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“Hello, Mrs. Marshall,” he replies. He stands completely still, which is a little more awkward than it has to be since I’m pretty sure he’s still wearing a used condom. “So nice to see you.” He lifts his free hand in a wave.
“What are you doing here, Gran?” I say as I gather the sheet around myself and stand up.
“I heard you were shacking up with a man,” she says. She sniffs loudly. “Had to come see if it was true.”
I look at Ethan and shrug. “It’s true,” I reply. Then I giggle involuntarily, which makes me laugh. Then I snort. Then I laugh because I snorted, and then I can’t stop giggling.
“Oh my God,” Ethan says with a groan.
Gran finally cracks a smile. “I’m going to take a little walk while you sort yourselves out,” she says. But at the last moment, she turns back to Ethan. “You turned out to be a fine-looking young man.” She lets her eyes fall to his chest, but no lower, because that would just be weird.
“Uh…” He scratches his nose. “Thank you?”
She cups her hand around her mouth and whisper-yells at me, “He’s pretty, Abigail!”
I whisper-yell back, “I know, right?”
She laughs and walks out. “I’m taking that walk now!” she calls out loudly, like we hadn’t heard her.
“Thank God,” Ethan says quietly.
“I heard that!” Gran calls back.
“Gran!” I call in warning, but I’m laughing so hard that I can barely catch my breath.
“Don’t Gran me,” she shouts, but her voice gets quieter and quieter so I can tell she’s walking away. “I’m not the one wrapped up in a sheet while a fine-looking specimen of man tiptoes bare-ass naked to the bathroom…” Her voice keeps going, but I can’t tell what she’s saying anymore.
“Oh my God,” Ethan says again. “I’ll never be able to look her in the face again.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. Then I let out a snort and follow it with “She’ll never want to look you in the eye anyway, now that she’s seen all that.” I lift my hands, moving them up and down indicating his body.
“You suck,” Ethan says as he turns and walks into the bathroom.
“Not yet!” I say. “But I’m willing!”
He stops and slowly turns to face me, one eye closed and the other open. “Get your ass in here, then,” he says.
I drop my sheet, he drops his pillow, and we close the bathroom door behind us and climb into the shower, where I prove that I’m most definitely not lying.
33
Ethan
“He’s fine,” Jake teases from where he’s sitting on a fallen log by the end of the road. He rests there with his elbows on his knees, staring up at me, the late afternoon sun on his face.
“What if he got on the wrong bus?” I ask.
“He didn’t get on the wrong bus,” Jake assures me. “You called the school, right? Told them Mitchell would be getting off here with my kids? He’ll be here any second.” He holds up his hands like he wants to ward me off. “Chill, dude. He’s fine.”
I pace up and down the side of the road. This is the first time Mitchell has gotten off the bus here, and I’m just afraid he forgot and he’s accidentally on the way to my mother’s house. My mom left this morning, after she took Mitchell to school, for a girls’ weekend with a group of her friends. She said she had margaritas in her future, whatever that meant.
Finally, I hear the heavy whine of the bus as it tops the hill. “There they are,” Jake says with a grin. “Told you so.”
“Just because the bus is almost here doesn’t mean he’s on it,” I mutter. I swipe a hand across my mouth in frustration.
But the bus stops and I see three figures stand up. Jake only has two. Mitchell is the third. He bounds off the bus behind Trixie and Alex and flings himself at me. The bus driver glares at me and the bus pulls away, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. “You’re here,” I say.
“I know,” Mitchell says, beaming at me. “It’s great, right? I get to stay the whole weekend?”
