“That sounds like a plan,” Ambrose said. He reached over, grabbing a red cup and filling it, then presented it with a flourish. “Personally, I like Rocky Road after a bad breakup. It’s like a metaphor, fitting.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Lately I’ve been mainlining rainbow sherbet. I was hoping it had antidepressant powers.”
“Just avoid the chocolate peanut butter or pralines and cream. Too couply for the newly single.”
“That’s good advice,” she said.
“Ambrose was just leaving,” I told her.
“Only because I had no reason to stay,” he said. “Now we’re talking ice cream, so I do.”
Lauren blushed slightly, then looked down into her beer. “I’m warning you, I might be terrible company. If I get buzzed I’ll probably start telling you my entire sad story.”
“I love sad stories. So does Ira,” Ambrose told her. The dog, for his part, started tugging toward the stairs that led down to the yard, clearly sending a message. “Oh, looks like someone needs a walk. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“I’ll come with you, if you want,” Lauren offered.
“Yeah?” he said, pushing that curl out of his face.
“It’s not like I really want to stay here,” she said.
“Lead the way, then.”
Ambrose waved his hand, motioning for her to go first. She glanced at Leo, shrugged with a smile, and then started down the steps, Ambrose and Ira following along behind her. I could hear their voices, already chatting, as they disappeared into the dark of the yard below.
“He’d better behave himself,” Leo said, as we watched them cut across the grass, their shadows thrown in the moonlight. “That girl’s a real prize.”
I believed this, even though I’d just met her, and was pretty sure Ambrose got it, too. And watching this particular departure, I knew something was happening. Even from a distance, you could tell when two people simply clicked. Starting with a nighttime walk, well—that just sealed the deal.
CHAPTER
16
ETHAN DID phone me from the parking lot, just as he’d promised. I missed the call.
In my defense, I was packed in the elevator with a group of people who’d just arrived, all talking over each other. If I heard a ringtone of soaring soprano, backed by moaning violins, I probably just assumed it belonged to one of them. It wasn’t until I got off on my floor and it rang again in the quiet of the hallway that I realized the noise was coming from my pocket. I pulled it out.
“You might be annoyed now,” he said, in lieu of hello, “but that song will grow on you. Someday, it might even make you cry.”
When I remembered this later, it broke whatever pieces were left of my heart. But that was later.
“You put a Lexi Navigator song as my ringtone?” I asked.
“While I was getting my bag,” he told me. “And before you get mad about me jacking your password for Tunage,” he said, “you really should make it harder to figure out.”
“How did you know it was William?” I asked.
“You did say he was the alarm code at the house,” he told me. I had, while telling a story about how this was the way I learned to spell his name as a kid. William was our password for everything. “I took a guess.”
“Well,” I said, still working through all this. I’d had to stop walking just to catch up, so to speak. “Now you know all my secrets.”
“Don’t worry. They’re safe with me.”
I turned, looking out over the balcony to the street below. Somewhere, a red car was driving steadily away from me, putting a mile, then another mile between us.
“What am I supposed to tell people when they ask me why I have a Lexi Navigator ringtone?” I asked him now.
“That you are her biggest fan because your boyfriend loves her,” he replied. Boyfriend. I liked the sound of that. “And then you show them your screensaver.”
“My—” I pulled my phone down, flipping to that setting. Sure enough, there was Ethan grinning next to Lexi Navigator in her stage outfit. I put it back to my ear. “Okay. That’s pretty cute.”
“I’m glad you think so. As we were driving off I started to worry that maybe you would hate it. Hold on a sec.” I heard a voice in the background, then Ethan saying something. “Look, we’re stopping for gas and snacks. I’ll call back in a bit, okay? You’ll know me by ‘Pay Attention, the Words Are Changing.’”
“What?”
“The name of the song about her grandmother, Lulu. Come on! How are you going to date Lexi Navigator’s number one fan if you don’t know her biggest hits?”
I smiled, turning back to my room. “I’ll get right on that.”
“You can start with your Tunage library, under Recently Purchased. Talk to you in a few!”
With that he was gone, leaving me to just stare, open mouthed, as I went to my music app to find, yes, five new songs, all by Lexi Navigator. I’d listen to them all, over and over again, in between the dozens of short conversations we’d have in the following hours as we each headed back to our respective homes. With Ethan in my ear, the drive back to Lakeview felt, and looked, entirely different. I felt like a different girl. I would never again be who I was when I walked down those beach stairs, took off my shoes, and stepped into the sand. And I was so, so glad.
Once home, we talked constantly, and when we weren’t talking, we were texting or chatting face-to-face on HiThere! He’d linked the S.O. (significant other) part of his Ume.com page to my profile right after our first phone conversation, at the same time I was adding his to my own. Despite my having dated a few guys already, it wasn’t until Ethan that I understood what all the love songs and sappy movie endings really were all about. I finally understood Jilly’s buoyant romanticism, the hopefulness that seeps into every part of your life when you know someone loves you in that way. I ate, slept, and dreamed Ethan. When he wasn’t in my ear or on my screen in one way or another, I was running over our night together in my mind, hour by hour, so I’d be sure not to forget a single detail.
As we’d promised, we immediately began to make plans to get together again. His dad, still eager to get on Ethan’s good side post-divorce, said he’d buy him a ticket down for his fall break, which was in mid-October, overlapping by a few days with mine. I circled the days on my desk calendar and began a countdown on my phone, getting teased regularly by my mom, William, and Jilly about my visible impatience with how slowly time was passing.
“I have never seen you like this,” Jilly said to me, staring as I hummed along to Lexi Navigator on the car radio as we drove to school the first day of senior year. “It’s like you’ve been body swapped or something.”
“What?” I said. “You’ve been in love tons of times.”
“Not like that. This, what’s going on here?” She swirled her finger at me. “It’s some serious first love stuff. Sometimes I look over at you and you’re just sitting there, smiling at nothing.”
“I am not.”