Chapter 23 A Necessary Change
T he leasing office felt cold and much smaller than it looked online.
The plastic chair I’d been sitting in signing paperwork and waiting for my credit score to be run was similar to the ones used in my middle school, and every bit as uncomfortable.
Patrice—the leasing office manager—didn’t make things much more comfortable either. Once she knew she didn’t have to do the whole spiel to sell me on renting one of her apartments, she pretty much stopped trying at all.
“You bringing any pets with you?” Patrice asked, tapping the butt of her cigarette against the chipping, golden ashtray sitting on her desk.
“No, ma’am.”
“And it’s just you movin’ in? No boyfriends or girlfriends or anything?”
Sucking in a breath, I answered as I blew it out. “Nope.”
Thank you for the painful reminder, Patrice.
She rolled her thin-lined lips together and exchanged her cigarette for a pen.
“All right, sign here and here on the next seven pages and we’ll be all set for you to move in by the end of the month.
Assuming that your check doesn’t bounce, that is.
” She gave me a warning glance and I shook my head vigorously, assuring her that my check would clear.
I left my soon-to-be new home around a half hour later with a copy of my new lease and a sizable dent in my savings.
As I hopped back in my car, I thought about how I was doing the right thing.
I thought about how I was making a decision that would benefit everyone currently in that house.
I couldn’t stay there anymore. Not now that I knew about Ethan, and especially not now that I used what I knew about Ethan against him.
I made him jealous on purpose yesterday, shoving my date with Peter in his face, and that was bad.
That was worse than bad. I shouldn’t have wanted it to matter to Ethan that I might sleep with another man, but I did and I took it too far.
Even if what Ethan told me two nights ago was a lie or if he really didn’t remember our conversation that night, I still needed to leave.
I was one breath away from kissing a man that wasn’t mine two nights ago.
Had he not stopped it, I never would have.
That night, I willingly forgot about Monica so I could have Ethan all to myself for just one moment, and that made me a gutless hypocrite.
I hadn’t thought of it like that until yesterday, but everything I despised Jonah and Hannah for, I almost became.
And so easily too. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes that he had me trapped with his words and the idea of a kiss.
That’s all it took, though. A couple hundred seconds to make a terrible decision that would have destroyed every second of my life from here on out.
For months I’d been spouting off self-righteous crap about cheating and there I was, almost giving my big sister the same heartless treatment.
I was prepared to do to her what Hannah had done to me, and the second my brain put two and two together, the thought of being with Ethan corrupted instantaneously.
No matter my feelings, no matter his feelings, we could never come close to where we had two nights ago. We could never be anything more than what Monica needed us to be.
* * *
When I arrived home, I walked into an empty house, thank goodness.
I’d planned my day around Ethan’s work schedule so I’d miss seeing him completely.
He usually worked until around five o’clock and I had to be at the bar by four o’clock so theoretically, the timing should have worked out in my favor.
It wasn’t until I’d set my stuff down on the kitchen table and begun to make myself a sandwich that I realized my theoretically perfect plan had gone to hell.
The sound of a toilet flushing filled the house, and before I could run and hide in the confines of my bedroom, the door to the hallway bathroom swung open and Ethan walked out.
Surprise sprung to his eyes and a momentary flinch pinged through his body as he saw me standing there.
“Sorry, I didn’t think anybody was home,” I immediately apologized.
“I came home for lunch. My car’s in the garage.”
Ethan’s explanation made sense, and I mentally kicked myself for not thinking to check the side garage.
“Oh, okay.” I nodded. “Makes sense.”
“I was about to leave soon actually.”
Thank God.
“Oh, I’ll get out of your hair until then.”
I spared Ethan a polite smile, thanking my lucky stars for an out of this nerve-curling run-in.
“You don’t have to.”
His voice stopped my leaving, as did the hesitant and remorseful plea in his stare. There was a notable yank on my heartstrings being trapped by that look.
“I really don’t mind,” I found myself saying.
Sorrow outgrew his hesitance, and slowly, Ethan started towards me.
“I mind.”
Anxiety launched up a field day inside my chest, feeling like it was going to explode the closer Ethan got. His expression was difficult to read and enraged my anxiety even more.
“I mind it a lot,” he continued. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to avoid me.”
Gah, blunt. So blunt.
With a chuckle, I pushed loose hair behind my ear. “I’m not avoiding you.”
Pulling on the skin of my elbow, I couldn’t manage to hold Ethan’s gaze to save my life.
It was intrusive. It was knowing. It was killing me blink by blink.
He stopped at the edge of the kitchen table, and a sigh sounding like a subdued lament poured from him and drew my eyes to his.
Except, I couldn’t see his. They were closed and pinched tightly, and the little space between his eyebrows was too.
He looked like he was in pain.
My ever-bleeding compassion for this man trickled through my fingertips as they tingled to reach out and comfort him. Ethan rested a hand on the kitchen table, looking like he needed it for support.
“I think…” Again, Ethan sighed. “I think we need to talk.”
My gut clenched like a hand had reached inside me and squeezed it. ‘We need to talk’ never led to anything good. Not in movies, not in books, and most definitely not in real life. There wasn’t anything Ethan and I could talk about right now that would lead to anything even remotely good.
On the kitchen table, his hand resting there pulled my focus as it fisted itself against the dark wood surface. With his sleeves rolled up, the perfect impressions of his veins pushed out against his skin, showing off his obvious strength and even more obvious anguish.
“Alice,” Ethan started, his tone heavy with despairing guilt. “I rem—”
Then, he stopped, but only for a beat.
“What’s this?”
Searching for what he was referring to, my eyes followed to where his were focused.
Oh… crap.
“I actually was going to tell both you and Monica whenever she got home tomorrow.” Lie. No I wasn’t. I was going to wait until the day before I moved out to say anything.
Ethan picked up the lease to my new apartment that I’d stupidly left sitting out, the guilt and agony stable in his features vanishing. It was most likely the shocked rage that appeared next that scared them both into hiding.
“You’re moving out?”
Ethan’s stare cut right through mine, boiling my brain as I struggled to find my next words. “I-I thought it was probably time.”
He did not respond. He did not move. All he did was stare me down like a lion that was meticulously planning out the downfall of his next victim.
“I just think I’ve mooched off of you and my sister for too long is all,” I tried to joke. He did not find it funny.
“Um, it’s not that far from here.”
I didn’t know why I couldn’t stop talking. The silence he was forcing me through was driving me quite literally mad. “Maybe about ten minutes or so.”
Nothing I was saying was making this better or making Ethan talk. It was like he was broken. The tension mounting between us was practically vibrating the house around us, and I felt like we were seconds away from the walls caving in.
An unexpected sound from the front door stalled the threatening vibrations and tugged my head around. Shock, guilt, and gratefulness swirled a nausiating cockail through my stomach as her bright smile came through the door.
“Hey! The house is still standing. I’m impressed, you two!” Her wide grin and joking attitude faded when neither myself nor Ethan reacted to her entrance right away.
“ Jesus Christ, the mood sucks in here. Who died?”
Just as my brain ruddered back to life in slow ticks to answer Monica, Ethan beat me to it.
“Your sister’s moving out.”
Monica’s jaw dropped open as her eyes followed suit.
“ What ?” She placed her suitcases against the wall, the shoulder of her sweater falling off as she leaned over. “Wow, babe. A week alone with you and you’ve run her out of the house.”
Monica’s teasing reaction was a grateful relief to the compilement of frenetic nerves the last few minutes of my life created.
“I just thought it was time I get back on my feet is all.” Meeting Monica’s smile with an easy one of my own, I walked over and hugged her.
As I pulled Monica in close, unwarranted flashes of the last few days streaked across my mind. Pictures of Ethan towering over me, holding me, whispering forbidden nothings to me buried my heart under mounds of guilt, and I only held her tighter.
I loved my relationship with my sister, and I’d never been more sure of my decision to move out as I was now.
“Aren’t you home a day early?” I asked, pulling out of our embrace.
“I am .” Monica’s shoulder brushed mine as she passed me, making her way towards where I knew Ethan was. “I told them I needed to leave a day early because I had an appointment to pick out wedding cakes with my fiancé.”
From somewhere behind me, Ethan spoke and as he did, I could picture so easily the confusion on his face.
“We don’t have an appointment for anything today?”
“I know. I lied.”
“Why?”