Page 35 of We'll Meet Again

“It was only three weeks, and he was constantly cheating on me,” she explained. “I ended it when Jordan sent me evidence he couldn’t deny.”

“Which was?”

“A video of him kissing another girl at a club,” she told him. “When I confronted him, he owned up to all the rest too.”

“Gotta give him some credit for honesty,” Ethan joked.

Billie snorted into her wine. When she recovered, he spoke again.

“Anyone since him?”

She turned the wine glass in half circles, the red swishing around inside, and thought about Greg and his words to her. They had been following her around like a shadow since he said them. And they haunted her especially around Ethan.

“Yeah, actually,” she said. “For most of last year I was dating Greg. He was an alright bloke, but we broke up because…” She trailed off, fear sinking its claws into her heart. What if this scared him off? She took a deep breath and decided on the truth. “He told me that love is wasted on me.”

Ethan blinked several times while that registered, and she watched as his brow knit slowly together over his eyes, as if he was trying to determine if he’d heard that right. “He said what now?”

“Well, it wasn’t like he just blurted that out of nowhere,” she explained. “It started because he was ready to say ‘I love you’ and I…wasn’t.”

“That is…” He let out a heavy breath. “Cruel. Wow.”

“That’s what I said!” Billie agreed indignantly, still miffed about Tessa calling her the ‘emotionally unavailable fuck boy of her own life.’ Would an emotionally unavailable fuck boy be on a date with a guy like Ethan? Billie didn’t think so.

“Love’s never wasted,” Ethan went on. “Not even when you get hurt.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “How do you mean?”

“Love always has value,” he said. “Gosh, I’d never say my love for my mother was wasted just because she passed and I was angry that I’d lost her. To say love is wasted just because it isn’t reciprocated…that’s just…Well, I don’t think that was really love at all.”

She let that seep into her heart, marinating it in the meaning. It was especially powerful coming from someone like him, who had lost so much.

“What did you do with it?” she wondered suddenly. “That love you had for your mother - what did you do with it after she passed?”

He raised an eyebrow. She’d surprised herself with the question, too. It was the sort of romantic nonsense she usually rolled her eyes at in films and books, but the way he talked about it, she couldn’t help herself. And thankfully, it only made him smile.

“Oh, I gave a lot of it to my grandmother,” he said. “She didn’t seem to mind.”

“To be expected, I suppose,” she returned with a grin.

“Some of it, I gave to football,” he went on. “And I kept a little bit for myself. I think that’s what she’d want.”

“I’m sure she would,” she said, warmth spreading from her chest to the tips of her toes.

Talking to Ethan was so much easier than her nerves led her to believe. It seemed no matter what she said, she was met with understanding. All the way through dessert, the conversation flowed. And by the time the chocolate cake they ordered arrived, Billie felt an ache in her cheeks from how much she was smiling. She had been on too many first dates to count, but this one stood out as hands down, the best.

They walked home, and Billie was thankful for the cold, as it woke her from her haze of having a full belly and two glasses of wine. Not to mention the fuzziness in her brain from the pleasure of the company. Ethan held her hand again as they made their way down the sidewalk, their fingers clinging loosely to each other where they swayed with their steady pace. Suddenly needing to be closer, she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

Just outside her building, a fleck of white floated past Billie’s face that made her come to a stop. She held her free hand out and looked up. The stars were hidden behind a blanket of gray clouds, from which fell a light dusting of snow. The flakes melted upon making contact with her flushed skin.

“The snow’s pretty,” she said softly.

Ethan tugged his coat a little tighter around him, shoulders hunching against a cold wind. “Yeah, it’s alright.”

She blinked. “Wow, youreallydon’t like the cold.”

“It’s not my favorite,” he admitted, and she giggled.

“Well, would you like to come up?” she offered. “Have a cup of tea and…get warm?”

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