I couldn’t blame her. To me, he was perfect: this gorgeous, funny, smart boy who thought I, Lulu, hung the moon as well. It was like my life had been silent in a way before, and now there was a soundtrack, the very best music playing along in the background at every moment. You didn’t miss it when it wasn’t there. You didn’t know to. But once it was, nothing ever sounded the same again.
“Tell me where you are now,” I’d say to Ethan when we talked before school, and then at lunch, and after last period, and several more times up until bed, when he was the last voice I heard before going to sleep.
“Walking across the quad to practice, stuffing my face with a bag of Cheese-pops,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Heading to the coffee shop for afternoon caffeine for Mom and William.”
“Double shot for her, or no?”
“Just the one. She already sounded like she was buzzing.”
He just knew me so well, already. Mostly because we talked so much, but there was something else, as well. The time we’d been together had been so short and yet so intense that everything was sped up, like the difference between dog and people years. I already felt like I’d known him forever. This was what love was. I knew it now. And it changed everything.
“When this boy does come,” William said to me in early September, as I sat texting with Ethan after school as he rode the bus to a lacrosse game, “I’m going to have to sit him down and have a talk.”
“You?” my mom asked from her desk, where she was busy checking a spreadsheet of attendees to the next wedding. “Isn’t that my job?”
“I’m the father figure. If anyone gets to sit cleaning a gun while making the boy squirm talking about honor and chivalry, it’s me.”
“A gun?” I said.
“You maced yourself the last time you tried to carry pepper spray,” my mom told him.
“Well, I obviously wouldn’t do that while giving this talk,” he replied snippily.
“No one is lecturing Ethan about anything,” I told themboth, using my own stern voice. “We’re all just going to make him feel welcome and show him the best of Lakeview.”
“Which is what?” William asked.
“Louna, of course,” my mom said. “That’s what he’s coming for after all, right?”
At this, I blushed, even as my phone beeped, Ethan responding to my last message.NOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
PUTTING UP WITH MY MOM AND WILLIAM TEASING ME ABOUT YOU.
HA! CAN’T WAIT TO MEET THEM.
“Look at our girl,” William said then. “She’s crazy in love. We didn’t ruin her with our bad attitudes after all.”
“Not yet,” my mom said. “Remember, they’ve only spent one night together.”
William gave her a look. “Natalie, for God’s sake. Let the girl have her fun. It’s not her fault we’re all dried up and unlovable.”
“Speak for yourself. I am very lovable.”
William snorted. My mom caught my eye, then mouthed anI’m sorry, looking genuinely apologetic. I knew in truth she was happy for me, but just worried, as her own love story hadn’t ended well. But this was different. I was different. And Ethan, well, was Ethan. He would never do anything to hurt me. It never occurred to me that, in fact, it might be someone else.
CHAPTER
17
SURELY AMBROSEhad always been a person who hummed. I probably just hadn’t noticed.
“Isn’t it time for morning coffee run?” I asked him, as he launched into the second go-round of a currently popular dance song, wordlessly. “You know how my mom gets without her caffeine.”
He paused the instrumentals. “I thought you’d want to do it. To see Leo. Don’t you?”
I shifted in my seat, then realized I was literally squirming at this question and made myself still. “I’m kind of deep in these place cards right now.”
