And yet, we know each other so little.
I think about that first date. I think about all the beautiful, wonderful, spectacular moments we’ve shared since. The cute days out, the nights snuggled up together losing track of entire hours as we kissed, the rush of looking for an apartment together, the comfort of spending Christmas with his family and New Year’s with mine, all those times he’s made me smile and we’ve laughed until our sides hurt and one of us (me, it’s always me) would have to rush to the bathroom before they (me) peed themselves.
I love him so much.
It’s so easy to love Zach.
That’s why it hurts so much, to feel like the guy next to me right now is a complete stranger.
We haven’t talked about it since this morning. We’ve settled into this clipped back and forth of, “I’m making tea, do you want one?
Can you close the door? Do you know where my laptop charger is?”
For a few minutes, though, we manage to forget all about that. I finish packing his clothes into a tote bag when there’s a weird rummaging at the door. We both go to look out of the peephole, and find Mr. Harris there, all masked-and gloved-up, a scowl on his face I’m pretty sure he was born with, spraying antibacterial spray on our door and scrubbing it down. Zach stifles a laugh into his hand and I nudge him, shushing him, before he makes me laugh too.
When Mr. Harris moves to scrub down the bannister on the stairs to the floor above, Zach whispers, “I don’t think those clothes are getting to Isla without a strict quarantine period first. Or a good soak in some bleach.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I’ll cover you.”
We wait until we hear Mr. Harris move upstairs. Zach opens the door, peering around it, and then waves me out. I hurry down the hall, knocking on Isla’s door as quietly , quietly, as possible, hopping on my toes for her to answer and collect the bag. I shush her before she can say “hello” or “thank you,” pointing upward, where Mr. Harris can be heard muttering to himself and aggressively cleaning people’s front doors.
“Oh!” she whispers, and nods, taking the bag from the floor. She gives me a thumbs-up before disappearing back inside.
Zach’s humming the Mission Impossible theme under his breath, his back against the door and hands poised in front of him, fingers folded in a gun shape as he squints dramatically at the staircase. He waves me over and when he follows me inside, he dives to the floor, doing a forward roll and then getting his finger gun back out like he’s surveying the area, which sends me into peals of laughter.
I catch myself, remembering we’re supposed to be fighting, and clear my throat, muttering something about having to get back to work. He coughs, straightens his hoodie and glasses, and shuffles back into the bedroom.
God, he’s such a dork.
I don’t know how to feel about the idea of him not being my dork anymore. So I decide it’s better to not think about it at all.
Thursday
apartment #6 – ethan
Chapter Nineteen
It’s automatic, when I tap my pen erratically against the table, a page full of useless scribbles staring up at me, the anxiety creeping up from the pit of my stomach, squeezing around my heart and crawling into my lungs.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
I can do this. I can do this, I have nothing to be so worked up about. It’s not like anybody even knows about this, if it does go wrong, or I don’t think I can go through with it for some reason.
This is not a big deal, I tell myself. I am just taking a break from work for a little while.
God, how can I post so much utter crap throughout the day on social media that people engage with, but I can barely string a sentence together right now?
I can totally do this.
I’ve had days to think about all the things I love about her and all the things I miss so much now she’s not around; I’ve had days to mope around like a soppy, pathetic, romantic bastard. I can do this.
It should not be this difficult.
Dear Charlotte—I . . .
Dear Charlotte. You’re not perfect, but you’re perfect for me, and . . .
Dear Charlotte, this week has been hell, and I don’t . . .
Okay, it’s impossible, and I absolutely cannot do this, and I have very, very good reason to be breaking out in a cold sweat.
I scribble out the latest stupid line I just tried to write out, sighing and burying my head in my hands. Eight pages in, and I can’t come up with a single entire sentence that doesn’t sound completely cringeworthy or even comes close to telling her how I feel about her.
You’d think, after two and a half years, I’d know what to say to her.
This is useless.
I’m never going to figure it out.
She deserves better than this paltry attempt. I should be singing
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” with a marching band as I dance down the bleachers in front of a crowd of all her friends. I should be kissing her in the rain after writing her a whole bunch of letters.
I should be climbing up a fire escape with a bouquet of roses after pulling up in a white limousine. I should march through a field in the pouring rain to tell her I love her, after bailing her sister out of a shotgun wedding to a soldier and in spite of my prejudice and her pride.
God, all the romantic movies we’ve watched together and I can’t even come up with a single damn line to express how much I love her, never mind some outlandish, unforgettable display of showboating.
Who am I kidding?
The good news, I guess, is that Charlotte knows I’m not that guy.
I’m awkward and shy and introverted and I look like the nerd I am.
Something tells me a dorky, gangly guy with wire-rimmed glasses and puffy, mousy hair singing tunelessly along to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” won’t have quite the same effect as when Heath Ledger did it, and that if I walked through the rain to meet her in a gazebo, I’d look less Mr. Darcy and more drowned rat.
“Come on, Ethan, get it together,” I mutter, dragging my head up out of my hands and shaking myself. I stand up, pacing around the room, and it’s official: the cabin fever is bad enough that I’m now talking to myself.
Seriously, you’d think, considering I’m an introvert who likes to spend most of his time indoors playing video games and recording vlogs, that a few days of staying in my apartment wouldn’t be any kind of hardship. It should be a totally average week.
And yet.
Motivation feels harder to come by than usual and I find myself getting distracted by literally anything. I’ve never wanted to just go out for a walk so much in my whole life.
I’d love to look at something that’s not the wall of floating book-shelves piled with Charlotte’s fiction paperbacks, or the IKEA unit in the corner with photographs we’ve framed, or my limited-edition Stormtrooper helmet.
I close my eyes and wonder, if I pretended hard enough, if I might be able to imagine that the shag rug under my feet is grass.