“At her friend’s house,” Ethan says. “She said something about planning their outfits for the first week of school.” He snorts.
In Ethan’s bedroom, I plop down on his bed and spread out my arms and legs and close my eyes, breathing in deeply. I wiggle my arms like I’m making a snow angel.
“Is this some kind of mating ritual?” Ethan asks. I open my eyes and he’s standing next to the bed, looking over me. “Because it’s weird, but I’m down.”
I roll my eyes and kick at him with my foot. “No, I’m just enjoying your amazing mattress that’s on a bed frame that’s not a squeaky air mattress on the floor.”
“Damn,” he says, faking disappointment, even though he knows I won’t do anything intimate while his mom is downstairs. He leans over and kisses me, then he walks to his computer desk and turns his attention to his graphics pad.
I continue to enjoy the feeling of Ethan’s plush mattress as I look over at him. “Didn’t you buy that fancy computer that you can write on?” I ask. “Why are you still using the graphics pad?”
The device is several years old and looks like a piece of plastic with a stylus attached to it. He uses it to draw his T-shirt designs. The images he draws on the graphics pad appear on the computer as a graphic, but it’s not as fancy as the new laptop he just bought. It’s the kind that has the screen that swivels around and you can draw on it or lift it up and turn it back into a laptop shape.
He shrugs. “I like keeping it old school.” His tongue curls slightly over his upper lip while he works, and I watch his computer screen transform as he draws the design. It looks like a cartoon dinosaur. I’m sure it’ll have a funny caption to go with it by the time he’s finished. Ethan has been running his own T-shirt company for the last few years. He designs custom shirts and sells them through a website that prints and mails the shirts to his customers. He’s a good artist, which is kind of the opposite of what you’d expect from a football player. Ethan’s dad wanted him to play college ball, but he doesn’t want to go to college at all. The last time we talked about it, he’d said he was considering going to community college to get a degree in business or something that will help him grow his online store. His parents are kind of pissed about it because they don’t want him to “throw his life away.” (their words, not mine.) They’ve spent all summer telling him to look into college more and to apply at the local community college before it’s too late. Ethan says he’s taking a gap year and will figure out what to do a year from now.
I’ve just kept quiet about the whole thing. Ethan and I have only been dating a few months, and being his girlfriend is like a dream come true after having spent pretty much all of my life crushing on him. So even though I kind of agree with his parents and think he should at least try college before giving up on the idea, I keep my mouth shut. I’m a cool, fun, girlfriend, not a nagging one.
Besides, we’re going to have a lot more problems once school starts and I’m living three hours away. I shake my head, wishing I could shove those thoughts away forever. Instead, I change the subject.
“Any luck on the apartment search?”
“A little,” Ethan says. He shades in some areas on his drawing and then looks at the computer to see how it’s turning out. “I didn’t think finding my own place would be so difficult. I definitely want a place with a pool and weight room and most complexes only have one or the other.”
My heart tightens a little. Now that Ethan’s business has been earning him a ton of money, he’s been talking about moving out on his own. Having his own apartment will be great when I come home from college, because we can have all the privacy we want.
But the downsides seem to stack up way higher than that one benefit. I’ll be gone off to college. Hours away. My schedule packed with classes.
And Ethan will be here, in our hometown in his own apartment, with all the free time in the world.
I swallow, and glance around this bedroom that’s belonged to Ethan for his whole life. Once again, I’m wondering how the hell this new relationship of ours will survive when we are separated by a hundred and fifty miles. What’s worse, is that ever since I got accepted to Hilltop, Ethan and I haven’t had a single conversation about where we stand as a couple. It’s like he doesn’t even care that I’m leaving.
It doesn’t matter how many times I shake my head to clear it. These worries aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. And if we don’t talk about it and figure something out, our relationship will be finished. Leveled to the ground like my family’s empty lot next door.
