I’d probably slept in as many tents and trailers as I had houses, often remote sites while my dad was shooting. It always felt special, particularly at night. There was this sense of anticipation for the next day, like the world was building up to something.
“I like it,” I told him. He smiled as if that meant something to him. “It reminds me of that projector Petey had in his basement.”
“Hopefully a little nicer than that,” he muttered.
“Definitely. This one isn’t stuck on ‘strobe effect.’ ”
He straightened a bright red sleeping bag on the tent floor so that it was about a foot from a lavender one. “You know, the battery compartment eventually melted shut. We couldn’t turn it off, and garbage collection refused to take it. Mrs. Thao had to bury it in the backyard.”
I gasped. “Like a haunted doll?”
“Yes.” His whole body lit up with excitement. “I kept calling it Chucky, and Petey thought I was talking aboutyou. No one understood. This is why I need you back in my life.” He shook me by the shoulders. My lungs fluttered. After the day together, I’d mostly adjusted to how he’d changed physically over the years—not the way that looking at him made my skin tighten across my ribs, but, you know, baby steps.
Still, I definitely hadn’t accepted thattimehad passed. That Ethan had lived four years where I was only words on a screen and he was…him. The person everyone was drawn to and the Sadies of the world fell for.
A noisy unzipping sound announced Laurel’s entrance into the tent.
“I was talking to this guy, Cory, and he didn’t know what a nectarine was. What ishappeningwith the men of today?” She starfished on the floor with a dramatic sigh.
“Really?” I said while nudging her calf off the pillow. I searched her face for remnants of her earlier distress, but she just looked like Laurel. An ethereal beauty with blue hair and a cracked phone screen. Charming chaos personified.
“Yes. And it’s not even a quirky fruit.”
“What’s aquirkyfruit?” Ethan asked.
“Kumquat,” Laurel and I said in unison.
“Noted,” Ethan responded through his snort-laugh. “Can you give my guy Pete twenty minutes before you start talking to the Corys and the Codys of the world?”
“Men will flow in and out of our lives.” Laurel sighed. “It’s important not to get attached. Charley, let me into your sleeping bag. I’m freezing.”
“You smell pickled,” I whined but still shuffled to make room, enjoying in spite of myself the comforting certainty of people behaving the way you expected them to. Minutes passed, the three of us lying side by side as we stared up at the simulation of a starry night, no noises apart from crickets and the distant murmurs of a dispersing party.
I squirmed under the weight of the quiet. “Sadie seems nice,” I said, breaking. She didn’t. She seemed weird and territorial, but starting something with Ethan’s…“someone” wasn’t going to serve me.
“Uh-huh.” He stretched the syllables like he was waiting for me to say more.
“Who’s Sadie?” Laurel butted in.
“Ethan’s girlfriend,” I answered, my eyes pinned to the lights dancing on the tent ceiling.
He groaned and turned to face me. The foot between our sleeping bags seemed to contract as an exhalation stumbled in my throat. “She’s not my girlfriend. We’re just friends who…hang outsometimes, but we haven’t talked like that in almost a month.” He said “girlfriend,” “hang out,” and “talked” like each word had alternate meanings I should know. “We’re not like…a thing.”
“We don’t want to hear about your hookups, Edna. It’s disgusting, and we’re trying to sleep.” Laurel retched performativelyand rolled away so she and I were pressed butt to butt. At that moment, I felt a little grateful for my sister and her revulsion to Ethan’s love life.
He and I exchanged smiles and I reluctantly closed my eyes, knowing one thing with absolute certainty: I wasn’t jealous of Sadie.
To Ethan, Sadie would only ever be a girl he’d once liked enough to “hang out” with and was now distancing himself from in a crowded tent. Sadies would go in and out of his life like regrettable haircuts, and I couldn’t allow that to happen to us. I was something better to Ethan. More permanent.
I was Chuck.
Chapter 10
A Reverse Benjamin Button Is Normal Aging
Saturday, Now
Something I learnedtoday that I never dreamed I’d need to know: in Rockland Bay, Minnesota, tow truck drivers willnotpull your van out of a muddy bike trail in a public park—which is apparently where Ethan and I have found ourselves—no matter how desperately you plead with them.
