Chapter 34 Third Wheelin’ Road Trip #2
“Okay,” I squeaked, regretting it the second it came out. I tried to hide my face behind my wavy sheet of golden hair, knowing my stupid fair skin well enough to be sure I was sporting an obvious blush at having just high-pitch malfunctioned in response to Ethan.
Helping him with the bags meant being alone with him for even thirty seconds, but thirty seconds was all he needed to disarm me down to nothing but a weeping heart.
Stepping out of the car, I smoothed my hands over the wrinkles in my baby-blue dress, side-eyeing Ethan who was pulling Monica’s luggage bag out of the trunk of the car.
We were only here for one night, but Monica never went anywhere without at least four clothing options, paired with shoe choices and her rigorous nightly face wash routine.
Hanging off of my shoulder was my overnight bag, which contained a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and my phone charger. Any make-up I needed was already on my face and I knew I could use my mom’s face wash tonight.
I stood off to the side of the car to remain equally in view of the front door and at arm’s length away from Ethan.
There weren’t enough bags for Ethan to really need my help, and the longer I stood awkwardly waiting for him to hand me a nonexistent bag to help with, the more it felt like someone had stuck a firecracker in my stomach.
His silence was unnerving and then some.
“Do you want me to grab the pie?” I offered, hoping he’d say yes and send me on my way with Monica’s store bought apple pie in hand.
Ethan ignored my question, yanking his overnight bag out with enough force to rip the handle clean off.
His biceps tensed beneath the cream-colored, long-sleeved shirt that covered his broad back as he dragged the remaining bag out of the trunk.
The features of his face were so rigid, he looked nothing like the kind, romantic man I couldn’t help but fall in love with.
He was angry and he was hurt and both unpleasant emotions were my fault. Everything lately felt like my fault…
Standing there with Monica’s luggage in one hand and his gym bag that he was using as his overnight bag in the other, Ethan’s glowering stare focused hard on the pie that sat lonely in the trunk.
“What were you thinking?”
Guilt cracked a whip across my heart, lashing a well-deserved gash right down the middle at knowing the heavy upset in his voice was my doing.
“Ethan,” I tried, but he stopped me in my tracks when he snapped his head and pinned his eyes, bright with betrayal, to mine.
“Why would you tell her we could do counseling? Why would you give her hope?”
“Because—” I stopped to breathe, finding it hard to grab onto any one thought with how Ethan was staring at me. “Because she was crying and she never cries. Because maybe it could work—”
“Alice, stop . ” He didn’t exactly yell at me, but my muscles stiffened as if he had. “It’s over. It’s done. I made up my mind and you have to stop trying to change it.”
“But…” But we were wrong. Monica did care about their relationship, and I was desperate beyond my powers to fix what I had broken between them.
“You and I can’t…”
I couldn’t even get the words out. The heartbreak of our reality was too painful to even think about, let alone say. A piece of my broken heart lodged itself in my throat, keeping me from ever being able to finish speaking the words that hurt with the power of a thousand deaths.
You and I can’t be together now or…
“Ever.” I witnessed the same break in Ethan’s expression that I heard in my voice as I admitted the defeat that neither of us saw coming. Still, with eyes like broken glass, a sureness remained drawn into his features that illustrated his plan for the future where none of us got a happy ending.
“Even if it can’t be you, it’s still not going to be her.” And then he paused, a hesitance running clear across his face before it disappeared altogether. “I don’t love her .”
Before Ethan could catch my stunned reaction, he turned back to the trunk of the car, pulled the pie out and set it in my hands.
“You should probably carry something in so my mom doesn’t get suspicious.”
Oof . Two gut punches in the span of five seconds.
Ethan lowered the trunk shut and walked around me to the front door of my parents’ home.
I followed behind him blindly, walking on feet that were growing numb with every step towards the house that contained so many people that could upend my life.
I must have looked as sick as I felt by the time Ethan and I walked through the front door.
“ Oh —Honey, did you get carsick again? You’re so pale.”
My focus went towards my mother as she rose from her favorite bright red lounge seat.
“Yeah, maybe.”
Handing the pie over to my mother as she walked up to me, I settled into her open arms for a hug that I badly needed. The ache in my stomach soothed for just a moment as my mother’s lavender perfume sunk into my nose and her free hand rubbed circles along my back.
The momentary relief I’d found in her arms evaporated the second the other mother in the room spoke up.
“Three bags and a pie is it? By how long you two spent out there, I expected you to bring in a full cart load.”
“Hi, Mom.” Ethan didn’t do a wonderful job hiding his annoyance, but when I turned to see them wrapped in a hug, Stella didn’t look one bit concerned with her son’s tone of voice.
“Where’s Mary?” Ethan asked.
“Your sister’s in the bathroom.”
As Stella said it, it dawned on me that I already knew Ethan had a sister. He’d mentioned her a couple times, and now I had two in-laws to avoid tonight, assuming this Mary was anything like her mother.
For now, it was me and my mother staring at the other half of the room as an uncomfortable silence fell over everyone.
In my parents’ living room, it was hard not to feel like it was us against them with Monica standing in the middle, oblivious to anything that wasn’t her phone in her hand.
My dad was nowhere to be found, probably in his study, writing away one of his new books.
Between the deafening quiet and Stella’s heated gaze burning a hole through the side of my face as she dared me to look her way, I said the only thing I could think of that would help at a time like this.
“Who wants a drink?”