Page 66 of The Someday Daughter
“You didn’t think I’d come?”
I shake my head slowly.
“Well, I did.” He shrugs, something so entirely defeated about it I feel tears gathering in my throat. “I think we need to talk, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. A black SUV swings into the driveway and Ethan turns around to look at it, giving me a chance to stare at him openly: the familiar curve of his shoulders, the dark-framed glasses I’ve slid down his nose so many times before.I think we should take a break. Space to think about what we both want from this.
My mother and Mags pile out of the back of the car holding trays of coffee. When my mom sees Ethan her smile falters, but only for a moment. No one, after all, knows how to pull it together quite like she does.
“Ethan,” she calls. “Honey, how did you get here?”
“Bus,” I say for him, and my mom’s eyebrows arch.
“I’m surprised they were running. We had to drive forty minutes just to find coffee.”
“Could have been worse,” Mags tells us as Camilla presses Ethan into a hug that looks, from his side, reluctant. “Fizzled out as a tropical storm before becoming a hurricane. Everything looks mostly okay out there, but who knows when the power will be back.”
My mother hands me an iced coffee and then, inexplicably, passes one to Ethan. I wonder whose it was supposed to be.
“Thank you,” Ethan says. “It’s nice to see you, Ms. St. Vrain.”
They’ve only met once before, at graduation.
“Oh, you too,” Mom says. Her eyes flick, nearly imperceptibly, to me. “Are you two coming in? It’s so dark with the boards up but cooler than this heat.”
“Maybe we should take a walk,” I say quickly. The thought of Ethan and Silas occupying the same space is untenable. Ethan looks like he’s thirty seconds from falling asleep. “Or maybe just sit outside?” I gesture toward the water, ten paces across the yard. “If you’re, um. Too tired.”
Ethan swallows, glancing out at the ocean before looking back at me. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”
“Go on ahead.” My mother touches the back of my arm. When she squeezes, gently, I feel a sharp pang of fear. “Mags and I will bring your bags inside, honey.”
Ethan slides off his backpack, handing it to Magnolia. Sheslings it over a shoulder, offers him a curt smile, and follows Camilla into the house.
And then there’s no one else to look at, and Ethan and I stare at each other for a moment that feels so long it’s torture. I draw a breath. He waves across the yard and says, “After you.”
There’s a seawall at the edge of the grass, and when I lower myself onto it Ethan hesitates.
“It’s wet,” he says.
The butt of my pajama shorts is already soaked through. I’m so overwhelmed by what’s going to happen next that I didn’t even notice. “Oh,” I say, making to stand back up. “Um, okay. We can just, we can—”
“It’s fine.” Ethan lowers himself gingerly next to me, setting his coffee on the ledge. He hovers for a moment over the wet grass and then finally gives into it, wincing like the moisture hurts.He’s me, I think.I’m like that, too.
“Thank you for coming,” I say. My bare feet are in the water, but Ethan tucks his sneakers flat against the seawall.
He looks at me, eyes as blue and dark as the ocean. “I was worried about you.”
The way he says it feels like an accusation. That I’ve given him something to worry about.
“The storm wasn’t so bad,” I say, and he shakes his head.
“Not that; everything else.”
“Everything,” I repeat.
His eyes cast over my face, like he’s looking for something familiar and having trouble finding it. “What you said when you were drunk in Nashville.”
My cheeks go hot. “I wasn’t drunk in Nashville.”
