—See? he said. Now you try.
I felt like hiding under the bench, but as he lifted his beer, I decided to play it off like a joke. I said, Got it, okay. Miami was great! I went to the beach every day and had breakfast every morning with the Miami Dolphins and went to fifty-five raves. It was super swell.
—That’s better, he said. He reached over and grabbed one of the mittens, smacked my left hand with it.
—What’s that though? he said. He reached for my hand, then pulled all but one of his fingers back and poked at my ring. I’d started wearing it at Rawlings in the hopes it would distract people from talking to me about Ariel and instead make them ask me what a ring like that was doing on my left hand.
—Nice bling, but I think you’re wearing it in the wrong place. Unless you and the Miami Dolphins got engaged.
—We did, I said. I did. Sort of.
—You sort of got engaged?
I nodded and he pulled his hand away.
—To your boyfriend?
—Yeah, I said.
—Not to the Miami Dolphins?
I smiled down at the table.
—Just making sure, he said. He knocked his knuckles against the table’s top a couple times. Wow, he said. Wow. Congrats, yeah? Does this mean you’re leaving Rawlings?
—Why would I leave Rawlings?
He wrapped both hands around his pint glass.
—I don’t know, he said. I guess, when people get married – I don’t know.
I realized what he might’ve meant—maybe I was pregnant—and I laughed to cover up the awkwardness. He laughed, too, but looked through the window at the cold as he did it. I tried to think of something I could say to correct his assumption.
—You think I’m too young to get married?
—No, no, that’s none of my business, he said. My mom almost got married when she was eighteen.
I imagined his mother holding on to one of those high school boyfriends a little longer than the rest of her college friends.
—Before she met your dad?
—No, to my dad. Didn’t happen though. He managed to escape before I came along.
I didn’t say anything. He started shredding his napkin into strips.
—I know he lives in Portland now, he said. And, obviously, I know he’s a ginger. Probably. Seeing as I’m the only person in my family who looks like this.
He flung a napkin shard at me, then pointed to his head. This was not the life I’d constructed for Ethan, and before our conversation got any more serious and confusing for me, I decided to protect us both and rework the truth.
—God, I feel bad now. I was kidding, I said. I’m kidding!
I turned the ring on my finger, tugged it off, and put it on my other hand.
I said, My mom gave me this. For Christmas.
He let out a burst of a sigh, his cheeks filling and then deflating, then shoved his hands in his hair and pulled it back from his forehead.
—Wow, OK, he laughed. That was a good one.
He took a long sip of his beer, then dropped his voice, made it deeper when he said, Sorry to get so personal there. I hope that wasn’t weird. I was ready to be very happy for you. I said congrats, didn’t I?
Aside from the existence of Omar, Ethan knew nothing about my life back home, and what he thought he knew thanks to Jillian’s mittens was wrong. I pressed my thumbnail into the table’s soft wood and tried to get his impression of who I was closer to accurate.
—When my mom gave me this, she told me the three stones stood for her, my sister, and my nephew. I’m an aunt, I said. My mom and dad aren’t together either.
—Oh, he said. Cool – about the aunt thing.
He set his beer down slowly, exactly on the condensation ring it had already made.
—A diamond ring for Christmas? he said. You must mean a lot to your mom.
The mittens—Jillian’s mittens—were still on the table, and I realized I’d made things worse in that respect: now I was a Rawlings girl who wore hundred-dollar mittens ice skating and got diamond rings for Christmas. I didn’t know how I’d fix this, but it wouldn’t happen then. I just said yeah.
When our sandwiches arrived (they were, in fact, pretty good), Ethan told me about the hall program he moderated called Happy Hours, a standing study group with a simple premise: every hour of work you put in around the aggressively silent book-strewn table equaled one beer you bought yourself later at Carter House. He wanted me to know I’d be welcome to hang out anytime; he’d been waiting around the library to tell me that.
—I’m legally obligated to say that the school’s endorsement of this program officially ends with the studying, before the tallying up of beers, he said. And while I fully understand you can’t join us for the bar portion, he said as he wiped his mouth, that doesn’t mean you won’t get work done. I mean it when I say we’re aggressively silent.