Chapter 11 The Anticipation Is the Best Part #2
And as much as I want to let it go, I can’t help but use this moment to make my own point about my sister.
“So you must understand more than anyone why I have to at least try to talk to Laurel.”
“I guess it makes sense.” He adjusts his position, shifting the mattress. “I’m still sorry I couldn’t come to your wedding.”
And stopped talking to me , I add in my mind. But it’s possible he thinks I was the one who stopped talking to him. We were two stubborn people refusing to bend in a conversational standoff.
“I couldn’t come,” he repeats. His voice is thin, his incomplete apology draping over us like a gauzy curtain. Even the way he recalls it now—that he couldn’t come—grates against me more than I’d care to admit.
The truth of it is this: my best man and I argued, and then a woman who no longer follows him on Instagram (I’m not proud that I know that detail) got food poisoning, and he simply didn’t show.
Or maybe she was just a convenient excuse, but at the end of the day, he didn’t feel like going.
And Ethan doesn’t do anything he doesn’t feel like doing.
He’s always come and gone as it pleases him.
It was my fault for being disappointed in a bird for flying away.
“Was it nice?” he asks, and something sweet blooms in my chest. It reminds me of the good parts of that day, how it wasn’t all bad with Rich. Even the bad years have the occasional good days, and the bad days still have moments of sunshine.
“Wendy and Stuart had a great time.” I smile, recalling Ethan’s parents and how they stayed with me until the venue kicked us out.
My parents were technically present but in one of their relationship’s “off” cycles.
For them, the wedding festivities seemed less like a joyful occasion and more like a series of interruptions to their heightening feud.
But the Powells danced all night long and whispered “I love you” to each other during Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” I adored the way his parents loved each other, out loud in this quiet and unselfconscious way that was truly for the two of them.
It was different from my parents, who loved each other with a volatile frenzy, like they had something to prove.
Rich was so even, steady. I’d hoped we’d end up like the Powells, whispering “I love you” over coffee mugs. But when Rich told me he loved me in the morning, it sounded like he was reminding himself.
The day Rich left, the seas of boring husbands and petty fights parted to make way for a reconciliation with my best friend. Ethan was my first text. Turns out, you were right , was all it said. I sent it as Rich walked out the front door.
And just like that, I had Ethan in my life again. We didn’t discuss the rift. We pretended no time had passed. I didn’t want to hash out the hurt or run back the tape of my bachelorette party, because I had my best friend again.
“Does the wedding really matter if the marriage was a failure?” I sigh, searching for an adequate way to convey how relationships always seem to slip away from me like water through cupped hands.
I sink my forehead into his shoulder. His arm wraps around me, adjusting our bodies so that I’m perfectly curled into the crook of his neck.
My hand falls onto his chest as his fingers gently comb the hair between my shoulder blades.
The sensation cracks me open like I’m a soda can, releasing the tension building up my spine and replacing it with the effervescent fizz of anticipation.
Where will that hand go next? Where do I want it to go?
We’re quiet again for a minute, probably more, until he asks, “Did you love him?”
The simple question shouldn’t conjure up the humiliation it does.
My pride wants to tell him that I always knew it was wrong. That’s what divorced people say, right? Better to have ignored your intuition than to have never had any.
I knew Rich wasn’t some big love, but I’d never wanted that.
He was someone who could perfectly slot into my life and I into his.
We never disagreed on anything. We didn’t challenge each other.
We couldn’t hurt each other. I remember lying in bed with him thinking: I could be happy like this so long as I don’t think about happiness too much .
If I didn’t dwell on the corners of our relationship where we didn’t fit.
The places in us that were dark and hollow.
The parts of me that wondered whether he even liked me, not loved me, but liked me.
Needed me. Asked things of me. And whether I wanted anything from him.
But somehow, despite the worries that circled and swarmed late at night, I was so sure Rich wasn’t a risk. And isn’t that all anyone is looking for in a love story—a person to keep their heart safe?
As much as I’d almost rather that Rich and I were broken from the start and that I didn’t have the incontrovertible proof that someone could fall out of love with me in under a year—that would be a lie.
So I answer Ethan honestly. “I think I did love him.”
I feel his frown in the strands of my hair. This bed is too damn small. “Then he was a lucky man.”
I nod into the dark, a little dumbstruck. I blow a raspberry to defuse the solemn shift in energy. We’re touching in too many places now—our shoulders, our knees, our knuckles—and nothing good can come from the vulnerability that’s cloaking us like a blanket in this already stuffy van.
“I’m not sure he’d agree with you about the ‘lucky’ part.” Ethan’s pulse is racing beneath my cheek. It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. It’s the greatest threat to our friendship, and I’ve never been so grateful for the dark.
Threat or not, he doesn’t clear his throat or feign a yawn-stretch that’ll unpeel his body from mine.
Instead, he takes my hand in his and squeezes.
Only once. Enough to remind me he’s him and he’s here , and all I want is to sink deeper into my best friend and let him hold all of my stiff broken pieces.
So I give in to how good it feels to have him this close. I pull myself onto my side to look at him eye to eye and find he’s already looking at me, breath shaky. In the absence of the warm sun, his features look serious. Sharper. More intense. Like a black and white photograph.
“I don’t care what that guy thinks.” His voice scrapes against my skin like loose gravel.
My eyes have adjusted, and I can see how Ethan’s tapered fingers look woven in mine. The way his purple loosestrife tattoo climbs up his forearm.
I got it because of you , he told me once.
His attention presses into me, until I’m hot and safe and terrified all at the same time. His tongue curls beneath his teeth, and I can’t stop replaying our conversation under the twinkle lights.
Rich doesn’t deserve to be the last person who’s touched you.
And now his thumb is rubbing circles in my palm, and it would be easy— so easy—to get carried away with him right now. To be with someone who sees me in a way no one else ever has, to let him remind me what anticipation and passion and desire can feel like.
My body hums, and I think he feels it—the live tuning fork he’s sharing a mattress with. His hand tenses. His flinty-eyed gaze flits between my eyes and my mouth like a compass on the fritz—up and down, up and down. His body doesn’t make a move. He’s waiting for me to decide.
But I don’t want to decide. I don’t want to be the one responsible for what does or doesn’t happen next.
I want his mouth to fall onto my skin like cool snow in this hot van.
He’ll just happen to me—every part of me—and it won’t have to change anything in the morning.
The sun will rise, the snow won’t stick, and I won’t have to risk the piece of my friend that’s always been mine.
And that’s when it overwhelms me. The years of loneliness.
The searing pain of being this close to someone who understands me, after being married to someone I’m not sure ever knew me.
The piece of me that’s always wondered whether my best friend tastes as sweet as he smells.
But with each breath, the possibility of something more between us slips further away, and I don’t think I can risk another second of indecision.
So I press my hand against his jaw and tilt his face to mine.
And then I’m kissing Ethan Powell.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
This should be awkward. This should be weird .
We should be staring regretfully into the whites of each other’s eyeballs, wondering where our hands should go.
But this feels…good. Right. Maybe because I keep my lips soft at first, testing the boundaries of what this is.
But then his hands are in my hair, tense and grasping with a wildness I didn’t know I liked until exactly this moment.
All of my hesitancy falls away, and suddenly, my teeth are tugging at his bottom lip and his tongue is urging my lips to let him in. And so I do. Of course I do.
Because whatever this is, it isn’t what kissing usually feels like.
Kissing is supposed to be a clumsy precursor to sex, but Ethan’s lips on my lips—and on my jaw and on my neck and along my collarbone—is downright indecent .
He’s kissing me like the world outside is ending, and I’m rising to meet him like I don’t care if it does.
How could I care about anything else when Ethan Powell is grabbing my hips so desperately that I hope it leaves a mark?
He’s growling into my skin and following each of my tiny whimpers like a road map, and I’m greedy for more of this .
More earth-shattering touches that feel more intimate than sex with the man I married ever did.
More of being wanted and desired by someone who doesn’t have to remind himself in the morning that he loves me.
But as Ethan’s always had a way of reading my mind, he pulls his mouth back at that exact moment. “Who am I right now?” he asks through heaving breaths. He presses his forehead to my cheek and something about the familiar sweetness of it steals air from my lungs. “Am I…me? Or am I…not Rich?”
I twist away for air and stare up at the ceiling, my chest rising and falling so violently it might demand medical attention.
“I’m sorry.” The apology might as well be an admission of guilt. “I…got carried away.”
Even though the kiss wasn’t entirely about my ex-husband—part of me is wondering (panicking about) whether this kiss was a decade in the making—it wasn’t not about my ex-husband. And for that, I feel sick.
He sucks air between his teeth.
“Can you forgive me?” The plea slips from my mouth.
I’m not the kind of person who lets emotions get the better of them, but right now, we’re on a detour of a detour. This rescue mission was already a deviation from my real life. Maybe that’s all this is: a much-needed vacation from my rational self.
“Of course. Could never be me,” he says to himself with a laugh, but the utter truth of it sinks into my chest like a rock.
“I know what you mean.”
I shift away from him two inches, settling into a more comfortable position, even though I want more than anything for him to hold me.
I want his finger drawing slow circles on my pelvic bone until I can no longer bear the rivulets of need beneath my skin, touching me in ways he’d never touch his best friend Chuck.
I want to torpedo my life. For a second. If only to finally know what it would be like to feel out of control with him. But my friend who is always interested in trying just about anything has never seemed much interested in trying this .
“It was just a one-time slipup. I won’t do it again,” I promise.
My chest rises and falls while I hang on each of his deep breaths, in and out.
“You will. It was never going to be just one time.” He pauses, and I wonder if he’s…
professing something, if this simple kiss is the first domino in a collision of words and touches that’ll lead to the two of us, side by side, in matching Adirondack chairs, watching our thirty-seven grandkids playing in the yard.
My stomach swoops and spins like I’m at the top of a roller coaster, and I can’t identify whether the resulting feeling is excitement or terror.
“I don’t mean to brag,” he continues, voice gravelly and too serious, as my heart darts around my chest. “But I have…skills…”
I pause. Silent. Stunned.
And then a spitty laugh explodes from my mouth and showers his face.
I should be utterly mortified that I just threw myself at my best friend, but I can’t bring myself to care, because the sentence that just fell from his lips is ten times more embarrassing for him than anything I could ever dream to say.
I’m certain no one has ever experienced this level of relief from a man displaying such delusional levels of sexual bravado. “You’re such an idiot.”
“I’m just saying, I know what I’m doing.” His smile is ridiculous and confident and so magnificently beautiful.
“Is that so?”
He puffs his chest out. “I’ve had a lot of…positive testimonials.”
At that, I groan, but it’s undercut by the fact that I can’t stop laughing. It’s only getting louder now, reverberating against the walls of the small space.
“I’m actually pretty impressed you were able to stop yourself without passing out from sexual frustration. That’s not usually how that goes.”
I shove him on the bed. “Stop,” I beg as I struggle for breath.
His body shakes, and even in the darkness, I can just make out the edges of the silent laughter tightening his eyes. “Why is this so funny to you? It’s true. There are, like, three things I know I’m good at, and this…” He takes pity on my respiratory system and lets his sentence go.
He stops teasing me, and when I regain control of my breathing, he rolls to his other side and settles into his pillow. “We good then?” he asks.
“Yes. We’re good,” I answer, wiping at my eyes.
“Good. Night, Beekman.”
“Night, Powell,” I say back, rolling into the mattress crack. I try not to examine the disappointment gathering in my throat.
The minutes stretch, and just when I’m crossing into the liminal space between asleep and awake, I hear Ethan’s low voice against my ear.
“Next time,” he hums, “it’ll be because it’s me . It’s us . Okay?”
“Mm-hmm.” My mind searches for the perfect pithy thing to say next, but I’m tired and that’s more of Ethan’s thing anyhow. Instead, I listen to his slow, sleepy breaths, matching his deep exhales with my own until the fatigue takes me away.