Barbie
Ethan is kissing me.
On the cheek, if we’re being technical here. The mint of his breath is still warm on my face. The heat of his body is still seared into mine. The press of his fingers is still firm against the small of my back, bunching the fabric of my top.
I want to turn my head an inch so badly and capture his lips with mine. I want to rip his shirt in half with my bare hands and taste the salt of his skin. I want to—
“He’s not looking our way, is he?” Ethan murmurs. My brain goes through a considerable delay before processing those words. I’m too busy wondering if it’ll be extremely forward of me to smush my boobs against him.
It would be extremely tacky of me.
My parents raised me better. There’s got to be some decorum instilled in me—an ounce, a crumb, a fraction of an atom; whatever it may be. I’m not some middle schooler who’s discovered boys for the first time. I’m Barbie who’s discovered her coworker is very hot for the millionth time.
God, his body is so solid and sturdy and rugged. Not wanting to describe him with adjectives one would use for a tree any longer, I pull my head back an inch, and my gaze connects with his. The noisy ice cream parlor is practically nonexistent the longer I look up into those dark brown eyes.
It takes a moment for me to realize he’s shielding me with his body, his back to the Flanders, and unless our manager wants to waltz right over and gets super close and personal—he won’t see our faces.
For all Ed knows, we’re just two strangers who can’t keep their hands off each other, and not Ethan and Barbie who can’t seem to keep their hands to themselves now that the floodgates have been opened.
“No.” I lean over slightly and hazard a quick peek, my palms flat against his hard chest. Our manager is too enamored with the various flavors of ice cream on display to notice us standing a few yards away or witness Ethan’s hands sliding down inch by inch—I clear my throat.
Ethan blinks, and I can see the gears working in his head when he comes to realize what he’s doing and abruptly lets go of me. “We’ll have to get pistachio later—”
A round of cheers and claps cuts him off, startles me, and draws our attention to the pimply teenager who’s probably—let’s be real here, definitely—not paid enough to scoop out ice cream, toss it into the air, and break into a rendition of some theatrical parlor trick with the two scoopers in his hands.
“Is this even hygienic?” I whisper. “Or profitable? What happens if it splats on the floor? That seems like a waste—”
“Think about that later,” Ethan says, his fingers twining with mine. “Let’s make our escape now.”
He leads me out of the ice cream shop, and it’s as if we’ve stepped into a different dimension because, boy howdy, is it so freaking hot outside. And crowded. So, so crowded.
A pitchy laughter carries with the wind. My mind shuts down.
As does my body when I freeze, and Ethan halts a split second later. The level of focus in his concerned gaze is no match for my racing heartbeat thrumming in my ears.
It’s a lot of people. We’d have to bottleneck our way out, and I don’t see any pocket of space anywhere.
“Barbie.” Ethan’s voice is steady, tinged with something reassuring as concern gathers in his eyes. “Do you want me to carry you out of here?”
“Like a bride?” I wheeze. Absolute horror floods me.
“Like a piggyback ride,” he says, which is much better and less attention-grabby and won’t have me blindly shoving and elbowing my way out of here.
“But your neck—”
“It’s fine. I’ll let you know if I pull it again.”
I’m not sure how or when it happens because my brain is scattered across a hundred different things going on all at once in my head, but I’m eventually on his back, my arms looped around his neck, and my thighs clinging tightly to his hips. I’m breathing through my nose and trying to focus on it.
“So, what’s the internship for?” Ethan’s voice breaks through my flimsy attempt.
“What internship?” I gasp, barely catching a glimpse of a chalkboard sign posted outside a pub. Everything around us is so bright and sporadic and so goddamn dizzying.
“The one you’re abandoning the dream team for,” he says, his tone is even and calm like his heartbeat.
“Oh.” I breathe in deeply and exhale. “There’s this research center—an oceanography one—about a thirty-minute drive”—I swallow another lungful of air—“from my hometown. They opened a research program for how our climate is affecting the pelagic ecosystem—”
“Pelicans?”
“Okay, so,” I wheeze, “the ocean is made of”—my lungs constrict—“various and distinct environments.”
My ex-fiancé would have put a stop to this the moment I mentioned oceanography. Heck, Bell would’ve told me to stop talking nerdy to her. Then she’ll follow up with a tactical pivot of the conversation to some music festival she wants to attend.
Ethan, however, keeps asking me to explain the terms to him. It’s as if we’re back on the plane, heavily engrossed in the conversation where we talked about the most random things yet were none the wiser about who we actually are to each other.
I’m in the middle of describing the bathypelagic region when he sets me down on my feet. In a shady, secluded spot with barely any foot traffic.
“So, there’s no sunlight?” is what he asks when he turns to face me.
“That’s why it’s called the midnight zone.”
“The midnight zone,” he repeats. “Huh.” I look over while he cocks his head and meets my eyes. His gaze is searching. Gentle. “Finally learned something on this boardwalk tour.”
I stare at him for a moment before a soft chuckle breaks free from my chest. “You did. Not me.”
“I’m sure we can easily remedy that.”
The maritime museum is boring. Although the submarine we’re in is currently empty.
I’d much rather ooh and ahh at the lighthouse not too far from here, but I can’t deny that I am learning some useless trivia.
More importantly, I have extra fodder to provide Bell with when it comes to the mini-vacation I promised to have.
The front-facing camera on my phone, as I’ve come to discover, is terrible to work with in the limited light. After my sixth attempt at taking a selfie beside the tap signals plaque, I flag Ethan down the second he returns from the front of the vessel.
“You all right?” he asks. “Want me to get you out of here?”
“I’m not claustrophobic,” I say, then push my phone into his hand. “I need a picture if you’re willing to help me out here.”
He takes the device and holds it up. “You’re not a people-person?”
“I’m fine around people—if they’re kind.” I take a few steps back, beaming as I pose beside the periscope. “I’ve got no patience for anyone who’s maliciously cruel or into toxic positivity.”
“What’s the latter?”
“You know Marnie from HR?”
Understanding fills his eyes. “Ahh.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I plaster on another grin. “Can you take another picture? I want to avoid sending my sister a blurry photo.”
“Just for your lack of faith, I’m taking a bunch of out-of-focus shots,” he teases, and I stick my tongue out at him in response. He brings my phone back to his eye level, and neither of us speaks while he taps at the screen twice.
A minute passes. We both remain rooted in place. Breathlessness claims me the longer I’m held under his gaze.
Is there such a thing as the mile-high club but for nautical vessels? More specifically, submarines? The league under the sea club?
There’s a clambering sound toward the back of the sub, which is my cue to stop checking him out and put an end to the idea of christening the engine room.
“Do you want me to take a picture?”
“Can you? I should send something to Mom and Lara.”
My eyebrows furrow. I understand the former. The latter, however, is something I’m having trouble comprehending.
Maybe it’s because I’d rather laugh my ass off and block my ex than send him any pictures of me, which actually happened last year when Warner drunk-texted me and asked me for nudes. After all, it was quote-unquote his birthday.
“You’re… going to send Lara a picture?” I say slowly, wishing my words didn’t come out so flat and clipped. I’m not jealous. I’m simply nosy as fuck.
“Just to let her know I’m alive.”
I take my phone back and carefully pluck his, which is unlocked, and trade places with him.
My lips immediately press together when he poses awkwardly against the periscope.
Suddenly, I’m thinking about his terrible profile picture at work while he moves his ever-so-stiff arms—I’m not even sure what he’s doing can be called posing.
I’m channeling a considerable amount of willpower not to break into laughter while I snap a couple of pictures of him. Then, for his sake, I offer him a few suggestions—most of which involve crossing those magnificent arms against his chest or interacting with the periscope.
Some people are photogenic and born to be on camera. Ethan Carter is not one of them. It’s kind of endearing, really. Dorky for sure, which adds to the charm.
Or, I have it bad for him, which is quite an astute and glaringly obvious observation. When we’re not engaging in our dodgy flirting rituals, the number of times I’ve secretly checked him out in the past forty-eight hours alone can only be rivaled by how often he’s been sneaking glances.
All we need now is a bunch of hand flexes thrown into the mix, and we’d be living our best period-drama lives.
“Jesus. If these were taken on a disposable camera,” he hedges, “we’d have run out of film twenty pictures ago.”
“You’ll thank me later,” I say. “More importantly, so will your ex.”
His head pulls back, and he frowns. “My ex?”
“Yeah. The girl you thought about proposing to three times?” I remind him, but the sheer look of confusion written on the lines of his face almost has me backtracking. “You know. Lara?”
“Lara, my sister?”
“You dated a girl with the same name as your sister?” I gasp, horrified.
“No,” he chokes out. “Lara’s my sister. Aimee’s my ex. I would never date anyone with the same name as my sister. I turned down a girl once ’cause Laurel was too close to Lara.”
“Oh.” Embarrassment blazes across my cheeks. I’m not sure what to say. “That makes so much sense. I was wondering why your ex would watch your mom for you.”
“Yeah, Aims wouldn’t,” he says finally, bringing his hand behind his neck. “She wasn’t a big fan of my mom, which would break her heart if she found out the truth.”
“Oof,” I say, sparing him a sympathetic wince. “I’m, uh, guessing your ex wouldn’t appreciate these pictures either.”
“No,” he says. “I don’t want her to assume I’m interested in restarting our relationship. I’ve officially moved on, or else a lot of things that have happened these past few days would have been entirely inappropriate and douche-y. It wouldn’t have been fair to her or you.”
“To me?”
He nods, his gaze resolute, and my lips twitch while I fight the hint of a smile beginning to form on my lips. In the near distance, I hear chatter and a shriek of laughter, severing eye contact with him to glance at the exit.
“We should go check out the other boats,” I suggest. “Get our money’s worth.”
“Or, you know, we can head back down to the boardwalk and grab a bite to eat before the dinner rush,” he counters.
“What are you in the mood for?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Lady’s choice.”
A grin breaks across my face, and his eyes narrow immediately as I say, “Famous last words, Ethan.”
“We’re not eating there,” he says, which causes me to snicker. He gestures to the chalkboard with both hands. “It’s a crappy spot.”
“It clearly says Crabby Spot,” I reply, forging on when he opens his mouth to respond. “Relax, Ethan. It’s a bar, not a crack house. It’s ridiculously hot. I want a fruity drink.”
He heaves out a weary sigh, shaking his head. “You and your fruits.”
“I will go absolutely feral for mangoes,” I tell him, and he chuckles.
“Is this why you sent us the bouquet?”
“Huh?” My brow furrows. “Oh. No. I sent you guys the bouquet as a distraction.”
“As a what?”
“And, obviously, a get well soon slash thinking of you gift,” I say, but it clearly doesn’t explain anything to him. If anything, he looks more confused. “Okay. It’s gonna sound a little morbid, so bear with me.”
His expression turns solemn as he nods for me to continue. I spare him a nervous laugh, brushing my hair behind my ear. Glancing around, the closest person nearby is yards away from us.
“Don’t tell anyone at work, okay?”
“I won’t.” He makes an X over his heart, which causes me to duck my head with a tiny smile.
“My sisters and I were a wreck after our parents died. Super miserable. Really devastated,” I babble, my voice low.
While shock colors his profile, he doesn’t cut me off.
“Friends and family wouldn’t stop dropping by with food and flowers.
People were reaching out to us nonstop to see if we were okay.
But honestly, none of us were handling it very well because their deaths were sudden. Hit and runs generally are, you know?
“Then, like, an old neighbor of ours sent us a fruit bouquet. Which, you know, is kinda odd—to us it was. Like sorry your parents died because they wanted to walk around their neighborhood, here’s some star-shaped fruit.”
Ethan looks at me, and my cheeks begin to burn under the intensity of his gaze.
“Okay, it was like the first time in weeks my sisters and I weren’t crying or being testy with each other.
We were too busy laughing at how fucking out-of-the-blue the fruit bouquet was, and it was what we needed, strangely enough,” I stammer, my body going completely stock-still when he places his hand on my shoulder.
With a gentle squeeze, he nods. “I get it.”
“You do?”
He nods again, then pauses, as if weighing something in his head. “I’m sorry about your parents. I know how painful it can be to lose someone.”
“Your dad?” I guess. “Wait, no. He passed away before you were born.”
“Yeah,” he concurs. “My stepdad. He died during my junior year of college.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “That must have been really hard for you—”
“Not as hard as it was for my mom,” he cuts in.
“It’s not the Olympics,” I say. “Your hurt is just as valid.”
His shoulder hitches, and he tips his head toward the bar before I can object. “Come on. Let’s see if they have mango-y drinks for you.” He’s already moving to the door, not giving me a chance to press him for more details when he opens it.
Immediately, we’re greeted with a screeching high note that a small few would describe as singing.
“Did I forget to mention?” I whisper, clasping my hand on his bicep and fighting my grin when he stares blankly ahead. “It’s karaoke night.”