Chapter 20
Gem wasn’t talking to him. Ethan didn’t know exactly what he’d done, but Gem definitely was not talking to him.
He’d known he was going to be a bit late to meet up with her, but he’d told her that in advance, and she’d seemed fine with it.
It was the first time Gem had agreed to go out out, so he’d helped her arrange a nightclub with bottle service to go to with all their friends—mostly Ethan’s friends, granted, but she had invited a few people she knew from work and some of their mutual university friends—and the plan was to experience New York City nightlife at its finest. No more frat parties or keg-stand nonsense.
They were finally celebrating like adults.
The only problem was that Ethan’s girlfriend, Sarah, had been expecting the two of them to go out for dinner that night, had in fact booked dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in the city, and he couldn’t simply abandon her to party with his female best friend.
The compromise had been that they would meet them at the club after dinner—and by “compromise,” he meant the terms Sarah had dictated.
The existence of Gem was already a mild point of contention for Sarah, who believed that a man having a woman as a best friend was weird at best and inappropriate at worst. Although she had never given him an ultimatum about hanging out with Gem—Julia, since nicknames were also a no-no—he knew it was a fine line.
And canceling dinner plans so he could go to Julia’s birthday party would definitely be crossing that line.
It could be argued, a tiny rebellious part of his brain liked to remind him, that the dinner plans didn’t need to be made for that particular night, since he had been pretty sure he’d told Sarah about Julia’s plans well in advance, but again, battles needed to picked, as did hills to die on, and he was unwilling to go to war for this one.
Gem would understand. Julia, he heard Sarah’s voice correct him in his head.
Plus, her actual birthday was the next night, for which they had plans to order Chinese and watch a movie—Julia’s choice—at her apartment. An event that Ethan had conveniently left out when Sarah had asked what he was up to the next day.
If he’d stopped to consider it, he might have found it slightly ludicrous, the hoops that needed to be jumped through for all the important women in his life to coexist. He may have even felt a bit guilty for being slightly dishonest to both of them—mostly Sarah, but Gem also didn’t know the extent to which Sarah disapproved of her, so there were some lies of omission happening there—and perhaps realized that his behavior was not breeding any sort of good faith or positive outcomes with or between the women.
But Ethan was twenty-three years old. He rarely stopped to consider anything.
Instead, he simply figured he’d do his best to continue to make both women as happy as possible, without revealing the circumstances around which their happiness centered, and there was no possible way it could blow up in his face.
Which was why he assuaged any modicum of guilt he felt about Gem’s birthday party that evening by thinking about their plans the next night and any discomfort he felt around not being totally honest with Sarah about tomorrow night’s plans by eating a thirty-five-dollar pasta entrée with her instead of staying with Gem and the rest of their friends at VIP Room.
Except now he was with Gem and their friends at VIP Room—he and Sarah had gotten there about ten minutes prior, at which point she’d promptly left him to go use the restroom—and Gem was ignoring him.
She had barely even said hi to him when they had walked in, though her greeting to Sarah had been slightly friendlier, even if it hadn’t been reciprocated in terms of friendliness. Then she had turned around and iced him out.
He found out through one of their mutual friends that some of the plans had fallen through—their booth had been given away to someone willing to pay more for it, and she had unfortunately dropped the half-empty bottle she’d then been forced to carry around, which would have gotten them kicked out if not for the quick thinking of the group and an even quicker dispersion into the crowd that made them impossible to track down amid the throng of dancing bodies.
Ethan had almost laughed at the visual of Gem and their friends making the joint decision to split up and weave through the crowd simultaneously, but then he realized it wasn’t actually that funny.
Some of their friends hadn’t made their way back to the group, and others had texted to say they were going somewhere else.
So things weren’t looking great for Gem’s little nightclub bash.
When things went awry for him, he usually felt like he was capable of finding the positive even in a terrible situation.
At the end of the day, not much bothered him, and if it did, he let it slide and sought out something that bothered him less.
Or, ideally, not at all. He knew Gem had a harder time letting things go, but even she couldn’t fault him here. Shit happened, right?
“Hey.” He nudged her shoulder. She barely glanced at him. “What’s up?” He had to shout over the music, which was louder than anything he’d ever heard before.
The idea of going to a club had held an appeal—it hadn’t been their first time, obviously, even though it was the first celebration they had tried to coordinate at one—but the idea, he found, was infinitely more appealing than the actual time spent at one.
The music was always too damn loud, and too many people were bumping into each other, just an unappealing mass of humanity experiencing sensory overload, the overconsumption of alcohol, and probably some sort of narcotics cocktail all at once.
He remembered how every time he entered a club thinking it was going to be the best night ever, he usually just wanted to leave as soon as he got there.
In fact, more often than not, the best part of the night was going out afterward with Gem to grab a hot dog or something equally delicious from a food truck vendor, sitting on a curb and talking while they ate, laughing at whatever ridiculous thing had happened while they were out, stuffing their faces with greasy street food.
It was that association that held such appeal.
The times they’d spent together after a night out.
Sarah.
Something in his subconscious reminded him in that moment of his girlfriend, who still hadn’t returned from the restroom.
“Hey,” he said again, louder this time, right in Gem’s ear.
He could smell her—a heady mixture of sweat, her familiar shampoo, and the perfume she’d worn since they were teenagers—feel the way his lip brushed slightly against the outer edge of her ear.
If he used his imagination, he could almost feel her shiver at his breath against her neck.
Just his imagination, of course.
“Have you seen Sarah?” He stayed on track with the question he’d intended to ask from the get-go. To track down his missing girlfriend.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Gem shouted back at him over her shoulder, still not looking at him.
“Yeah, but she’s been in there for a while.” It felt ridiculous having a conversation at this volume, but there was literally no alternative. Any decibel lower and she wouldn’t be able to hear him at all.
“Maybe she’s freshening up.” Gem caught his eye then and deliberately pushed her pointer finger against her right nostril, pressing it shut, before miming a big sniff.
Ethan blinked, momentarily shocked. He was surprised at Gem’s forthrightness and, frankly, her hostility toward Sarah.
He knew—at least he thought he knew—about his girlfriend’s habits and vices, and white powder in a public restroom was not one of them.
If anything, Sarah was more straitlaced than most, a chronic rule follower.
Gathering himself, he leaned forward again, stepped closer, feeling his front press against Gem’s back. He had to bend down low—lower than he did with Sarah—to get to her ear.
“That’s not nice,” he chided, as chiding as he could sound with the volume of his voice cranked up to the max.
He thought he caught her looking momentarily chagrined before she shrugged. “Sorry,” she shouted back, remorselessly.
As if on cue, Sarah returned, looking peppier than she had the entire night, even earlier at dinner.
“Hey, baby!” she greeted him, throwing her arms around his neck. “Miss me?”
For some insane reason that Ethan would never be able to explain even if he’d been given a hundred chances, he turned to look at Gem in that moment rather than respond to Sarah.
She hadn’t been expecting him to look at her then; he could just tell.
There was something unguarded about her expression, something powerful and painful, that told him the perpetual “Julia” mask had dropped slightly.
It was a face he rarely saw on her—somewhat vulnerable and fragile, eyebrows furrowed, eyes slightly larger, lips pursed in an emotion he couldn’t identify.
Whatever she was looking at, it made her unhappy. Unsure.
And her gaze was directed at Sarah.
Sarah, who may have been slightly tipsy—or, the devil on his shoulder whispered, under the influence of something else—was sober enough to catch her boyfriend do a full-body turn and expression check of another woman milliseconds after she’d thrown her arms around him.
Sarah looked between the two of them, her expression souring, red lips curling in a sneer.
“You know what?” she said, her voice a bit too low for the volume of the club but loud and clear in Ethan’s mind. “Fuck this.”
Turning on her heel, she stalked out, weaving through the masses of people before disappearing from his vision.
He watched her go, knew he should go after her, knew that if he didn’t, he might as well kiss her goodbye right then and there—metaphorically, of course, since he was certain she would never let him actually kiss her again—but there was something that didn’t allow him to move.
Something that made his feet stay glued to the floor, that kept his body immobile.
He turned to look at Gem.
She was staring at him carefully, the mask back up again, her expression inscrutable. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out.
She looked at him for another minute, or maybe just a few seconds that felt like an eternity, before slowly shaking her head, turning around, and walking away as well.