30. Ethan
ETHAN
The room had found its rhythm again.
Lucy was across the floor with Marcus by her side, chin up, laughing at the right volume. Composed. Effortless. Completely fine, the way Lucy always was, the way she had always been, regardless of what was happening underneath.
Salem leaned into the bar with her back half-turned to the room, one hand resting on the counter, my jacket still around her shoulders. A strand of dark hair had come loose near her cheek, and she hadn’t fixed it.
“Survived,” she said.
“Survived.”
The bartender appeared. “What can I get you?”
Salem studied the bottles behind him. “Whiskey sour. Actually, make it a double. It’s been a night.”
The bartender looked at me.
“Same,” I said.
Salem raised an eyebrow. “Hardware store guys drink whiskey sours?”
“Hardware store guys drink whatever the woman next to him is drinking.”
She almost smiled. “Very diplomatic of you.”
“I contain multitudes.”
The drinks arrived.
She picked hers up and turned, facing the room. “Lucy’s watching.”
Not a question.
“Probably.”
She nodded slowly and sipped her drink. "Tell me about you and Lucy."
"Oof."
I wanted to get this right—honest, all of it. I imagined Salem already had thoughts on the matter.
"Lucy came into my life when I needed a buoy, I think.
My grandpa had just passed, and I was trying to keep the shop running and the house standing, and it was all new to me.
I wasn't just grieving my grandparents. I was grieving my career.
It was an awful stretch of my life. I was drinking a lot.
That's not an excuse, but I couldn't sleep, and I was self-medicating. "
I made myself keep going.
"Lucy and I had a one-night stand that turned into a two-night stand.
To me, it was casual. I could tell that to her, it wasn't. I was so deep in my own head—I think I was using her to step outside my grief for a while.
Outside my life. I felt bad almost immediately because I didn't like her that way, and it was a shitty thing to have entertained in the first place.
So, I told her I didn't date, that I was leaving anyway, and that I wanted to stay friends.
"Every now and then, she still asks me—if I stayed, would she be my choice? It's awkward, and I never really answer. I know I owe her a real conversation about it. After all these years, she hasn't taken the hint."
I looked at Salem, searching for confirmation that honesty had been the right call.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Okay?"
"Okay." She shook her head slowly. “She staged a scream. I’m pretty sure it was for your benefit”
“I know.”
“An entire, choreographed, pulled-us-off-the-balcony scream.”
“I know.”
“That’s—I mean. That’s commitment.”
“It’s something.”
She huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh, picked up her drink, and turned it in her hand without drinking from it. “She picked a good moment. I could have stayed all night on that balcony.” She set the glass down. “She’s not stupid.”
“No. She’s not.”
Salem nodded once, like that was what she needed to hear.
She hadn’t once called Lucy crazy or petty or any of the things most people would have reached for. Just facts. Just what actually happened. I liked that about her.
A smile broke through my defenses, then it settled into something quieter, and she looked at me the way she had on the balcony—steady, unguarded. The room kept going around us. Music. Conversation. The low hum of a hundred people having a hundred different evenings, none of them this one.
I tucked the loose strand of hair back from her cheek, and she went still beneath my hand.
My thumb stayed just below her cheekbone—the same place it had been on the balcony, at the fair. She looked up at me, and the whole month was in it. Every event. Every moment we’d stood close enough to feel it, and neither of us had said it aloud.
“Salem—”
“Do you want to get out of here?” Her eyes pleaded for half a second.
“Yeah. I do. I have a room upstairs for tonight.”
“Good.” She looked at me once more with that expression that did something I was never going to fully recover from. Then she pushed off the bar.
We walked out hand in hand, the noise of the gala falling away behind us with every step, my jacket around her shoulders. Neither of us looked back.