Chapter 15 Bad Memories
T oday marked the first day without Monica.
I’d been smart and got myself out of the house first thing in the morning to avoid any unanticipated run-ins with Ethan.
Every interaction between us lately seemed to ramp up the inappropriate attraction I felt towards him whether it be by a disarming glance he gave me or one of his many frank remarks that always turned me on my head.
Everything about him flustered me, including and mostly the unavoidable fact that he was my sister’s. She saw him first and that was that.
Over time, my attraction to him would lessen and I’d come to love him as my brother-in-law as I should, but for now? For now, I needed distractions.
That morning, I went to AIM Dance and took their ten o’clock Advanced Ballet and their noon Intermediate Contemporary dance class.
The first class was for a proper brush up while the second was just for a little bit of fun.
After that, I went shopping to pick up a few things—batteries included—before making the unfortunate trip home earlier than I wanted to.
I’d simply run out of reasons to be out of the house.
Arriving home and walking up the steps to the front door, I stopped at the sound of loud voices on the other side of the door, all male and all shouting.
Was Ethan throwing a party in the middle of the day?
He had the day off, so why wouldn’t he throw a party with the misses out of town? In my head, I toyed with the idea of getting back in my car and going into work five hours early.
I’m almost positive Patrick would say I could use the practice.
Just as the thought grew more enticing, a boisterous cheer came from inside and my curiosity won me over.
Pushing the door open, my attention went right over to the couch where Ethan sat with two other men.
Ethan’s eyes jumped to mine as did the two other pairs of eyes in the room.
The beers in their hand and the jerseys on their backs clued me into what they were all doing here in the middle of the day, screaming at the T.V.
Football.
Do not roll your eyes. Don’t do it.
“Hey, you’re home,” Ethan greeted, standing from his spot on the couch.
“Yeah.” I walked into the living room, hanging my purse on the back of one of the chairs against the bartop. I nodded my head towards the T.V.
“I didn’t know you were a football fan.”
Ethan’s grin turned lop-sided and bashful as he walked towards me. “I grew up watching the Bears play with my dad, so it’s sort of in my blood to love the game.”
“I feel like it’s in most men’s blood to love some sport that requires shouting at their T.V.’s.”
“Hey, asshole, are you gonna hog her all to yourself or are you planning to introduce us?”
The voice that came from behind Ethan put a smile on my lips and a grimace on Ethans. Laughter bubbled in my chest as Ethan breathed out a sharp sigh and rolled his eyes as he turned to his friends still on the couch.
“This is Monica’s sister, Alice. Alice, this is Peter.
” Ethan referred to the man wearing blue jeans, glasses, and a kind smile directed right at me.
“And this dumbass is Julian. He’s not important.
” He gestured to the second man on the couch, and just before Ethan turned his broad shoulders over my sight of his friend, I saw Julian’s jaw drop and his eyes color with offense.
“How about you let Alice decide that for herself?”
Annoyance wrote itself in vividly in the lines on Ethan’s face as Julian appeared behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder with enough force to make me wince. Julian was wearing the kind of smile that made me feel queasy in my stomach, but I tried to ignore the feeling as he looked right at me.
“Don’t believe anything this guy says. He’s full of lies. Why do you think he wants to be a lawyer?”
“Well, what do you do?” I asked back.
The falter in his gaze revealed itself before his sheepish answer. “I’m a lawyer.”
“So I can’t trust either of you.”
“I’m an accountant!” Peter announced from the background. “You can trust me.”
“So it’s settled.” A rising smirk slid on my lips as I glanced between the two men. “Peter’s the only one I can trust between the three of you.”
Ethan replied with a less than pleased frown, bringing my smirk to a full-blown grin as I turned towards the kitchen. While I put away my few grocery items, my hearing strained to pick up the whispers being shared behind me. Some sounded angry. Some sounded teasing. Then Julian called out to me.
“Hey, Alice, would you help a guy out and grab me a cup?”
“Oh, sure.”
Without thinking twice about it, I opened up the tall cabinets and reached as much as my little fingers could reach until they grazed the rounded edge of a glass. Just before I could grab the cup, another arm shot in front of mine and snatched it first.
My stare fell to Ethan as he pulled the cup away from me.
“I was getting it.”
“We both know it’s easier if I get it.” I almost flinched at the hard edge in Ethan’s voice. Confused, I sank back down to my heels as Ethan closed the cabinet, sparing Julian a warning look over his shoulder.
“Come on,” Julian whined, and my confusion grew.
Ethan walked away from me, handing Julian his cup. It was like I wasn’t even there as the two stared each other down. Julian was the first to break the connection.
“So, Alice . What do you do for work?”
“I bartend at The Regular right now, but hopefully I can get back to teaching dance soon.”
Julian perked a dark eyebrow up at me. “You’re a dancer?”
I started to nod, but the gesture slowed to a stop as his eyes raked down my body with zero shame whatsoever. My stomach turned over like it had when Julian first smiled at me minutes ago, proving that first impressions were to be trusted after all.
He brought his stare back up from my body, rolling with indecent thoughts.
“I can tell.”
His voice dripped with flirtations I had no plans of reciprocating, and I quickly severed our connection by turning back around to face the cabinets.
It felt weird. I felt weird being so openly flirted with and unsure of how to respond.
I wasn’t used to this yet. I’d been out of the dating game for so long, and now I wasn’t sure how to play.
How does one navigate a game that has no instructions? How can you possibly win at a game where there’s no strategy involved and all luck?
A light brush of wind made by the blur of a man now next to me caught my attention. I turned my chin up to find Ethan standing so close; the fire scorching around his eyes singed my cheeks before he even spoke.
“Go change.”
It was an order so brusque and random that for a moment, I thought I’d misheard him.
“What?”
Warmth played along my left arm as Ethan closed the remaining space between us, lowering his voice to a gruff command.
“I need you to go change.”
Heat slapped my face and then trickled down the rest of my body.
I wanted to tear my eyes away, but couldn’t.
I was trapped, as the spandex shorts I was wearing suddenly felt too close to my skin—too tight.
Even my shirt made the skin underneath it itch to breathe.
My entire body erupted in heatwaves, sucking the moisture out of the air and into my sweating skin.
My eyebrows pulled together as I stared at him, shocked beyond words and humiliated beyond comprehension.
Ethan didn’t even look the teensiest bit sorry. “Just put on some pants or something.”
The embarrassment that I felt as he continued to look down on me was simply suffocating. The rage building beneath my heated skin was overwhelming. The hurt was as undeniable as the harsh cut of Ethan’s stare. The absurdity of what he’d just ordered me to do crushed my eyes into slits.
How dare he.
Even as the slow beginnings of regret spread throughout his pleading stare, it didn’t make any difference to how I was feeling. He’d just crossed a line and now, he knew it.
I left to my room without a word to him. He called my name just once, but I ignored it. I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to him. All I had inside of me was a boiling anger that sloshed around and melted any understanding of why he’d said what he said.
That anger encouraged me to stew in my room and ignore the messages that came through my phone over the next hour.
It encouraged me to willingly relive the memories Ethan’s words had dredged up that not only caused my anger, but also crippled it so badly all it was in the end was a weeping mess of heartache.
‘Why are you wearing that shirt? Cover yourself up, Alice.’
‘You only wear clothes like this so that men will look at you. Don’t try to pretend it’s anything other than that. You like the attention or else you wouldn’t be wearing that dress.’
‘You look like a slut. You can be angry all you want, but I’m just being honest.’
Jonah’s words over the years circled my mind on an unending loop for the next couple hours.
I replayed those scenes over and over and heard his gaslighting comments as if he was right next to me, whispering their shame in my ear.
The words were tattooed onto my brain, the ink poisoned through to my mind so I would never forget to think twice about what I wore in public.
Did it show too much cleavage? Was it too short?
Was my midriff showing and begging for unwanted attention from men?
Was I my own cause of the verbal and sexual harassment I received from men because I wore shorts that were too short?
No. I wasn’t. But for the better part of five years, I thought I was. It didn’t matter that the clothes I wore made me feel confident or sexy. He convinced me I only wore them because I wanted attention and that made me a slut.