“Hmm.” I lean closer and use my thumb to wipe a smudge of icing off the corner of his mouth. “I guess eating crappy homemade cake is sort of boring in comparison?”
Instead of answering, he kisses me. His mouth is sticky and sweet, and I kiss him back like I can’t get enough of it. Soon, we’re tangled together on the couch, cake and everything else forgotten.
“Want to go up to my room?” Ethan asks sometime later, after he notices me shivering for the second time. The fire died off a while ago, and the room has been growing increasingly chilly. “I don’t mean—we can just talk. Or whatever. It’s a lot warmer up there, that’s all.”
I hesitate for a moment. If we go up there, we’ll probably do a lot more than talk. My chest is pressed against his and I can feel his heart pounding. He wants me, and going by the way my own heart races in sync with his, I want him too. I want us to get lost in each other and let everything else fade away. Just for a while, I want us to forget.
“Okay,” I reply.
We slowly make our way upstairs. I feel a bit unsteady, like my limbs belong to someone else. I’m grateful when we reach the top floor, because it’s much warmer up here and I don’t have to climb any more stairs.
“Oh my God,” I gasp when we walk into his room. The last time I was in here, it looked almost like a hotel room, tidy and bland and impersonal. Now, the walls are virtually covered in posters, and his floor is littered with clothes and music magazines and guitar picks. For the first time since I’ve known Ethan, his room looks like it belongs to a teenage boy. “You’re really committed to pissing off your parents, aren’t you?”
“I live for it.” He pushes a balled-up sweatshirt off his desk chair. “You want to sit down?”
I ignore the chair and kiss him instead. He wraps his arms around me and walks me backward toward his bed, which—surprisingly, considering the state of his room in general—is very neatly made. Not for long, though. We pick up where we left off downstairs, only now we have more room to maneuver. Without removing his lips from mine, Ethan rolls us over until I’m on top of him, my knees on either side of his hips and my hair falling forward, shielding our faces.
“I love you,” he mumbles against my neck as his hands slide over my rib cage, pushing my shirt up, unhooking my bra. “I love you so much. I always have.”
Tears sting my eyes, but I force them back. I don’t want to cry. Not now. All I want is to get even closer to him, closer than I’ve ever been to anyone, and let these feelings take over until there’s nothing left but his body against mine.
“We still good?” he asks as our clothes join the jumbled mess on the floor.
“Still good,” I say, because even though I haven’t loved him for years like he’s loved me, I’ve always been able to trust him. And that hasn’t changed.
Ethan lies there and watches me for a while, like he’s giving me time to change my mind. When I don’t, he reaches beside him to the nightstand and opens the drawer, pulling out a small, square package. The fact that he has an open box of condoms in his room makes me pause for a second.
“You’ve done this before?” Right now is the worst possible time to broach this subject, but I have to know.
“A couple times. With Lacey.” He touches my bare shoulder, his fingers trembling against my skin. “But it was nothing like this.”
As he leans in to kiss me, I realize it doesn’t matter. None of it does. Not who he’s been with or what he’s done or what I’ve done or if we’ll end up destroying each other. For the first time in a long time, I can’t see anything but what’s right in front of me.
I wake up just before dawn, thirsty and disoriented. Propping myself up on my elbows, I glance over at Ethan, who’s stretched out on his stomach beside me. I can barely make him out in the grayness of the room, but I can tell from his even breathing that he’s deeply asleep.
Heat floods my cheeks as images of last night push through the sleep-fog in my brain—the vodka shot, the cake, the New Year countdown, and then . . . this bed. That part of the night feels like a surreal blur, and I’d probably think I imagined it if it weren’t for the tenderness between my legs, assuring me it really happened.
I feel a twinge of regret. Before, we might have been able to go back to being just friends—or even walk away from each other entirely—if the Aubrey-shaped wedge between us ever became too big to manage. But there’s no going back after last night. Now our lives are tangled together even more.
I glance down at my body, naked underneath the covers. Too late for second-guessing now.
Ethan stirs and rolls toward me, his hand grazing my bare hip. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, even though my eyes are suddenly prickling with tears. Why am I so emotional all of a sudden? “I just . . . I need to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” he mumbles, and seconds later he’s breathing evenly again.
Quietly, I get up and feel around on the floor for some clothes. I grab the first thing my hand touches, which turns out to be Ethan’s Black Sabbath T-shirt, and pull it over my head as I leave the room.
In the bathroom, I gulp some water from the tap and then splash some on my face, avoiding my red eyes in the mirror. As I reach for a towel, my gaze catches on a yellow tube of lip balm on the counter next to the hand soap. It probably belongs to Mrs. McCrae, but Aubrey used to use the same kind.
A memory flashes through my mind. Aubrey and I, in this room, sitting side-by-side on the edge of the tub. Aubrey crying over Justin, wiping her tears with toilet paper because the Kleenex box is empty. Me with my arm around her, telling her she’s worth the hassle. Her in the hallway with Ethan, assuring him that she didn’t mean to yell. Both of us forgiving her instantly, knowing that even when she pushed us away, there was nothing either of us could do to make her stay mad at us forever.
I let go of the towel, my body growing cold despite the warm air pumping out of the vent by my feet. Maybe there is something I could do to make her that angry. Ethan was a willing participant these past few months, but it’s me she’d blame for crossing the line.
Aubrey would hate me for this.
I pause at the threshold of the bathroom, shivering and unsure what to do next. I’d told Ethan I’d be right back. My body aches for his warmth, for a few extra hours of sleep, but instead of turning left toward Ethan’s room, I veer right and head for Aubrey’s instead.
The door is closed. I push it open slowly, praying the hinges don’t squeak. They don’t. I slink inside and flip the light switch, squinting as the brightness hits my eyes. Right away, I can see it’s not Aubrey’s room anymore. Almost everything of hers is gone—laptop, books, makeup, the miniature violin I’d given her for her thirteenth birthday that always sat on her bookshelf. All gone.