“So he says. I mean, the guy probably has no social life—?I bet he came just to hang out with you.”
“Well, it’s what he told me,” I say irritably. “Feel free to ask him if he was lying or not.”
“See?” Sarah says. “You’re in a bad mood.”
The three of us are watching music videos on my laptop when Ivy comes in and informs us that Ethan and David left as soon as the movie ended.
I say, “You should have told me. I would have said goodbye.”
“It’s okay. They didn’t care.”
Sarah’s parents tell her she has to come home, and James says he’ll drive her. I get the sense he doesn’t particularly want to stay alone for dinner with my family, so I don’t push him to come back.
Mom’s annoyed that she ordered a lot of pizza and now only the four of us are eating. “At least James and Sarah explained why they had to go, and of course I don’t blame Ethan for not communicating. But that brother of his . . . Not only did he completely ignore the fact I’d invited them to dinner—?no response one way or the other—?but he didn’t even say goodbye, so I thought they were still here when I placed the order.”
“I actually thought he was the autistic one,” Ron says. “I mean, when we first walked in, before we met the other one. He seems to have his own social difficulties.”
It’s lovely the way he talks about autistic people in front of Ivy—?like there’s something wrong with them. She’s chewing away at her pizza, and I can’t tell whether or not she’s bothered by what he said.
“Well, maybe he’s on the spectrum too,” Mom says, picking up her own slice with a sigh. “It can run in families, you know.”
Ron doesn’t like pizza because it’s “all carbs,” so he put together a salad for his own dinner, which he washes down now with several glasses of red wine.
Mom keeps fretting about all the leftover pizza she’s going to have to deal with, but when Ivy reaches for a third slice, Ron puts out a hand to stop her. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“No, I’m still hungry.” She puts the slice on her plate.
He takes a long sip of his wine. “Ethan’s pretty thin. You don’t want to be heavier than your boyfriend, do you?”
“I don’t think he’s my boyfriend.” Ivy looks at me. “Is he?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He’s not not your boyfriend. And I want another slice of pizza too.” I’m lying. I don’t really want it—?I just don’t want Ron to make Ivy feel bad about having one. I take a couple of bites just to make my point.
Ivy turns very quiet, and later, when we’re alone in our room, she says, “I don’t think Ethan’s my boyfriend. We don’t kiss like you and James do.”
“Do you want to? Because I think he’d be up for it.”
“Would I know if I wanted to?”
The question kind of blows my mind. You can’t assume anything with Ivy. Finally I say, “I think so. I did. I really, really wanted to, pretty much every time I kissed a guy. I mean, it was scary the first time—”
“The first time with James? Or the first time kissing anyone? Because you had a lot of boyfriends before James. There was Juan and Brian and—”
I cut her off before she can finish the whole recitation. “Yeah, yeah, I know. The first kiss with any guy is always scary, I think. But the first first kiss is the scariest. Even when you want to do it, it’s terrifying.”
“So why do it?”
“Because at some point, the wanting is stronger than the terror.”
“Do you think you’ll marry James?”
“Marry him? Ivy, I’m seventeen.”
“I know. You’re three and a half years younger than me. I’ll turn twenty-one before you turn eighteen, and then I’ll be four years older than you, but only for five months. Do you think you’ll marry James when you’re older?”
“Nah. I’ll probably go out with tons of guys before I get married, if I even ever get married.”
“I don’t think I’ll marry Ethan either. I’m old enough to get married, but I don’t want to marry him.”
“No one’s expecting you guys to get married, Ives. This is just about having someone to do fun things with. That’s good, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So relax,” I say.
Twenty-One
TV at our house on Friday?
It’s Wednesday night. I’m lying on my bed doing homework. The text is from David. He adds, Ethan’s idea
Ivy or both of us?
Up to you
We still don’t talk to each other at school. We do this nodding thing when we pass, and we don’t attack each other’s comments in English class anymore . . . but we don’t talk.
I ask Ivy what she thinks about going to Ethan’s house. She says, “Only if you go too.”
“Come on, Ives. You can’t always be dragging your sister along wherever you go.”
“Just this time.”
“And then you’ll go out with Ethan by yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Seriously, I can’t keep going with you. It’s getting weird for me.”
“Why?”
“I think it’s starting to bother James that David and I spend so much time together.”
“Why?”
“Because James is my boyfriend. Which you know.”
“Does he think you want David to be your boyfriend?”
“God, no!”
“Then why is it weird?”
I fling my hand out. “It just is. Guys don’t like their girlfriends to hang out with other people when they could be with them.”
“Why not? Why does it matter?”
“Look, what if Ethan said to you, ‘You shouldn’t always be with—’” I stop because I can’t think of an example.
“With Diana?” she suggests.
“What if he said, ‘You’re spending all this time with Diana instead of with me, and that hurts my feelings’? You’d feel a little bad, right?”
She shakes her head. “You should be with who you want to be with. If I wanted to be with Diana more than I wanted to be with him, then I would be.”
“I mean, obviously no one should ever tell you who you can and can’t be with. I’m just saying that if it bothered him, you’d feel bad.”