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“Where is she going?” I hear Lizzy asking as I walk away.
“She’s going to get her man,” Beth cheers.
I walk at first, walking faster, then break into a steady jog towards the club. My chest burns and I’m out of breath, but I’m desperate to see Ethan. To talk to him and make him understand that I don’t care about the money as much as I care about him. I’m propelled by my unheeding need to see him again.
I hadn’t been there since Ethan handed over the bakery. I quit my waitressing job and focused all my energy towards making sure it will be a success. It doesn’t count if he won’t be there.
In my rush I can hardly see ahead of me, never mind the people walking beside me. All I want to see is Ethan.
I rush past the stalls near the club and see the newsstand ahead of me. I see Ethan, or a mirage of Ethan, I can’t be sure. Maybe I want to see him so badly that every man in a designer suit turns into him. The man moves to the side, right into my path, and I can’t stop running in time. I slam into him and he drops the newspapers and magazines in his hands.
A world of apologies begins to form in my mind but I freeze up before I can speak them.
I would know that scent anywhere. The smell of him fills my nostrils and takes me back to the moment we shared together, the happiness I lost the day he handed me the keys to the bakery and walked away from me. In his mind, that was the last time he would see me and now here I am at the place we first met.
“Watch it!” Ethan shouts picking up his papers, he doesn’t look up at me. It doesn’t even cross his mind that I could be here.
I bend down to help pick up the papers and magazines that lay scattered at his feet. I hand him the bundle in my hands and for a second our fingers touch and he looks up at me. He finally sees me. He looks at me as he would a stranger, there is nothing in his eyes. But the longer I stand there silent, staring into his eyes, the more I start to see the flickers of rage.
Ethan turns to walk away and my heart races. I can’t let him walk away from me again, not before I’ve said my piece.
“Ethan,” I call after him.
We both straighten out and I see the scorn in his eyes. “What do you want, Cassidy? More money?” he asks, set on telling me off.
His words sting and for the first time I consider that he might not feel the same way about me anymore, that my actions might have turned him away from me for good.
“No,” I reply. “I want you.”
It’s not what I was planning to say. I didn’t even have a plan, really. All I know is that I wanted to say something, and I wanted it to be the truth.
Ethan’s eyes soften, he’s surprised, tongue tied. I know he doesn’t hate me now, although the hurt is still raw and the wound I inflicted on him still bleeds.
“I have the bakery I’ve been dreaming of all these years and I’m not happy,” I confess, the truth stronger as I express it than when it was just a feeling while sitting down alone with my thoughts. “I’m just not as happy as I imagined I would be because something is missing and that something is the man who made it all possible,” I say.
None of it is a lie. I don’t try to flatter Ethan or sweeten my apology, it’s just how I feel. And no amount of money or success would make any of it better than having him to share it all with me.
I miss him, I miss laughing with him as he makes up ridiculous scenarios, pretending to know more about plants or any little insignificant thing around us. I miss holding hands, talking, getting to know him, sharing my fears, my joys and the feeling of his skin against mine. Even though we haven’t been apart for very long, the day Ethan walked away from me at the bakery, I felt an emptiness I couldn’t have imagined.
Ethan stares down at me, silent. His face is blank and I have no idea what he’s thinking. But as long as he stands here in front of me, I’m ready to tell him how I feel whether he still feels the same way or not.
“It isn’t about the money or the bakery or anything else I might have told myself it was about. It’s always been about us, me and you, from the moment we first met right here at this newsstand,” I say, smiling at the memory.
It comes to me clearly… the earrings I was wearing, my anxiety over starting a new job, and the heaviness of having to remember to minimize my dreams.
Ethan is still standing in front of me, still listening so I know he hears me. He is waiting for me to say the right words.
“I want you to be a part of it, because before I met you I was done with love. I didn’t want any part of it and that’s what made being with you make sense. But then things changed. You changed and it scared me. I was so afraid of what this could become,” I say.
I don’t even realize I’m crying as I talk until Ethan pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes my face.
“You changed too, Cas,” he says softly.
“I know I changed,” I reply. “I started to see the world the way you saw it. I stopped being afraid of love because I thought it was just something people make up and choose. But I can see now, we were both wrong.”
Ethan nods, his hand still resting gently on my face.
“We were both wrong,” I continue. “But you realized it before I did and now I realize it too.”
