Page 67 of The Someday Daughter
“You said you were.”
“I said I had a beer.”
“And a half.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“I don’t know, Audrey, are you?” His voice sounds frayed, like he’s holding too tightly to himself and something’s starting to rip. “Because this isn’t you. The partying and not caring about the ICU rejection after—”
“Not caring?” It feels like getting an IV, how fast the fury diffuses through me. Sprinting into my bloodstream. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, then help me understand,” he says. “Because all I know is we had a plan, and then all summer you’ve been less and less committed to the Penn work. Then you get rejected from the ICU position, and you go out and drink instead of doing something about it. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It wasn’tinstead of,” I say, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. Something is clawing back up from the dark pit of my stomach, a familiar shame.He’s right, it whispers.You didn’t do anything about it. “I was really upset, and I needed to do something fun to get through that night. That’s it.”
“But that’s not how we have fun,” Ethan says. Our eyes meet and it’s so plain on his face, how confused he is. “We aren’t into stupid stuff like drinking or going to clubs.”
I feel stiff, like there’s metal shot through my bones. Maybe Idohave fun like that. Maybe I’ve always had that in me. Hearing him use the wordstupidin association with a choice I’ve made feels like a compound fracture. We’ve been on a break, and it’s so clear sitting here beside him that we really are broken.
“Would it be so bad?” I manage. Wind moves off the water, fingering through his hair. “If I had fun like that sometimes?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan says. When I rear back, he holds up his hands. “I mean, no. I don’t—no, I just feel like you’re changing and I don’t understand what you want. It’s not making sense.”
“Okay, well, I’m not a problem set, Ethan. You can’t solve me.” There’s no one here to protect me but me. I feel like I’m watching myself from above, propped on the seawall in my pajamas as I’m told by someone I thought was on my team that there’s no wiggle room between us. That I’ve fucked it all up by trying even one new thing. And it hurts, but it also feels untrue. I don’t know a lot, I don’t know what’s next, but I know I didn’t earn this. “It’s as I am or not at all.”
Ethan looks at me, draws a breath through his nose. “I guess it just feels like I don’tknowwho you are anymore.”
I blink at him, trying to find it. The feeling I used to get around Ethan, like he ordered the world for me. Like everything would make sense if I could just be next to him.
I’ve always thought he was helping me: editing my papers, encouraging me to apply for things, sending me links to research positions. But now, sitting by the ocean with a person who doesn’t recognize me at all, I wonder if Ethan actually just needed me to be a certain version of myself. If he was scared of what might happen to us when I finally fell short of his vision of me.
“I think we’re supposed to change, sometimes.” My voice is quiet, swishing into the tide. “I’m sorry if you don’t like the ways I’m changing. But you can’t force me to be the kind of person you want me to be.”
“I know,” Ethan says. He sounds sad, and it hollows me out.“I guess I’ve just always thought we were the same kind of person, until now.”
I reach for my coffee and take a long, bitter sip. It’s weak and watery. “You came here to break up with me.”
Ethan hesitates. “Yeah,” he says finally. If there’s one thing I’ve always been able to count on Ethan for, it’s the truth. “And I knew you would do it, if I didn’t.”
I nod, setting the coffee back on the ledge.
“Because of him?” Ethan says, and when I look at him I can tell that it hurts to ask the question. “The guy from that paparazzi photo.”
I think of Silas, asleep with his arm thrown across me. Drenched by Lake Michigan. Moonlit in that tree house overlooking the garden. “A little,” I say. I owe Ethan the truth, too. “But mostly because of us.”
He nods, tracing the seam of his shorts with a thumbnail. When he looks out over the water, his eyes narrow into a wince. “It’s probably my own fault, for encouraging you to stay this summer. That day you called me from California. Maybe it would’ve been different, if we’d been together at Penn.” He turns back to me. “But I told you to stay.”
He’s right—it probably would’ve been different. I wouldn’t have met Cleo or Mick or Silas and I wouldn’t have drowned myself like a dumbass and I wouldn’t have fallen so hard for that stupid dog sleeping in the office. I might have landed the ICU job. I wouldn’t have had that conversation in Nashville with my mom. I wouldn’t know so many things about myself that I know, sitting here, right now.
“I wanted you to want me to come,” I say. His eyes track over mine, liquid blue in the sun off the water. “And there were so manytimes early this summer, and last year at school, that I—” I swallow, make myself say it now when I never have before. “That I wanted to tell you I loved you, or to hear you say it, but we never did.”
Ethan hesitates, and I watch this process through him. I can tell, by how long it takes him to find words, that it’s the first time he’s thought about it. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “I didn’t think we—I thought we were focused on other things.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. Focused, steady Ethan, who’s never pretended to be anything other than himself. “We were. And I’m glad you told me to stay on the tour.”
He looks at me, draws a deep breath before speaking. “Yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
