Chapter 22 The Art of Forgetting
“ S o he’s tried to kiss you twice now? In the span of a few days?”
“I don’t know that he’s actually trying to kiss me. It just feels a lot like he is.” Changing my phone from one ear to the other, I continued. “He’s never come right out and said he wanted to kiss me.”
“He just said that he can’t stop thinking about you and hates that you went out on a date with another man last night,” Gabe shot back.
“This is why I called you!” I let a frustrated sigh out into the fresh morning air and ran my hand back over my ponytail. “None of it makes sense, and I need you to make sense of it all for me. Tell me what to do.”
“You don’t want me telling you what to do, babe.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he looks anything like I remember him, I’d tell you to go for it at least once so you could tell me what it’s like to fuck a God.”
“Gabe!”
Even as I scolded him, a burning rushed across the back of my neck and up onto my cheeks.
Hearing someone else voice the flustering thoughts I had secluded in my mind was bizarre and made me feel like hiding my face in the crook of my elbow and screaming.
After last night though, I had to tell someone.
“ Going for it isn’t even an option. Ethan is off limits as much as a person can be.”
“Yeah, but what if he’s not? What if they break up?”
“That’s—” I sighed loudly, dropping my face into my hands. “That’s not going to happen, and even if it did, he’d still be off-limits.”
“What’s the standard waiting period for dating a sibling’s ex?”
Honestly, if I found out that Monica was dating Jonah even five, ten, twenty years after we’d broken up, I’d still feel weird about it.
I wasn’t sure there even was a proper length of time to wait in between dating ex’s between sisters.
The ick factor would always play a part, and I was sure it would drive a wedge between us that neither of us wanted.
Monica and I were close, and losing her right now wasn’t an option.
“I don’t know, and it also doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It’s about…” My thoughts stumbled, falling over each other to quickly think of a reason that wasn’t about wanting the go ahead to date Ethan. That’s not what I wanted. It really wasn’t. Why bother wanting something that was in every way impossible?
“It’s about you helping me figure out how to… how to deal with Ethan after last night. It’s about you telling me if I should ignore him until he apologizes or confront him about what he said or pretend like last night never happened. Those are my three options. Help me pick one.”
Gabe breathed out loudly on the other end of the phone, and I looked down to my running shoes.
“Before I give my answer, can we play a game?”
Confusion stalled my next sentence. “Sure?”
“Okay, so put yourself back where you were last night with him,” Gabe began, and an immediate regret pinched in my stomach. Already, I didn’t like where this was going.
“You’re with him and he’s leaning in to kiss you just like he was last night except this time, he doesn’t stop. He straight up kisses you. What would you have done?”
Flashes of last night piled through my mind, and immediately, thoughts of Ethan overwhelmed me to the point of dizziness.
He was everywhere inside my head, his eyes shining down at me, bright and blinding the line of right and wrong.
His tempestuous words hit my brain like a hit from a drug—hard and muddling anything around them into a soft blur.
There was nothing else but his words running circles in my mind, round and round until they’d run so fast they ran themselves into permanent divots into the surface of my brain. I’d never forget those words. I couldn’t even hope to.
“I’ve already touched you in so many ways I shouldn’t have, so what’s one more?”
“I don’t want to play this game anymore,” I breathed, just the thought of him stealing all of my air. One falter in letting myself think of last night, and already, I’m a panting mess.
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“Because you know you might have kissed him back and don’t want to admit it?” he pressed.
Yes .
“No. I just think playing this game is avoiding the real issue, which is how I deal with Ethan going forward.”
In the silent beats that ticked by between us on the phone, I could tell that Gabe wanted more. He wanted to push me for an answer, but thankfully knew me well enough to not to.
“Fine. So either he was drunk and said a bunch of weird shit that he didn’t mean or…
” Or. I couldn’t stomach thinking about the possibilities of ‘or .’ “Or you’ve got a man who’s falling for you while being engaged to your sister.
And if that’s the case, then you’re in a very sticky situation, my dear. ”
Tell me about it.
“And what do I do if it’s that? If it’s the… sticky situation.”
God, even considering it made my stomach twist with nerves so strong I could have doubled over in pain.
“Then you’ve got to decide what you want.” His voice warmed and softened, holding my fragile state of mind in its comfort. “You’ve got to decide if you need to turn him down or—”
“There’s no or in that case.” I cut Gabe off. “Turning him down would be the only choice.”
Again, Gabe paused, and I sucked down a nervous breath. You’d think the cooling weather outside would make me feel better, but somehow, sweat poured down the back of my neck, sticking to all of my wisps of baby hairs more now than when I was running twenty minutes ago.
“Then all that’s left to do is to talk to him and see which situation you find yourself in,” he said eventually and with finality.
We hung up shortly after that with promises that I’d give him an update after I spoke to Ethan. Which meant that all I had to do now was… talk to Ethan. A task easier said than done.
I made my way back inside the house, planning to shower and get ready for the day and use that time to figure out what I wanted to say to Ethan. I estimated I’d have around an hour to plan out what I would say when I saw him.
That estimation was thrown right out the window as soon as I closed the front door.
“ Shit .”
The curse drew my attention right to Ethan, finding him hunched over the kitchen sink, a glass of water filling up in his hands. “Can we please refrain from any loud noises this morning?”
The gravel quality to Ethan’s voice matched his appearance perfectly. Wild curls of hair sticking up in odd directions, sweat shining a telling line across his forehead, and eyes settled with dark rims beneath. He was, to put it mildly, a mess.
Staring at him and his disheveled state, a thought occurred.
One that put my erratic heart at ease and a relief in my belly.
If he wasn’t feeling fully himself, maybe it wasn’t the best time to bring up what happened last night?
That would be awfully rude of me to try to have such a serious conversation while he was in such a miserable state.
Maybe this unfortunate and uncomfortable conversation would have to wait until tomorrow or next week or never?
Maybe his hangover was an absolute blessing.
“Not feeling so hot?” I made my way over to the kitchen myself to fetch my own glass of water.
“Nope.” He sank his head into his hands, rubbing his fingers over his eyes. “Feeling more like someone dropped a house on me.”
“Maybe next time don’t drink away the entire kitchen?” I joked, and Ethan gave a half-hearted attempt to laugh before giving up.
This was amazing. Almost all of the nerves I’d gathered thinking about this conversation pushed to the back of my mind, knowing that we couldn’t possibly talk about it now. He was a trainwreck. He could barely hold a thought together from the sounds of it.
“So how’d your date go last night?” Ethan asked, still hunched over the sink.
And everything stopped. I felt all expression fall from my face.
“What?”
Pushing himself up, Ethan spared me a barely there glance from over his shoulder. “Your date with Peter. Did it go okay?”
I blinked at him, but didn’t say anything. Was he joking?
“You don’t remember?”
“Remember what? I wasn’t there.” His eyes widened, flying to mine. “Was I? I didn’t crash your date, did I?”
“Wha— No . I—” My words stuck behind my teeth, blocked by the insane reality that was slowly sinking in around me. “You asked me about my date last night. You don’t remember that?”
Ethan’s eyebrows rose at once, with surprise elevating them.
“I did? I don’t remember having that conversation.”
Those nerves that had moved to the rear of my mind crept back up, this time with an entirely different emotion pressing them forward. If he didn’t remember asking about my date, what else didn’t he remember?
“What do you remember from last night?”
I heard the desperate twinge in my voice, but I ignored it. I needed to know what he knew.
“Um, I remember… I went for a run and watched some T.V.”
“What else?”
Ethan turned to face me, leaning his weight up against the sink. “Drinking. I remember lots and lots of drinking.”
“Do you remember why you were drinking so much?”
He crossed his arms over themselves and shrugged. All he did was give me a goddamn shrug. A furious burst of humiliation crowded over my vision, and for a moment all I saw was striking white. All I felt was shame pouring over every inch of my body, melting through bones and turning them to sludge.
I felt weak and limp and completely defeated.
“So you don’t remember anything from last night?”
With his arms still crossed over his chest, Ethan stared at me long and hard. The pupils of his eyes turned to the familiar black ice just like I’d seen in them last night. His mouth twisted, and his nostrils flared before saying, “No.”
Standing there in front of him, I knew I’d just been handed the perfect out. This was the best possible outcome for this entire mess, and I should be relieved. He didn’t remember. We could move on and I’d just have to forget about last night just the same as he had.
I should have been thrilled, but I wasn’t. Because I’d just learned something about Ethan that I never knew before this moment.
He was a liar.
He was a dirty, rotten, no good liar .
And he’d just lied right to my face. He remembered everything. The proof of it in his eyes. Our memories were there, playing through his stare like their very own movie. I watched them and I watched the break in Ethan’s facade come along with them.
It would be one thing if we both agreed to never talk about it again. It would also be another thing if we both avoided the conversation forever until we actually might have forgotten about it years and years down the road.
It was an entirely different, insulting, infuriating thing to lie to me about it and make me look like a fool.
“Cool. Well, in that case—” I yanked the refrigerator door open with as much force as was in my voice. “The date went great .” Grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge, I continued, feeling my embarrassment fuel my anger and the two emotions work in step with each other.
“It went so great in fact that we’re going out on a second date.”
Slamming the fridge door closed, I spun on a quick axis to spot Ethan as a blanket of open irritation covered his expression. “That’s great .”
“Yeah, it is great, isn’t it?”
Perhaps it was due to his hangover or maybe it was because he knew I had figured out his lie, but either way, Ethan wasn’t even attempting to hide how he felt as I kept on.
The more I spoke, the more visible his anger became, burning a bright flame in his eyes that grew more formidable by the second.
“I said it was great,” he bit out.
“Oh, I know. I’m just trying to get across how great it was and how great the second date is going to be.”
My own anger was firing up, bubbling the blood in my veins red hot. Maybe it was for this reason that I said what I said next. Blood wasn’t pumping properly into my brain and consequently, comments unfiltered by logic or compassion made their way out like daggers aimed right at Ethan’s heart.
“It’s going to be especially great for Peter considering that I always put out on the second date!”
I turned from Ethan before I could see his reaction and bolted towards my bedroom. Though I couldn’t see his reaction, I still heard it. As I made my way around the corner, a violent curse spewed from Ethan’s mouth, followed seconds later by a loud crash.
My heart was pumping furious blood a mile a minute as I threw myself into my bedroom and slammed the door behind me loud enough to rival the crashing sounds coming from the kitchen.
Alone in my room, I didn’t realize how harshly I was breathing until it was the only sound to fill up my bedroom.
I couldn’t decide if I was more humiliated that he’d rather lie and pretend that last night never happened, or if I was upset with myself for how I handled it.
I should have just let it go. I should have just realized that even though it hurt to be lied to, it was for the best.
Him forgetting last night was for the best for literally everyone involved.
So why couldn’t I let him forget it?