I looked up in time to see her face go from expectant to shocked to bright red with anger. At first, I thought the anger was for Justin, since he’d crossed a line no boyfriend should ever cross, but then she opened her mouth.
“I can’t believe you,” she said, eyes blazing. “You’re just saying this because you’re jealous. You’ve been jealous this entire time and you’re doing whatever you can to sabotage this for me. What kind of friend does that?”
“That’s not it at all.” I kept my voice low, hoping she’d take my cue and do the same. People were starting to stare, and no wonder. Tears were rolling down my face and Aubrey looked like she wanted to kill me.
“That’s exactly it. You’ve been trying to turn me against him, telling me I can do better and maybe we’re not meant to be together. And now you’re trying to convince me he hit on you? That’s low, Dara. Justin would never do that to me.”
“Yes, he would,” Ethan cut in.
“Ethan,” Aubrey said, tossing him a quick glance. “Maybe you should go. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“It does, actually. I was there Saturday night, in the garage. I saw it happen. Dara’s not lying.”
She looked at him again, and this time her gaze lingered. Ethan was unfailingly honest, especially with her. She knew he was telling the truth, which meant I was telling the truth too.
After a long pause, the anger in her face softened into hurt and she turned and walked away, dodging the small crowd of nosy bystanders who’d paused to listen to our fight. They watched her until she disappeared, then spun their heads back to Ethan and me, hoping for more drama.
“I should probably go talk to her,” Ethan said, sounding apologetic. But I understood. Aubrey was his number one, exactly as she should have been.
“Thanks,” I told him, blinking back more tears. “For what you said, I mean. And I’m sorry you got involved in this.”
He shrugged as if it were no big deal and headed off to find his sister. Now it was just me, standing in the hallway and crying, wondering once again if I’d just screwed things up even worse.
twenty-five
Senior Year
“ARE YOU SURE?” MY MOTHER ASKS ME FOR THE umpteenth time this week. “We don’t have to go tonight. We can all stick around here and order Chinese food.”
“No,” I say, swirling my spoon around in my cereal. “You should go. You’ll get charged if you cancel your hotel room now.”
Mom sighs into her coffee cup. She’s been freaking out for days about leaving me alone on New Year’s Eve. Months ago, before they knew I was coming back, she and Dad bought tickets for a concert and reserved a hotel room nearby. They never do things like this anymore, and I know they need the break from work and stress and me.
“True,” Mom says with a definitive nod, and I know I’ve finally convinced her. “It would be a shame to have to pay a cancellation fee. And Tobias is really excited about sleeping over at Brock’s house tonight.”
Keeping my face smooth so she won’t see my relief, I put my empty bowl in the sink and go to my room. There’s a text from Ethan waiting for me on my phone.
Have you decided?
I stare at the screen for a moment, my mind reeling. Since the night he asked me to celebrate Aubrey’s birthday with him, I’ve been putting off giving him an answer. It’s not just that I’m worried about going to his house for the first time since she died. I know it won’t be easy, and being there will trigger more memories and anxiety than I’m probably ready to handle. That part is inevitable. What I can’t predict is how tonight will impact the new, still-fragile connection I’ve managed to build with Ethan over the past few months.
But maybe that old fierce-and-fearless part of me still exists somewhere and I can tap into it again, at least for a little while.
I refocus on my phone and tap out a response. I’m in.
When Ethan arrives at seven to pick me up, it’s snowing. Not the dry, flurry kind we’ve had until now, but big, fat flakes that stick and make the roads treacherous.
“Oops, I’ve never really driven in snow before,” Ethan says when his tires skid on the way out of my driveway. He gestures to the plastic-wrapped plate in my hands. “What’s that?”
“It’s a cake I made earlier.” I peer out the windshield at the swirling snowflakes. “I really suck at baking, but . . . Aubrey would’ve wanted a cake for her birthday.”
He smiles. “Only if she could bake it herself. From scratch.”
I smile too, remembering how picky she was about store-bought pastry and the kind that came out of a box, like this one. But I think she’d give me credit for trying.
We make it to his house in one piece, and Ethan parks his car in the empty driveway.
“Where are your parents?” I ask as we walk up to the front door. I don’t really care where they are, but I need to distract myself somehow.
“Some party at one of their friends’ houses.” He opens the door and motions me inside. “I’m not exactly sure. They hate me, so we try to avoid speaking to each other as much as possible.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my heart start to pound. The inside of the house looks exactly the same, perfectly coordinated and impossibly neat. It even smells the same, like cinnamon and citrusy wood polish.
A surge of dizziness passes over me.
“You okay?” Ethan touches my arm and gives me a sympathetic look. Of course he understands. Getting used to living here without Aubrey must have been much more difficult for him than this brief visit is for me.
I let out a breath and nod. “I think so.”
“Come on.” He takes the cake out of my hands and leads me toward the kitchen. “I have something that’ll help.”
The “something” turns out to be an almost-empty bottle of vodka that he digs out from a bottom cupboard. He sets it on the counter beside the cake, finds two shot glasses, and fills them both, shaking the bottle to get the last few drops.
“Cheers,” he says, sliding my shot toward me and picking up his own.
I’ve never liked alcohol—probably a good thing, as I might have drowned myself in it after Aubrey was killed—but I’ll do pretty much anything to calm this shaky feeling in my stomach. “Cheers,” I echo, then tip the shot in my mouth like I did at Paige’s party so long ago. This one is only marginally better. Ethan gulps his at the same time, wincing as it goes down.
“So,” I say, leaning against the counter beside him. “Why do you think your parents hate you?”
He tosses the empty bottle in the trash. “Because I rebelled, or whatever. Stepped out of the box they kept me in. They’re just pissed I started living for myself instead of for them.”
I feel my muscles start to loosen, warmed by the vodka in my belly. The dizziness has passed. “I doubt they hate you. If your parents hate anyone, it’s me.”
“What makes you say that?”
“They charged me with criminal negligence, Ethan. I’m pretty sure there are some hard feelings.”
He gets quiet for a moment, his fingers absently tapping against the counter. “They dropped the charge, though.”
“Yeah, and I still don’t know why.”
An odd expression crosses his face, like embarrassment mingled with pride. He turns away to get a glass of water, suddenly unable to look at me, and that’s when it sinks in.
“You convinced them to drop it?”
He downs a mouthful of water and then offers the glass to me. I take a small sip, studying him carefully over the rim.
“I told them you’d already been through enough,” he says, meeting my eyes. “And if they didn’t back off and leave you alone, I’d find some way to fuck up their lives even more.”
I almost choke. “What would you have done?”
“Ruin their reputations around town somehow? Get a tattoo? I don’t know. I didn’t really need to provide details . . . the threat was enough.”
All I can do is shake my head, amazed. He’d stoo
d up for me, fought for me, even after I’d taken his sister away. Right after I’d taken his sister away. That he was still willing to help me after what I did makes me feel even more undeserving of him.
“Thank you,” I tell him, and press my lips against his. It’s inadequate, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.
He kisses me back for a minute, then pulls away and says, “How about we take that cake down to the family room and not come back up until it’s gone.”
“Sounds good to me.”
We gather up forks and napkins and the cake and carry everything downstairs in one trip. The family room hasn’t changed much either, aside from new lamps on the end tables. A fire crackles in the wood stove, making the room feel cozy and warm. We dump everything on the coffee table and settle on the couch.
“Do you remember the last time we were down here together?” Ethan asks.
It takes me a minute to summon up the memory. “It was spring. May, I think.” About a week before Paige’s party and everything that happened with Justin. I remember, because it’s one of the last times I was in this house with Aubrey. “We were watching Harry Potter.”
“Right.” Ethan smiles and puts his arm around me. “I was sitting where I am right now and you were stretched out beside me, your head by my leg. I couldn’t concentrate on the movie at all. You had on this shirt that was sort of low cut, so I had an awesome view.”
Emboldened by the vodka shot, I reach out and swat him. “Ethan.”
“Sorry. Most of my memories involve lusting over you.” He tugs my legs over until they’re draped across his. “Anyway, right after the movie ended you guys left to meet Travis and Paige or something, and my heart was broken.”
I remember that part too. Justin was busy that night, so it was just the four of us for a change. We went to the movies and then to Starbucks for frappuccinos, and Travis spent the whole night joking around with Aubrey.
“Do you think he was in love with her?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“What?”
“Travis. Do you think he was in love with Aubrey?”
He looks at me like he’s wondering if it’s possible for a person to get drunk from a couple of ounces of liquor. “Why would you think that?”
My mind flashes on the day I found the two of them together in the library, how red Travis’s neck got when he saw me. “You’ve seen the way he acts around me,” I say, picking at a loose thread on my leggings. “He hates me. He looks at me like I’m a murderer.”
Ethan’s jaw twitches. “No. I’m almost positive he wasn’t in love with her. They were just really good friends. She was the only one who never made him feel dumb, you know? I think even Paige made him feel like an idiot sometimes. Still does, probably.” He runs his fingers over my kneecap, tickling me. “And I’m sure he still has a soft spot for her because of what she did for him.”
“What she did for him?” I ask, confused.
His eyes widen. “She never told you about that?”
“About what?”
“She tutored him in math and English for an entire year. He would’ve had to go to summer school or repeat tenth grade if it weren’t for her.”
I gape at him. How did I miss this? What else was going on in Aubrey’s life I didn’t know about?
“Maybe he asked her not to tell anyone,” he adds. “Even you. I probably wouldn’t know either if he hadn’t come over here a few times to study.”
I lean my forehead against his shoulder, feeling a bit rattled. “Wow. I had no idea. All this time I thought he might be the one putting those papers in my locker because he loved her and hated me for—”
“Wait.” He pulls back, causing my forehead to drop off his shoulder. “Papers? Plural? There was more than the obituary one?”
“Just one more,” I assure him, and I describe the stick-figure sketch of me pushing Aubrey, that big, happy smile on my penciled face.
“And you think Travis is behind it?” His hands, both resting on my leg, clench into tight fists.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I think he started some of those rumors about me, at least.” I touch his cheek, run my thumb over his tensed jawline. “Forget I said anything. Tonight’s about the good memories, okay?”
His features relax and he nods, capturing my hand in his. And for the next two hours, that’s what we do—talk about our good memories of Aubrey. The funny things she said and did. Her amazing talent. Her quirks and pet peeves. How sweet and thoughtful and loyal she could be. How much she loved us both. How much we both loved her.
It’s cathartic, exchanging these stories with Ethan. I can talk all I want to Dr. Lemke or Mrs. Dover or my mom, but none of them knew Aubrey like Ethan did. None of them shared a connection with her that was forged through years of laughter and kinship and pain. None of them truly understand how it felt to lose her so early, long before she was ready to go.
“What do you think she’d be doing now?” I ask after we’ve exhausted every happy memory in our collective brains. It’s close to midnight, minutes away from a brand-new year and the day Aubrey would have turned eighteen. We haven’t moved from the couch, and the cake still sits in front of us on the table, untouched. We decided to wait until it’s officially January first to eat it.
“Probably freaking out about college,” Ethan says, sprawling back on the couch.
“Yeah.” I feel a pang of sadness. She’d never get to go to college, or get married, or have kids, or sit around with us like this, talking about old times.
“Two minutes,” Ethan says, checking the time on his phone.
“Do you have candles for the cake?”
He glances around, then gets up and crosses the room to a set of shelves in the corner. “I have a candle,” he says proudly, swiping a squat, red candle off one of the shelves. He brings it and the lighter from the wood stove back to the couch. I unwrap the cake, and he sticks the candle right in the middle, causing the thick, white icing to ooze up the sides. “Time?” he asks as he lights the wick.
I peer at his phone. “Fifteen seconds.”
He settles back on the couch again and grabs my hand, and that’s what we’re doing when midnight and Aubrey’s birthday arrives—sitting together and remembering her. I think about last year, how I’d spent the holidays at my aunt and uncle’s house because I wasn’t ready to come home. Mom and Dad and Tobias flew in for a few days so we could celebrate together, but it didn’t feel like a celebration. Not like right now.
“What did you do last New Year’s Eve?” I ask after the candle has been blown out and we both have forkfuls of cake.
Ethan hacks off another bite. “Hunter got me drunk.”
“Hmm.” I lean closer and use my thumb to wipe a smudge of icing off the corner of his mouth. “I guess eating crappy homemade cake is sort of boring in comparison?”
Instead of answering, he kisses me. His mouth is sticky and sweet, and I kiss him back like I can’t get enough of it. Soon, we’re tangled together on the couch, cake and everything else forgotten.
“Want to go up to my room?” Ethan asks sometime later, after he notices me shivering for the second time. The fire died off a while ago, and the room has been growing increasingly chilly. “I don’t mean—we can just talk. Or whatever. It’s a lot warmer up there, that’s all.”
I hesitate for a moment. If we go up there, we’ll probably do a lot more than talk. My chest is pressed against his and I can feel his heart pounding. He wants me, and going by the way my own heart races in sync with his, I want him too. I want us to get lost in each other and let everything else fade away. Just for a while, I want us to forget.
“Okay,” I reply.
We slowly make our way upstairs. I feel a bit unsteady, like my limbs belong to someone else. I’m grateful when we reach the top floor, because it’s much warmer up here and I don’t have to climb any more stairs.
“Oh my God,” I gasp when we walk into his room. The last time I was in here, it looked almost like a
hotel room, tidy and bland and impersonal. Now, the walls are virtually covered in posters, and his floor is littered with clothes and music magazines and guitar picks. For the first time since I’ve known Ethan, his room looks like it belongs to a teenage boy. “You’re really committed to pissing off your parents, aren’t you?”
“I live for it.” He pushes a balled-up sweatshirt off his desk chair. “You want to sit down?”
I ignore the chair and kiss him instead. He wraps his arms around me and walks me backward toward his bed, which—surprisingly, considering the state of his room in general—is very neatly made. Not for long, though. We pick up where we left off downstairs, only now we have more room to maneuver. Without removing his lips from mine, Ethan rolls us over until I’m on top of him, my knees on either side of his hips and my hair falling forward, shielding our faces.
“I love you,” he mumbles against my neck as his hands slide over my rib cage, pushing my shirt up, unhooking my bra. “I love you so much. I always have.”
Tears sting my eyes, but I force them back. I don’t want to cry. Not now. All I want is to get even closer to him, closer than I’ve ever been to anyone, and let these feelings take over until there’s nothing left but his body against mine.
“We still good?” he asks as our clothes join the jumbled mess on the floor.
“Still good,” I say, because even though I haven’t loved him for years like he’s loved me, I’ve always been able to trust him. And that hasn’t changed.
Ethan lies there and watches me for a while, like he’s giving me time to change my mind. When I don’t, he reaches beside him to the nightstand and opens the drawer, pulling out a small, square package. The fact that he has an open box of condoms in his room makes me pause for a second.
“You’ve done this before?” Right now is the worst possible time to broach this subject, but I have to know.
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