Bullet

chapter Eight

Past



FINALS WEEK WAS an intense whirl, but I made it through. Between having a good chunk of that Sunday to study as well as a quiet empty dorm room, I felt prepared.

Before I knew it, though, finals were over, and I was at home, caught up in the spirit of Christmas, probably my favorite time of year. Ethan and I hadn’t talked much that week, and I felt almost like maybe I’d done something to cause his sudden coldness. But he said he had finals to worry about and, even though we’d spent some time together studying for our history exam, there was a definite coolness in the way he treated me.

Had I been older and wiser, I might have just written him off, but even now I wonder if that’s true. I cared deeply for Ethan and worried about his well being. I wanted him to be happy and satisfied. I would have planned on never seeing him again, except the day I was ready to leave for home, he brought me a small present.

“Open it.”

I smiled and looked at him. “You didn’t have to get me anything. I didn’t get you anything.”

“Oh, hell, Val. Christmas is about giving, not getting. Just open the goddamned present.”

My eyes grew wide. “Well, when you put it that way…” It was a small gold foil box, and I remembered a time when my mother had bought me a necklace that fit in a box that size. Could it be jewelry? I unwrapped the pretty red ribbon tied around it. The gift surprised me, all right, but it wasn’t unwelcome. It was a CD, and Ethan had even made cover art for it. It was a picture of the four of them standing on a dirt road somewhere. Whoever had taken the picture had understood rock band poses, because it looked professional. But the artwork on it had been more recent, because the name on it was Fully Automatic, not Bullet. I knew Ethan had a pretty powerful computer in his dorm room with a slick printer, and after talking to his mother, I figured Ethan’s grandpa had purchased it for him for college, not knowing that his grandson used it to mix music more than to write essays. But what did I know? Maybe his grandpa did know.

But as I looked at that gift, I felt my heart swell up with newfound emotion for the young man in front of me. He’d trusted me enough to let me into his world, and now he was sharing it with me on a whole new level. He’d been around me enough by this point to know that I listened to the music I liked over and over and over, and that’s how it either grew on me or I would decide it wasn’t my thing. It was a visceral response to music, but I had never discovered a way to be intellectual about it. Either I loved it at the most basic level of who I was or I didn’t. And I already liked their music. I felt overwhelmed when I realized first how much trust he had in me to give himself and his art to me that freely, and then it hit me that he had that much confidence in himself and his band.

I loved that confidence. That was part of what continually drew me to Ethan.

So, when my lips had turned up into a smile and I’d gushed a thank you, Ethan pulled me into a tight embrace and kissed me on the cheek. “Have a nice Christmas, Val.” I’m not sure what idiotic thing I said after that, but the kiss made me feel loopy the rest of the day until my dad arrived to pick me up later that afternoon.

It was weird how much I’d changed and how much the world around me at home had too. It had only been a few months since I’d left for school, but things were different. I met up a couple of times with my old friend Jill, and I just didn’t feel as close to her. We were worlds apart now, even though we’d chatted on Facebook once or twice and texted off and on over the semester. We were now different people…adults, maybe? And then I realized that maybe Ethan really was my best friend now, for all intents and purposes.

And over Christmas break, I talked about him…a lot. So much so that my mother insisted on meeting him. After all, she said, if he was my friend, the family should meet him. I promised her she would soon. How, I didn’t know.

And then my little brother…he was in a steady relationship with a girl named Marcy, a cheerleader at my old high school. My brother had never been serious about anyone before, so I was a little shocked. Ha! I thought. Take that, Charlotte.

But Christmas break was soon over, and I was back at college. It felt strange returning there too, and looking back, I think I was having a bit of an identity crisis and just didn’t know it. I didn’t really fit anywhere anymore. College didn’t feel right; home didn’t feel right. And that Sunday when I returned, the day before classes, I felt out of sorts. I considered tracking Ethan down and then decided against it. I didn’t want to seem desperate. So instead I put his CD in my laptop and played it. I hadn’t had as many opportunities to listen to it over break as I had wanted to, so now would be a good time to listen. After hearing the CD multiple times, I was able to start distinguishing different elements between Ethan and Brad’s songs. I was pretty sure they sang the songs they wrote. They both had good voices, no matter what self-deprecating thing Brad had said about their singing.

The more I listened to the handful of songs, though, the more differences I could identify. It wasn’t a bad thing, and it wouldn’t hurt the band, but I wondered if there would be a way they could collaborate more on the music, like they had that night I was there. They’d collaborated on everything that evening, and I felt like that song was better than any of the ones on the CD I was listening to. It had more polish and…well, more heart. I wondered if there was a way I could gently suggest that to Ethan without hurting his feelings. Really, the two men’s styles complemented each other. Brad’s playing was pretty thrash and hardcore with some death metal, groove, and even industrial influences, while Ethan’s was more traditional, if you could call it that—classic heavy metal with a lot of nu metal and alternate metal feel. And you might think they were too different, but they had no problems adding their own thing to each other’s songs (which I was more easily able to identify the more I listened to that CD), and I knew from that afternoon with the band that they could mesh even better when they worked it out on the spot.

So the more I listened, the more I loved them.

And then I felt better about being in my own skin. I thought maybe the semester would be a fresh start. Now that I’d realized I didn’t quite fit at home anymore, it was time to find my place in the world. My RA gave me some pleasant news when she told me I still wasn’t assigned a new roommate. Maybe I’d be lucky enough to have the room all to myself for the entire semester.

That first Monday made me feel better. I knew I was going to like my classes, and I hoped that at least one of them would give me an indication of what I wanted to do with my life. I recognized a couple of fellow freshmen, but no one I really knew. So late that afternoon I decided to go to Ethan’s dorm and say hi to him and Zane. Ethan and I hadn’t compared schedules before break, so I had no idea what his class schedule was like. I was hoping he wouldn’t have a class the second I’d decided to drop by. Maybe I should have texted him first, but I wanted to surprise him.

As I walked down the hall and got nearer to his room, I felt my blood begin to race. I had missed him a lot more than I would have thought. My hands started to shake, and I knew I had to get a grip on myself. It was then that I realized just how much I’d missed him.

When I got to his door, I just knocked without much thought, and I was glad. As usual, I was overthinking it and stressing out way too much. I could hear pounding music through the door, and I smiled as my mind identified that it was Slipknot. Soon Zane was at the door, pulling me in by the hand. “Val. How the hell have you been?” He embraced me in a big bear hug. “Have a seat. How was your Christmas?”

I sat down on one of the two desk chairs. “It was…great.” Oh, that wasn’t convincing. Zane lowered his head, giving me a questioning look, urging me to continue. “It was kind of hard. I…discovered that my friends and I just don’t have much in common anymore.”

Zane sat down, pulling the chair around so he could sit backward in it. “That sucks.” He shrugged. “You know, I think the only reason I don’t have that problem is that me and my friends are in a band together.” I nodded. That and he and Ethan actually went home once in a while to touch base. I hadn’t seen my friends since late August. But it might have happened anyway. Maybe my experiences at college were changing me more than I’d realized. Zane said, “Ethan’s in class right now. If my guess is right, he should be here in about ten minutes or so. Anyway…what exactly do you mean about not having much in common with your friends anymore?”

I tried to pinpoint exactly why I felt that way. “Well, we just don’t talk like we used to. I guess I don’t feel like Jill and I are best friends anymore.” I wasn’t going to tell him that she just didn’t get the whole Ethan-Brad thing at all. Of course, that would have meant telling Zane my deepest, darkest feelings, and we weren’t going to go there. Zane was easy to talk too, though, and I was glad for that.

“That really sucks. It hurts?” He said it like a question, but it sounded more like a statement. I nodded.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get over it. Jill and I just aren’t as close, and I guess I should have expected that to happen. She’s going to the community college back at home, and I’m going to school here, halfway across the state. She has her friends now—new ones she’s made at college and some of our old ones from high school—and I have mine. She said she’d try to come up one weekend in February or March, and maybe I’ll be able to talk more to her then. Maybe we’ll be able to reconnect.”

He nodded. “I hope things work out.” I could tell he wasn’t the most comfortable now that we were getting into talking about my feelings, but he was being a good sport about it. “You can consider me one of your friends, Val.”

Well, of course, I did, and I didn’t know if that’s what he was getting at or if there was something he was being coy about. I was too naïve to read anything too deep into it, so I just said, “Yes, I do. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

“Good.” He scooted his chair closer to mine. “You care a lot for Ethan, don’t you?”

I felt the need to take a deep breath, but I didn’t. How could everyone read my thoughts so easily? Everyone, that was, except for Ethan. I looked down at my hands but finally worked up the nerve to return my gaze to his. I didn’t want to make it out to be something it wasn’t, though, because Ethan had made it pretty clear to me that we were friends only. So I said, “Yes. I think he’s my best friend now.”

His eyes bored into mine. “You sure that’s all?”

I wasn’t sure what or why he was asking. No way was I going to tell him I thought I was falling in love with Ethan. I would feel ridiculous if I told him I had stronger emotions for Ethan than I should have. After all, it seemed obvious that Ethan didn’t feel the same way for me—he only considered us friends. And if he wanted our relationship to remain that way, then I would be comfortable with it. As long as he was a part of my life, I would be happy. So I said simply, “Yes.” It was anticlimactic.

And that made Zane realize that not only was he uncomfortable with the subject, so was I, and he changed it to focus on classes. So we both talked about the new classes we’d attended that day and, before I knew it, well more than half an hour had passed and still no Ethan. “Well, I already have reading to do for my classes, so I better get started.”

“Yeah, me too. When Ethan gets back, we’ll swing by your room. Maybe we can all do dinner together.”

“That’d be nice.”

When I arrived back at my room, the resident advisor called me and told me I had been assigned a new roommate who would be moving in that evening. Well, so much for peace and quiet. I should have known better than to expect the no roommate situation to last forever. I just hoped my new roommate would be better than my last.

She began moving in from another floor not long after I’d spoken with the RA. Jennifer Manders was a sweet, demure girl, the exact opposite of Charlotte. She seemed polite and friendly. I offered to help her move the rest of her things, but she told me she could get them. She was nice about it but seemed quite set on moving her things herself. Well, it was a little possessive, but I guessed I could understand that. She didn’t know me well enough to trust me yet, so I told her to just let me know if she changed her mind. After just a few trips, though, she had all her things in our room, and she started putting them away. I lay on my bed reading my new psychology textbook and tried to give her the breathing room she seemed to need. She seemed to search for the perfect place to put each item, so I wondered how her tidy self would cope with my intermittent phases of sloppiness, mixed with my incessant love of metal. I guessed we’d find out soon enough.

Well, I had to check out a couple of things with her, and the best way to do that would be through an honest, thoughtful conversation. I didn’t want to just sit back and let shit happen this time. So, once she seemed completely settled, I asked, “Jennifer, not to pry, but why are you moving out of your old room?”

She looked down at her newly made bed before sitting down on it. She seemed a little reluctant, but I could tell she thought it was important to talk. “You’re probably going to think it’s my fault. I seem to be hard to get along with. At least my last roommate thought so.” When she said that, I prepared for the worst. Great. I’d just survived one crappy roommate and now I had another to contend with. She didn’t seem to be the type who would be trouble, though. I was curious and nodded, hoping it would urge her to continue. I had to withhold judgment until I’d heard her entire story. “The first month I was here, I had a single room because the girl who was going to be my roommate decided at the last minute to switch schools. So I was all by myself. I was okay with that, even though it was kind of lonely. But another girl moved into my room in October. She’d been fighting with her roommate and I guess had been kicked out. She called her a conniving little…” She paused, seeming to rethink what she wanted to say. “Well, you know.” I nodded my head and smiled. I might not have been worldly, but I could figure out that much. “Anyway, I know now that she was the troublemaker. She was rude and inconsiderate…and a man-eater, I’m tellin’ you.”

Hmm…could it be? “Her name didn’t happen to be Charlotte, did it?” Jennifer’s blue eyes opened wide. “Charlotte Edwards?”

“How did you know?”

“I was her first roommate. I doubt the problems you were having were your fault.”

Her pale face lit up as she flashed a smile of gleaming white teeth. “You don’t know how good that makes me feel.” Well, that explained her hesitation to trust me at first. She stood up and started arranging clothes in one of the drawers I thought she’d already been done working on. What had seemed like initial shyness now became a light-hearted openness. I could see that maybe I had won a friend, and it would be nice to have a female friend. I’d been missing them.

* * *

“I’ve got it,” I told Jennifer as I crossed our small dorm room to answer the door. I was going to have to get used to having a roommate, so I wanted to let her know I could get the door instead of just pushing her aside to get there.

When I opened the door, Ethan stood there, and at that moment, I thought he was the reason for the saying a sight for sore eyes, because that he was. He looked better than I’d remembered from a month ago. His hair was a little longer, and he was growing a goatee. His sleepy eyes took me in and he said, “There’s our woman.” Unable to hold myself back, I threw my arms around him in an affectionate hug.

“I missed you, Ethan.” He laughed as he and Zane came into the room. “Guys, this is my new roommate, Jennifer Manders.” The young woman nodded out of politeness, her short blonde hair bobbing with the motion. She had a shy smile on her face. “Jennifer, these are two of my very good friends, Ethan Richards and Zane Carson.”

She waved her hand near her hip as though trying not to draw too much attention to herself. “Nice to meet you.”

Zane said, “We gonna eat or what? I’m f*ckin’ starving.” Apparently, he felt the need to let my new roommate know right off the bat that he liked strong language and wasn’t afraid to use it. I had to give her credit. She didn’t even flinch.

Ethan furrowed one brow. “Jesus, man. We just got here.”

“We can talk on the way, standing in line, sitting down and eating, right? Am I missing something here?”

“Jennifer, would you like to eat dinner with us? We’re just heading over to the cafeteria.”

She smiled. “Sure.”

So, on our way to eat, Ethan talked nonstop. They’d worked on three fantastic songs over break, he said, and he wanted me to hear them sometime that week. He’d burned them to a CD and wanted me to check them out soon.

We were in line at the cafeteria when I asked, “So when are you guys gonna throw some videos up on YouTube?”

Jennifer spoke up. “Wait…so you guys have a band?” Zane smiled and nodded. “What do you guys play?”

Zane threw up the metal devil’s horn sign on both his hands. “Heavy metal, baby!” He stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyes back in his head, making an agh sound. If Jennifer wasn’t scared off by that, nothing would freak her out. That was good.

We got caught up in ordering our food, and then we went out into the dining area carrying our trays. We split up, getting drinks and salads and other accompaniments to our meal. We all met up at a booth near a back corner. Ethan sat next to Zane, and Jennifer sat beside me. It seemed that Zane made a special effort to sit directly across from me. Why I felt that way, I didn’t know, and then I realized it was likely my wild, active imagination working overtime again.

Ethan asked, “How was your Christmas, Val?” He was the one I wanted to talk to. He took a big bite out of his burger, waiting for my answer.

“It was okay.” I didn’t want to start my whine-fest again. I wanted our meal to be light and happy because, after all, that was the way I was feeling. I was lighthearted, being under the gaze of my friend whom I against wanted as my boyfriend. “How was yours?”

Ethan’s eyes moved back and forth, taking mine in. “Come on, Val. I heard you were a little down in the dumps. You can tell Uncle Ethan.”

I started laughing. He’d made me feel better already. “Later, Uncle Ethan.” I wouldn’t mind telling him everything if we could just be alone for a while.

“A bad sign, a very bad sign. The patient seems reluctant to speak about the past. I must make a note of that and, I’m afraid, I’ll have to recommend shock therapy.”

In spite of the subject matter, Ethan continued to make me giggle. “Fine. If you really must know right this minute, when I went home, I felt like my old best friend and I have grown apart. That’s all.”

Ethan lost his jokey manner and sobered up. His voice was tender, and it was as though the other two in our party no longer existed, even though Ethan and I were at a diagonal. “Sure that’s all?”

Well, yeah…aside from feeling a little lovesick, but no way were those words coming out of my mouth. “Does there need to be more?”

He smiled again. “Let’s catch up later talking about Christmas break, okay? Just me and you.” My breath caught in my throat. Maybe finally we could tell each other how we felt…if indeed he felt the same way about me that I did him. I nodded my head. “Promise?”

I smiled back. “I promise.”

At that second, all the noise and rambunctiousness of the cafeteria returned, and Ethan brought Zane and Jennifer back into the conversation. He started talking about an action/ adventure film he’d seen over the break and proceeded to tell about it in excruciating detail. I enjoyed watching his animated self entertaining me and our friends.

After dinner, though, we found ourselves alone. Zane and Jennifer headed back to the dorms, while Ethan and I decided to take a walk around campus. I felt a tiny surge of adrenaline find its way into my veins. Tonight could be our night. But I needed to quit being stupid about it. What if he really did want me as just a friend…forever? If that was the case, I needed to stop dreaming that it could ever lead to something else.

Once the other two were out of earshot and we were alone on a darkened path heading in the vague direction of the gigantic gymnasium, Ethan said, “What’s buggin’ you, kiddo? Zane told me what you told him, but is something else the matter?”

What could I say, aside from the secret desires I felt from him that I didn’t want to confess? No…those words had to stay as cold as the snow that was starting to fall on the sidewalk in front of us. “Jill doesn’t confide in me like she used to. We used to tell each other everything, but it felt like there was this huge fence between us, you know? I guess…she has other friends now.”

He shrugged, jamming his hands in his jeans pockets. “Sure, but so do you.”

“Yes, but—well, I never thought our friendship would change. We’ve been friends since grade school. But…that’s not what’s bothering me.” He looked over at me from the sidewalk. “I think there’s something she’s not telling me.”

“Like what?” We stopped walking, and he turned to face me.

He’d asked just the right questions, and there was no stopping the onslaught of words now. “I don’t even like to think about it.” I bit my lip, but I guessed I was going to charge full speed ahead. “She’s had this boyfriend for a couple of years. She didn’t say it, and I didn’t ask, but…I think she might be pregnant.”

Without saying a word, he laid his hand on my neck and brought my head to his shoulder. Oh, God…where the hell were all these tears coming from? And how had he known I’d needed to do that? And the words just kept coming. “I thought before that if she ever had a problem, she could come to me with it. It hurts me that she didn’t.” I sobbed and wiped my eyes with my hand. It was too damn cold to be doing this outside. I reached inside my coat pocket and grabbed my gloves to slide them on.

He kissed my cheek. Oh…it would have been so easy for me to just turn my head and make my lips meet his, but I froze. I was paralyzed. He looked me in the eyes. “Feel better now?”

I just nodded and Ethan grabbed my hand to lead me back toward the dorms. The bitter cold lashed at my wet face. His hand was firm around mine and gave me comfort. My voice was quieter than I’d expected when I said, “Thanks for listening.”

He squeezed my hand. “What are friends for?”

The snow was falling harder now and Ethan released my hand, instead wrapping his arm around my waist. I rested my head against his shoulder and didn’t care how much snow fell on my face. Ethan’s next words were unexpected. “I think Brad likes you.”

Wow. That was weird. And I knew Brad liked me…a lot. But no way would I say that. “Why?”

“Oh…just the way he looked at you and the way he couldn’t shut the f*ck up about you over break.” Had he seen my close encounter with Brad that last night I’d been there? I’d been convinced he had, but now I wasn’t so sure. Still…

I didn’t want Ethan to think what had happened spoiled his chances with me. Whatever had happened between Brad and me was some weird, animalistic, electromagnetic, primitive thing that I seemed to have no control over. And it certainly wasn’t a deep love like I was beginning to feel for the man next to me. Still…I wanted him to feel comfortable with our friendship, especially if that was all it ever wound up being. “Well…I like Brad too. He’s a nice guy. And…any friend of yours is a friend of mine.” I slowly let out the breath that had filled my lungs as I tried to relax.

“I didn’t mean it that way.” I shrugged and feigned ignorance about Brad’s interest, and no more was said on the subject. I wrapped my arm around Ethan too so he’d know he was important to me and hoped this particular topic wouldn’t be brought up again.

* * *

Over the next month, Jennifer and I seemed to become close friends. We did everything together—eating our meals, studying at the library, exercising. She seemed to fill in the gap of my lost friendship with Jill, the one I still clung to because it seemed to signify the last vestige of who I was before coming to college.

Jill never did come to visit like she’d promised, and—really—it was no big surprise to me. Instead, she wrote me a long email confessing that she had in fact been pregnant, just as I’d guessed. She’d gotten an abortion and somehow her parents had found out. And they were old-school Catholics, so they weren’t too pleased. Rather than deal with the arguments and accusations, she moved out of her parents’ house and in with her boyfriend to move out of the light of her parents’ disapproving glares.

I felt bad for Jill, and I wondered how this would change her life. Did she love Chad, her boyfriend of just a couple of years? She was now a nineteen-year-old wife who had broken ties to her family, and I wondered what kind of emotional scars the abortion would leave her with. That couldn’t have been an easy decision, and had anyone been by her side when she’d decided it? When she’d gone through with it? I didn’t know that Chad would have been supportive in that way, but I hoped I was wrong. God…if I’d had the chance to talk with Jill, if we’d been able to talk like we had in high school, maybe I could have talked to her, felt her out. Did she really want to be married? Could she have tried to mend the issues with her parents? Did she even try? As her friend, maybe I could have helped her see the rational side. But what did I know? Maybe she’d made the best decision out of all the available options. The email somehow felt final, kind of like a Dear John letter, terminating our friendship. But I felt I still had to try to salvage what we had. So I emailed her back, but when she never responded, I took the hint. The email was, perhaps, her last farewell.

Zane…what was up with him in the new semester? It didn’t take me long to discover that he was definitely taking an interest in me, and I had no idea why. Maybe he was tired of seeing Ethan piss away one opportunity after another. And, aside from just telling Ethan I was madly in love with him, I didn’t know what else to do. I’d never been forward with a guy, and—coming from an old-fashioned family—I thought it was his job to make the first move. So I tried to at least create the ideal environment for that first move. I spent time with him; we texted a lot, usually about music or something funny; and he’d caught me multiple times just looking at him with a sappy look on my face.

But Zane…he came over to my dorm room. A lot. Usually uninvited, though not unwelcome. He started walking with me to my classes when he could. At first, I thought he was interested in Jennifer, but he wasn’t walking her around, and he was never in my dorm room chatting her up before I got home. And, to quell any doubts I had in my mind, he later invited me to the first dance of the semester.

His dark blue eyes twinkled when he asked me, and at first I thought he was joking. Then I could have kicked myself. When he and I had talked in January, I hadn’t confessed the complete scope of the affection I felt for Ethan. That was my fault entirely. Zane had asked, and I’d just told him Ethan was my best friend. I hadn’t told Zane my secret desire was to be Ethan’s girlfriend, was to snuggle up close to him, was to have him kiss me like I’d never been kissed before.

Zane waited for my answer to his question, and when I gave it, I was slow and cautious. “I’m…not sure, Zane.”

He wasn’t a quitter. He pushed back his black hair and leaned forward. God, he really was gorgeous, and my subconscious started giving him serious consideration. “Why not? We’re friends, right?” His eyes searched mine and then he said, “It’s Ethan, isn’t it?” I couldn’t say a word, and my silence told him what he needed to know. “Valerie, you need to forget about him except as a friend.” He stared at me. “Trust me on this. Come with me to the dance. I know you care about Ethan a lot, no matter what you say, so don’t even try to deny it. But what would it hurt for you to go to the dance with me?”

“Oh, Zane. I know Ethan won’t ask me to the dance. That’s not it. But it’s a Valentine’s Day dance. And if I go with you…” I felt the wind leave my sails. Much as I cared for Ethan, I didn’t want to hurt the man who’d actually grown a pair to ask.

He knew what I was saying, though. “He’ll think we’re a couple, right?” He paused. “Jesus f*ck. Val, I really don’t want to be the dickhead to tell you this…” I could see some kind of emotional struggle in his eyes. “No. F*ck it. Not going there.”

“What?” No way was he getting away with not talking now.

“No. Forget it.” He took a deep breath. “Just…never mind.”

He started to stand up, so I stood too. He was tall, but I still reached for his shoulders. I wasn’t going to be demanding, because that already had gotten me nowhere, but I knew he was withholding something from me, and I wanted to know. “Please tell me.” He looked at me and then above my head at the wall behind me. “Is it something I’ll find out anyway?”

And that’s when I saw the change in his eyes. Yeah…it was something I’d find out later. He looked almost sad. He sighed and then said, “Ethan…uh…is taking another girl to the dance.”

The breath left me just as surely as it would have had someone punched me in the gut and thrown me to the ground, following it up with a few kicks. I couldn’t hide my feelings, because they were too fresh, and I’m sure I looked like a wounded animal. “Oh…”

Wow. That hurt more than I would have expected, because I’d thought I was okay with the best friends/ maybe relationship down the line stance Ethan had taken. But now I knew. Ethan didn’t love me that way, probably never would. I had to grow up and face reality. So I had to accept that the occasional arm around my shoulders, kiss on my cheek, and hand in mine were simply friendly gestures that meant something entirely different to Ethan than they did to me.

And that meant another thing as well. That meant it was time to give other guys their shot. I’d thwarted advances from classmates here and there without the guys ever getting far enough to actually have to be rejected. It was time to accept other guys’ interest in me, and I would start with Zane. Zane, an incredibly good-looking guy who was also a friend—he’d be a great first candidate, and I guessed he was just in the right place at the right time. I nodded. “Okay.” I took a deep breath and Zane didn’t say a word. He looked like he felt guilty as hell. “The dance is tomorrow night, right?”

He looked unsure, as though we were venturing into unknown territory…and, really, we were. “Uh...yeah.”

I took a deep breath and tried to smile, but I’m sure it looked like my cheeks had been injected with Novocain. “What time will you come by?”

Zane tried to appear sober, but I could see the twinkle in his eyes return. “So…you’ll come with me?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He got his bearings back. “Um…eight o’clock sound all right?”

“Yeah…”

He placed his hands on my shoulders. “You okay? Goddamn. I’m sorry I said anything. What an a*shole.”

I shook my head. “No. No, Zane. You were just the messenger.” I forced the smile this time. If I really didn’t care about Ethan in that way—as I’d been trying to convince Zane—then it shouldn’t hurt at all, right? So I had to make the smile convincing. “No worries. We’re going to have a great time.”

“Yeah, we are.” He hugged me, and I’m sure he sensed he shouldn’t go any further…not yet, anyway. Because he knew. Deep down, he knew. No matter what I said, it was pretty apparent to every f*cking person on the planet except Ethan that I loved the boy. So Zane was going to try to comfort me or, at the very least, help me save face. And I appreciated that. Sure, I knew he had an ulterior motive, but I wasn’t going to hold that against him. And I’m sure I wasn’t doing his ego any favors. He knew he wasn’t my first choice. But maybe he cared enough about me that it didn’t matter.

When he left my room, I just leaned my back against the door, trying to recover. And I was glad Jennifer had a class, so she wouldn’t be home for a while. I would be able to deal with this fresh pain on my own for a while. The wounds were too fresh, and I wasn’t ready to talk about them yet.

I threw myself on my bed and cried and cried to the point of exhaustion. I half filled my wastebasket with wadded-up tissues. After I got over my feelings of heartache, I then felt pangs of jealousy against this girl I didn’t even know, the girl who’d managed to capture Ethan’s heart when I wasn’t looking.

And then I thought…maybe going to the dance with Zane would be my form of revenge…not even let Ethan know how much he’d hurt me.

I took a deep breath. No, I couldn’t be like that.

But I didn’t want to act like a little child either and refuse to go. I’d already promised Zane, and who knew? Maybe I’d have fun after all.

I realized then that I really had fallen helplessly in love with Ethan. And, I told myself, if he doesn’t want to go to the dance with me, that’s fine, just as long as he’s happy. Oh, yes. I could think those words, but believing them was another thing entirely.

And those feelings? I was having a hard time shaking those too.

I felt so vulnerable, so much in pain that I could be easily destroyed. I needed to bounce back, as had been my nature up to this point. That was when I decided life really does go on, and I was going to enjoy myself at the dance.