Chapter 53 Second Chances #2
“I came by. I’ve stood outside your apartment building I don’t even know how many times. Twice I made it all the way up to your door but left before I could talk myself into knocking.”
Images of Ethan standing outside my door, fist up and ready to knock but never following through flooded my mind, and all I could think was exactly what I said next.
“Why didn’t you knock?”
Ethan shrugged this charming sort of shrug and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Because I wasn’t ready for you yet.”
“What does that mean? You weren’t ready for me yet?”
Confusion held strong in my tone, but there was a peeking excitement beneath that I was having a hard time holding back. It was premature excitement and largely assumed, but the casual but pointed step Ethan took towards me didn’t help settle it one bit.
“It wasn’t a part of my plan, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to talk to you or see you. I almost slipped up once and spoke to you after one of your dance shows.”
Awe-struck, I asked, “You saw my shows?”
He smiled one of those crooked grins that curled my stomach together.
“Some of them I saw twice just so I could get my fill of you.”
At this point, he was close enough that I could smell him again and I breathed him in deep. The scent of burnt soap stung my watering eyes and lungs in the most perfect way. He smelled just the same as I remembered. I loved him. I loved the smell of him and how completely it consumed me.
“Why didn’t you talk to me?”
Remorse shadowed his eyes as his expression fell. “Alice, the last time you saw me, I was drunk in a hospital bed. That’s not the kind of man I want to be or the kind you deserve.”
Before I could think, I was taking my own step into him, and my heart was working my mouth like a puppet. “I want any version of you. Rich, poor, jobless, messy, I don’t care. I just want you.”
The slightest surprise rose in Ethan’s eyes that melted with delight as I mirrored his words back to him from a year ago. He appeared so content just before he shook his head and that happiness faded.
“I was in a bad place last year. So bad that you disappeared from my life without telling me. I won’t ever forget going to your apartment and someone else answering your door, and not enough has changed on my end for you not to leave again.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I swear.”
Ethan’s lips thinned. He didn’t look convinced enough.
“I’m not taking any chances. It’s why I haven’t returned your calls or knocked on your door no matter how badly I want to.
Because I need to give you the best version of me, and I’m not there yet.
I need everything in my life to be so fucking perfect that you won’t leave again, Alice, because I just barely survived it the first time.
I don’t think I’d do so hot if you left a second time. ”
“You were perfect when I left you. You’re perfect now,” I whispered, my voice falling off.
He cast his stare off to the side, disbelief set in his clenched jaw. “I have two jobs and a roommate. I’m far from perfect right now, Alice.”
“I don’t care what you have. I only care about who you are, and I’m so sorry I ever made you feel like you weren’t good enough. The truth is that you are way too good for me,” I said with an overwhelmed, short laugh.
His eyes cut back to mine, strict and narrow. “That’s never been true.”
“Agree to disagree then.”
Ethan was the sky and the stars, and I was just a hopeful onlooker, gazing up at him and admiring his unreachable magnificence. Maybe he saw it the other way around, and maybe that’s why we’d fallen and hit the ground as hard as we did.
“I wasn’t ready for you, Ethan. You happened so fast and the situation felt so impossible, so I pushed you away.
I pushed and I pushed until I saw the first opening, and then I ran.
” Remembered fear caught in my throat, swallowing down the rest of my strength.
“I don’t know if I was leaving before I could be left or if I was just too afraid to deal with the consequences of my choices.
Probably both,” I whispered, tears holding strong in my eyes.
Ethan looked back and forth between my tears, his voice deep and true.
“I never would have left you.”
“I know.” I nodded. “I’m working on that. That and plenty of other things.”
The tears were beginning to annoy sitting on the edge of my eyes, and I tried to blink them away.
Instead, two small trails slid down the sides of my face, and I could tell old habits were dying hard within Ethan and that he wanted to brush them away.
My tears had been his to brush away plenty of times, but not anymore, and there was a notable sad shift between us as I wiped them away on my own.
“So we’re both works in progress,” Ethan mused.
I closed my lips together to tighten the smile trying to widen my mouth. “Sounds like it.”
The idea of being in a harmonious place of imperfection with him dipped through my breastbones and dabbed my heart with a touch of hope.
We’d both been so caught up in being perfect for the other that we forgot to be perfect for ourselves.
Through the last year, I had to come to terms with the fact that perfectionism, while desirable, is not reachable.
You have to come up with your own version of the word and accept the faults it might have as a part of it.
As far as every beat of my heart told me, Ethan was crucial to my ambiguous definition of the word.
“So…” If I wasn’t mistaken, Ethan had just lingered a hair closer as he spoke by the ecstatic flutter of my heart. “Where does that leave us?”
“How about we just start over?”
One of his brows arched up. “How do you mean?”
“Like from scratch. We’re two strangers who just met tonight, and we’re starting from the beginning. We have no past. Just a future as friends or whatever you want.”
Ethan angled his face down, intensifying his serious expression.
“You and I both know we can’t just be friends.”
Oh thank God.
“Then let me take you on a date,” I blurted out. A blush flared up my cheeks as I heard the words myself, and I struggled not to let the shock of my own statement show on my face.
Ethan’s full lips twitched just the slightest. “You want to take me on a date?”
I nodded before I could chicken out. “When are you free?”
“How about tomorrow?”