“You?” I ask, out loud, without hands, the words right where I need them. Finally, finally, realization dawning. My eyes are locked with Ethan’s. I can’t help it; I’m grinning. “For real. It’s you?”
“Me,” Ethan says, and holds up his phone. “You were early. We had an Oville meeting in the back that ran too long, and then he got to you first.”
I look at Liam, who is rocking on his heels, confused and still angry. Watching our conversation but not getting it at all. How could he? I barely understand.
Ethan is Ethan is Ethan.
Ethan is SN.
“Liam, I’m sorry. I can’t. I mean, it’s Ethan. It’s him,” I say, which makes no sense at all, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because now Ethan is sitting down across from me in the booth. And we are smiling at each other, goofy and giddy, and it’s easy, so much easier than it should be.
Liam looks more confused than upset. Caleb shrugs and then rolls his eyes toward the door, as if to say Give it up, man. She’s not worth it.
“Whatever,” Liam says, taking Caleb’s cue, the words casually thrown over his shoulder as he walks out the door. Caleb shakes his phone at me and Ethan, apparently his generic goodbye, as he runs to catch up with Liam.
“You?” I ask Ethan again, because I need it to be said one last time. To be sure that I’m not just jumping to conclusions and that I’m not dreaming.
“It’s nice to meet you again, Jessie, Jessie Holmes. I’m the weirdo who has been messaging you.” Ethan looks nervous, a question in his eyes. “Today so didn’t go the way I meant it to.”
I laugh, because what I’m feeling is something so much bigger than relief.
“What? You didn’t expect to almost get into a fistfight?”
“No, no, I did not.”
“I can’t believe it’s you,” I say, letting out the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. My phone beeps.
SN: are you disappointed?
Me: NO!!!
SN: can I come sit next to you?
Me: YES!!!
Ethan switches sides of the booth, and now his thigh is up against mine. I can smell his Ethan smell. I bet he tastes like coffee.
“Hello,” he says, and reaches up and tucks my hair behind my ears.
“Hello,” I say.
—
After we’ve talked for a while, it’s like all those other times I’ve hung out with Ethan but also totally different, because we’re not working on a project, we’re just together because we want to be, and I now know him, like really know him, because we’ve spent the last two months talking with our fingertips.
“Why?” I ask. He closes the gap, puts his hand in mine. We are holding hands. Ethan and I are holding hands. I am not sure I ever want to give his back.
“Why what?”
“Why did you email me that first day?”
“Since my brother…I feel like I’ve forgotten how to, like, how to talk to people. My dad made me go to this therapist, and she said that it might help to start writing instead. And when I saw you on the first day of school, there was just something about you that made me really want to meet you. You seemed lost in a way that I totally get. I decided to email. It felt safer to be undercover.” He shakes his head, as if to say Yes, I’m strange.
“Have you written to anyone else?” I ask.
“I mean, a few times here and there. I like to watch people. I’ve told some kids stuff in the nicest way possible. I told Ken Abernathy that Gem was cheating off him in calculus. With you, it was different. Ours was a two-month-long conversation.”
“So what you’re saying is you’re kind of like Wood Valley’s Batman.”
He grins. Looks down.
“Not really. This is my brother’s shirt. It’s silly, but whatever.”
“I like being able to ask you questions and you answering them.”
“I like you asking me questions.”
“Tell me three things,” I say, because I love our three things. I don’t want them to stop even though we can now say them out loud.
“One: contrary to popular belief, I do not do drugs. Terrified of them. Won’t even take Tylenol. Two: I memorized the first part of ‘The Waste Land’ just to impress you. Normally, I play Xbox in the middle of the night or read when I can’t sleep, but I thought it would make me seem, I don’t know, cooler or something.”
“It worked. It was totally dreamy.” My voice is smiling. I didn’t even know it could do that.
“Three: my mom’s in rehab as of yesterday. I am not naive enough to be optimistic—we’ve been to this rodeo a few times—but at least it’s something.”
“I—I don’t know what to say. If we were writing, I’d probably emoticon you.” I squeeze his hand, another way to talk. No wonder Ethan can’t sleep; his family life is even more screwed up than mine.
“Your turn. Three things…”
“Okay. One: I was really hoping it was you. I was sure it was, and then I was sure it wasn’t, and for that second, I thought you were Liam and I wanted to cry.”