Seventeen
SEVENTEEN
TAYLOR
“H ey, you’ve reached Sasha Frost. I’m out doing something awesome…or sleeping. Take your best guess! Leave me a message or shoot me a text. Have a great one!”
Sasha’s bubbly voicemail message fades out right before a grating beep.
Taylor pauses, momentarily tongue-tied. Should he blurt out that he had two rounds of intimate, soul-searing sex with his boss’s ex-husband last night? The house is empty. Even Nana went with Ethan to the resort this morning, so it’s not like anyone will overhear him.
He would text it all out to her, but he’s afraid of keeping a written record of it anywhere but the logs in his mind. Besides, he needs both hands free to finally finish these baskets. Only two more to go and then he’s done.
“Hey, it’s me,” he says way after the beep has ended. “I hope your voicemail box is empty because this is a real whopper.” From there, the PG-13 version of events bolts from his mouth.
He’s fluffing up some tissue paper as he concludes, “I don’t even feel guilty about this. Am I broken? Am I a bad person? A good person would regret it, I think. A non-selfish person would realize he’s made an irrevocably fucked-up choice, but I…want to do it again?” He palms his own face. He’s certain the slap was recorded for posterity. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but the sex was sooooooo good . So good.”
Breathless, he seals up the wrapping on the penultimate basket with a ribbon and sets it aside. “Tomorrow, Amy and Samara arrive, and I know it’s going to be awkward, but I sort of don’t care. I should! I know I should! I love my job. I love Storybook Endings. Why did I do this to myself? No, actually, I know why I did this to myself, I—”
The voicemail cuts out with another unsettling beep.
Fine. At least now he doesn’t have to admit aloud that he did it because Ethan said he wanted it. Multiple times! Again, it boded well that their wants overlapped in such an alluring way, but Taylor’s programmed to appease the wants of those around him. Those he cares about .
Yeah, it’s time he faced it. He cares about Ethan. Six nights under the man’s roof, and he’s chiseled out a room for him inside his somewhat stony heart.
It’s easy to care for Ethan. Not only because he’s got soulful blue eyes and hands that could move mountains, but because he’s been vulnerable and open. Because the people Taylor sees most in the world—Amy Lu and Samara Golding—are undoubtedly linked to Ethan and are products of being around him for so many years. He admires both those women immensely for their strong wills and their penchants for beauty.
After finishing the last basket and cleaning up, he returns to the living room to find Ethan inspecting his work.
“What are you doing back?” Taylor asks, surprised.
“I’m taking the rest of the day off.”
Taylor warms at this, even though he’s certain he shouldn’t. “Does that mean we get to spend the day together?”
“That depends. Are you up for a trip into town?” he asks, sheepishness cutting through his question. “I’ve earned the world’s worst dad award. I forgot to get Samara a birthday gift.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. My dad once got me an ice cream cake with my brother’s name on it,” he says. “In the pantheon of dad bluffs, yours doesn’t even come close. Let me grab my coat.”
ETHAN
Seeing the Catskills—or as Samara calls it, “the Cat’s Hills”—through Taylor’s eyes is refreshing. The magic and the mystery are replenished with the bonus of another’s excitement.
“New England is really different from California. There’s a lot of architectural history here. The buildings are interesting,” Taylor spouts, pointing toward the firehouse-turned-pub. The scene of Ethan’s bad date with Kurt before Taylor arrived. Funny how he almost swore off dating right before Taylor appeared in his lobby.
Not that they’re dating, but this—strolling the main strip toward the antique shop on the penultimate day of March, talking life and buildings and birthdays—sort of feels like a date. Perhaps he should scrap that thought before it runs away from him.
“Taylor! Taylor!” comes a voice from behind them after they pass DIWhy Not? The bespectacled woman, no more than twenty-five, who works the register stands in the middle of the sidewalk without a jacket, holding a painted glass jar with silk flowers in it. “What do you think?”
Taylor gasps with delight. “It’s perfect!” He grabs for the arrangement excitedly.
“Ethan,” he says, extending a hand by way of introduction.
“Lola,” she says, her pixie cut swishing around as she nods energetically.
“What is this for?” Ethan asks Taylor.
“Centerpieces for Samara’s party,” he says quickly. “She loves flowers, but she’s allergic, so I figured this was a nice compromise.”
Ethan’s chest melts at Taylor’s thoughtfulness. He clearly cares a lot about Samara. Maybe that’s where Ethan’s mind should be, too. On the daughter he rarely sees who is hitting a milestone birthday soon.
“I’ll pick these up tomorrow morning?” Taylor asks.
“If you’ll be in town for a bit, I can have them ready before close tonight,” Lola says with a smile.
Taylor looks to Ethan. “How long will we be here?”
“As long as you’d like,” he says, that warmth in his chest sneaking onto his face.
With a whole day stretched out ahead of them, Ethan leads the way to Refurbished for Me, the town’s nicest antique and thrift shop. Every time he comes in here, it always looks different. The owner, Baxter—an eccentric with hickster (his term, a combination of hick and hipster ) tastes—is constantly rearranging the sections and window displays as new items come in so you never have the same shopping experience twice.
Today, they’re greeted by a gold, velvet sofa with an art deco vibe that has a cross-stitched cat pillow laid out in its center. Behind it is a handcrafted coatrack where each hanger hoists up a different costume hat. One with feathers, another with a veil.
“Why here?” Taylor asks with genuine curiosity as they venture in farther.
“It’s tradition. One of my hobbies in the spring is fly--fishing, so when Amy was working the resort or away and my parents couldn’t watch Samara, I’d wake her early and make her tag along. She didn’t hate it, per se, but I’m sure nine-year-old girls have more interesting ideas about how they’d like to spend their Saturday mornings,” he says. “Nevertheless, for being a trooper, we’d stop here on the way home and I’d buy her something—a piece of costume jewelry or an old VHS tape. She said to me once that she preferred things that were preowned because they were more interesting.”
“Yes! She and I share that. Backstory makes everything more beautiful in my mind,” Taylor says. Ethan wonders if all the sharing he’s done has made him more beautiful in Taylor’s mind as well. “I wish my siblings had felt that way. Everything in my house growing up was a hand-me-down, but out of necessity, not desire.”
Taylor wanders away. Ethan enjoys Taylor perusing. His amble has no logic. Some folks, like Ethan, start at the perimeter and make their way in. Others go straight for the shiny section that catches their eye. Not Taylor. He seems content to zigzag and double back and touch everything like a kid in a petting zoo.
Once he stops staring after Taylor, the first item to draw Ethan’s attention is a music box. A lovely, lilting piano melody trundles out when opened. Samara could put all of those old pieces of costume jewelry in here—the purple ring and the chain and the brooch with the bumblebee on it.
Sold. That didn’t take long at all.
Ethan spins to flag down Taylor and show him. He towers over all the displays so he’d spot Taylor’s bright orange coat easily if he were anywhere to be found.
Music box in hand, he wanders into the clothing area. It’s a hodgepodge of gowns and trench coats and cowboy boots with a standing, gilded, full-body mirror in the corner. In the reflection, he fixes that one pesky strand of hair that always falls across his forehead. The curtain to the changing room behind him slides open with a screech.
Taylor steps out wearing a psychedelic button-down shirt. It’s got wavy, fuzzy purple and white stripes. It reminds Ethan of a lava lamp he had in his college dorm room. Amy always made fun of him for it. Called it tacky. Secretly, it calmed his mind, watching those blobs dance at random.
“What do you think?” Taylor asks, stepping around Ethan and toward the mirror.
“I think we were supposed to be looking for a gift for Samara,” Ethan says with a flirtatious air.
“No, you were looking for a gift for Samara. I already got her something,” he says, still turned to the mirror. “I’m just here for moral support.”
“What did you get her?” Ethan asks.
“This rare Record Store Day vinyl she was dying for. It’s a super limited printing. She even begged Amy to let her go with her friends to camp outside the store at four a.m. the night before. There was no way that was happening, so I went. My sister Sasha really likes the artist, too, and the shop lets you buy two copies of each title, so I gave one to my sister and saved one for Samara’s birthday.”
Taylor’s thoughtfulness quota flies off the scale. “I didn’t even know Samara had a record player,” Ethan grumbles.
“It’s a recent thing for her. Maybe a year or two ago. One of her friends, Lily—you’ll meet her—is really into them. Trends come and go. You know how teen girls are.”
In truth, he doesn’t. Not really. He grew up with two brothers. He had Samara solely under his roof until she was ten. They talk all the time, and they see each other for holidays, but it does often feel like Samara is editing herself during those visits. Ethan, too, if he’s honest. They’re bringing their best selves to those occasions. Ethan doesn’t get to muddle through those teenage tantrums over record store lines or whatever. Is that a blessing or is he missing out?
“Anyway, thoughts?” Taylor asks. “I’d want to wear it to Samara’s party. It matches the decorations.” The top two buttons of the shirt are undone, exposing some of Taylor’s chest, and that’s when they both notice the shirt isn’t the only thing that matches the party’s color scheme. A fresh, amorphous purple hickey is displayed on the right side of his collarbone.
Taylor’s eyes bulge as he shakes his head.
“Sorry about that,” Ethan whispers.
Taylor demurely catches his gaze in the reflection of the mirror. “Don’t be,” he whispers back, fingering the spot.
Ethan’s pulse quickens, thinking about how wonderful it had been to give Taylor that love bite.
When was the last time Ethan had given another person a hickey? College, probably. Amy, most likely. But she hated them with a vengeance. Anytime his mouth neared her neck she shirked away. That’s her right. But the way Taylor seductively smiles on his way back to the dressing room makes him think he could turn Taylor’s collarbones into a detailed map of the Galápagos Islands and he wouldn’t care one bit.
He’s tempted to follow Taylor into the dressing room and do just that behind the shelter of the curtain, but he knows the owner, and this place is small. Word travels like wildfire in this town.
Dizzy with the thrilling fantasy, he sits down on the plush, round bench outside the changing room. “Whatcha got there?” Taylor asks when he returns with the shirt back on its hanger.
“Check it out.”
Taylor’s mouth quirks to one side when Ethan demonstrates the music box.
“What? You don’t think she’ll like it?” Ethan asks, self-conscious suddenly. “You got her a record. She loves music, and she can put her jewelry in here.”
“It’s just…” Taylor’s fingers waggle like he can summon a word from the dust particles suspended in the air. “Doesn’t it feel a little young? Don’t get me wrong—it’s beautiful. Anyone would be lucky to have this, but it’s not really Samara. She wears the same earrings and choker almost every day. I don’t know what she’d put in there.”
“I see.” Ethan hurriedly takes the box back. Guilt’s nearest cousin, shame, takes a front row seat inside Ethan’s stomach. The weight of the emotion causes him to slump back down onto the bench.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep.” Taylor sits beside him. “You wanted my help. Not my criticism.”
Immediately, he sets his closest hand on top of Taylor’s in reassurance. “Taylor, no. It’s nice that someone like you cares about and knows so much about my daughter. Weird, in a way, but nice. Thank you.”
“She’s easy to care about. She’s like family to me. She’s a great person,” says Taylor, making no effort to move his hand away.
“I wish she were around more so I could see that greatness for myself.” The words are heavy, but they bring about a lightness now that he’s finally shared them aloud.
“It must be hard being away from her most of the year.”
It’s impossible for him to explain in the middle of this antique store that Samara not being near is like trying to live with only half a heart. The blood still pumps, the feelings still come, but not as strong nor as steady as he wishes they would. “Yeah” is all he manages to get out at first. “It’s silly, but I’m still hoping she picks an east coast college so I can be the obnoxious guy at parents’ weekend wearing a Proud Dad of an XYZ Student T-shirt without having to dump my savings on the airfare.”
Taylor’s face breaks out into a large smile. “Hey, I can drop some hints for you. She listens to me. I think she’s leaning toward studying photography anyway, and there are some great art and design schools out here.”
Ethan palms his forehead. “She’s always been a shutterbug. How didn’t I think about that before? There are tons of antique cameras here. Do you think she’d like one of those?”
“I think she’d love one of those.”