33. Thirty-three
The seven hours I spend not sleeping are the perfect amount of time for me to convince myself that Ethan misspoke.
Or misunderstood the question.
Like maybe he meant he’d do nothing differently than what we were already doing, which is dry humping and making out like horny teenagers.
A chilly rain falls, but I barely feel it. Heat feeds on my entire body as I walk toward the house, remnants of the pleasure he’d given me curdling with the sting of his words.
I’m going to walk in, tell him thanks for the thighgasm, then demand an explanation.
And sure, I’m leaving and living a world away, but the idea in a hypothetical world he wouldn’t do anything differently is ridiculous. Who thinks like that?
Marin, Finn, and Derek stand in the kitchen as I slide open the glass door.
“You’re up,” I say too loudly with a smile too big.
“Don’t remind me,” Derek groans, running a hand through his long hair. “I have a float trip this morning, and I need about fifteen hours more sleep.”
Marin and Finn yawn in agreement.
“We are heading out in just a bit. Is your dad up yet? I want to say goodbye, of course, but I don’t want to wake him or anything.”
I look around and try not to seem too eager.
“Uhh…” Derek clears his throat. “He left.”
“Left?”
My voice is a strangled kind of sound.
“Yeah…” His eyes bounce from Marin to Finn, then back to me. “He had some, uhh, stuff with the restaurant, I guess. I dunno, I think it was planned?”
“Yes, right. Of course!” I force a laugh that sounds like a robotic ha ha ha. “I mean, the day after a holiday is always a big cleanup in a restaurant, so I totally get that. I mean, gotta start early, right? People need to eat, right? Crowds can sometimes be bigger on the fifth of July than they are on the fourth, did you know that? I mean, it’s the darndest thing. I guess everyone is just so burned out from all the celebrations they just want someone else to cook for them. And not do the dishes, of course.”
I babble like a moron.
Marin’s eyes are wide as Finn presses a finger to his lips while Derek just stands, confused and uncomfortable. Clearly, he’s never dealt with a shocked woman who just had a much-needed sexual experience on his dad’s leg in the yard before.
“Right.” I smack my lips together. “Derek, thank you. You are an amazing cook, guide, and host. If you ever find yourself in Key Largo, please look us up. And thank Austin for us, and your dad, of course. Or not. You know, just whatever feels…”
I wave my hand around as if it’s an understood signal that this conversation is over.
He left.
He left?
I must have missed something. Like maybe he told me this last night, but I had too much wine to remember. Or he said it, but it was during the fireworks, so I didn’t hear him.
It can’t be right.
I didn’t expect him to throw himself in the middle of the street and beg me not to leave, but no goodbye? It feels like a knife is being twisted straight through my chest.
Was this because I used his leg? I cringe at the thought of that possibility.
I bounce between feeling incredibly sad and ferociously angry. I knew what I was getting with him. He’s a man who dates a lot of women, and it’s ridiculous to read anything deeper into what happened.
Hell, it was probably just another night for Ethan Mills!
To hell with him.
I only start to breathe easy after we pull out of the driveway and head east toward the coast.
Finn immediately crawls back into bed, and Marin sits next to me in the passenger seat. Our eyes are glued to the hazy road in front of us. It starts to rain harder, and a thick fog covers everything like a blanket.
The weather is an actual representation of my mood.
“Mom…” Marin taps her fingers on her lap and drops her head onto the headrest. “I’m sorry about Ethan. I know you… enjoyed spending time with him. I’m sure there’s a reason he left.”
I shake my head and swallow down all the tears that I want to cry but refuse to give to him. “Oh, Marin, don’t be silly. Did I like spending time with him? Sure. But that’s it. He has a life. I didn’t expect him to base his schedule on us leaving or anything.”
Lie.
I did expect that.
“Plus, we are going to see whales! And puffins! And lobster!” I feign enthusiasm, but the way she looks at me lets me know she’s not buying it. I reach my hand over to hers and give it a squeeze.
“I’m fine, promise.”
She returns the squeeze before closing her eyes.
I stare through the windshield and imagine each droplet of rain is a memory of Ethan the angrily squeaking wiper can purge from my mind.
Making drinks behind the bar. Wipe.
Paddle boarding down the river. Wipe.
The blue-green color of his eyes. Wipe.
Holding hands in the night market. Wipe.
The way he kisses. Wipe.
The wiper clears the windshield long enough between awful memories for me to see something big and brown flash in front of us.
“What the—”
My words are cut off by a slam.
Everything that happens next is a blur.
A metallic crunch.
Sudden pop.
The dig of the seatbelt across my chest.
Exploding airbags.
My grunt on impact.
Marin’s yell.
We spin like a top in the middle of the road, smoke billowing out of the engine as dust fills our lungs.
Then—stillness.
And shock.
Marin garbles out a sound next to me that I can’t make out as I fumble with a seatbelt that’s digging into my skin.
“Marin!” I shout. “Marin, are you okay?”
My pulse pounds in my ears as she sobs something next to me and I climb to the space between our seats.
I crouch down next to her on the dishes that have flown from the cabinets.
“Marin, talk to me.”
Panic surges through me as I cup her face in my hands.
She blinks her eyes open and scrunches her dust-covered face.
“I’m fine. What happened?” she croaks.
“Mom?” Finn calls from the back.
“Finn! Are you okay?” I yell to him before turning back to Marin. “Can you get out?”
She nods—slowly—and I rush to the back where Finn is sprawled on the floor between the beds, moaning and rubbing his head.
“Finn, are you okay?” My voice is desperate as I search for blood, relieved when there is none.
“Mom?” he groans. “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. We hit something. It was fine, and then it wasn’t. The cab is destroyed. Can you walk?”
He reaches an arm out to me with an oof, and I help him up and out the side door, where we find Marin standing in the middle of the road with an angry red mark from her seatbelt slashed across her chest.
“Marin?” I cough, walking toward her through the light rain. “Do you see anything?”
Then I see it. A lifeless mountain of hair with a huge rack of smooth antlers that takes up most of the road.
“A moose?” I whisper. “We hit a fucking moose?”
My eyes are wide as I bring a hand up to my open mouth.
“Language, Mom,” Marin rasps out, rubbing a hand across the line on her chest from the seatbelt.
Finn coughs out a laugh that echoes across the quiet road as soon as it escapes his mouth. It spreads from him to me to Marin in a chain reaction, all of us looking between the moose and the ball of aluminum that was once the Avion. We laugh until tears run down our faces.
It’s ridiculous how hard we laugh about getting in an accident in the middle of a quiet mountain road in Maine, but we do.
“Now what?” Finn asks once he can speak clearly.
“Now.” I sigh, wiping the tears from my eyes. “We call a tow truck and get the hell out of here.”