Chapter 21 I Wanna Kiss the Stars
“ H ow much have you had to drink?”
Ethan shrugged, his eyes as lazy as his smile. “I didn’t keep count, Mom .”
Searching around the living room, there were at least three empty shot glasses lying around, trying to seem innocent. “It’s just… it seems like you drank a lot .”
“Well, there wasn’t anything better to do.” The kitchen light above his head illuminated this sort of dark fog blanketed over his usually bright with life stare. “I tried watching T.V., going for a run around the neighborhood, even reading a book, but nothin’ worked so… I drank.”
“What do you mean nothing ‘worked’?”
The darkness over Ethan’s eyes solidified to a coal, burning with the same fractured intensity. For several seconds, he said nothing. He simply stared me down with eyes as black and as intimidating as a starless night sky.
Before I could lose my tether on the ground and get pulled into his orbit, he perked up and asked, “Do you want a drink?” He lifted a mostly empty bottle of rum high in the air.
“Either a celebratory drink or a concilila—conciliatory— fuck that word’s hard to say. You pick based on how your date went.”
“I don’t want a drink.”
“Does that mean the date didn’t go well?”
“No. That means that I currently make drinks for a living and I already had a glass of wine tonight, so I’m good.”
“Ah.” Ethan glanced at the little alcohol left in the bottle, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he set it down untouched. “So,” Ethan said, biting his word between gritted teeth. “Wanna tell me how your date went with Peter?”
“Not really.” I hung my purse on the arm of the countertop stool, avoiding all eye contact with Ethan.
“Why not?” I was surprised to hear him sound sincerely put out.
“Because it’s personal?”
“ Personal ?” Ethan rounded the corner of the kitchen counter to meet me in the living room. “What’s so personal about it that I can’t know? Peter’s my good friend and you’re about to be my—” He paused for a beat. It was a long enough beat to pique my intrigue as he loaded up a sharp sigh.
“Sister-in-law.”
God . The way he said it made my blood curdle beneath my layers of crawling skin. ‘Sister’ sounded like a curse coming from him—like the worst kind of slander he could think of.
“So what’s so damn personal about the date that I can’t know?”
Already, Ethan’s persistence was wearing on my state of mind. Grabbing a hold of the chair next to me, I unclasped the backs of my heels whilst trying my best to deter Ethan’s questioning so I could just finish this night and go to bed.
“There’s nothing to tell. I don’t know why you want to know so badly anyway.”
“I just wanna make sure he treated you the way you deserve to be treated.”
I stopped myself from asking how he thought I deserved to be treated. That was a question loaded with worms that would spill out all over the floor and muck up my attempt to recover from my feelings for him.
“He did. He was a perfect gentleman.”
“Does that mean he didn’t try and kiss you?”
The question spilled out of Ethan’s mouth like it had been sitting there, waiting to be heard since I came through the door. It brought with it an uncomfortable clenching in the pit of my stomach, and an uneasy tension that laid itself out between us.
“I didn’t say that.”
There was a pause, and I couldn’t look up at Ethan during it. I didn’t have the guts to.
Instead, I grabbed my heels and padded off into my bedroom, hoping and praying that Ethan wouldn’t follow. And though I wasn’t surprised, I was extremely disappointed when I heard Ethan follow suit with his personality to date, and push his way into my bedroom.
My bedroom door hit the wall as Ethan entered, and even if there hadn’t been a sound to accompany his entry, I would have known he was there regardless.
Even with my back turned from him, his presence still pressed down on my body like a weighted blanket sewed of rocks and twigs.
Ethan being there made it hard to breathe, like he’d taken up all the oxygen in my room and was keeping it to himself until I answered his question.
“Did he kiss you?”
There was no way he meant for it, but his question sounded almost like a threat. The low, ominous power bleeding through his voice sent a shiver up my spine that I was sure was unintended on Ethan’s part.
Turning around to face him, my confidence that his tone was a mistake wobbled as I saw him standing there.
Ethan took up every inch of my small bedroom with his glowering presence, reaching out like arms and strangling any friendliness between us.
His expression burned hot, like the one word answer chasing up my throat set on fire.
“Yes.”
Truthfully, I expected him to be upset. I was bracing for it.
Peter was his friend and I’d gone out and made him my date, which had potentially disastrous effects on all of us.
If Peter hurt me, Ethan would be upset. If I hurt Peter, Ethan would be upset.
If this thing with Peter went in any way sideways, Ethan would be upset.
So I understood him being uncomfortable with it.
What I didn’t understand was everything that came next.
“Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” Ethan asked suddenly. “Because I’m gonna get another drink.”
Before I could say anything, Ethan was walking away from me with a furious quickness in his steps that made no sense. He found his way into the kitchen and laid his hands on the bottle of rum he’d earlier abandoned.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” I asked, rushing to catch up to him.
“No, I don’t think I’ve had enough.” He unscrewed the top to the bottle, unfurling my worry with it. “I won’t think I’ve had enough until I’m passed out and can forget this night ever happened.”
“What? Why would you do that to yourself?” My heart squeezed with the image of him unconscious, unaware, unwilling to remember. “Did something happen tonight? Did Monica call and you guys had a fight?”
For a split second, Ethan stopped what he was doing to look at me, and I flinched at the resentment circling a ring around his eyes. “No, she hasn’t. But thank you for the reminder.”
“What? I didn’t—Ethan, please ?” He readied another shot for himself, and my body was reacting before my mind could catch up. I found myself next to him, my hand on his arm, my eyes on his.
“Please don’t.” He watched me closely as I begged him. “For me?”
I wasn’t sure why I said that, or why I thought that would work. Standing just below Ethan, I was close enough to see each and every fleck of emotion spotted through his vibrant eyes. He was stunning and terrifying; he was the horizon and a riptide, drawing me in and pulling me under.
The look about him turned so harsh that I gasped, my lungs filling with the burning suffocation of saltwater as I drowned beneath the current of Ethan Black.
“I’m drinking because of you, Alice.”
The absence of all color, all life, all presence swallowed me whole, dropping me back in the tortured memories of that one night five months ago.
The panic in my throat had begun to squeeze out tears that dribbled down my face in wet streaks. Jonah looked down at my tears, but he didn’t stop.
“I drink way too much now, and it’s because of you. Because I have to drink to be happy around you.“
“That’s not true,” I tried to protest, but my voice failed to help past a whisper.
“It is. Think about it,” he pushed. “Can you remember one time over the last year where I’ve been happy around you without a beer in my hand or shot being poured down my throat?“
Reality came back harsh and overwhelming as the memories I tried my best to forget hounded me, beating against my heart again and again until it remembered how it felt to be raw and bleeding.
I stumbled away from Ethan, my scarred heart tugging me back.
“Jonah said the same thing…”
Ethan’s reaction was slight at first, but telling.
His expression fell just barely, but it was enough to see the tick of his time-bomb, counting down by the second.
His eyes vibrated with rage that built in him the same as the tension around us climbed higher and higher—until they both shattered expectations.
“Fuck!” A gasp pierced my lungs as Ethan slammed his shot glass down on the countertop with a shocking amount of force. The rum inside splashed up and out of the glass, making a mess of the counter and of Ethan’s shirt.
Ethan didn’t seem to care or even be aware of the mess he’d made or the stains seeping into his gray, fitted shirt.
He stood with both arms against the counter, holding his towering frame upright with his head hung low.
I felt trapped as I watched him, both too scared to move and not to move.
I wasn’t sure how he would react to either.
Ethan was a wild card tonight, and I had no idea what my next play should be.
“See?” Ethan’s voice was unusually gravely, like honey mixed with rocks. “This is why you need to be with Peter.”
What?
“ Peter is a nice guy.” Ethan continued, his volume building with each statement he made. “ Peter would never make you feel as shitty as I just did right now. He would never fuck up like I did.”
Pushing his weight off of the counter, Ethan turned to find me. His gaze landed on mine, heavy with palpable upset.
“Peter’s the man you should be with.”
Confused beyond thought, I had to ask, “What does that have to do with anything?”
He shook his head, eyes still gripping mine. “Everything.”
Then he slumped his head, tearing apart our connection. For a moment, I worried he’d passed out standing up until the sound of humorless laughter shook his shoulders. Bringing his head back up, there was a terribly miserable smile cinching up his lips before he spoke. “And nothing.”
His eyelids drooped halfway down his eyes. “Nothing that matters anyway.”
“It matters to me.”
Ethan’s mouth squished together in thought, his eyes turning suspect. “Only because you’re nice. You’re so so nice, Alice. Sometimes you’re too nice when you should be tougher.”