Twenty
TWENTY
TAYLOR
I t’s after 10:00 p.m. and Taylor stares out the new back window of the Snow White cottage where he will be sleeping alone tonight.
To think that without that shattered window and clipped roof, the last week would’ve been drastically different. He never would’ve known what Ethan was like behind closed doors—what he dreamed about, what he tasted like, what he sounded like in the mornings.
Perhaps it would’ve been better that way because now there’s a pit of want in his stomach that he’ll never be able to fill.
Unzipping his suitcase, he unpacks his clothes, including the new shirt he bought at the vintage store. Slowly, he puts everything back in the drawers of the chest where it was before his trip took a surprising detour. When he’s finished, he wanders over to the kitchenette, to the kettle, remembering then that he used the last of his tea the night of the storm.
In the corner, there’s a Storybook Endings tote bag that he’s certain isn’t his. Inside, there’s an unopened bag of mint Milanos and the last of the green tea he bought. His heart mirrors the electric kettle, bubbling and spewing out warmth.
Ethan’s thoughtfulness supersedes whatever weirdness he felt in the parking lot during the dead battery disaster. Jumping to conclusions is one of Taylor’s special skills. Anticipating needs is part of his job description. But he can see how sometimes that might backfire.
From meals to archery to sex, Ethan never treated him like some young thing that he used for fun to later be discarded like a loaded condom. Every glass of wine poured to every utensil set out, every touch to every kiss, respect sparkled in the air. Appreciation, too.
The click of the kettle underlines Taylor’s hasty assumption. An overwhelming urge to apologize for getting snappy circles him. But it’s not like he can sneak out—
Knock.
The sound is so soft he mistakes it for the wind.
Knock. Knock.
It’s his imagination. He’s almost certain. Like that old Poe tale. The one about the raven. Now that really would’ve scarred the children at story time.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Kno—
Finally, he opens the door expecting Amy. Earlier, she was complaining about her cell service up here. She switched carriers back in California—with Taylor’s patient help—and there seems to be fewer towers out here getting her the 5G she’s used to.
In the doorway, there’s a person, much larger than Amy, wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood up. Even though his face is obscured, his size and age and bergamot scent give him away. Without pausing for an invitation, Ethan comes inside, shutting the door and the curtains behind him.
For a second, Taylor contemplates whether he conjured Ethan at his doorstep with his wish to apologize. Does this fairy tale resort have witch’s magic running through its grounds?
“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” Ethan says, revealing himself fully. Ethan’s hood whacks that one long curl loose and it hangs pleasingly across his forehead. “I came to apologize for earlier. What I said was unthinking and unkind, and I am sorry.”
Taylor hadn’t been expecting that. Amy had always gone on about how Ethan wasn’t one to apologize. Now he fears he’s been holding too tightly to some of the things Amy said about her ex-husband. At no point has Ethan proven himself to be the stubborn, inflexible man she’s always painted him to be. Maybe he never apologized to her because she was in the wrong. “Thank you,” Taylor chokes out finally. “And I’m sorry, again, for intruding on dinner.”
Ethan’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “I was happy you were there.”
“You were? I feel like I stepped all over your conversation with Samara,” he says, toying with the tea bag in his mug. Which is probably overly steeped at this point, but Ethan’s blocking the trash can. Taylor’s worried that if he makes any sudden movements, Ethan will prove to be a wishful apparition, a fabrication about to whisk away in a sudden burst of light.
“Not at all. You get her. In a way I never could,” he says. It rings like a compliment. Yet— “Are you saying I have the mentality of a teenage girl?” Taylor asks.
Ethan’s eyes widen. “Not at all! I—”
“I’m only teasing you,” Taylor cuts in quickly. Maybe some of that defensiveness from earlier still needs to burn off. He isn’t interested in riling Ethan up like that. If anything, Ethan deserves peace, ease. He wishes he could massage every tense muscle of Ethan’s.
Ethan runs a hand across his beard, which does nothing to cloak his growing smile. “What I meant was that Amy still treats Samara like a little girl. Probably because she isn’t the best at listening. She probably thinks Samara’s interest in music and photography are whims or silly hobbies. You treat them like they’re passions.”
“Because they are,” Taylor says. He wrinkles his brow, trying to get to the bottom of why Ethan thinks somebody wouldn’t do that. The simplest thing in the world is taking someone else’s hopes and dreams seriously. If you don’t accept and believe in someone, you can’t expect them to shine.
“That’s just it. I see her—what?—four to five times a year in a good year. All I get are snapshots of her life, her world. I can already tell the world of an almost-sixteen-year-old girl is far more complex than all those Netflix movies make it seem.” He wanders over to the new window, looking out. “She’s not a snapshot. She’s a whole gallery. I see that you see that. I have the excuse of distance, but what’s Amy’s?”
Taylor is still rendered confused. “I don’t know what you want me to say to that.”
“I don’t want you to say anything. I just want to thank you for being there for my daughter when I can’t be. When her mother won’t be. You are…you are a really caring, good man,” he says. When he turns back to face Taylor, there’s a shiny line of tears waiting to fall from his eyes. “I see you as a man, Taylor. I’m sorry if my rude comment earlier led you to believe otherwise. You are more mature and put-together than half the people I know and associate with. Maybe even more mature than me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Taylor says, worried if he lets those words snuggle too close to his heart that his guard will fall. He’s still got his job to consider—Amy’s certain ire if she caught the two of them alone like this.
“I would. I would go further. But I’ll spare you the whole monologue,” Ethan says with this tinkling note of chivalry. That’s the foremost word Taylor would use to describe Ethan if pressed: chivalrous. Also noble. And insightful. Taylor’s crushed with the urge to hug him, but shows restraint, despite the difficulty.
“What if I want the whole monologue?” Taylor asks, venturing into treacherous waters without a paddle.
Ethan’s blushing now. “I’ll give you the abridged version. Last week meant a lot to me. I couldn’t put into words how much if I tried. I know this has to be over now that Amy is here. I’m not going to put myself between you and your work because like Samara’s passion, I see yours in the career you’ve chosen. Amy will most certainly open the right doors for you. You’re where you’re meant to be.”
The sacrifice of what Ethan’s saying sways between them like a sharp pendulum slowly descending, evilly set on severing. Before the slice, Taylor has to say this: “Last week meant a lot to me, too. I haven’t connected with someone like this in a while, and I hate that we have to pretend now like none of it happened.”
“I wish there was a better way,” Ethan says with a gallant air, like he’d cross land and sea with only a tattered parchment map if he could find the treasure chest of more tomorrows together. “I really wish there was.”
Ethan starts toward the door, and Taylor suddenly concludes that the pendulum was only ever in his head. Yes, he wants to be treated as an adult, seen as Ethan’s equal and respected as Amy’s colleague and heralded as Samara’s role model, but he’s also twenty-seven. He is young. He is spry. He is willing to sneak around and keep a secret and play the dangerous game if it means Ethan Golding stays in his presence for a few more nights.
“Please don’t go,” Taylor says. “Not yet. I’m not tired. I was going to have some tea. There’s a Scrabble board in the top of the closet. We’ll keep the curtains closed. We can be friends, can’t we? There’s nothing wrong with us being friends.”
He’s grasping at turtle-saving paper straws, and he sees Ethan register that. Contesting thoughts wiggle across Ethan’s expression. I would love that , and Won’t that make the parting harder? Ultimately, Ethan says, “Watch out. I’m a killer at Scrabble.”
Over green tea, mint Milanos, and seven letter tiles per turn, the two of them keep company at the drop-down table by the fireplace with the curtains closed and the heat turned up. They pretend, at least for the time, that nothing has changed except their location.
Amy is not across the resort going through her twelve-step skincare routine before plopping on her satin sleep mask and getting her regimented eight hours. Samara is not in a cabin across the way, luxuriating in a rare moment of privacy before all her friends arrive tomorrow morning. If he focuses, Taylor can almost paste in the sound of Nana’s adorable snores under his feet even though she’s surely back at the cottage and dreaming of squirrels to chase.
Conversation ebbs and flows between long bouts of thought. There’s an adorable crinkle of competitiveness in the set of Ethan’s brow. Taylor is tempted to bend across the table and kiss it. But the only place his lips land are the edge of his mug with his second cup of tea.
“How much should we tell Amy? Just so we have our stories straight,” Taylor says, certain they should’ve hashed this out last night before he picked them up from the airport instead of going ahead for that third round, which was slow and sensual and lasted well past 3:00 a.m. Every time he has sex from here on out, he’s going to compare it against that. Against the connectedness and the blissed out stretch of Ethan Golding.
He’s literally and figuratively fucked.
But at least he has this. Now. Ethan sitting across from him, mug paused partway to his open lips, lost in thought. Taylor wants to dive inside that neurodiverse brain of his and swim laps in his beautiful thoughts.
“As little as we can get away with,” he says finally. His swallow of tea is like cannon fire in the mostly silent room.
“Which is…?” He plays the easiest word he can think of: LAMB on top of Ethan’s previous BOATS . Ethan records Taylor’s points on the Storybook Ending’s notepad from the drawer by the bed. Ethan is leading, but not by much. “Gabriel already brought up the issue with the roof and the window at dinner.”
“He didn’t say which cottage, though,” Ethan is quick to note.
“So I never stayed with you?” Taylor asks, worried that if they begin lying, the truth will become a watercolor painting hung in direct sunlight: apt to fade into unrecognition.
Ethan cringes as if he’s got cramps. “I don’t see a way she won’t read into it. If we had told her when it happened, it would’ve been easier, but now…”
His sentence falls off the cliff of understanding. It’s the truth. Why hadn’t either of them said anything to Amy and Samara? After a moment, Taylor comes to a single conclusion: he was hoping this would happen.
Not this, playing Scrabble over cups of tea, but everything before—with the cuddling and sex and stories. From the first time he laid eyes on Ethan Golding in that hospitality magazine, his whole body stirred to sharp attention. Then, when he began working for Amy, images of Ethan were constantly floating across his laptop screen. The attraction was undeniable, despite Amy’s condemnations of Ethan’s stalwart ways. Only when Taylor arrived here did he realize he’d be attracted to Ethan’s heart and mind as much as his body.
“We never stayed together,” Taylor says it as matter-of-factly as he can muster. Ignores the way his stomach churns over it.
“You still did story time,” Ethan says with a playful smirk that lightens the mood.
“If we’re lying, can we at least say I was a success at it?”
“Where would be the fun in that?” It’s so flirtatious that Taylor could kiss him. Damn, someone needs to hog-tie his hands to this chair, duct-tape his lips shut. Trouble is not only in the air between them; it’s manipulating the tiles.
Ethan plays LOVE off LAMB , and Taylor’s chest nearly snaps open like a pinata.
“I know you were excited to see Samara after a long time away, but what was it like seeing Amy?” Taylor asks. Because there’s nothing less flirtatious than asking your hot former bedfellow about his acrimonious ex-wife.
“The same way it’s been for the last five years—like taking an ice bath after an injury. Awful at first, but once you adjust to the temperature, it feels good. I know maintaining that relationship, no matter how much strain, is in my best interest. It’s healthy.”
“An Amy a day…” Taylor jokes.
Ethan laughs from somewhere in the back of his throat. “If I had to see her every day, I don’t know that I’d be so generous. Don’t mistake me. She’s not the villain of my story. I don’t think she’s a bad person for falling out of love with me.”
Taylor probably shouldn’t ask, but since they’ve agreed they can be friends and friends share vulnerable truths, he says, “Do you still love her?”
“Oh, of course. I always will,” he says certainly. “But I stopped being in love with her some years ago. Even before the divorce, if I inspected the evidence closely enough. There’s a lot you don’t see when you’re living with undiagnosed ADHD. Your mind gets pulled in so many different directions that you sometimes fail to see what’s occurring right in front of you. Right inside of you even.”
“It’s amazing that you’ve learned this about yourself, and that you’ve claimed peace with the way things turned out,” Taylor says. The game is now forgotten. Sitting between them on the table like the remnants of an appetizer nobody really wanted.
“Peace? Not quite. A piece of peace, maybe.”
“A piece of peace?”
“Sure. To me, peace isn’t a mural. It’s a mosaic. Things have to break before they can be rebuilt into something beautiful and serene again.”
Taylor’s heart tumbles down a never-ending rabbit hole of emotion. The depth of that statement warms his bones yet sends feverish chills down his spine. The world contained behind Ethan’s blue eyes is remarkable. “And your mosaic isn’t complete?” The question is little more than a choked-up rasp.
“Far from it,” Ethan says.
The intensity of their eye contact makes Taylor wish he could snap off a piece of himself and add it to Ethan’s mosaic. Desperately, he wants to be part of what makes Ethan’s life colorful, beautiful, serene. Fuck. These next few days without being able to touch Ethan and say lovely things to him are going to suck.
“It’s late,” Ethan notes, shattering the time lock they were in. “I should be getting back.”
At the door, before he shrugs his hood back onto his head—a poor disguise but a good look for him—he tips his head down and his lips land on Taylor’s cheek. If the rest of his days were lived inside this single sensation, Taylor would be forever happy.
“Good night,” Ethan says before stalking off into the night.
Back in California, Amy only ever talked of the stubborn beast that was her ex-husband. Now more than ever, Taylor sees the prince beneath the fur and the shuttered windows and the snarl. Taylor so clearly sees Ethan and, sadly, a blissful future that can never come to pass.