“Yeah,” David says. “That always works out so well, doesn’t it? ‘I don’t like you that way, just as a friend.’”
“If it’s sincere—”
“Would it be? Does Ivy actually care? Or is that something else you’re projecting on her?”
“I think she’s really had fun going out with him. I have too. I’d like—” I stop. But then I go ahead and say it. I don’t have a lot to lose at this point. “I’d like us all to keep doing stuff together. If you guys want to too. It’s been really nice for me.”
“Yeah?” His gaze flickers across my face, but evades my eyes. “Nice, how? Why?”
“It’s been amazing being able to talk to someone about Ivy—?someone who gets it.” It’s the easiest way to answer the question, and it’s true. But it’s not the whole answer. Even when we weren’t talking about Ivy and Ethan, I was starting to like hanging out with David.
“Join a support group,” he says, and turns away.
“Wait! What about this afternoon?”
“I’ll bring Ethan over at three,” he says over his shoulder. “You guys can tell him what you need to tell him. Let’s just get it over with.” And he walks away before I can say anything else.
Which is fine, because I have nothing else to say.
It’s funny: the night before, after James broke up with me, even though I cried, I kind of felt okay deep down, like the right thing had happened, like it was inevitable. But now, as I drive home, totally dry-eyed and outwardly calm, I feel awful inside, all the way through—?even my bones and my intestines ache.
I wish I could go back in time. I wouldn’t try to push Ethan and Ivy together.
Except if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gotten to know David, and I’ve really liked getting to know him. He’s crazy and angry and surly, but he’s also smart and funny and challenging in a good way. James is kind and charming and helpful to everyone. David . . . David’s not nice to very many people. But he’d sit and talk to me like I was actually a human being, and it felt like I’d broken through some barrier other people couldn’t get past. It felt meaningful, like I was someone special.
I hope Ethan will be fine with everything, and then maybe David will be fine with everything, and then maybe we’ll all be friends again, and maybe Diana will decide she’s in love with Ivy, and Ethan will find someone else to be in love with, and David and I will be able to get together and talk about how great it is that Ivy and Ethan are friends with each other and in love with other people . . . and then unicorns will spread rainbows all over the sky, and flying pigs will play in them, and we’ll all live together and have dogs named Eleanor Roosevelt and cats named Sappho.
Twenty-Eight
“YOU HAVE TO BE kind of tactful when you talk to Ethan,” I tell Ivy over lunch.
Mom and Ron are out, so she and I are eating grilled cheese sandwiches by ourselves. I burned one side of them, but I don’t care, because I don’t have much of an appetite at the moment. Ivy complained about the burned taste but is managing to eat hers anyway.
I go on. “Don’t just say, ‘I’m gay and don’t want to go out with you.’ Tell him you really like him as a friend; you just can’t be his girlfriend. Make sure he doesn’t take it personally, that he knows you wouldn’t like any guy that way.”
“You should probably tell him.”
“No, you should.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Well, neither do I.” I get up to clear my plate. “And I already had to tell David, so this one’s on you.”
“Why can’t David just tell him, then?”
“He doesn’t want to either.”
“But—”
“It’s your job to tell him. You’re the one who’s gay.”
“See? You always make it sound like a bad thing.”
Great. Now I feel even cruddier.
When I open the door to Ethan at three, he’s alone. I ask him where his brother is, and he points to their car and says, “He didn’t want to come in. He said we’re not going to see a movie today because Ivy wants to have a talk instead. I like movies better than talks, though.” He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a belt. His hair is combed. He looks like someone who is trying to look extra nice because he’s going on a date with a girl he likes, and it wrecks me.
I lead him to the kitchen, where Ivy is sitting with her iPad.
“Hi,” she says. “Do you want some popcorn?”
“No, thank you,” Ethan says. “But you should have some if you want to.”
Ethan and I sit and watch as Ivy gets the bag of popcorn out of the pantry and comes back to the table with it. She sits down, opens the bag, and starts eating popcorn.
“I wanted to see a movie,” Ethan tells her. “But David said you wanted to talk.”
“Chloe wanted to talk, not me.”
“I just thought you two should talk,” I say. “Ivy, tell Ethan what’s going on—?what you realized yesterday.”
“Okay.” There are bits of popcorn shell on her lips. I catch her eye and make a wiping gesture toward my own lips. She stares at me blankly before turning back to Ethan. “Chloe wants me to tell you that I’m gay.”
Ethan blinks several times rapidly. “What do you mean?”
Ivy waves her hand; grains of salt fly from her fingers. “Being gay means you like your own type of people, so girls like girls, and boys like boys.”
“I know what gay means,” he says impatiently. “I’m not stupid. But you’re not gay.”
“Yes, I am.”
He shakes his head. “No, because you’re going out with me, and I’m a guy.”
“I don’t want to go out with you.”
There’s blunt . . . and then there’s cruel. I quickly cut in. “She likes you a lot as a friend—?she’s just saying that she doesn’t think you guys should date.”
“I want to go out with Diana and not with you,” Ivy adds.
“Diana from school?” Ethan hugs himself and starts rocking back and forth in the chair. “You like her more than me?”
Ivy just nods, so I say, “Not more, just in a different way.”