“I guess we are. Will you email me? Like before?” He rocked on his heels, waiting for my response.
“All the time,” I said. “I might call you occasionally, if you’re lucky.”
I looked over my shoulder at Laurel and opened my mouth to make any excuse to leave this conversation, which wasturning me inside out, but without warning, Ethan grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Come with me,” he said.
I blinked. “What?”
His eyes were wide and wild. He looked thirteen again. “Come on the road with me. You finished your last final yesterday. It’s perfect.”
“I have that LSAT course over break and then the spring semester starts—”
He grabbed my face in his hands. His whole body shook with a feverish energy. “Take a semester off. It’ll be like studying abroad.” His smile was so big and intoxicatingly frenetic, I wanted nothing more than to smile back.
“You usually getcreditswhen you’re studying abroad.” I forced a laugh into my voice, an attempt to inject some sense of casualness into this increasingly uncasual conversation. What was he doing?
“Who cares about credits or LSATs? You’re an incredible photographer.Bea photographer! With me. Come with me.”
His words were the yank of a plug in a warm bath. I could feel the blood draining from my face. “What am I supposed to say to that?” I asked, my voice unsteady.
His eyes on me were too much. Too alight. Too pleading. “Say yes,” he whispered.
I’d had countless fantasies of a man holding my cheeks and begging me to “say yes.” Now it was happening with my best friend, and it sounded like more like “give up your dreams and lose yourself in mine.” My heart was splitting, soaring and sinking all at once, leaving me mangled on the sidewalk.
His smile wavered. “Please,” he begged soundlessly.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t give up my life to follow him around as he lived out his wildest dreams. I couldn’t be the woman he wanted. I didn’t want to disappear. Not with him. The only right answer echoed through my empty chest like a gong. “No.”
I ripped his hands from my cheeks, and in an instant, he backed away from me.
“What?”
Tears bit at the corners of my eyes. Mortification and shame were breathing against my neck like a monster perched on my shoulder. I took a shallow breath, hoping my face didn’t betray how shattered I felt. “I’m not giving up my life to follow you around like some hopeless loser until you get bored of me.”
“It wouldn’t be like that,” he pleaded, voice cracking. “Fuck.” He grabbed at the back of his neck, looking up at the stars as though the universe were pressing in on him, and just as I was certain he was going to explode in every direction but mine, he dropped his hands to his sides. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve…That was dumb. I’m sorry I suggested it.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest. “It’s fine.”
He swallowed hard, still looking up at the sky, then faced me again to ask, “Can we forget I said all of that? Please?”
“Of course.” I took a step forward to show him I really meant it. “Forgotten.”
His hand cradled my elbow again. It made my heart do a sad little flutter. “Will you call me? Please.”
I didn’t answer, swallowing down the lump in my throat.
“I’ll callyou, then,” he said. “You don’t have to answer, but—”
“I’ll answer,” I promised.
“Good.” He nodded as though convincing himself that we really were good. “Are you going to be okay with Laurel tonight? Do you need help getting her up to your room?”
“I’ve got it from here. Thanks.”
He hesitated but then turned away from my dorm in the direction of his minivan. I tried not to watch Ethan walk away. Something told me I’d always remember it if I did, and Ireallydidn’t want to remember that.
I plopped down next to my sister on the bus bench, gutted.
