—Nice to see you too, I said. What’s left of you.
The hand went to his hair, fingers spreading out to hide as much of it as he could. Maybe in the instant I was getting called a sellout in a Little Havana backyard, Ethan was chatting about his upcoming move to Berkeley with some stylist, some girl like my sister working the clippers around his ears and saying So you’re getting a doctorate, what kind of doctor are you gonna be?—a mistake I might’ve made just a few months earlier, a mistake people like me made. I propped my elbows on the desk, leaned my face into my open hands, covered my eyes.
—So you don’t like the haircut?
—You look like a different person.
—Is that a good or bad thing? he said. He pretended to laugh.
I kept my eyes covered and tried to keep all feeling out of my voice. I said, I haven’t seen you in a while.
—You stopped coming to Happy Hours.
—You’ve been avoiding me too, right? It’s not like you don’t know where to find me. You found me now.
—Yeah, well, I figured you were still mad at me for getting into Berkeley.
—I was never mad about that.
—Whatever it was, it wasn’t OK. Can you maybe put your hands down and talk to me?
I pressed my fingers harder into my eyelids until I made false light glow from them, just to the point of pain. I wanted to be back home, not having what now felt like a frivolous conversation. His sweatshirt, the glass doors, the rare book on the table—all of it felt so pointless, so small. I kept my hands up.
—Ethan, I just got back from Miami like hours ago, and I’m sorry but I just can’t talk to you about this right now.
—Why were you in Miami? he said.
I couldn’t handle Ethan the RA trying to console me about something he didn’t have to think about unless he wanted to—another reason to resent him. I blinked into my fingertips. Please go away, I muttered.
—You’re not wearing your ring, he said. Did something happen?
I pulled my hands from my face.
—I wasn’t home for that. Seriously, what part of Go away do you not understand?
—You know, Lizet, I don’t know why I’m standing here either. If anything you should be apologizing to me.
He was talking too loud for the library’s foyer, but I didn’t care. There were worse things in the world than talking too loudly in the library. There were much worse things than hearing the basest version of what you might want from someone thrown at you right when you’re the happiest you’ve been in weeks.
—Okay, fine. Sorry I told you the truth. Are we done here?
He surprised me by saying, No, we’re not.
He leaned over my desk and said, I don’t know what’s going on with you. I know you’re – or were, I don’t know – serious about someone, and I’ve tried to be respectful of that. But I still thought we – look, it’s not what you said. It’s how you said it. You insulted the fact that I like being around you. You made me feel like an asshole when I’ve tried really hard not to be an asshole with you.
I slid the book to my side and dropped it with a slap into the return bin even though special collections books were supposed to get reshelved immediately. The sound was meaner than I wanted, but I needed him to leave me alone—there was no room left in my imagination for a version of my life that included someone like Ethan. I pushed my fingernail into a knot in the desk’s wood, tried to scrape away some of its shine.
—Did Berkeley send you that sweatshirt? I said.
It was the closest I could come to the way we’d always played around, so easy and so quick and subtle, like before. I hoped he’d heard the compliment beneath it—That just looks right on you—but he shook his head.
—OK, I think I’m done here, he said.
—Come on, Ethan. Do we really need to do this now?
His Adam’s apple churned at his throat, like an animal fighting its way out. If he’d found me at work before I’d gone home, I would’ve asked him to come back after my shift—maybe even feigned sickness to leave early—and I would’ve confessed everything: Do you watch the news? Have you heard about this kid? I could’ve told him about the internship happening on his coast, how I wanted to do it but felt like I shouldn’t. If he’d found me before I’d promised Leidy I’d come home, I could’ve asked him how far Berkeley was from Santa Barbara. Maybe you could visit me this summer. Except now none of that mattered: I needed to be home and Ethan didn’t need to be anywhere he didn’t want to be. I sat up in my chair, tired of how he made me feel, jealous of how lucky he was to have survived long enough at Rawlings for his priorities to change for good. There was no way to explain to him and his sweatshirt why I no longer cared how many books were kidnapped from the library.
—No, Lizet, we don’t need to do this now. Don’t worry, we won’t do it at all.
He backed away from the desk.
—I’m just saying I’m sure we both have real things to worry about.