THE DAY
Chapter 63
Flashback
Ethan
The house was loud.
Music bled through the walls, bass rattling the windows, voices overlapping in the way they only did when everyone was drinking and nobody was listening. Someone had hung a banner crooked across the living room.
LAST NIGHT OF FREEDOM.
I leaned against the kitchen counter and watched Nate try to open a beer with his teeth. He missed twice. On the third try, the cap flew off and skittered across the floor.
“Still got it,” he said, grinning.
I lifted my glass. “A true display of skill.”
He clinked it. “A week, man. One week.”
“Yeah.” I took a drink. “A week.”
Someone shouted my name from the living room. Someone else shoved a shot into my hand. I didn’t remember agreeing to it, but I drank it anyway. The burn was sharp, then gone.
People kept slapping my back, telling me how lucky I was, how Claire was a catch, how I’d somehow pulled off the impossible. I smiled, nodded, let it roll off me the way it always had.
I was good at that part.
At some point, my brother found me. He stood in the doorway, taller, steadier, watching the chaos like it was something he’d already grown out of. He waited until the room thinned, until it was just the two of us and the hum of noise from the other side of the wall.
“You having fun?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “You know.”
He didn’t smile. He leaned his shoulder against the frame, arms crossed. “You helped with anything yet?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The wedding. Claire. Anything.”
“I mean,” I searched for something light. “She’s got it covered.”
He exhaled through his nose. Not angry. Just tired. “Ethan.”
I looked at him then. He wasn’t scolding me. He wasn’t laughing either.
“You know this is real now,” he said. “Right?”
“I know.”
“She’s not just your girlfriend anymore.”
“I know that too.”
He stepped closer, lowered his voice. “You’re not the center of things anymore. Someone else is going to depend on you. That’s not a joke. That’s not something you can charm your way out of.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
