Olivia sighed. I imagined she was just as tired of this conversation as I was.
She thought I was nuts to still be so angry, but she just didn’t get it. He should have understood better than anyone how hard it was to take a chance on a dream. And he should have taken my word for it when I said I wouldn’t be a dancer—that I couldn’t.
You’re not cut out for it.
I winced. Days later and I was still wincing over some of the things Bianca had said.
Maybe because they were the truth. Maybe I should have fought harder, or dieted more, or opted for surgery to make my body into the kind that would fit my mother’s ideal.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Now was not the time to rehash all that. This wasn’t about me, or my mother, it was about Ethan and his heavy-handed interfering.
“Why would he do that?” I asked, as if this time Olivia might have the magic answer.
She gave me a droll look. “I don’t know, Collette. Maybe if you’d given him a chance to explain, you’d have your answers.”
I bit my lip, thoroughly chastised. Again. She was right. I knew she was right. I needed to talk to him. I at least needed to hear what he had to say for himself.
I took a deep breath and summoned my courage. “Where is Ethan?”
I’d asked it under my breath so I was more than a little startled when a child’s voice beside me answered.
“You’re a friend of Ethan’s?”
I turned to find a cute little girl with a huge welcoming smile.
“Uh, yeah, you could say that.”
“I’m Chrissy, his sister.”
Before I could say ‘nice to meet you’ she was leaning into me, her voice the loudest whisper I’d ever heard. “Ethan’s not here because he’s playing with a band!”
I blinked at her as Olivia smothered a laugh. “Well, look who grew a pair,” she said under her breath.
I was too busy blinking like an idiot to respond.
He’d done it. Ethan Morrison had actually done it. “He’s…he’s playing at The Tailgate tonight?”
Chrissy nodded eagerly, but before she could reply, her father came over. “Christina, have you seen your brother?”
I blinked at the older man in shock. I’d seen him before—I’d stood a few feetaway from him the other night at the stadium—but I’d never stood face to face with him like this. I’d never reallylookedat him.
He looked just like Ethan. You know, if Ethan were a couple decades older and walked around like he owned the world.
“Dad, this is Ethan’s friend,” Chrissy started the introductions.
He flashed me a smile that was as fake as they come, not bothering to ask my name. “How do you do?” He turned back to Chrissy. “Where’s Ethan?”
She shrugged.
I’ll just come right out and say it. I wouldn’t want to be on Chrissy’s bad side. She lied like a professional poker player and her voice was sickeningly sweet as she said, “I don’t know, Daddy. I haven’t seen him.”
I stared at her in shock. Olivia’s expression was one of awe. I was pretty sure Olivia had just found her new spirit animal and its name was Chrissy.
Ethan’s mother joined them a second later. “He’s not coming.”
It was eerie the way she managed to hiss this so Ethan’s dad could hear while never faltering with that creepy plastic smile.
“What do you mean he’s not coming?” Again with the creepy fake smiling.
