucks have a bad reputation, it’s perfectly possible to walk away from them thankful for the pleasure you shared instead of irritated that it won’t continue as long as clear expectations are set at the beginning. Chad certainly isn’t the only lover I’m still on good terms with on the rare occasions I see them.

Ethan’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when I return in under five minutes.

“How in the hell did you manage that?” He chuckles.

I wiggle my eyebrows and drag my teeth along my lip ring suggestively. “I have my ways.”

He laughs even harder. “Your sexy lip ring got you pizzas without having to wait in line? Shit, maybe I should get one.”

I can’t convince my lips to form a response as we make our way back to the park. All I can think about is the fact that he called my lip ring sexy. Have I been reading his apparent disinterest wrong for months now? Fuck, I hope so.

By the time we maneuver our way back to the park, Charlize and Gabriel have changed into what almost appears to be full-blown winter gear and laid a couple of blankets down on a patch of grass far enough away from the stage that the music isn’t deafening, but close enough that the eight p.m. fireworks will be loud and brilliant. Gabriel hops up from the blanket in a graceful, athletic move I’ll never be capable of and pulls Ethan and me into a spine-snappingly tight hug.

“Thank you so much for coming. Both of you.”

“Thanks so much for letting me tag along with you guys this weekend. You were spectacular! In fact,” Ethan glances around quickly, looking almost panicked, “you were so good that, ummm…”

The pizza boxes are unceremoniously snatched from my hands. “I got you these pizzas.”

Gabriel’s eyes nearly close as he tightens his lips in an attempt to hold back his laughter. I know my expression must be almost identical. I’ve never seen Ethan this relaxed and chatty, and his attempt to woo Gabriel with stolen pizzas that he was already going to eat is hilarious.

“These are from you, darling?” Gabriel’s voice is trembling with amusement. “They aren’t from a certain local pizza shop owner who may or may not still be so enamored with Blue’s fantastical ability to dick a guy down until he forgets his name that he’s giving us free pizzas even three years later?”

I’m going to kill him. I’m going to meticulously plan and carry out his murder. Disposing of Gabriel’s body without Gabriel’s help will be hard, sure, but it will one hundred and ten percent be worth it if said murder can erase the crestfallen look that has appeared on Ethan’s face.

Gabriel must suddenly and magically understand that his inability to filter that mouth of his has sealed his murder fate because he quickly wraps an arm around Ethan’s shoulders and guides him to the pile of blankets. “Of course they’re from you, you cheeky thing. No one understands my love of carbs like you do. Plop your gorgeous ass down right here and share with me, huh?”

If one more of my friends mentions my phone-book-sized list of sexual conquests in front of Ethan again, I’m going to unfriend them all. It’s not that I’m ashamed of my sexual choices. I’m not at all. I enjoy sex, the same way some people enjoy bowling or fishing or Irish dancing. We don’t judge those folks for enjoying their hobbies, even if we probably should. It’s just that even though I don’t know all that much about Ethan’s dating history or sex life, he doesn’t seem to react all that well when mine is mentioned, and no matter how hard I try to convince myself that his opinions on the subject don’t matter, they do. I don’t really think he’s the type of guy who would think less of me because our sex lives are different, but I don’t want him to simply not think less of me; I want him to like me. I shouldn’t. I’m still trying to convince myself that I don’t believe in love. Not really anyway, not happy-ever-after, storybook-ending love that lasts. But moments like watching Ethan release all his inhibitions on the dance floor or spending hours on a freezing dock wrapped in a hideous tie-dyed blanket with his leg pressed up against mine are starting to make that really difficult to remember.

“Yo. You having a stroke up there?” Charlize’s voice breaks me out of my introspective daydream. “Come on, man, get in on this.”

I don’t have to be asked more than once to flop down for a pizza picnic, and I settle myself as close to Ethan as I can without it seeming intentional. Although the look Gabriel shoots me when Ethan shifts just a bit closer and removes the blanket from his shoulders in order to cover both of our laps while offering me a small, sideways smile is hard to ignore.

We quickly burn through the pizza and the cooler of beer that Charlize was thoughtful enough to bring as we talk and laugh and half watch the other entertainers on the stage at the other end of the park. It gets dark early in September, and it’s barely eight p.m. when the fireworks start. Charlize shifts to lie with her head in Gabriel’s lap while Ethan and I lean back with our hands on the blankets and our legs stretched out in front of us, still pressed tightly together with our new shared-custody tie-dyed blanket tucked across our laps. It’s cold and dark as a hush falls over the crowd, and the only sounds that remain are the crickets and waves and the explosions that spark through the sky, and I’m lost to the rest of the world. There is nothing other than the heat of Ethan’s body at my side, the rise and fall of his chest in my peripheral vision, and the fact that our fingers are so close together that all I’d have to do is shift mine over an inch and they would cover his. I don’t want to fall in love with him, but in this moment, it’s hard to convince myself that I’m not already too far gone to stop it.