“Here.” He hands me an insulated tumbler of white wine.
“I’m stranded off a bike path, eating grilled branzino,broccolini, and tomato Parmesan risotto. This wasnotthe way I expected my Saturday to go.”
“I bet,” he says, smirking. “Who’s going to organize your freezer now that you’re out here having the best meal of your life?”
“You think you’re making fun of me, but that is my dream Saturday night.” I bite into the perfectly flaky, expertly seasoned meal and let out an indecent moan. “My god, Powell. This is amazing. This tastes exactly like that Italian place you took me to in LA.”
“Velluto,” he offers, correcting me.
“You have all the ingredients to Velluto’s branzino dish sitting in your van? What is your life?”
He glances at me and then away. “You caught me on the day I happened to go to the store.”
“What store? Does Aldi carry whole branzino now?”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s just a fish, Beekman. Do you like it?”
“I love it. I want to marry it, have its babies, and buy a cabin we complain about not visiting enough.”
“Good.” He laughs. “Then mission accomplished.”
We talk comfortably about nothing, eating the most exquisite meal anyone has ever served next to a mud-bogged camper van. I drink the wine with small, tentative sips. My hangover might be gone but an aura of sensitivity continues to circle my skull.
I peer over at him under the gleam of the café lights and soak in all of his Ethan-ness. His easy posture, his dimples, the hard cut of his jaw, that laugh and how it ripples over my skin like a rock in a pond.
The breeze off the water flutters his hair, exposing the tiny silver scar along his hairline from when we collided on oursaucer sleds in the eighth grade. At a house party in college, a girl asked him about it. He said it was from a bike accident.Easier to keep people in the dark, he’d told me the moment she walked away.Not everyone needs to know that my friend Chuck is a secret daredevil.
I nestle my wine into its cup holder, realizing all at once thatthisis the Ethan that the women in this van experience. Café-lights Ethan. Branzino Ethan. A man so beautiful it hurts and you’d do anything to keep him even after he’s warned you he can’t be kept. A perfect projection of a carefully curated, nomadic sexual fantasy as directed by Sofia Coppola. I almost want to take a picture of it, but this Ethan isn’t mine.
“So is this how it usually goes?” I stretch my elbow over my chair and relax my head into my palm. Beads of sweat collect on my neck from the heat of the low sun. I’m warm and loose and feeling a little bolder than usual. “You grill her anentirefish…?” Something swims in his expression at my prodding. “Set up these cute little twinkle lights? You say ‘Just one night,’ but do the absolute most, and then pick her stepdad up from the airport the next morning just to really confuse her?”
He plucks a fishbone from the tip of his tongue and tosses it into the grass. “I’ve only driven one stepdadtothe airport, thank you very much.”
“Powell!” I balk. “You’re ruin-your-life attractive. You can’t be this noncommittal while still doing your whole ‘Ethan thing’ and love-bomb them via acts of service. It deludes otherwise intelligent women into believing they can transform you into a monogamous grown-up with an immovable house like some sort of reverse Benjamin Button scenario.”
The corners of his mouth tilt upward as a tiny ember ofembarrassment flushes my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I stopped listening after you called me ‘ruin-your-life attractive.’ ”
I wince. “I’m immediately regretting that choice of words. It’s clearly going straight to your head.”
He narrows his eyes, undeniably pleased. It’s probably been ages since someone’s both criticized and complimented him with such specificity. “You know, a reverse Benjamin Button is normal aging.”
I refuse to acknowledge that he’s read a lesser-known work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, though that’s clearly what he’s fishing for. “Is this even your first time helping a woman crash her sister’s wedding or is this just another Saturday for you?”
He squints. “Third, I think.”
I sigh dramatically. “And here I thought I was special.”
My laugh starts light and playful—we’re only playing—but soon, the sound disperses into the air like a puff of smoke, because he’s looking at me with this increasing intensity. His eyes flash between expressions I can’t decipher and others I can read plain as day. It’s as though he’s letting me peek inside his mind. I don’t want him to look away, but I’m terrified to keep looking back.
“What makes you so sure you’re not special, Chuck?” The tiny lift of his lips practically knocks me out of my chair.
“Ha ha. Very funny.” Self-consciousness cracks through my voice. I’m the physical manifestation of lipstick on teeth.
His eyes don’t let up, and that unfairly lovely gaze warms my skin like stepping into sunshine. “Who’s joking?”
“Don’t be that guy,” I implore him.
That little shit is still grinning. “What guy?”
