Chapter 14 Ethan
Ethan
I just want to shut him up.
I want to shut Shane Carraway’s helpful and kind mouth up.
And if I have to kiss him to do it, so be it. And if I have to grab his shirt and pull him toward me to kiss him again, so be it. And if I have to pull him down on top of me on this motel bed to kiss him some more, then so be that too.
He kisses the same. There was a pattern and a rhythm to kissing Shane Carraway. The way it started. The way it progressed. I haven’t forgotten and neither has he, and my body is responding. We’re kissing each other as if we need each other’s breaths to survive. Maybe we do.
He would always kiss me slow and gentle. Wrapping his arms around me. I never felt safer. Sure, my parents were always there for us. Sure, we lived in a relatively safe town. Sure, I had a big brother to protect me.
But no one knew me the way Shane did.
And that’s why I felt so safe with him.
That’s why it hurt so much when he disappeared on me.
I drag my teeth across his bottom lip, and he groans into my mouth. He pulls away from me. “Ethan…what—”
“Shut up.” I grab his face and smush his cheeks. “Shut the hell up, Shane.” I kiss him again.
I roll on top of him and feel around for the buttons on his jeans.
He’s stunned, lying under me like a starfish, then his hands slide under my sweater, brushing over my skin, his thumb grazing a nipple.
I sit on his hips and take it off, looking down at him looking up at me.
He looks confused. And turned on. And maybe a little worried.
I lean down to kiss him again, softer, then rub my crotch up against him and he groans again. He breaks the kiss and stares up at me, his hands on my face. “Maybe we should talk about this first.”
“I don’t want to talk. I just want you to touch me,” I plead with him.
He blinks, then pulls my face down to kiss me again, his tongue pushing into my mouth.
I slide my hands under his sweatshirt and take it off him.
As we roll around on the bed, our lips crashing into each other in desperate, open-mouthed kisses, there’s the sound of zippers, the buckle of my belt being undone, the snap of it against my hip as Shane tugs it off.
I’m vaguely aware of Mulder and Scully talking about aliens on TV.
My hands grope Shane’s naked body until I find his dick. I spit on my hand, and I have to move my arm when Shane’s hand wraps around my dick. And then we’re laying there, side-by-side, face-to-face, jerking each other off like maniacs.
This was my Seventh Grade Fantasy.
And Eighth Grade.
Ninth.
Tenth.
And, if I’m being honest, even after he was gone from my life.
Shane was always so chaste, so prudish with me that I came up with a theory once I got to college that it was because he wasn’t really into dudes.
Maybe I was just an experiment to him. His kid with Gina proved it.
But it was also because I met other guys at school who weren’t the least bit prudish with me.
So, in a way, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe Shane Carraway is kissing me, jerking me off, and fucking his cock into my hand.
I can’t believe it’s him that’s got me gasping into his mouth and ready to blow so soon and so fast, my body shudders like an electric shock went through it, and I come all over his hand and stomach.
I’m so brain-dead from it, I don’t know when exactly he comes after me, but when he does, he jizzes all over me and the covers.
I lay my head against his to catch my breath.
He breathes heavily onto my forehead, into my hair, then he plants a chaste kiss on my head.
I don’t bother getting up to get a towel.
I just wrap myself around him, messy and sweaty until he does the same.
We stay that way for a while. Long enough for a couple of commercial breaks and for our breathing to even out.
I’m kind of afraid to look him in the face, but he’s the first one to move, unwrapping himself from around me, and giving me a gentle kiss.
He gets out of the bed and comes back with a towel, my cigarettes, and an ashtray. There’s a familiar flutter in my stomach as I remember him this way—kind and thoughtful Shane.
At least until he ditched me.
I light a cigarette and find the envelope of pictures on the corner of the bed. I balance the ashtray on my chest as I sift through the pictures again.
Some of them I’ve seen and some of them I haven’t. I would go into the darkroom with Shane while he was developing some of them. But I’ve never seen the ones of Everett running track. Or the ones of Shane and me, especially by the river.
I take a drag and hold the photo up. Shane, lying beside me, looks up at it too.
“I forgot about this,” I say.
“I didn’t,” Shane says.
“Well, you got to keep the pictures.”
He grabs the cigarette from my fingers and takes a drag. “I kept them in a shoebox under my bed. I know that’s shitty, but I didn’t really know what else to do with them.”
“You could’ve entered them in that contest.”
He takes another drag and hands the cigarette back to me. “By then, I found out Gina was pregnant.”
There’s a little bit of a sting at the mentioning of his kid. I don’t begrudge him his daughter, honestly any kid would be lucky to have a dad like Shane, but it’s a reminder of this new life he started. And waiting for him in Port Leyden.
And I’ve got one waiting for me in the city.
“They’re good,” I say, flipping through the pictures. “Really good.”
“Well, it was you that was really good.”
I look over at him.
He smiles sadly. “You were my muse.”
Five years ago, I was so insanely in love with this asshole, I couldn’t have been cured even if I’d been institutionalized for it.
I would have done anything for him. I was pathetic.
And I swore I wouldn’t be that way again.
I swore I wouldn’t let him back into my life.
I swore I would just tolerate him this one last time, then be done with him forever.
But I was never really done with him, and I sure as shit won’t be now.
Good going, I tell myself.
Shane’s brown eyes search my own. “What?”
I hadn’t realized I was staring at him. I shuffle through a couple more photos. “You’re not in very many of these.” I hold up the one of us on the rocks again. “You’re only in this one.”
“Because I was taking them.”
I stub out my cigarette, set the ashtray on the nightstand, and sit up.
In a lot of these pics, I can sort of remember Shane behind the lens, directing me, telling me what light to stand in, telling me to move or not move.
Then he’d have to go home to a pile of trash and fix dinner for his grandparents.
“You always took care of everybody else,” I say to him softly. “You had to take care of your grandparents. And now your little girl.” Then I look over my shoulder at him. “But who takes care of you?”
He blinks at me a couple of times, a sadness settling in his eyes. He looks over at the TV where Homer Simpson is scratching his beer belly. “Nobody, I guess.”
I set the photos down and get up off the bed. I look for a towel and head toward the bathroom, then I stop and turn to look at him. “I would have,” I tell Shane Carraway with all the sincerity that I have left in me. “I would have taken care of you, if you’d given me the chance.”
I go into the bathroom. I shut the door. I turn the water on.
Hot.
Shane
January 1999
I hear the shower cut on and my heart aches in my chest.
Ethan’s words still hang in the air. They hurt only because they’re true.
We shouldn’t have done anything. I should’ve stopped it. I should’ve insisted that we talk first, and this is why. No matter what, there’s always going to be hurt between us, it seems. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand it.
But despite all my doubts, I still go into the bathroom, pull aside the curtain, and step into the tub.
Ethan turns around in the spray of water. He doesn’t even look surprised. His eyeliner has run down his face and down his neck past that lock-chain necklace. He looks mostly just defeated.
Before I can say anything, he wraps his arms around me, holds me tight, and his head lays heavy on my shoulder. These days the only people who hug me are Gina and Mikayla. It’s different being hugged by a man. It’s different when that man is Ethan Sawyer.
I close my eyes and tentatively slide one arm around his back. And then another. I’m surprised to feel tears sting my eyes. At some point we hugged for the last time; there was one five years ago that I can’t remember because I had no reason to believe there wouldn’t be any more.
Ethan whispers, “I miss him.”
“I miss him too,” I whisper back and hug Ethan closer to me. Tears spring up in my eyes. “He was my best friend.”
This seems like a strange time to properly mourn Everett, standing naked in a shower with his brother after we’ve just had sex.
Something that would have angered Everett five years ago.
I don’t know if he’d feel that way now. People grow up, and people change.
Ev grew up, and maybe he changed, but he won’t be able to grow or change anymore.
That part hurts the most. You really only get one chance in life, don’t you?
And if you don’t learn from your mistakes, one day it won’t matter because it’ll be too late for learning.
And it’ll be too late for making mistakes.
“I missed you, Ethan,” I whisper to him. “I missed you more than him. More than anybody. You were more than a friend to me. You meant everything to me. Maybe you don’t care now, but I swear to god, you did. And you still do.”
He pulls away slightly, and his mouth, wet and warm, is against mine before I can say another word.