by Mia Ford
Hayley snorts.
“Fair enough,” she says. “That kid of Ethan’s can be really fucking persuasive.”
I grin at Hayley’s coarse words. She can swear all she wants, but we all know that she’s got a real sweet side for both Lily and Owen.
I met Hayley when Allison took us both to meet Jessica, who, at the time, was still muddling around in her renewed relationship with Ethan. Oddly, it was Hayley and I that came out of that as really good friends; the two of us had been outsiders in a situation that we had been dragged into, and that small connection had gotten us talking.
Hayley is unlike many of my other friends. She’s very rough and quite rude. Underneath all that, however, she has a heart of gold, and she’s really good with the kids. She also fits in very well with Ethan’s Roughshod Rollers crowd. If she decided to learn to ride a motorbike, then I don’t doubt that she’d be wearing their jacket within the week.
I didn’t invite Hayley out today because I wanted to hang out, however. As much as I enjoy Hayley’s company, what I need from her is advice. I still remember the advice that she gave Jessica ages ago, advice that helped Jessica and Grant finally begin talking about their relationship. Her valuable input as a psychologist had been just what Jessica had needed to turn the tables.
Now, I need some of that advice. I just don’t know what to do, and I need someone to give me direction.
“Anyway, before Lily called, you were telling me about the argument?” Hayley prompts.
“There’s not much to say,” I say gloomily. “It wasn’t even an argument, just me telling Ethan what I thought. None of it nice, either.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised it took you this long,” Hayley comments. She rolls her eyes at my incredulous look. “Come on; this guy has kept you on a leash for over ten years, right? I’d be mad, too.”
“He didn’t keep me on a leash!” I snap, upset on Ethan’s behalf. “I chose to stay and help him, and he’s really done his best not to take advantage of that!”
Hayley picked up her coffee and sipped it calmly.
“Well, you can’t be that upset if you’re defending him,” she says.
I blink. Right, my knee-jerk reaction had been to protect Ethan, even if I’m still mad at him. I don’t know if that’s a sign of just how much I love him, or a sign that I really need to pull myself away.
“I don’t know,” Hayley shrugs when I say this. “It could be either. What do you think?”
“I have no idea,” I say, beginning to feel frustrated. “Which is why I’m asking you about it.”
“I’m not the one who has to make decisions, here,” Hayley points out. “How would you feel if I told you, right now, that you can use this argument to your advantage. You can just cut Ethan out, never talk to him again, and walk away, because you’re mad at him.”
“I can’t do that!” I protest immediately, horrified.
Hayley smiles smugly.
“And there’s some of your true feelings,” she says. “You’re mad at him, but it won’t be long before you start talking to him again, because you can’t bear it for long.”
I look down at the table. She isn’t wrong. But that just makes me feel worse.
“That’s…” I trail off, trying to collect my thoughts. “I was just so angry at Ethan. I am angry at him. I mean, I get what he was trying to say. But why did he even bother? Why couldn’t we have just forgotten about it?”
“Did you forget about it?” Hayley asks.
“For the most part,” I groaned. “I knew it didn’t mean anything. I knew we had just been stupid and that he was drunk and I was just an idiot who can’t resist him. So I put it out of my mind. I’d barely even thought about it until he brought it up yesterday!”
“Hmm.” Hayley smiled slightly. “But he was the one who brought it up, right?”
“Yes,” I say, my brow furrowed.
“That means it was something that’s been playing on his mind all week, probably,” Hayley says with a sly smile. “You managed to put it behind you. But he’s been thinking about it. What does that tell you?”
“That he needs to stop stressing about worthless things,” I groan. “We already talked about it! We already agreed to pretend it never happened!”
“And you managed to do that,” Hayley says. She looks intrigued. “And he didn’t.”
I eye her. I wonder if she’s doing a psychology thing again, reading something into Ethan’s actions that I can’t really see. I find myself leaning forward, wanting to know what was going through her mind.
“So, what does it mean?” I ask slowly.
“There are two possibilities,” Hayley says, leaning on the table. “The first is that Ethan is really that fucking stupid, even if he had honest intentions when he brought the topic up. But, that doesn’t really make sense.”
“Why not?” I ask, frowning.
“You said Ethan’s entire focus was on explaining why nothing could come from the two of you having sex,” Hayley said. “And that he fumbled around, first telling you how much you meant to him, and then cutting any future possibilities off because he’s scared of relationships.”
I feel a little guilty for telling Hayley about this. That’s a secret Ethan has kept for a very long time, even from me. But I needed to give my friend the entire story to get her advice.
“That’s right,” I say.
“It feels like he didn’t really know what was going on, either,” Hayley says. “He saw a chance to tell you how he felt and seized it, wanting to clear the air. But it couldn’t have been some spur of the moment thing. For him to jump so quickly on a chance like that, he’s been waiting for it.”
“Waiting?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Ethan is a fucking idiot, but he wouldn’t have brought it up unless it’s something he’d thought about for ages,” Hayley says. “Which brings me to the second possibility. That Ethan couldn’t get what happened out of his head and, scared about what that meant, grabbed the chance to talk to you about it and cut any relationship possibilities off before it became a problem.”
“Wait…what?” I ask. My head is spinning. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple,” Hayley shrugs. She takes a sip of her coffee. “You forgot about it. He didn’t. You didn’t think, for even a moment, that a relationship could happen after you had sex. Yet, he brought it up, which means he’s the one who had thought of the possibility.”
I stare at her.
“Ethan considered a relationship with me?” I ask in a strangled voice. “But he…”
“I don’t know exactly what went through his head,” Hayley interrupts. “But, what I can tell you is that Ethan wouldn’t have worried about you having those sorts of thoughts if he hadn’t already had them.” She grins. “Seems to me that yesterday’s conversation happened because he was running scared about what it meant that he couldn’t forget having sex with you.”
I stare at her. My mind is whirling. Now that Hayley says it, it is strange that Ethan would bring that up a full week after we’d had sex. How long has he been thinking about it?
I’m still not entirely sure what it means, either.
“Ethan only looks at me like a friend,” I manage to say. “That’s how he’s always looked at me.”
“But then he tells you that you’re the only one he trusts,” Hayley says, snorting. “When he’s drunk, when all his inhibitions are down, he has sex with you. He lets you into his life, worries about you and lets you worry about him. Frankly, it’s more surprising that he isn’t fucking in love with you.”
“I would know if Ethan was in love with me,” I snap, a tight feeling in my chest.
Because I would know that. I know I would.
“Would you?” Hayley asks. “Because you’re pretty damn close to the situation, and you’ve convinced yourself that Ethan will never see you as more than a friend. And Ethan’s convinced himself of that too.” Her eyes gleam. “But then you had s
ex, and something is playing on Ethan’s mind. Maybe he’s finding that he can’t keep fooling himself.”
“But it doesn’t make sense!” I burst out. I’m not sure why I’m arguing, because Ethan being in love with me would be a dream come true. “Ethan can’t see me that way!”
“He couldn’t,” Hayley agrees, throwing me off. “And he already told you why. Polly really messed him up. When the two of you had sex ten years ago, he couldn’t even imagine having a relationship with someone else, even if it was a year since Polly left.”
She leans toward me. There’s a smirk playing on her lips.
“So, imagine this,” she says. “Ten years ago, Ethan sleeps with his best friend, lonely and desperate. Afterwards, he feels so guilty, and he and his best friend decide to pretend it never happened. But it’s hard to forget about that, so Ethan does think about it. And he decides that he can’t put his heart out there again, not even with you. He rejects his best friend, who he trusts more than anyone else in the world. And if he could reject her, then no one is going to be good enough. That thought carries him through over ten years…until he and his best friend sleep together again and, this time, there’s no ex-wife to be traumatized by.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, my hands trembling.
“I’m saying that Ethan mentally rejected you over ten years ago, and he never forgot doing that,” Hayley says with a shrug. “He fooled himself into walking away from you then. But he can’t do that now. He’s probably very confused at this moment.”
I let out a short laugh.
“I’m confused,” I tell her.
Hayley laughs and shakes her head.
“Look, Georgia, yours and Ethan’s relationship doesn’t make any fucking sense,” she tells me. “The two of you are really tight. You’re completely in love with him, but you forget about that to be by his side. He’s really considerate of you, and, if you’re not already at his house, he invites you around at every chance. You cook meals for each other, you look after a kid together, you wallow in blankets and pillows either with that kid or just the two of you together while watching movies and eating popcorn. For fuck’s sake, when Lily is off somewhere else, the two of you just hang together because you want to keep each other company. You’re already in a relationship, and the two of you are both fucking idiots.”
I choke on my drink and put it down quickly.
“What, no, that’s not…” I shake my head quickly. “Ethan is my best friend. I’ve known him since I was eight. I’m pretty sure he looks at me like a little sister. So it’s not strange for siblings to be that close, right?”
Hayley gives me a pitying look.
“Looks like Ethan isn’t the only one who’s scared,” she says.
I stare at her. Scared? Of a relationship with Ethan? Why the hell would I be scared of that?
And then, slowly, the reason dawns on me. Ethan isn’t the only one who has had his heart broken in the last ten years. In fact, my heart first broke long before then, when Ethan first met and started falling in love with Polly. It broke when he married Polly and had a child with her, and again when we agreed to forget about having sex with each other. It broke every time I remembered that he would only ever see me as a friend. And then it broke again yesterday, despite the iron defenses I thought I had put around it.
Ethan has broken my heart over and over again since I was a teenager. He didn’t mean to, of course. I never once told him how I felt. He didn’t know how much he was hurting me every time he told me he loved me like a friend. And I’m the one that just went along with the flow, pretending everything was fine.
But the fact is, he did hurt me. And the idea that our relationship could change, that Ethan could be in a position where he could hurt me worse… That’s terrifying.
“What…what do I do?” I stammer.
“What do you want to do?” Hayley asks, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve waited over ten fucking years for this guy. Why did you do that when you’d already resigned yourself to him never seeing you that way? Now, suddenly, there’s a chance and you want to run from it. Are you stupid?”
“But we could be wrong,” I say desperately. “Maybe Ethan was just worried.”
“Maybe he was,” Hayley agrees. “But…you’re going to be leaving soon. Are you really going to leave without telling him how you feel, even if it doesn’t go the way you want?”
“It’s better that way,” I try. “If I tell him and he rejects me, then I’ll be upset and he’ll feel guilty, and it will all just be a mess. Then it will be awkward when I go to visit.”
Hayley barks out a laugh. “Did you just hear that? When you go to visit, not if. Even if it all goes down the drain, you’ll still visit. What the fuck do you want, Georgia? Tell me, right now.”
I bite my lower lip.
“I want Ethan,” I say. “Because I love him.”
It occurs to me that it’s the first time I’ve ever said the words aloud like that. When I told Pamela, I just told her I had feelings for Ethan. Susie, who knows too, was the one that cornered me, telling me that she’d noticed how I looked at him.
The words hang in the air. They’re terrifying. My feelings for Ethan are so big. I just don’t know what to do with them. It was easier to simply stay at his side and ignore them. Why can’t I still do that?
“I don’t want things to change,” I whisper.
“Things are already changing, Georgia,” Hayley says sympathetically. “Ethan’s thinking, and something is going to come out of that. So you need to decide what you’re going to do about it.”
I swallow. I don’t want to think about it.
But I know she’s right.
Chapter Seventeen
Ethan
I’m sitting stiffly on the couch when Polly finally comes inside. My first impulse, when I overheard that conversation, was to burst outside and confront her. Instead, however, I slipped away. What do I even say to her?
“Sorry,” Polly says with a small smile. “My husband just wanted to confirm some things.”
“Right,” I say. I feel oddly out of place.
“Where’s Lily?” Polly asks, looking around.
“Having breakfast,” I say shortly.
Polly gives me an odd look. But I was already in a bad mood, so she just shrugs and heads that way. I open my mouth to stop her, to tell her to get out of my house because she’s trying to take my daughter away from me. But I don’t. I just watch her leave the room.
I don’t know what to do.
Distractedly, I rifle through the movies. I suddenly wish Georgia was here. She’d know what to do or say. I swallow and pick a movie. I’m sure Lily won’t mind if we start with this one.
There’s footsteps behind me, and I turn around. Polly is returning.
“Thank you for letting me stay for a little while,” she says, and her smile actually looks dangerous. But I know the snake that’s lurking beneath now. “I’m going to go home now.”
I give her a strained smile. “Have a safe journey.”
“Thank you,” she says.
She walks away. I hear the front door open and close, and then the roar of her car’s engine before it disappears down the street. I thought I would relax when she was gone, but I don’t. Instead, my chest is tight and it’s hard to breathe and I don’t know what to do.
“Dad?”
I look up. Lily is standing at the door now.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say, pulling myself to my feet and making a show of yawning. “Just pretty tired. Don’t be surprised if I fall asleep in the movie!”
Lily laughs, relaxing.
“I’ll wake you,” she says. She picks up the bowl and shoves it at me. “Go make popcorn!”
“Aye, aye,” I say with a forced laugh.
It feels surreal to be joking around with my daughter when I know that Polly is now out there, finding ways to take custody of her. And she’s doing it quietly, so it will be too
late to fight back by the time I’ve realized what happened.
It might even already be too late because I can’t figure out how to fix this.
I bring some popcorn to the living room and we settle in the blankets. Lily is a warm weight at my side, but I feel so cold. She’s my entire life. I can’t lose her.
What am I supposed to do?
“Please,” I say into the phone. “I know it’s late, but…”
“Look, it’s fine,” Kyle says. “Allison is on her way. I’ll meet you at the bar? Then you can tell me what this is all about.”
“Yeah…yeah, I’ll do that,” I say.
I hang up. Allison is on her way. I look through the door, to the living room, where Lily is still watching the screen. I’ve already told her that I’m going out for a minute, and she’s excited to keep watching movies with Allison, who she adores.
I just can’t keep sitting there, watching movies, not when the weight of what happened gets heavier and heavier. I need to talk to someone. Georgia is out right now. So Grant or Kyle is my next bet. Now, I’m meeting Kyle at the Anchor Bar, where Grant is working, despite it being a Sunday, because his co-worker is sick.
I pace through the kitchen, hoping Lily doesn’t hear my restlessness. Before long, however, Allison knocks on the door, and I almost fly to open it.
“Thank you so much,” I say.
“My pleasure,” Allison says with a smile. It drops as she gets a look at me. “Is everything okay? You don’t look so great.”
I give her a small smile that doesn’t feel right.
“It’ll be fine,” I assure her. “I’ll tell you later, or Kyle will… It’s fine.”
If only Allison was finished with her degree. She would be the first person I would talk to, because I probably need legal help right now.
“Alright,” Allison says, frowning.
“Lily!” I call. “Allison is here!”
There’s a yelp and then running feet. Lily bursts quickly into view and throws her arms around Allison.
“Are you going to watch movies with me?” She asks.
