by Eden Butler
Ransom’s name had come up often. Especially during that first month when Ethan was courting me, sending me roses, taking me to dinner—when a stupid Sports Illustrated interview Ransom gave, the one that mentioned how happy he was being a bachelor in Miami, loving the life he led, had me desperate to forget the promises he clearly hadn’t meant. Ethan was a fan. That much was evident from all the times Kona and Keira came to the studio for Mack and Ethan went a little dumb. But he was also determined to help me forget Ransom. He’d been so patient with me. He continued to be so, but the heated gaze in his eyes began to fade when I kept silent. It worried me, added to my confusion. Ethan knew I didn’t love him, but I had promised to be open to the possibility of forever with him. A forever that kept me from pining over Ransom.
“Is this…well, he was there tonight. He saw you say yes.”
“It’s not…” I didn’t bother lying. Moving my head down, I rested it on his shoulder, loving the smell of his skin, how warm and comforting Ethan felt. Maybe I didn’t love him, but that didn’t mean I never would. Some good marriages have started with less than that.
“Do you want to take it back?”
“Ethan…”
“Sir? Your car,” the valet said, interrupting the moment with hand on the door, ushering us through it.
The silence kept, the mood a bit more somber than it should have been for a newly engaged couple. But Ethan guided me out of the door, settled me inside his Mercedes and kept to that silence as he drove away from the restaurant.
I felt heartless, cruel.
The car shifted, flying down Canal to the emptying N. St. Peters Street, toward, I assumed, my small condo on Elysian Fields. He drove beyond the blinking lights announcing traffic construction until he finally slowed, throwing on his blinker and in the six-minute silent car ride we ended at his Jax Brewery condo.
There was no need to comment on why he didn’t take me home. Normally, we were a handful of blocks from each other. Normally, we never drove to see each other at all, but the recital had been uptown and the weather had cooled considerably, warranting his Mercedes and me being at his mercy unless I wanted to walk home in the windy weather. There was a discussion he wanted and activity I knew he hoped I’d agree to. I wasn’t sure how I felt about either.
He sat still, quiet in his parking spot with the Mississippi past the Riverwalk, but did not speak. The only movement that Ethan made was to shift his gaze straight out toward the river and lean his elbow against the door.
“That look you gave him, it made me wonder.”
“That’s not…you don’t know…”
“I can feel it.”
He wouldn’t look at me. Choosing, instead that constant gawk at the slow moving river and the flickering activity of people leaning against the railing. But Ethan didn’t seem angry. The smooth hold of his features weren’t tight with anger or wrinkled with worry. There was little in the way of any emotion at all on his face and I wasn’t sure what that meant. For all my complaints that he hadn’t figured out my moods by the expressions I let him see, I didn’t know how to read him either.
Finally, when Ethan’s attention seemed perpetually unmoving I shifted to my side, watching his profile, taking just a second to appreciate the cut of his jaw and the long, straight slant of his nose.
“He was my first love.” I kept my voice soft, like a whisper I almost wished he couldn’t hear. “His family…they’re still…”
“I know how much they mean to you, baby.” When he looked at me and took my hands between his long fingers I felt some of the awkward tension eke away. But Ethan wouldn’t smile, not yet. He wouldn’t give me any indication of his anger or ambivalence. “Did I interrupt something tonight?” He asked that question with his attention on that ring. Our engagement ring. It felt like deadweight until he glanced at me, mouth easing into a grin. “Between the two of you?”
“No. No, of course not.” I couldn’t make him understand. Not when I barely knew what to think of me and Ransom myself. I knew what he meant to me. I’d mourned the loss of what we had for four long years. Now was the time for me to move past it. Saying yes to Ethan tonight may not have been the wisest course of action, but it felt like the surest. During that withheld moment on the stage with Ethan’s hopeful, anxious expression freezing his features and the silent breath still in my lungs, it felt right. ‘Yes’ felt right, just for a few seconds. It felt right until I looked out into the crowd and saw Ransom’s expression. That look broke my heart.
“Ethan, Ransom and I…” We were what? Nothing came to me right away. We were ridiculous. We were too selfish to make things work? We were impossible to explain? Ransom wouldn’t listen. He had singular thoughts about his life. Thoughts that gave no consideration to how I felt, how invisible he made me feel sometimes, how worried his injuries made me and when I asked him to just consider his safety, for our sake, he blew me off, not thinking I was serious.
Ethan didn’t hurry me along, didn’t ask that I explain myself. Just like he had for months, Ethan waited for me. I wondered how long he’d keep that up. “We…were together a long, long time and even though it’s been four years since we broke up, we still care about each other. After all this time, it’s hard to keep that from resonating. But our lives are so different now. He wants things that I won’t…I can’t give him but it’s more than that. His life, mine…modi.”
We’re end game. God, Ransom had said that to me with such conviction the night I left Miami. He’d said it like he’d meant it but I’d allowed myself to stop believing him. I’d stopped believing a long time ago that he was where I’d end up. Then Ethan came along and… me zanmi, I’d agreed to marry him. Logically, I knew that I was too young to be senile, but the night came back to me in an instant, while I sat in that fine car with that finer man patiently waiting for me to explain my relationship with Ransom and what he’d seen when he found us in the dressing room. What I hoped he hadn’t seen was that I’d said yes to him just minutes before and I’d already begun to regret it.
“Look at me.” Ethan’s hands were gentle, a touch that even then relaxed me, had my breath evening out. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe it was too soon, but you know I don’t like to think about things before I do them. I like to be spontaneous because it makes everything I attempt that much sweeter. But you’re not like me.” We sunk deeper into the leather with Ethan pulling me so close that our noses nearly touched. “You like order. You like to know what’s happening next. It’s one of the things I love about you, beautiful.”
He spoke so softly, a gentle tickle of his words easing me, comforting so that I didn’t feel like such an idiot, so that the weight of my guilt didn’t choke me as much.
“It was a rush,” he continued, keep his fingers on my cheeks, ghosting his thumb against my jaw. “This whole proposal thing was another spontaneous thing from me and I know you’re doubting your answer. I’d be a little worried if you weren’t. So how about we take this slow? No wedding planning. No setting any dates. Nothing that’s going to put that look on your face.” He smoothed the muscles across my forehead until the ache there went away. “You were with him for six years. His family is your family. I have no desire to take any of that from you. I just want you, Aly. I want to be with you and if that means I have to wait while you figure things out, I will.”
He was a man I didn’t deserve, but God, I wanted to, so badly. Herein lay the problem. Ethan was good and smart and sweet. He was more beautiful than Lucifer and kinder than a less wicked, more obedient angel. But…and this was the hell of it all…Ethan was not, would never be, Ransom.
“Do you want the ring back?” I asked because it seemed only fair. It seemed to make things less complicated.
“No,” he said, picking up my left hand to kiss my knuckles. “Why would you think that? It looks good where it is.” He wouldn’t let me pull away from him, not just then. Instead, Ethan tugged on my wrist, fingers slipping up my hand, gripping me tight, but gentle.
I let him because his touch was warm, because I craved the comfort he offered. “Let’s just take it day by day. Maybe you and Ransom aren’t together anymore, but that doesn’t mean you both aren’t important to each other. That doesn’t mean you can’t be friends. His kid sister adores you, so does his mom. Hell, even Kona dotes on you.”
I nodded, reminding myself that no one knew how deeply Kona had taken offense at my leaving Ransom four years ago, and how deeply his rudeness had cut me. The first time I had seen Kona after I had walked out on his injured son, he had interrupted my quick return to the lake house to pick up Mack for a girls’ day out. He’d been cold to me then, his temper flaring when I didn’t back down from his bluntness, Kona had let his mumbled disrespect cut me to the bone. “What kind of woman leaves her man when he’s hurt?”
Keira had yelled at him, telling him to mind his own business, but even that simple question stung. Kona hadn’t realized what his anger had done, how that snap at me for leaving Ransom had stuck. But he also hadn’t realized the secret I had been carrying deep inside, a secret that no one knew, that had been the catalyst for my leaving Miami, or how much his drunken words months before had made it a secret I could not share with those I loved the most.
Ethan moved closer, no longer, it seemed, interested in discussing my warring emotions or what I felt about Ransom. He seemed to want my mouth just then, eager to see if I wanted his too. When I didn't move away from him, smooth, collected Ethan kissed me like he always did—like it was the first and last kiss all at once.
I didn’t know if I could name what I felt for Ethan. Maybe it was that I’d deprived myself for two years of a man’s touch and he ticked off all the buttons that made me reconsider my celibacy. For more than a decade, there had only ever been Ransom. Even after we broke up. Only him until that text message two years ago. Maybe it was Ethan, who he was, how he treated me, that had me second guessing myself anytime I stopped him from pushing me too far.
He wanted me. That I felt in the aggressive movement of his mouth over mine, in the way he held onto my hip, how his fingers dug into my skin, how he bit my bottom lip, how his breath went quick and pulsing inside of a minute of me returning his kiss. And when Ethan moved his hand down my arm, when he rested his palm flat against my ribs and brushed my nipple with his thumb, I was aroused enough to do little else than arch into that touch.
“Shit, Aly…” He was gentle, as much as a frenzied tornado can be and I didn’t push him back, letting him sweep me along by his smell, by the heat in that car and the satisfied buzz of my body finally being touched. For just a second I forgot to keep myself restrained. “Baby…I don’t want to rush anything but I…” He grunted, an unsatisfied sound, before he gripped the back of my neck, holding onto me like he thought I might float away. “I just want to taste you. No…no pressure, but please, let me…” He cleared his throat, finally glancing at me. “Come inside with me.” A graze of his mouth on mine and his fingers shook against my arm. “Stay with me tonight.”
I didn’t answer, felt a little flustered, a lot turned on, then annoyed with myself when that small, cruel voice in the back of my mind told me how hurt Ransom would be if he knew what I was up to. For once, I didn’t care what he thought. Ransom wasn’t mine anymore.
Ethan was.
There is nothing sadder
Than love left untended.
Mine
Yours
Theirs.
It cripples.
It shakes.
My past
Your pain
Our memories.
It destroys.
The whole
fucking
world.
Three
For four years, we existed in text messages. Greetings, check ins, questions about how we were doing, sometimes even the occasional late night confession that we’d missed each other—Aly and I swam in the circles built by zeroes and ones, wifi and distance.
I’d hated every second of it. Especially when the last year we were together I’d seen her texts more than her. That hadn’t changed, but the frequency had. Then two years ago, someone else replied to a text that Aly had sent to me. One quick shower trying to wash a stranger from my skin, a missed text from Aly, and it all fell apart. For good. “Who the hell is this?” was the reply Aly had gotten from someone who wasn’t me, and it changed everything.
I couldn’t stop it in time.
There was nothing for me to feel guilty about. At least, that’s what Aly had sworn when I finally got her to speak to me. But I heard the hurt behind her words. We weren’t together, technically, but we’d still been sleeping with each other on and off, had been for two years after she walked out. There was still a connection, so of course my fuck up hurt her.
“I knew it would happen eventually.” That reply had been short, brutal and the sound of it made my stomach drop until I thought there would be nothing left inside me.
“That’s not the point,” I’d told her. It had been damn hard to reign in my anger at myself and at her for brushing off the fact that I had been with someone else. “It didn’t mean…”
“If you tell me giving that part of yourself to someone else meant nothing to you at all, then my opinion is going to change.”
“Aly…”
“If my opinion changes, then I won’t be able to find time to speak to you anymore.” When I’d spent the next handful of seconds listening to her breathe, to the crackle of emotion she tried to repress, and mixing in a few prayers between my own ragged breaths, Aly continued. “Did it mean anything?”
“Yeah,” I’d told her, unable to keep the quake out of my voice. “It meant you were really gone.”
I’d never been lower than that night, alone in a Dallas luxury hotel room with some stranger over me, saying things that meant nothing. Things meant to fill the air with energy, to take the edge off, words that were a balm for emotion. I’d felt no real pleasure, no emotion at all, nothing that would take away the bone-scraping loneliness that Aly had left behind.
There had been nothing to hold onto at night. No sweet scent taking up space in my head. No soft, pliable body to keep me grounded. Nothing in my heart but the memory of her lips and the sound of her laughter. Even with a girl whose name I hadn’t bothered to remember moving over me, I’d still felt Aly’s vacancy. No one could fill it. Not then. Not now.
It hadn’t been Aly’s fault. I’d made sure she knew that. At my most basic level, I was weak. I was a pathetic asshole who’d let my woman leave. I didn’t chase after her, only took what she offered whenever we were together. I’d never acknowledged that our lives had been about me, my career, what I needed and when. I hadn’t even considered how she felt, how much she worried.
Ridiculous as it sounds, I’d texted her. An hour ago, on the night she got engaged. Not surprisingly, she still hadn’t answered. It was late, and she’d had a big day with the recital and the proposal and all. Still, I kept my phone where I could see it. Next to me on the patio table my phone flashed with an email alert I ignored and the light from the screen brightened against the darkness, illuminated the pavers at my feet and shot out toward the deck beyond my parent’s backyard and the lake that ran behind it. The water was still, black like a magpie’s head with a sliver of purple waving along the shoreline, reflecting the low light from the moon.
This place was home. Where my family lived, where the sweetest memories of Louisiana came from—my life here had been about loss for so long as I kid I wondered if I could come here, sit out on this patio watching the waves and the distant activity from across the lake, without feeling all that loss.
Then Aly had come along.
She replaced every shred of pain with her laughter and love.
Now I could sit out here and not think about losing my first love, Emily, at sixteen, right out on that lake. I could relax, stare out toward the dock lined with a string of soft yellow lights that danced off the water and not be reminded of anything but the taste of
Aly’s mouth and the number of times we’d disappeared for hours on end into the pool house across the patio.
My parents had transformed the lake house over the years, from the place my mother spent her adolescence wanting to escape, to the comfortable upscale home that didn’t seem too ornate or too formal, like it had been when Mom was a kid. The fancy marble floors and lavish columns from her youth were gone, replaced with cedar posts and hardwood floors. It was more farmhouse than luxury mansion now and my parents took great pains to keep it that way. There was a pool off to the side of the patio, for when the lake was too high or the water too choppy, and a stone fire pit in the center of the patio where we’d spent years roasting marshmallows and having impromptu sing-alongs.
The large house on the lake had been a prison for my mother, but she had escaped, with me in her belly and my father having no idea I existed. Over the years after their reunion, the memories of the lake house had been replaced by my brother and sister’s laughter, by their bickering, and by miles of indulgent toys and books. Ohana had finally come to the lake house, fired by promises broken, then rekindled with time and the love my parents created together. Mom had substituted the bitterness and loneliness of her childhood with a family of her own making—one with a power strong enough to displace the past.
Something I still hadn’t found a way to do for myself.
The vibration from the guitar in my hands echoed against the silent night, grew louder as I continued playing. “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones. It was a song I’d taught Aly. It meant something to us once. Now it was another memory in the full bank of them that kept her present, kept her real to me. Sometimes I thought they’d be the only thing of Aly I’d ever be able to have again. Christ, I hoped that wasn’t true. When my phone finally sounded with a text alert and I jerked the small silver device in my hands and read her message, I thought maybe my chances were gone.