When Perry spoke, his voice sounded far away.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t feel the same way if I were in your shoes. Here’s my advice, and you’re welcome to ignore it: try to divorce the project from your feelings about Sam. Finishing this won’t bring him back. You need to stop wallowing in the past, and figure out what your future looks like.” He attempted to spear a crouton with his fork, cracking it in half. “Speaking as someone currently being waterboarded by my own past, it’s not pretty.”
Ethan felt hot behind his eyes. He’d expected Perry to understand how important this was, how it was the only possible tribute to his and Sam’s legacy. If he were to abandon the project, that would be it. He would be fully alone now.
But that wasn’t true. He wasn’t alone. He had Grey. He suddenly regretted letting her go see her mother without him. He only hoped she was having a better time than he was.
* * *
—
“HI. HELLO?”
A woman approached their table with a wave. Grey was so destabilized by her mother’s company that she’d forgotten there were perfectly good reasons for a stranger to approach her. She expected the woman to tell her that Grey’s chair was on her purse, or that she’d accidentally dropped something on the way back from the bathroom.
“Sorry?” Grey said, smiling nervously.
“Can I get a picture?” the woman asked with what was probably supposed to be a smile but looked more like a grimace. Her Australian accent was so thick it took a moment for Grey to register what she was saying. Peeg-cha. She looked down and saw the woman’s phone brandished under her nose.
Grey’s smile turned apologetic.
“Sorry, it’s not a good time right now. I’m just trying to have lunch with my mom.”
The woman’s lips slid back down to cover her teeth and she slunk away without another word.
“That was very ungrateful of you, Emily,” her mother snapped before the woman was even out of earshot. Grey attacked her omelet with renewed vigor and tried to keep her voice low.
“I’m allowed to have boundaries.”
“These people are the reason you have a career.”
“Wait, I’m confused. Is it them, or is it Ethan? Anyone but me, right?”
“I didn’t say that. There you go again, always jumping to the worst conclusion.”
Grey closed her eyes. Opened them. This could all go differently. She could put her fork down, unclench her jaw. I don’t want things to be this way between us. They would sit there for hours, crying and apologizing, reopening all their old wounds before cauterizing them for good.
Or her mother would play dumb. Raise an eyebrow. Shut her down. I don’t know what you mean, Emily. Make it hurt even more than it did when she didn’t try, when it was all still unsaid.
Grey made eye contact with the waitress.
“Could we get the check, please?”
When she got back to the hotel, Ethan was already there, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows of their penthouse suite, glass of bourbon in hand. He glanced back at her when he heard her open the door, but said nothing.
“How did it go with Perry?” she asked, kicking off her sandals and padding over to him.
“Bad.” His voice was hoarse. “How was seeing your mom?”
“Bad.” She rested her head on his shoulder.
He offered her the glass. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“It’s okay. I don’t think it would’ve helped.”
She took a sip, even though it was the middle of the afternoon and she hated bourbon. It burned her throat and made her eyes water, but her nerves felt a little less raw. It was hard to remember that not so long ago being this close to him, his scent and his warmth, had made her palms sweat. Now it soothed her like a weighted blanket. She handed the glass back to him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Can we stay in tonight?”
He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.
“Please.”
ETHAN PACED THE LENGTH OF their suite like a tiger in an enclosure. Grey had been gone for hours, getting a late lunch with one of her high school friends. When she returned, the two of them would take a car out to Forest Hills to have dinner with Sam’s parents. In the meantime, Ethan had no idea what to do with himself. He’d taken a long, scalding shower, scrubbing his skin until it was red and raw. The minutes ticked by like hours as he wore tracks in the carpet.
Back in L.A., there were a lot of things that reminded him of Sam. But he lived in a different house now, he didn’t see any of their mutual friends anymore, and until recently, he barely went out. He’d made his life as small as possible so he’d hurt as little as possible. But even without stepping foot in Queens yet, just being in New York had opened the floodgates. He’d tossed and turned the night before, drifting in and out of dreams filled with fragments of memories so vivid that he woke up gasping.
The first time he’d met Sam had been the summer before sixth grade. Sam had moved in a few blocks away, and Ethan had caught a few glimpses of him as Ethan rode by on his bike while they were unloading the truck. He was short and scrawny, like Ethan; a tiny ball of energy with dark curly hair.
Ethan had been terrified to enter middle school. He was too shy and too pretty for his own good, perpetually trying to slip under the radar to avoid becoming a target. He’d lingered around the edges of a pack of rowdy, unruly boys he had nothing in common with, for no reason other than self-preservation.
Sam had approached Ethan and his friends while they were setting off bottle rockets in the park. The ringleader, Jimmy, had started to push Sam around, taunting him. Ethan had watched this scene play out half a dozen times, and it always ended the same. A skinned knee—maybe a bloody nose—before a tearful retreat. But something incredible had happened: Sam made him laugh. Made all of them laugh. Though Ethan couldn’t recall exactly what Sam had said, he’d never forget the looks on everyone’s faces, how surprised and disarmed they’d been.
He’d sought Sam out at school, and eventually they stopped hanging out with the other guys at all. They saved up enough money mowing lawns to buy a camcorder, and their afternoons and weekends were occupied with running around the neighborhood shooting their own increasingly elaborate movies.
Ethan loved Sam’s house. It was so different from his own. First of all, it was quieter. Sam was an only child, while Ethan had four older sisters who were constantly fighting, crying, stomping, yelling on the phone, slamming doors. When it was quiet in his house, it meant that something was wrong. It meant that something had set his father off and they were all trying to lie low to avoid being singled out as the object of his wrath.
Sam’s parents, too, were polar opposites of Ethan’s. To Sam’s embarrassment, they were still obviously, desperately in love. Sam’s mother had been an opera singer, Italian, from Italy, and his father was an art director at an ad agency in the city. Their house was crammed to the brim with books and instruments and mysterious objects that may or may not have been art.