56. Fifty-six
When our dinner is gone, and a female blues singer takes a small stage with a gritty, soulful voice, the dim lights and soft, sexy music make me feel things I don’t want to. It reminds me of the nights at Ethan’s restaurants, and my heart splinters in all the ways it paints a picture of a scene I’ll never be part of again.
He leans back casually.
“Tell me something I’ve missed from the last six months.”
I regret leaving Maine the way I did.
I’ve missed you every day for six months.
My mom thinks I love you.
I might love you.
I do love you.
I love Ethan.
I know it now.
I know it too late.
Sitting across from him, I experience a completely new kind of miserable heartbreak. It isn’t the devastatingly shattering kind that hurts until I’m numb like Travis caused. It’s the kind where my heart stays intact just enough for it to dully ache every time it beats in my chest.
Worse is pretending I don’t feel it.
“Hmm. Well, I’m not so horrible at making coffee anymore,” I say.
He vibrates with a small laugh, and amusement covers his face. Like he knows how tortured I feel, and he’s enjoying it. It’s as cruel as the small talk we’re forcing ourselves to make.
I lift my wine to my lips.
“What about you? Tell me something I’ve missed.”
“I got a dog.”
I snort. “I didn’t expect that, but I can see it. In front of that fireplace or laying by the river.”
“He does love the river.” He nods and smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
Without warning, I hear myself ask, “So how did you meet your… her?”
If I’m going to walk around with a knife in my soul, it might as well plunge all the way through.
“My dog? It’s a he.” His smugness is as permanent as the nose on his face. I don’t love him, I hate him.
I narrow my eyes. “You know who I’m talking about.”
He pauses, long and methodically, in a way that feels like a bomb is about to drop. “She came into my restaurant.”
He props his elbows on the table and lifts his chin. Like he knows how loyal his good looks are to him in that white shirt rolled up on his forearms.
“Of course.” I roll my eyes on reflex before stopping myself. I refuse to be petty. “I’m sorry. I’m happy for you.”
He ignores me.
“Wait, that’s not actually when I met her. This is kind of embarrassing Nel, but she kind of stalked me first.” He holds up his hands as if to say let me explain. “She contacted me under the guise of needing help, but I know better.”
When he smirks, I take a gulp of my wine then press my lips into a tight line, trying to hide how much I do not want to hear anymore.
“Then she came into the restaurant. On my worst night, actually. I had to work behind the bar, which, before that night, as you know, was my least favorite area to be. I swore to myself I was going to list the damn place for sale the next day because I was so miserable.”
My chin pulls back—behind the bar?
“But in walks this woman, wearing a ridiculous t-shirt and rubber boots that squeaked like ducks, offering to help me.”
At this, he grins, and I instantly feel my heartbeat at every surface point of my body.
“Being at my worst night, I was not in my best mood, but I was mesmerized as she marched around and made everyone around the bar fall in love with her as she made drinks and put me in my place.”
Wait—what?
I’m so still I don’t know if I’m even breathing. Because what he”s saying…
“Then, for some reason, she took pity on me and agreed to go out with me on a date.” He leans back in his chair, blue eyes dancing. “I went out on a limb and took her to a farmers market, somewhere I’d been hundreds of times, but I had never seen it quite like that. When I watched her talk to farmers and get excited about herbs, I was a goner. Stupid right? Forty-three years on this planet, and I just needed to find the one woman who giggled about mint. I fell so hard that night I knew I was never going to be the same again. I bought every painting by an artist she liked just so I would have glimpses of life the way she saw it when she wasn’t with me.”
Oh. My. God. My eyes burn like the winter wind is blowing straight through them.
“I knew when I kissed her, I never wanted to kiss another woman for the rest of my life. Even ones who do very naughty things to straws couldn’t compare.” Smug smile in place, he reaches his hand across the table to grab mine, which is trembling.
“Ethan…” I can’t find my tongue.
“Please, Nel, this is getting to the good part. It’s rude to interrupt.”
He shakes his head solemnly as the first tear drips down my cheek.
“Then, I left. Honestly, I was scared. Really scared. That’s not who I was. I went on late-night dates and kept things casual, and this woman screamed serious. But she found me again. This time, wearing this green dress—very similar to the one you wore in the magazine, actually.” He licks his bottom lip slowly before a small smile makes his mouth curve upward. “Between the way she looked in that damn dress and how she once again put me in my place in a room full of people, I was ruined.”
I barely hear the words he’s saying from the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears. Another tear falls and another.
But he doesn’t stop.
“Nel, she has this ability to always tell me exactly what’s on her mind, without reservation or concern over consequences. The things she’s said to me make me feel like I’ve only ever had relationships that never went below the surface. They were all tattoos on the skin until she came in like a blood transfusion and infiltrated every single part of me.”
The graceful single tears are gone, and I am now full-blown ugly crying.
Ethan is here.
The person he’s serious about is me.
He waited for messy, broken, babbling me.
In one quick move, he’s out of his chair, on both knees, on the floor in front of me. When he bumps the table and his glass of wine spills, he doesn’t turn to look.
His hands rest on my thighs, but his eyes are glued to mine.
“I looked up plane tickets to Miami a hundred times since you left, starting the day you flew away. Once, I made it all the way there before deciding you still weren’t ready and flying back home. I wanted to give you a year to figure things out on your own, but when I saw you in that magazine, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I would have loved you if you hadn’t left, Nel, but it turns out I loved you even when you did.”
I smile through the tears that keep falling.
“Yes.” My voice is in a thousand pieces. “Yes. To you and this and all the messy work that comes with it.” I run my fingers through his thick hair, smiling deliriously. “I love you, Ethan.”
Then, with him kneeling between my legs in that damn suit, I bring my face to his and kiss him. I kiss him like my life depends on it, and he kisses me like he’s trying to make up for all the ones we’ve missed. His taste and smell and the feel of his skin touching mine is like coming home after being gone for far too long.
When we finally pull apart, we”re smiling.
“Did you really get a dog?” I ask as he stands up and pulls my hands for me to do the same.
He grins. “I did. A Golden Retriever named Odey.”
“Odey?”
“It’s short for Odysseus.”
Penelope’s husband in Greek mythology who spent ten years trying to get back to her after ten years at war.
“Dammit, Ethan.”
I drop my face to his chest as I try to hide every fresh emotion that stains my skin before looking back up at him.
He curls his lips into a smug smirk I’ve missed so much over the last six months.
His mouth drops to my ear, and his voice lowers. “Dance with me, Nel.”
I don’t argue with him. After everything he’s just told me, there isn’t much I have the power to say no to.
Me against him with the woman’s raspy voice filling the air, my body liquifies as we sway slowly in a dark corner of the restaurant.
And when the music stops, and the wine is gone, we barely make it to his truck before our clothes are off. In an icy night in Bangor, Maine, in the backseat of a truck in a parking lot, Ethan reminds me how good we are together with his hands and body and the words he never stops saying in my ear.
The next morning in the hotel lobby, our ridiculously giddy smiles are permanent—a reflection of how satisfying our night together was.
When we finally drag ourselves out of bed, we get dressed and eat breakfast while staring at each other like lovesick puppies. I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t so happy.
As he starts up his truck, I pull out my phone.
Me:Did you know?
Marin:Of course, we did, Penelope.
Finn: It was for your own good.
Me: You’re both grounded.
Marin: Have fun, Mom. We love you.
Finn:And please don’t tell us what you two do together.
I laugh, warmed completely despite the freezing temperatures that have iced over the windshield.
We made it to the other side of this big ugly thing together. It’s different than I expected, but also so much better.
Some people are lucky enough to have one person to love for their entire life. One person they grow with, change with, and experience every big moment with. One person who knows them better than they know themselves.
Despite my best efforts, that is not how my story is written.
My story gave me two. Two great men who changed me to my bones. Without one, there could never have been the other.
It’s a bittersweet truth that will probably cause the slightest ache in my chest for the rest of my life.
Ethan reaches his arm across the seat and grabs my thigh while my sock-covered feet prop up on the dash. Piles of snow line the sides of the road as we head out of the city and into the mountains. The White Mountains, which really was where I found myself.
“I was thinking.” I turn to him and rest my head on the headrest. “We should spend Januarys in Key Largo.”
He squeezes my leg.
“Deal.”