“Alex, I—”
“Don’t apologize for him,” he says, reading my mind. He tugs me into his arms for a hug. “I can handle him. Go enjoy the beach, soak it up.”
“You don’t want me to stay? Be your kitchen backup?”
Alex nuzzles into my hair. “Nope. This way, if I kill Ethan while he tries to boss me around the kitchen, you won’t be an accessory to murder.”
I squeeze my arms around him. “You and Lauren joke too much about homicide.”
“When it comes to Ethan,” he grumbles, “there’s no such thing. Lawrence would agree with me.”
He pulls away and leaves me in our bedroom, battling adelirious blend of laughter and tears. The laughter wins out, though I muffle it in a bed pillow.
Because he’s right. Ending Ethan is one thing he and Lauren definitely agree on.
We’ve almost survived our first night of “vacation.” Dinner was served without Alex ending Ethan, and it was delicious—fresh-caught pan-seared fish; grilled peach, goat cheese, and arugula salad; and a summer risotto that Alex whipped up that had me fighting hard to keep my foodgasm noises to myself. They’re funny when it’s just Alex and me. With Ethan and Jen, it would have been beyond awkward.
Mia’s in bed, her snores carrying through the living room, with the door left cracked open, per her request.
I’m finishing the dishes while Alex does his usual full wipe down of the appliances. It makes my heart twinge, seeing him do that. He has every reason to leave Ethan’s family’s kitchen grease splattered and fishy. But he won’t. Because this is what he does, his routine, a matter of pride and discipline, to respect the tools that allow him to do his craft.
Jen finishes gathering up Mia’s toys from the middle of the living room, then tiptoes over to the bedroom and carefully eases the door shut.
Ethan is nowhere to be seen.
He always made himself scarce during after-dinner cleanup, and if that isn’t a big red flag that I took way too long to recognize, I don’t know what it is.
Alex pulls a seltzer from the fridge, offering me one. I take it,setting it on the counter beside me while I finish drying the last pan.
“Jen?” Alex says, extending a seltzer to her, too.
She startles, hearing him say her name. “Oh.” Jen smiles, a little tentative, as she takes it. “Thanks, Alex, yeah.”
He nods, then shuts the fridge door.
Jen cracks her seltzer. Alex cracks his. I set down the pan, then crack mine. The room is an awkward almost-silent, the only sounds our seltzers’ fizzy carbonation and the faint roar of the ocean at night.
“I think I’ll pour some wine, too!” Jen says, rounding the island.
“I’ve got just the thing,” Ethan says, making us all jump.
He shuts the door behind him that leads to the lower level, which I saw only in passing when we first came inside from the beach. It struck me as a pretty typical man cave—a den with a bar, an extensive wine collection, a big TV, and a deep-cushion leather sofa, which I’m assuming is the extremely comfortable pullout couch Ethan is planning to sleep on.
Ethan turns the bottle, facing it out to us. If it weren’t so unique, I probably wouldn’t have recognized it, let alone remembered it. But it is, and I do. Slim neck, tapered green glass, a label painted with watercolor flowers.
That’s the bottle his parents gave us on our wedding. An extremely nice bottle, Ethan had explained. I asked him, on a couple anniversaries in the early years, where it had gone. Now I have my answer. It ended up here. He kept it for himself.
Maybe it’s like his hosting—maybe there’s a less hurtful explanation. Maybe he was saving it for some special anniversary that we never got to.
I find myself suddenly exhausted, not just from the all-nighter we pulled to get here. But from doing this—exerting energy to somehow finally make sense of Ethan, to figure out what he’s really doing and why. I want to know for Mia’s sake. Hell, even for Jen’s. Because I want him to be better for them than he was for me. I want to find proof that I can hope he’ll be good to them.
He’s so closed off, so inscrutable, that feels damn near impossible.
I glance toward Alex, who’s been watching me. He peers at Ethan, who’s watching me, too.
I turn toward Jen and say, “I’m wiped from the drive, but what do you say? One round of euchre?”
Jen looks to Ethan, who’s opening the wine, to Alex, who’s made no move to do anything, watching us closely. Then she smiles at me. “Well, one game wouldn’t hurt.”
