Chapter 21
Ethan
‘Can I take that?’
I glance up at Alice when she appears at my side, carrying a crate of empty bottles that ought to be way too heavy for her.
The girl is stronger than she looks, that’s for sure.
She takes the empty bottle I’ve been rolling along the table for the last hour, pulls her eyebrows together, then turns to follow my eyeline.
Directly across the room, Mia stands behind the bar, looking at her watch, the clock on the wall, and back at her watch. It’s the tenth time she’s checked it in the last fifteen minutes.
‘Oh.’
Alice smiles as she adds my bottle to her collection.
‘I’m not waiting for her,’ I start to say but she’s grinning like she knows better. ‘I figured we could walk home together is all.’
‘That’s why you’ve been sat here on your own for the last hour?’
‘Yes. I mean, no.’ I frown at my now empty hands. ‘Has it really been an hour?’
She nods. ‘Since the rest of the team left, yes. Probably only five minutes since someone tried to keep you company and you politely told them to piss off. Rumour has it you’re not very sociable.’
‘Since when did rumours ever turn out to be true?’
‘Since half the girls, gays and theys tried it on with the captain of the football team tonight and he turned down every single one of them.’
It’s not not true.
Almost getting into a fight with that piece of shit at the bar ruined any chance I had of enjoying the evening.
Not because I was planning to hook up, but because after I heard the way he spoke to Mia, I couldn’t stop worrying about her.
I told the team I was frustrated we didn’t win with a clean sheet, which pissed most of them off just enough to leave me alone and if I’m real lucky, will encourage the defence to pick up the slack and not let anymore lucky goals in next week.
‘You know, I’m in Carpenter House as well,’ Alice says. ‘Anders is next door in Walsh. She won’t be walking home by herself.’
I’m the first to admit I’m not the smartest guy on the planet but even I can take a hint. Standing up, I pat myself down. Keys, wallet, no phone because why carry around a useless hunk of plastic when it only works in your room anyway.
‘Did you know it’s her birthday tomorrow.
In fact, it’s past twelve, isn’t it? So, it’s her birthday today.
’ Alice turns to make sure Mia can’t hear her but she’s so busy staring daggers at the last occupied booth, we could be screaming her name and I don’t think she’d hear.
‘We’re having a surprise party for her behind the boathouse, a picnic. One o’clock, you should come.’
‘Really?’ I don’t mean to sound so taken aback but it’s not an offer I was expecting.
‘No, not really. I thought it would be funny to invite you to a picnic then drop a bucket of pig’s blood on your head and point at you with all my friends.’
That gets a smirk out of me at least.
‘Okay, Carrie, got it.’
‘Technically, you’d be the Carrie in that situation,’ Alice points out. ‘But I’m serious. Come, it’ll be fun, there will be cake.’
‘Are you baking?’
She gags and shakes her head.
‘No. I like Mia, I don’t want to ruin her birthday. Maybe not as much as you like her but still.’
She winks, redistributing the weight of the crate in her arms, and I leap forward to take it from her when it slips.
Damn. She really is strong. Leading the way across the empty dancefloor towards the bar, Alice motions for me to follow and I trot behind like a dutiful dog.
It’s not as though I have a choice, I can’t exactly dump the crate of bottles and run, but my heart rate picks up as we approach and Mia looks my way.
Why does this feel like I’m back in third grade?
Why am I so sure Alice is going to tell her friend I like her and they’re both going to laugh?
She points to the open hatch at the end of the bar and I pass through, bobbing my head in Mia’s direction.
She seems surprised to see me, as though I haven’t been sat staring at her all night long.
There’s a huge dumpster full of empty bottles through the open back door and I toss the contents of my crate with a satisfying medley of breaking glass.
When I walk back into the bar, Alice is sliding Mia’s purse onto her shoulder and pushing her through the hatch.
‘No, because Oliver said—’ I hear her say but Alice isn’t interested.
‘Oliver said if he was still here and he isn’t.
He left with Bryn ages ago.’ She points to me and I suddenly feel as though I’m completely naked in the middle of the bar.
‘As my first official act in honour of your birthday, I am sending you home seven minutes early with your official escort. That’s you,’ she adds with a theatrical hiss.
Taking my cue, I bow low, then hold out my arm.
‘M’lady.’
Mia purses her lips and it’s so close to a pout, something stirs in my shorts. I’m twenty years old, I can get hard from bumping into a doorknob, but the way this girl gets to me is unreal.
‘What about you?’ she says to her friend as I subtly shuffle my junk.
‘Firstly, the Hemden campus is so safe it’s almost embarrassing,’ Alice replies, ‘and secondly, I’ve got Anders, Michael and Jenna to walk with me and I need to talk to them about your birthday surprise so it would be incredibly helpful if the two of you would, and I say this with nothing but love, knob off. ’
‘You heard the lady,’ I say when Alice jerks her thumb towards the door. ‘We gotta knob off.’
‘Well, when it’s been put so eloquently.’ Mia’s cherry-red lips pull up and there’s that unexpected sense of anticipation again. ‘Let’s go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘One o’clock!’ Alice calls as we say a quick goodnight to her friends in the last booth. ‘I’ll come and knock for you. Be ready!’
It’s so much colder than it was when I arrived at the bar. The English nights turn so fast, and Mia is shivering from the moment we step outside. Without saying anything, I peel off my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.
‘Thanks.’
If nothing else, I would truly love it if she could stop looking so surprised every time that I do something that could be considered nice.
‘Happy birthday,’ I try, as she pulls the jacket closed around her. ‘Twenty, right?’
‘How’d you know?’
‘Alice mentioned it on Friday, in The Snug.’
She considers the information and continues walking, following the winding leaf-strewn path that leads back to our dorm.
‘Reckon you’re the first person I met who skipped a grade,’ I say, pushing the conversation forward.
‘Really?’
‘Think so. Didn’t happen to anyone in my school.’
‘Really.’
When I laugh, she looks over at me.
‘That all you can say? Really?’
She rolls her head in a slow circle and blows out a heavy breath. ‘I’m sorry, it was a crazy night and I kind of thought …’ Hesitating, she resets her face, like she’s changed her mind about what she was going to say. ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’
‘Wow, I didn’t think people actually said that.’
At last, I see the slightest hint of a smile on her face and it feels like I found a needle in a haystack.
Less great is how upset she is about the leather jacket–wearing douche not waiting to walk her home.
What kind of guy says he’ll stick around then ghosts?
But I keep that opinion to myself for now.
I don’t want to fight with her, and she doesn’t need reminding of the fact he disappeared, she needs distracting.
‘So, twenty huh? The big two-oh?’
‘It’s just a birthday,’ she replies as we pass under an archway of oak trees, a spot that always makes me feel like I’m in a movie. ‘It’s no big deal.’
‘Are you kidding me? It’s a huge deal! You’re in your twenties now, that’s a thing.’
‘No, sixteen is a thing, eighteen is a thing. Twenty-one is more of a thing than twenty but I have no idea who decided on that.’
Okay, she’s still arguing with me but at least she’s smiling.
‘One of those weird things from a million years ago, I guess.’
Cracking my knuckles, I look up at the leaves still clinging to the trees overhead. ‘My mom had me when she was twenty. I’ll be twenty-one in a few weeks and I can’t even imagine having a kid.’
Mia tilts her head to one side to look at me as we walk.
‘My mom was young when she had my brother. My dad, too. A little older than her but not by much. It’s crazy to think about it, right?
I consider myself pretty competent but imagine waking up one day and someone says, here’s a kid, now keep it alive for eighteen years or so and call us if it gets a fever over one hundred degrees. ’
‘You have to call a doctor if a kid has a fever over one hundred?’
‘I worry for your future kids.’
She kicks at a pebble in her path with the toe of those huge black boots she always wears. She’d never make a soccer player.
‘My dad is a lot older than my mom,’ I tell her. ‘He was already thirty-five when they had me, almost forty when they had my little brother, Chris. I wonder if it would be different if they were closer in age.’
‘Wonder if what would be different?’
Searching the sky for an answer, I shrug.
‘I don’t know. Everything?’
We walk on without words for a while, but it’s not uncomfortable.
There are just enough old-fashioned light posts dotted along the path to show our way home but not so many it ruins the peaceful beauty of the university.
Every few steps, Mia’s face is cast in golden light before it returns to the shadows, only to take my breath away when I see it again a few seconds later.
What is happening to me? When did she go from cute to beautiful?
‘You have an older brother?’ I break the silence, desperate for a distraction from the sudden and almost irresistible urge to kiss her.
‘I do. And a younger one. Kane is two years older, graduated back in May. He played football at Wofford. Hudson is still in middle school. Moves up to high school next year.’
‘Mia in the middle.’
I smile and she smiles back.