Ethan
“And you have Aaron’s number,” I say, “in case anything goes wrong—”
“I’m gone for five days,” I say, and she lifts her head to meet my gaze. “I won’t be back until Sunday night.”
“Can’t. Wait,” she says, and she flashes me a sarcastic smile before her attention goes back to her phone.
Fighting my sigh, I streak my fingers through my hair and glance at my mom, who’s too busy knitting a hat to look my way. “Aaron’s—”
“Your sister and I have it handled,” she says in Spanish. “Go enjoy your vacation—”
“It’s not a vacation. I’m going to a conference for work.”
“Or so he says,” Lara chimes in English. “What if he’s abandoning us to spend time with his secret family? Work trip is often code for secret family.”
“You have a girlfriend?” Mom’s eyes glitter with excitement. “You must bring her over when you come back from your vacation. I want to meet her.”
“I do not have a girlfriend,” I say, and she immediately clucks in disapproval. “And I do not have a secret family.”
Sighing heavily, Mom shakes her head. “I’m never going to have grandchildren.”
Lara presses her lips together, stifling her laughter with a cough. “How could you deprive her of dozens of grand-babies, Ethan?” she asks. “Do the right thing and—”
“I’m not going to have kids—” I almost pinch the bridge of my nose when my mom lets out a theatrical gasp. “Right now. I don’t have the time for them—”
“And yet you always have the time to go on the computer,” Mom chides.
“For work,” I say. “I work from home. It’s a thing many people do these days.”
“That’s what he wants you to believe,” Lara interjects with an evil smirk. “Every time I’m over at his apartment, he’s talking to Barbie. It’s always: listen to me, Barbie”—her voice drops to a gravelly register—“or I’m going to record this, or are you ready to begin?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Oh, Ethan,” Mom breathes, and she sets down her knitting needles. “If you’re that lonely, I know some very nice girls from church—”
“Barbie is my coworker,” I say. Or a bot. I don’t think I’ll be able to explain to my mother what artificial intelligence is in the next ten minutes before my Uber arrives, though. “She’s the one who sent the fruit bouquet.”
Three sets of eyes land on the arrangement left on the kitchen counter, half-eaten and fully forgotten.
I still don’t understand why she sent it to us in the first place.
Perhaps the company’s chatbot meant to send my mother a bouquet of flowers and accidentally ordered fruit instead.
All I know is that she somehow found my address and had the edible display delivered to my apartment with a card addressed to my mom.
“It’s so nice of your Internet girlfriend to send you some fruit,” Lara comments, and Mom lifts a brow.
“She’s not a sixty-year-old man from Florida, is she?” Mom carefully leans back in her seat. “You know, I saw Aimee at the hospital.”
My jaw goes tight as Lara makes a slicing motion by her throat.
“She broke up with the boy she was seeing.”
“Mom,” Lara hisses.
“She asked about you, which was very thoughtful of her,” Mom adds. “Out of all the girls you’ve dated, I always did like her the best. I still don’t know why you two broke up.”
“I think your Uber is here,” Lara says as she pushes up to her feet.
“You should give her a call,” Mom continues, and I shake my head. “Ethan—”
“I have to go,” I say, and I can only look at my sister while I grab my duffel bag. “But I’ll be back on Sunday. Do not let Mom walk JoJo. You know how to reset the water heater if it shuts off again. If anything happens, Aaron’s number is on the fridge—”
“I know,” Lara says with a blustery sigh. “Mom and I will be fine. The house won’t collapse in on itself because you’re gone. Go have fun with let me fill you in, Barbie.”
She’s met with an immediate blank stare from me. “One, you’re taking things out of context. Two, I need you to return my spare keys—”
“When you see her, can you ask her if the hats are real?” my sister asks. Catching sight of the confusion spreading across Mom’s face, she whispers, “His Internet girlfriend has this cat who wears hats.” She pauses. “They’re quite festive.”
There’s a heavy silence before Mom levels me with another look of concern. “Are you sure she’s not a sixty-year-old man from Florida?”
“I’ll find out and let you know,” is what I say, and I scrub the line of my jaw for a brief moment before I turn to face her. “Do not overexert yourself.”
“You worry too much.” She waves me off, and my brows pinch as I bite my tongue. I’d say I’m the only one here who’s worrying accordingly. Lara never takes anything seriously, and Mom downplays everything until it becomes a glaringly concerning issue.
“Yeah, Ethan. You worry too much,” Lara teases. “Go fill in Barbie and leave us be.”
“If anything even happens,” Mom continues, “your aunt, Yesenia, will help me.”
I decide not to point out that Aunt Yesenia lives in Texas, with over a thousand miles separating us. She’ll just hand-wave me off. They both will.
Refraining from heaving out a massive sigh, I head to the kitchen to double-check and make sure the stove’s off before I exit the house.
“Why is there a candle in my bag?”
“That’s what you’re calling me about?” Aaron’s laughter rings in my ear. “You didn’t want to text me thank you for packing the clothes you’d need for a vacation?”
“I got pulled over for additional screening because of you,” I growl. “I might miss my flight—”
“You? Miss your flight? You show up to everything early,” he snickers. “You even busted out of your mother’s womb a month early.”
My mouth twists into a grimace. “Why”—I jog around an elderly man shuffling across the terminal at a speed akin to molasses—“did you put a candle in my bag?”
“Well, I didn’t think they’d let you take bug spray on the plane,” he explains. “Figured you’d thank me tonight when you’re not a buffet for the mosquitoes. After you remember what it’s like to have genuine fun. Maybe the Ethan I remember will be the one I pick up on Sunday.”
A frustrated sigh escapes me. “Next time, do not sneak things into my bag.” I dart around a family and pick up speed. “Not without a heads up—”
“If I give you a heads up, it’s no longer sneaking. It’s just providing or gifting—”
“Aren’t you supposed to be working right now?” I ask flatly.
“It’s pretty quiet with all the higher-ups heading to the conference,” he says. “Think I might take a nap. Play a little hooky. Change your profile picture to your senior grad photo—”
“You will do no such thing,” I say through clenched teeth.
“You didn’t like the one I set for you,” he points out. “What did you say about the picture? That you looked like—”
“A giraffe in a hostage situation,” I supply, because the image he uploaded for my work email and IMs is the most awkward photo he’s ever taken of me. “I have to go. Do not change my profile picture.”
“Change your profile picture, you say?” he asks. “But with a throwback to your emo days and your scene hair instead?”
“Don’t you dare,” I say, and then I hang up on him as I get my boarding pass scanned before I enter the jetbridge.
It’s the first of three flights I’m flying today because there’s no direct flight from Oregon to South Carolina, and this one’s the shortest of the trio.
The plane’s crowded when I board, and as I look around for my seat, my attention snags on the two rowdy boys screaming and hitting each other.
God. No.
Dear God, no.
Knowing my luck, I brace for the worst while I check the seat numbers as I go. To no one’s surprise, I’m the sucker stuck with them—down to the assigned window seat covered in crumbs.
It’s only a two-hour flight to Vegas, I remind myself. Just one hundred and twenty minutes to go. I dealt with Lara during her teen angst phase. I can deal with this.
Once my duffel bag is stowed away in the overhead bin and my work laptop is in my hand so I can work on my team’s mission statement, I carefully squeeze through the row only to bite back a grumble when the boy in the middle seat kicks me in the shin.
I look over to the woman in the aisle seat, surrounded by more screaming children, all under the age of seven, by the look of it. Even Lara wasn’t this bad when she was their age, but my sister, for the most part, adored the crap out of me to ever act out.
Taking my seat by the window, I’m quick to connect my laptop to the inflight Wi-Fi, and then I side-eye the kid next to me when he starts kicking the tray table before him.
And Mom wants me to give her dozens of these.
Truthfully, I know my mom’s just feeling empty nest syndrome with Lara moving out for her last year of college. It’s just her in the house I grew up in—with the dog Lara surprised her with four years ago, but still. She’s all by herself, and I can’t help but feel bad about it.
“Hey.” I look up from my laptop to see a man twisting around to glare at me. “Control your fucking kid.”
“He’s not my responsibility,” I say, and the woman beside him turns around to level me with a disbelieving scoff.
“Typical,” she sneers. “It’s always the husbands who leave all the parenting duties to their wives while they do nothing.”
“He’s not my kid,” I say, and her eyes harden into steel.
“You are a terrible stepfather, and you should be ashamed of yourself,” she snaps. “A real man would look past DNA—”
“I know.” I stare incredulously at her because what the fuck is going on? “Listen—”
Whatever short speech I had prepared about knowing what a great stepfather is like goes flying out the window when the kid next to me swings his foot into my tray table and sends my laptop sailing into the side of the plane.