Chapter 14 I Smell Like Cherries
T hat night’s shower was one of the best I could remember having in a long time.
Coming out of my bedroom for my nightly glass of water before bed, I felt all clean and satisfied and comfy wrapped in my cotton pajamas and fuzzy socks. Although I said goodbye to Gabe tonight and learned Monica was leaving at the end of the week, I still managed to feel good .
There really wasn’t anything a great shower couldn’t cure.
Then, I spotted Ethan moping on the couch and all of those good feelings melted away with my smile.
I really should start keeping water bottles in my room.
“Oh. Sorry.”
My footing reversed back towards my bedroom to make a quick escape.
“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to go.” I stopped my traveling feet as I saw the sadness in his stare and the bags under his eyes that matched the color of the drink in his hand.
I knew he wasn’t, but I asked anyway because it was the polite thing to do. “Are you okay?”
His eyes left mine as the last word tipped from my tongue, and I knew from that slight gesture that I was right. He wasn’t okay. I could never look anyone in the eyes when they asked me if I was okay if I was the exact opposite. Lying was easier when you didn’t have to look at anybody to do it.
“I assume you heard?”
“I did. I’m sorry.”
Ethan creased his forehead as his eyes swept back up to me. “Why are you sorry?”
I froze. My tongue locked up as did my brain, the two refusing to communicate with each other to spit out a logical answer. Why was I sorry? Why did I say that?
“Um, just-just because I know fights are hard.”
“Yeah.” Ethan paused, his expression turning thoughtful. “But what’s that saying? Fighting with your partner proves that you care?”
I gave a tiny shrug. “I never really believed that.”
“No?”
“No. I think showing that you care proves that you care.”
A line of worry snagged through Ethan’s stare, and I realized that’s not what he wanted to hear right now.
“And Monica, she does care,” I added. “She’s always showed it in odd ways, but she does. I can tell.”
He gave a humorless chuckle that knocked against my bones and took a sip from his glass, his stare far off and frenzied. My heart went out to him. It really did. Monica wasn’t an easy person to know or to love, but she was worth it all.
Walking a little closer to him, I caught his eye.
“Monica’s never been a big gesture kind of person or even a small gesture kind of person. She shows that she cares by being there, by showing up when it counts and standing by your side no matter what. By opening her home to her sister indefinitely without a second thought.”
Ethan nodded, thumbing his bottom lip in thought. “Yeah. You’re right. All of that’s true. Except if work is involved.”
I took in a breath to respond when my mind drew a big fat blank. Falling into a quiet laugh, I replied, “You might have me there.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
In the weeks I’d known Ethan, I’d come to know him as a self-assured, tenacious, silly man.
Tonight, between what I’d heard from the fight and the defeated look in his eyes I saw now, I felt like I was meeting a different man entirely.
One that was shaken and lashed with flaws like the rest of us.
“I love how ambitious she is, and I knew that going in. I wouldn’t want to change that for anything in the world.”
I could feel there was a ‘but’ in the air, wanting to tag along onto the rest of his sentence, but he left it alone. Probably for the best, too.
Then, Ethan sighed and dropped his chin into the up-turned palm of his hands.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”
“It’s okay. People tell me I’m a good listener.”
My lips tried to raise at him, though the look Ethan gave me as he batted his eyes up to mine made it very hard to move a single muscle.
“That’s hard to find these days.”
Every look offered to me by that man either overwhelmed me or shamed me in the way it made me feel, and I’d had about as much of it as I could take, so I changed the subject.
“What’re you drinking?” I asked, eyeing the glass filled half-way with a dark liquid hanging in his hand.
The side of his mouth pulling up a tad, he flickered his brightened stare up to me. “Try and guess.”
He stretched his arm out to me, holding his drink out for me to take.
My eyes went from Ethan’s to the drink many times before my pride shoved my hesitation out of the way, and I closed the gap.
Harsh aromas burned the inside of my nose as I took a whiff of the cocktail.
As the taste of the drink washed across my tongue, I knew exactly what I was drinking by the bitter nostalgia that hit my stomach right after the alcohol.
“Jack and Diet Coke.”
Ethan’s eyes glistened over with obvious surprise. “Wow, I’m impressed. You got it down to the Diet in the coke.”
I handed Ethan back his drink, dropping my eyes to the floor.
“It was my Ex’s drink of choice.”
Without looking at him, I couldn’t see his expression or reaction if there was any, but I could feel the air in the room turn stale with the mention of Jonah.
“You haven’t talked about him since we watched 27 Dresses.”
The rotten air stuck to my skin, making me fidget in place and twine my fingers around the edge of my cotton shorts. “He’s not worth talking about.”
There was another pause between us and for a moment, the regret of being so honest twisted in my chest.
“He really hurt you, didn’t he?” Ethan’s voice caught me off guard, pulling my eyes up to find his.
I shrugged. “It was my fault for not seeing the signs sooner.”
It was strangely fascinating how blind a person could be to something so obviously toxic. For me, my blindness was a love that had been masked by my own insecurities that Jonah loved to stoke. The more insecure I was, the higher he could rise above me.
Over the years, I built him up and up while he systematically broke me down to someone I didn’t recognize or respect.
Ethan caught my wandering thoughts with a tilt of his head, and a focused curiosity in his eyes. “You blame yourself a lot. Do you know that?”
I blinked at him, lips parting to say something excusing back but nothing came out. Was he right?
“I… I guess it’s just another unfortunate habit I got from being with my ex. It was always just easier to nod and apologize than fight with him.”
“You definitely give out more of a lover than a fighter vibe.”
I pursed my lips to the side, tipping a strand of damp hair back over my ear. “I’ve always been that way. I’ve never liked confrontation.”
Eyeing me over the rim of his glass, Ethan spoke. “Sounds like he took advantage of that.” And then he took a drink.
“Yeah.” My eyes followed his Adam’s apple down as he swallowed, trying to think of some clever segue and coming up short.
“Enough about me and more about literally anything else please.” I forced a breath of laughter, trying hard to break the tension Jonah’s mention had put there.
“But I like learning about you. Aside from a few of the more obvious things, you’re a pretty closed book.”
I couldn’t help the shrug that came next or the way my toes pointed and drew tiny circles of distraction on the hard floor.
“That, or I’m just not a very interesting read.”
At that, a gentle thoughtfulness settled in Ethan’s gaze. “Something tells me that that’s just not true.”
Jonah certainly thought so.
He didn’t want my mediocre life with my mediocre personality and my mediocre dreams. Jonah wanted excitement. He wanted extraordinary, and I was about as ordinary as you got.
“What about you? Are you more a lover or a fighter?”
Ethan’s closed-lipped smile grew into a grin. “Can’t a guy be both?”
As it had been established, I was definitely more of a lover than a fighter, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to smack that charming smile right off of his lips and make him take back those teasing words.
“That’s my fault for asking. Shoulda known your answer would have been inappropriate.”
“Hey. First—” He lifted and pointed a finger at me from around his glass. “Stop blaming yourself.”
Crap . “And second, it wasn’t just a joke answer. I think a person can be both. Sometimes I let stuff roll off my shoulders. Sometimes I fight. Just depends what it is.”
“What kind of stuff do you fight for?”
A shade of awe rose to the surface on Ethan’s face, and I was sure in that second that my too-personal question took him by surprise. He looked to his drink, as if the answers were swirling in the ice, and tapped his index finger against the glass.
“The people I love.” His voice was as rich as the taste of the liquor that lingered on my tongue and every bit as intoxicating, and I shivered without meaning to. “I’ll fight round after round for what and who I love. I can’t hold back or hold it in.”
My curiosity pushed forward, encouraging me to ask him the what, when, and why of this onetime occurrence, but he’d already opened up some tonight and I didn’t want to push my luck.
“That sounds really sweet actually,” I decided on saying.
A smile was in his eyes when he turned his attention back up to me, and my lips responded to match.
“Speaking of sweet,” Ethan began, inhaling deeply. “What is that? What do you always smell like?”
Excuse me? “What?”
Without even hesitating, Ethan wrapped his fingers around my wrist and guided me in closer to where he was sitting. “It’s something fruity, but I haven’t been able to figure out which fruit and it’s driving me nuts.”
The violent pitter-pattering of my heart was sudden and distracting to anything that wasn’t my wrist clasped in the grip of his hand. My wrist looked so small and his hand felt so warm, and I was hopeless to filter my next response.
“Well, it’s not nuts. I can tell you that much.”
Ethan opened his mouth and then shut it again almost immediately.
“What?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, coughing out a strangled laugh. “I’m holding off on the inappropriate joke in my head. Trying to be better about watching what I say around you like I said I would.”
Rolling my eyes, I slumped my shoulders.
“You’re a child, you know that, right?”
He flashed his brilliant stare up to mine, nodding. “I do, yeah.”
I breathed a soft laugh through my nose, staring down at him and trying so hard not to enjoy his gentle and yet somehow firm touch. Pushing the crazed beating of my heart to the back of my mind, I answered him.
“Cherries. My shampoo is cherry scented.”
Ethan closed his eyes, his expression turning satisfied. “That’s it. Cherries.”
When he opened his eyes back up to me, they were softer—glowing almost—and my heart buckled even before he spoke.
“I like it.”
I didn’t need to ask in return what his scent was, nor would it be appropriate. I already knew. From our close moments at the axe place, the club, and even now, I knew he smelled like a perfect concoction of soap and crisp embers from a dwindling campfire.
I tried not to love it as much as I knew I did.
“Maybe that should be your nickname,” Ethan said, breaking me from my thoughts of rolling myself in a field of his perfect scent.
“ Cherry ? What am I—a stripper?”
Both of Ethan’s eyebrows dropped into the straightest line I’d ever seen. “I just said that I’m trying not to make inappropriate jokes around you. Can you not dangle them in front of me?”
“Sorry,” I said with a laugh. “At least you can say that you learned something new about me tonight.”
As close as we still were, I saw it as if his stare was made up of crystal when a touch of appreciation lightened his eyes.
“You smell like cherries.”
The low notes of his voice ran shivers through every inch of me, and I returned the thankful look in his eyes as best I could.
“I smell like cherries.”