“Duh,” I say, because it is the first thing that comes to mind.
He kicks my foot.
“I mean it. I want you to understand that. Because maybe you don’t, after the whole thing with my mom. Had she told you yes, that she’d let you move in, I would have been excited. I swear I would have come around. I would rather have you there, sharing my bathroom—me having to sleep on Adam’s floor—than have you move somewhere else.”
It means a lot to hear that, so I tell him.
I turn on my side to face him.
“Maybe it’s good for me to try being with my mom. I don’t know. Seth isn’t . . . who he’s supposed to be.”
Chris turns on his side to face me, too.
“I know why you have issues with your mom, but I’ve always liked her. And she wants you with her, you know?”
“I guess,” I say. “Plus, it’s only a year. If she and Bill break up and she moves again, it probably won’t happen until the end of the year, and then I’ll be in college anyway.”
“Then we’ll be at the same college,” Chris says.
“I hope so,” I say.
Our breath mingles. Chris smells like dried apricot. He had a snack pack.
“Lori,” he says, pulling me to him and putting his arm around my back. We’re hugging, but horizontally, and I recognize this as a potential cause of actual death. I could write a story about a girl who is so desperate for someone, so in like but also so in love, so good at keeping all her feelings in a little box in her soul, that when the object of her affection gets into bed with her and pulls her close, she explodes into confetti.
I don’t want to turn into confetti, so I start to move away, but when I do, I’m awkward about it because he’s holding on tight, and then our bodies are very close. So close that I notice his whole body.
“Oh my god,” I say, and I roll away and hop to my feet at the end of the bed.
Chris scrambles up, too. “Lori! I’m sorry, Lori!”
“I’m not mad,” I say, and I know he’s panicking about basic biology and what I felt on my leg, but I can’t deal with it right now. “It’s fine! It’s not anything!” I hope that’s enough to make this less weird.
I turn on a light on the wall, which only makes this moment worse because it is now unsettlingly bright. He understands this and turns around. I still can’t look at him, but I see my slip-on shoes and I run to them and grab the room key on the desk by the door.
“I’m going for a walk!” I yell.
The door slams behind me, and I am shuffling down the hallway as if it’s a fire drill.
I will take a walk, and he will be asleep by the time I get back. We won’t have to talk about it.
Things are going to be so busy tomorrow anyway, and really, what is there to discuss?
I make it halfway down the hall and let out a string of very bad words, only to look up to find an older couple staring at me as they come out of the elevator.
“Sorry,” I say.
I make it to the lobby and see a bathroom—thank god it’s a one-stall—and then I feel safe. I stay seated on the toilet long after I’ve used it.
I will not give in to temptation and go back upstairs before I am ready.
There is a poster on the wall that shows a bunch of pictures of different styles of New England barns, and I read them over and over.
Yankee Barn. Three-bay Barn. Connecticut Barn.
Barns are soothing.
I am going to tell my mother that I am excited to move to Maryland. Seth can go back to New York and see how he fares without his muse in front of him. Chris and I will forget what just happened, and we will benefit from having Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and Delaware and a bunch of other states between us. We’ll share a Google Doc for stories, and we won’t ruin what we have.
I wonder, for a second, whether I could spend the entire night in this bathroom, sleeping with my head against the wall, but I know I can’t. I will have to go back to the room.
I wash my hands and exit. Maybe there’s a computer down here where I can email my mom now—just to tell her I’m all in—but I stop short because I see Ethan in the reading room off the lobby. He’s on the couch by himself, wearing pajamas not unlike mine. They’re silky, and the top and bottom match, but instead of short shorts, his are full pants with a matching button-down top. His initials, EF, are on the pocket. Classier than the M on mine for whatever brand they sell at Target.
This style of pajamas looks so much more natural on a well-groomed Englishman who has a cool accent and says chips instead of french fries.
It’s when I wave to him and he doesn’t respond that I know that something is wrong. He’s staring at the wall, lost in thought, even after I wave a second time, so I clear my throat and say, “Hey, Ethan.”
“Oh, hello, Lori,” he says, as if he’s waking from a zombie coma. His eyes are unnaturally bright now, his smile big and fake. “Do you need something? Is the room okay?”
I sit across from him, on the opposing leather love seat. The room is decorated with old leathery books. Old leathery everything. I notice, looking closer at Ethan, that his beard is coming in. He’s tired.
“The room is great. Thanks for putting us up; it’s super generous,” I say. “I just needed to escape my room for a few minutes. Or hours.”
Ethan looks concerned, and I realize that what I’ve said—especially the word escape—might have implied that there’s been a conflict. I don’t want him to worry, and I can’t think of a lie that will serve as a good explanation, so I tell the truth.
“I needed some air. And I had to poop,” I confess, because that did just happen.
“I see,” Ethan says, and smiles again, but his expression is flat. I know this kind of meaningless smile. I’ve been showing it to people a lot this week. To Chris’s mom. To the Garden Girls. To Ethan, probably right now.
“What about you? What brings you to Ye Olde Library?” I ask, gesturing to the sturdy decor. I’m trying to lighten the mood here. “I assume you are not here for the same reason.”
“What? No,” he says. “Oh, no.”
I notice the clear tumbler in his hand. It’s filled with brown liquor, maybe something like bourbon or whiskey. Chris’s dad drinks something similar every New Year’s Eve and at midnight says, “Here’s to another one, my sweet,” and kisses his wife.
When I look up again, Ethan’s eyes are super glassy. Then I look down and see that he’s wearing socks that have tiny dogs printed on them. He has wandered down here without shoes on. That seems out of character.
I’m not wearing shoes either, but I am seventeen and my hair is purple.
I think, for a second, that in the story Seth is writing, I’m the exact kind of girl who wanders around in a hotel not wearing shoes. That makes me scowl.
But Ethan is not messy like this.
“Ethan, are you okay?” I ask. “You forgot shoes.”
“Of course, yes,” he says, and he sounds miles away.
I don’t believe him, obviously, and I don’t have anywhere else I want to be, so I pick up a magazine on the table and flip through it. It’s a glossy guide to the area, and there’s a family on the cover who look like they’re living their best lives in this part of Massachusetts. There are pictures of them doing different things. In one, the parents and their two kids are running through one of those corn mazes that are all over New England every fall. They cut the corn into some shape. Like it’s a field of corn with paths cut into the shape of a ghost if you were looking from above. I went to one with Chris’s family once. The Maize Maze. It’s a whole thing.
In another picture in this magazine, the parents are having a romantic dinner at a winery. Both blond and pale, they look like siblings. In the third picture, the kids are wide-eyed at a children’s museum of some kind. In the fourth, it’s summer, and the family is eating cotton candy.
The magazine is called Berkshires Now!, and all I can do is imagine a different issue with my family
on the cover—my mom, Seth, me, and Ethan and Bill—and in every picture we’d be looking more and more confused and miserable. Or maybe our pictures would show us in gardens, illegally dumping bags of ashes all over the place.
“Your uncle and I are just—we’re just going through it.”
I look up, and Ethan’s eyes are on his socks.
I consider his words and try to make eye contact, but he’s more interested in the floor. It’s also clear to me now that he might be drunk. He’s holding the tumbler at an angle. He’s a little shaky. And if it wasn’t mostly empty, it would have spilled. He hiccups.
“Going through what?” I ask.
I’ve seen drunk people my age, and I guess I’ve seen older people drunk too, like the time at the Cheesecake Factory when a bunch of guys watching hockey at the bar were yelling so loud they got kicked out. But I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen an adult get really, really wasted. My mom doesn’t drink; it taints her energy, she says.
But Ethan is fully smashed, and now I know I’m not going to leave him.
“. . . just some troubles,” he mutters.
“You’re having troubles with Seth?” I ask.
“That’s probably an understatement,” he says.
“Oh.”
He looks up at me and waits for me to say more.
“Are you guys in a fight?” I ask.
Ethan laughs, and it sounds angry and mean.
“Lori, we ended things three months ago.”
I cover my mouth with my hand.
“No,” I say.
“Technically, six months ago,” he says, and he drags out the word technically so it sounds like five syllables. “At first it was a trial breakup. We’d open ourselves up for a bit. But it was never about that. We’d ceased to be romantic partners in all ways.”
I nod. I don’t know what else to do. I mean, I’ve never even had a boyfriend—I was with Frankie the lacrosse player for a few weeks, and it was mostly just making out in his car—so I have no idea what it means to be a partner.
All I know is that Seth and Ethan are my example for that kind of relationship. I’ve known them together my whole life. Ethan is my uncle by marriage, even though they’re not married. They always told me they already shared real estate and other important paperwork, and didn’t need the wedding gifts. They’re a unit.
“But you’re here with us,” I say. “And you and Seth still live together.”
“Oh, you noticed that, did you?” Ethan says, and stands up. He walks to the other side of the room, where there’s a small bar with water glasses and a wicker basket full of tiny packs of pretzels—the same brand they had at Walsh’s Funeral Home, a place that I feel like I visited a thousand years ago, as opposed to last week.
Ethan picks up an empty water glass, pours about two inches of alcohol into it, and slides it over to me.
“Really?” I ask.
Seth gave me wine just days ago, but this looks more serious.
“Where I’m from, we let young people learn to drink alcohol so they can do it more responsibly when they become adults. Americans—it’s all depravation and then excess. It’s not a good way to teach self-control.”
This is a good point, but it’s a little meaningless coming from someone who’s slurring his words and can’t stop hiccuping.
“Yes, I know I’m one to talk, in my cups,” he says, reading my mind.
I love that he says things like “in my cups.”
For the record, I also like drunk Ethan. He has no filter, and he’s clearly fed up, and hearing this from him makes me feel older than I’ve ever felt in my life. But I want to assume that whatever’s happening with Seth is just a fight. I can’t imagine that it’s actually over.
I take a sip of what’s in the glass. It burns going down my throat, in a good way. Based on the way it clears my sinuses, this could do a number on me quickly, so I have to take little sips. I try not to pucker my whole face every time I taste it.
“If you guys really broke up, why are you still together? Why are you here with us? Why are you acting like things are normal?”
“Because we built a home together, and that’s a pretty complicated thing to split up. We are two separate people who have agreed to move on, and we both know it’s time, but I also know that when I get out of the shower in the morning at home, there will be a coffee cup on the counter made just how I like it, with two teaspoons of milk and one of honey. Our routines continue because we are roommates and friends, even when we’re not partners. We know we’ve fallen out of love. But there’s still love there.”
“Oh,” I say.
“And I’m here because of that love for him, for all of you. Because Seth’s mother died, and I lost my mother years ago, and I know how it feels. I know that even if he is functional this week, this loss is going to wreck him once it sinks in. Our breakup doesn’t change that.
“He’s still the love of my life. I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now. But . . . it doesn’t make it easy.
“Being in this gorgeous place in a hotel room that is designed for romance is not easy for either of us. You have these memories of the attraction and the patterns you can fall into that would . . . in our case, it would confuse things. At home, it’s easy to sleep in the same bed without even thinking about . . . intimacy, but what is it about hotels?”
Indeed, I think.
He adds, “I’m down here so I don’t make mistakes up there. There’s a temptation to pretend we can mend things that are supposed to stay broken.”
He surprises me by adding, “We should have gotten married.”
“Why?”
“Because this loss is monumental. I don’t want to call him an ex. He’s an ex-husband.”
“Ex-partner,” I offer.
“That sounds a bit better, I suppose. It still doesn’t scratch the surface.”
I take another sip of alcohol, and I’m really starting to feel it now. The whiskey is warm, making my brain tingly. His words are sinking in. My chest gets tight as I realize that I’m losing someone else. It sounds like Ethan and Seth are really over, and I don’t want this incredible man to be out of my life.
He’s disclosed all this to me as if I’m a peer or a friend, so I do the same.
“That’s why I’m down here too,” I say. “I didn’t want to make a mistake up there.”
“Really,” Ethan says, his smile twitching, and he looks relieved to be talking about anything else.
“I . . . it got weird.”
“You and Christian are just friends?”
“Best friends,” I say.
“You don’t have romantic feelings for him?” Ethan says.
“Oh, I do. I have every romantic feeling for him. But I need him for the long haul, you know? I can ignore the love stuff. I need his friendship and our creative partnership more than anything else.”
Ethan nods.
“I never had to worry about it, because he’s fine with it. We had a small talk about it when we met, but we’re friends. We hook up with other people. And I’ve always thought that if anything, it’s been harder for me to keep the boundaries. But then, upstairs . . .”
Whatever I’m saying is sobering Ethan up. He’s got his concerned-dad face on.
“Do you want to come back to our room? We have the pullout. No one should be uncomfortable tonight.”
I hesitate for a second. “No. I feel like I owe him an apology,” I say finally, “because I ran out when things got too close. He looked . . . stung. Like rejected and then confused. But it’s complicated.”
“It sounds like you care about him quite a bit,” Ethan says.
“I do,” I say.
“Lori.” Ethan leans forward. “Sometimes the best way to make something less awkward is to acknowledge it. Maybe you should let him know why you ran out.”
“Is that how you and Seth communicate?” I ask, and I don’t mean to be rude, but it sounds as if there’s a lot unsaid in that relati
onship.
He leans back and finishes the last sips of his beverage.
“We’re doing our best. Once one of us finally said what he was really thinking, once he had the courage to say that he wanted to move on, the path became clear. Now it’s just logistics—the practicalities of letting go.”
I think about Chris, and how I ran out without telling him why. That I count on him to be indifferent about me because I’m constantly thinking about getting closer to him. That the moment I realized he wasn’t, that his body wasn’t indifferent at all, I had to depend on myself to make sure we stayed safe from anything more.
I sink into the couch.
“What I have with Chris can’t be temporary,” I whisper. “I need to tell him that’s the problem.”
“Everything is temporary, technically, Lori,” Ethan says. “That doesn’t mean it’s not worth experiencing.”
“He’s probably so confused.”
“You sound pretty confused too. Maybe you can help each other.”
With the empty tumbler in his hand, Ethan gazes through the bay doors that lead out to the back of the hotel. He stands up and walks to them, and I follow.
“I guess he didn’t want to stay in that room either.”
I move close to the door to see what Ethan is looking at, and it turns out that it’s Chris. My best friend—if that’s what he still is—is on the hotel’s lawn. He’s circling the oversize chessboard that sits on the ground. We’d passed it on the way in.
I don’t know what he plans to do on that board. Like me, he does not know how to play chess. Somehow his dad taught his brother how to be a chess whiz, but Chris stopped at checkers.
Maybe he left the room to look for me. Or to avoid my return.
“Go out there and be honest,” Ethan says.
I nod.
Ethan takes my arm and turns me toward him. The skin around his tired eyes look crinkly, like paper. As if it could fall off his face and turn to dust, like craisins. Everything is dissolving.
I look at my uncle’s big brown eyes and kind smile, and I want to tell him that he is such a cool person, that since I was a kid, everything about him has made me feel happy and safe. He is better than Seth. He speaks before I can.
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