I laugh. “No you don’t.”
“It’s very small.”
The air around us is thick and sticky, getting hotter by the second. It’s as though I’m moving through honey when I inch closer.
“Prove it.” It falls from my lips on a puff of air. “Lift up your shirt.”
His gaze drops to the shirt I’m wearing. His shirt. “Only if you lift yours.”
I lick my lips. “I don’t have a tattoo.”
His nod is heavy, his eyes hot. “Unfortunately, this is ashow you mine, show me yourssituation.”
“Thatisunfortunate.”
I hesitate, but then my fingers drag the soft fabric up an inch. Then another. He lifts his shirt too, revealing hard stomach and smooth sun-kissed skin.
Why can’t we…why can’t we…It’s a partial thought, but that’s all that comes together before he drops the fabric and covers himself up. “Fine,” he says. “I don’t have it, but I should.” He takes a long, languid drink of his hard cider. “Careful, Chuck. You’re getting dangerously close to daring me to get a tattoo.”
Careful. Dangerous. Daring.Each word makes my stomach jump.
I stare him down, inhaling through my nose. He smells like apple cider and sweat. “I’m not Petey,” I tell him in a hush. “And even he outgrew that.”
He swirls his bottle, and I refuse to unpack why I find the movement so devastatingly sexy. “Not quite. When Jonah’s foot went numb, Petey bet him we could row to the car in under thirty minutes. It took thirty-four minutes and now there’s an outline of a foot on my guy’s left delt.”
“Wait, what?” I pull back an inch. It severs the flirtatious current flowing between us. “So he’s camping for the rest of the week with an open wound? For what? A laugh?”
Is that gigantic man determined to never grow up?
Ethan grimaces. “He might not have thought it through, but Jonah was pretty scared and that Walter guy kept asking whether they’d ‘have to amputate,’ which was…unhelpful, to say the least. I think Pete was just trying to distract Jonah.”
My eyes find Petey and my sister swaying in front of the record player. “Between Laurel and Shoulder-Foot, there are no adults in the room, are there?”
Ethan tugs my face away from the more chaotic Beekman sister. “Charley, Petey’s a hockey coach who owns his own home and Laurel is an award-winning high school English teacher. They’re gonna be fine. You don’t need to worry about them.”
“I hate this feeling,” I groan, flopping my head onto his shoulder, releasing myself into the safety of leaning on someone. Or maybe just on him. “My stomach seizes up whenever I think about Laurel getting married. It’s this…motion sickness. I can just feel everything’s going to go to shit, and I don’t understand how everyone else can’t feel it too.”
He places his chin on the crown of my head, so that I’m completely enveloped in him. “It’s normal to want the best for the people you love,” he tells me. “And it’s even more normal for it to hurt when you watch them struggle for it. Or wonder whether there was something you should’ve done that would’ve made it all easier.”
His T-shirt is so soft beneath my cheek that I’m overcome by one of those absurd childish thoughts that doesn’t makeany sense:What if I lived here?I think.Right here, on Ethan’s shoulder like a tiny parrot person. I could be happy like that.
“Loving people is so unbearable,” I whine, inhaling the scent of his neck like it’s an aromatherapy candle.
He laughs into my head, and his exhalations ruffle my hair. “I know, honey.”
I look up at him and catch the smile he reserves for only those intolerably happy moments. When everything is exactly right and your stomach is fizzy like uncorked champagne and the world around you glows gold. Or maybe it’s that smile that casts a shimmering light everywhere I turn.
My eyes dive into his—pools of warm water—as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Unbearable,” he repeats.
But then he drops his hands, and it’s as though whatever sensory deprivation they provided disappears with a harsh snap of the fingers. It’s loud and hot, and suddenly, I’m back in a packed Lincoln Log apartment overflowing with people. I follow Ethan’s gaze past my shoulder and spot Petey waving him over.
Ethan hesitates but hops off the counter. “Sorry. Best man duty calls.”
The bubble bursts in more ways than one. He was my best man once, and the morning of my wedding he sent,Margot’s not up for it. Sorry, Chuck.And then I didn’t hear from him for a year.
I shift to the side and watch him walk away. Despite the unpleasant metallic taste swirling in my throat, I can still appreciate an impressive walk when I see one.
