“News flash. Your parents have sex,” was her nonchalant response.
I always enjoyed watching Joel and Olivia interact with each other. It was clear they loved each other, but they’d each had their own individual successes in life. It was a partnership they shared, one I hoped to emulate with Ethan. Nothing like my own parents, a sad bond that was based on desperate optimism and obligation. It was safe to say my parents hadn’t had a rousing sex life in at least a decade, more likely two.
“But we don’t need to talk about it,” Aubrey said. “Any more than we need to talk about my sex life.”
“Who is talking about your sex life?” Joel asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “And why do you have a sex life? Ethan is the one who is engaged.”
Aubrey bit a piece of bread. “Never mind.”
“Anyway,” Olivia said, raising her wine glass. “Let’s toast to Ethan and Caitlyn. To a happy marriage.” She smiled at me. “Welcome to the family, sweetheart.”
That meant everything to me. This was what I had always wanted. A family. Normal stability, a world of traditions and inside jokes and carefree affection. Where time clicked along in the most ordinary of ways, one holiday to the next, one life event after another and the rhythm was always the same. I wanted to belong.
“Thank you,” I said, and my throat was tight. I looked at Ethan, blinking hard, feeling like I was going to cry. God, I was so emotional the last few days. It was embarrassing.
His smile was reassuring. His hand fell onto my leg and he squeezed my knee. “You’ve made me disgustingly happy. And now I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”
The rest of my life.
Til death do us part.
Jesus.
I took a sip of my wine, unable to speak.
Ethan was dozing in bed, still lightly enough in sleep that his breathing changed every minute or so, full of little sighs and snuffles. He looked very young when he slept, his eyelashes the kind that girls paid good money to get. I was lying next to him, wide awake, covers half off my body. Ethan radiated heat when he slept and I was warm even though I was only wearing a T-shirt and panties. I could never figure out why he wanted to be bundled under seven hundred blankets but sleep naked. Having that much weight on me made me feel smothered.
I got hot easily anyway. My father had always said it was because I’d been born during a heat wave. Heath had said it was just my nature to be hot blooded. Hot temper. Hot passion.
Sometimes I’d thought that was why I loved to run, why I had joined cross country in middle school. I needed to run off my temper, my passion. Run away from the sensation of being trapped within my life, trapped on the island.
I had stopped running cross country when I’d started college because of time constraints. But sometimes I wondered if I had just wanted to stop running, to stay still in one place. And as a result, had bottled up some of my personality.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand and I reached for it automatically, bored. It was midnight so it was probably Aubrey texting me.
It wasn’t.
I’m sorry.
Heath.
Automatically, I glanced over at Ethan to see if he had woken up. He stirred a little, turning on his side away from me. I did the same thing, turning towards the nightstand to shield my phone with my body. It felt wrong to get out of bed and go into the other room. If Ethan woke up and asked me, I would be honest. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Not technically. But I still wanted a touch of privacy.
Not that I knew how to answer that text. It was nice to hear. But it really wasn’t enough. Did he mean he was sorry for leaving me four years ago? Sorry for insulting me that afternoon? Sorry for being so crude and gross?
I was jealous.
That annoyed me.
You don’t have a right to be jealous.
Yes I do.
So much for a quality apology.
How do you figure that?
Just because I left doesn’t mean I stopped wanting you.
There it was. What I knew he was hinting at, and it was what I desperately both wanted to hear and was afraid of. Nothing good could come out of hearing that Heath wanted me.
That doesn’t change anything.
I anxiously clutched my phone in my sweaty palm and stared at the bubble that indicated he was typing a reply.
It can.
I couldn’t do this. I just couldn’t. Throw away everything and for what? Someone who had hurt me so agonizingly? It was a risk I just couldn’t take.
I’m with Ethan and I’m going to stay with Ethan.
The pause where he typed was long. The bubble disappeared, indicating he’d stopped typing. I lay there, in the dark, the glow of my screen dilating my pupils.
That’s what you think.
That was so Heath. I could practically hear his confidence even in a text.
Are you threatening me?
No. Just stating facts. You and me? Inevitable.
A shiver rolled up my spine. Was that fear crawling over my skin? Or was it excitement?
I wasn’t sure.
Nothing is inevitable. We make choices.
And I will always choose you.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.
But I clutched my phone to my chest, heart pounding frantically.
Ethan was snoring now and I raised my foot and slammed it down into the mattress, completely annoyed by the buzzing sound he was making. He cut off mid-snore, snorting and jerking out of sleep briefly, before settling back. I immediately felt guilty.
Hot blooded.
It was true.
The next day I glanced at my phone a hundred times throughout the day, expecting another barrage of texts. But Heath was silent. I’d overslept again that morning and I’d felt groggy all day. It was a new feeling for me and after three days in a row it was starting to wear on me.
Ethan met me for lunch and he was acting weird. Nervous. He dropped his cup twice and evaded my stare. He babbled on about something in his finance class and swallowed repeatedly.
So not him.
Suspicious, I stabbed a piece of lettuce with my fork. “Are you okay?”
“Huh? Yeah, why? Sure, of course.”
Because that wasn’t obvious or anything. “You are such a bad liar. Like literally the worst. What’s going on?”
He sighed and finally looked at me. “Okay, I did something shitty.”
For Ethan that probably meant he’d had three cups of coffee instead of two. Or he’d accidentally run over a skunk while driving. “What?”
“I looked at your phone this morning while you were sleeping.”
I was so shocked that a piece of lettuce fell off my fork. “What? Why would you do that?” It was so unlike him I didn’t even know what to say.