12. Ethan
ETHAN
I’d been planning this for days. The folding table had fit awkwardly in the bed of my truck alongside the small cooler and the canvas bag with everything else. I checked the sky again as I drove up the winding road to the overlook. No clouds, which meant the sunset would be clear and uninterrupted.
Perfect.
My palms were damp against the steering wheel, and I told myself it was just the evening heat, and not nerves about what I was about to do. A part of me felt like it was a mistake. If I was honest, most of me knew it was a mistake.
I had tried to talk myself out of it more than a few times, but there I was anyway. It wouldn’t be long now before I knew exactly how big of a mistake it might be.
Hell. She might get there and just waltz right back to her car. Not like I had given her any forewarning. But then, I knew that if I did…
She absolutely wouldn’t have come.
She was struggling with something, that much had been clear the other night.
And she seemed like just the kind of person who liked to struggle all on her own.
I pulled out of my thoughts when I arrived at the overlook, relieved to find that it was completely empty. The spot was different at this hour. It was quieter, more intimate somehow.
My pops had been right; this place made it hard to hide from yourself.
That night, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the kind of honesty it liked to pull out of people.
I had been coming here my whole life, watched the view change through seasons and years, but that night it felt new again.
I set the table near the edge, far enough back to be safe but close enough to catch the view.
The tablecloth snapped in the breeze before settling, a clean white square against the dusty earth.
I weighed it down with stones at each corner, placed the candles in their holders, and arranged the chairs.
Not directly across from each other, but at an angle where conversation could flow easier.
From the cooler, I pulled out the containers Marianne had packed earlier. She hadn’t asked questions when I placed the order, just nodded once and said, “Smart man.”
I arranged everything carefully, then stepped back to look it over. It was nothing fancy, just a table on a hill, but it felt right.
I heard her car before I saw it, the engine working against the slope of the road. My chest tightened slightly. I wiped my hands on my jeans and waited.
Lena stepped out of her car looking like she was carrying something heavy.
There was a tiredness around her eyes that was new, even with all the work she’d been doing. When she saw the table, something shifted in her expression—surprise, then a hesitance I’d seen before.
My pulse kicked up, and I wondered for a moment if she was going to take off.
“What’s all this?” she asked, her voice as tired as she looked.
“Dinner,” I said. “Thought you might be hungry.”
She walked toward me slowly, like she was giving herself time to decide how to feel about it all.
Her hair caught the early evening light, turning gold at the edges. She was wearing something simple, jeans and a blouse I hadn’t seen before, nothing special except for how it made her look somehow more herself.
“You did all this? It’s beautiful, Ethan, but I… things are getting really complicated.”
“It’s nothing complicated, really,” I replied, pulling out her chair, hoping to coax her into it. “Just food in a better place than usual. That’s all it has to be.”
She perched on the edge of her chair, and I moved around to the other side. There was a moment where neither of us spoke, just looked at what sat between us—the food, the candles not yet lit, the view stretching out beyond the table’s edge.
I lit the candles even though there was still plenty of daylight, looking up to make sure that it didn’t run her off. The flames barely showed against the sky, but they’d matter more as the sun dropped lower.
“Marianne’s?” she asked, nodding toward the food.
“I wouldn’t subject you to my own cooking.” I opened the containers—roast chicken with herbs, bread still warm in its wrapping, a salad with bits of fruit and nuts mixed in. “She claims this chicken recipe is a hundred years old, passed down through her family.”
“Is it?”
I smiled. “Probably not. But it tastes like it could be.”
She took a bite, closed her eyes briefly. “You’re not wrong.”
I served us both, and for a while we just ate, the silence uncomfortable enough that I couldn’t seem to stop shifting in my chair. She pushed the food around on her plate more than she ate it.
For a moment, I considered asking her what had been bothering her so much. Instead, I figured that if she wanted to share with me, she would.
The silence grew damn near unbearable before her soft voice finally cut through the wind.
“I never stayed anywhere long enough to have family recipes,” she said eventually, setting down her fork. “My mom was more of a ‘whatever’s in the cupboard’ cook.”
I watched her, waiting for more. Scared that if I said anything, she’d retreat again.
“At one point we were moving about every year,” she continued. “Sometimes more often. Always apartments, always temporary. I got really good at packing exactly one box of things that mattered.”
“What went in the box?” I asked.
She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Books, mostly. A music box my grandmother gave me. A small blanket. Things that didn’t take up much space but made places feel empty without them, I guess.”
I nodded, trying to picture it—young Lena carefully selecting what stayed and what got left behind, already learning to hold everything lightly.
“I guess that’s not a familiar sentiment for you,” she said. “You’ve always been here.”
“Not always by choice,” I said. “There were times I thought about leaving.”
“Really? What stopped you?”
I looked out at the town, considering. “My dad got sick. The shop needed someone. But before that…” I paused, searching for the right words. “I guess I never found a reason that felt big enough to leave.”
She watched me with a careful kind of attention. “Your father taught you the business?”
“Everything I know,” I said. “He had me holding wrenches before I could tie my shoes. Used to say you can learn more from a broken engine than a working one, if you know how to listen to it.”
“He sounds wise.”
“He was practical,” I corrected. “Wisdom was just a byproduct.”
The light was changing now, the sun dropping lower, painting everything in gold. It caught in her hair, along her skin, made her look lit from within. She was beautiful in this light, in any light, really, but especially then, with her guard lowered.
We fell quiet again, watching the colors shift. The valley below turned slowly from green to amber to something deeper. Our shadows stretched longer across the ground.
“I’ve seen a lot of sunsets,” she said softly. “But I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat and watched one. Not properly, at least.”
“That honestly makes me a little sad for you,” I said. “There isn’t much in life that a good sunset can’t fix.”
She smiled at that, a real one this time. “Is that another one of your dad’s sayings?”
“No,” I laughed. “That one’s all me.”
When we finished eating, I didn’t rush to clear things away. We sat there as darkness seeped into the edges of the sky, the first stars appearing overhead. The candles mattered now, their small flames steady between us.
“Thank you for this,” she said.
“For what?”
“For showing me... this.” She gestured at the view, but I thought she meant more than that. “I needed it today.”
I hesitated before replying, “You know, Lena. You can talk to me. I can tell that there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, and then moved back to the horizon, “Is that right?”
“Sure is. And look. I get it. You don’t know me all that well. But I’d hope with all the time we’ve been spending together that you could at least think about letting me in a little bit.”
“That’s really nice of you, Ethan. But honestly? It wouldn’t help.”
I just nodded, not trusting myself to say more. I didn’t want to have to beg her to talk to me, and I didn’t want her to know that it bothered me that she wouldn’t.
Eventually, we packed everything up.
I wasn’t sure what I expected out of that night, but whatever it was, that wasn’t it.
The walk back down was darker than the climb up, and every step I took felt heavier. As the path narrowed, I was a little too aware of the careful distance she was keeping between us. When her arm accidentally brushed against mine, she didn’t look at me, but folded both arms in on herself.
I didn’t reach out for her. There was something in the set of her shoulders that stopped me, that told me that whatever was going on with her, me reaching out wasn’t going to be a comfort to her.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m just super tired.”
Something in her tone told me that while that might be the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth.
When we reached her car, she turned to face me, and for a moment I thought she might actually tell me what had been bothering her. Her mouth opened briefly, before it turned down into a sad smile, and she got in the driver’s seat.
I stood there until her taillights disappeared, trying to figure out if things that night had gone good or bad. I got in the car when I realized that I just didn’t have an answer.
A couple of days later, I found myself standing in the bay of the shop, wiping the dust off a tarp that hadn’t been pulled back in months.
I stood in front of it for a second, hands in my pockets, before reaching out to pull it away.
The truck underneath was exactly as I had left it—primer, spotted body, missing headlights.
Hell, the engine was only half rebuilt.
My dad’s project, then mine, then no one’s for too long. I’d been putting it off, telling myself it was because I didn’t have the time.
But seeing Lena watching me from the garage doorway, knowing that she was struggling with things she wouldn’t share, I finally admitted the truth.
I’d been afraid of finishing it without him.