“I still think you’re making a mistake, though,” she mutters under her breath. “But what do I know?”
It takes a few minutes for my fingers to release their death grip from the steering wheel, but my chest needs twice as much time to stop feeling so tight.
“So the apartment’s a keeper?”
“Definitely.” I step into my room and shut the door behind me. “They just need to run a credit check on us, but we can move in as early as the eleventh. I’m so excited, Ethan. It’s an equal distance from the research center and Bell’s school. More importantly, my room has a bay window perfect for the cat.”
The deep chuckle he makes prickles my spine with heat. “Can’t forget about the cat.”
“Of course not,” I say. “Bell and I have to figure out how we’re breaking the news to our sister, but that’s a problem for future us.”
“You haven’t told Betty you’re moving out?” he asks incredulously.
“We will. Just not today.” Taking a seat on the edge of my bed, I lift the orange tabby from my pillow and set him on my lap. “I know it sounds bad, but Betty’s a mother hen who shuts down at change. If she had caught wind of our plan earlier, she would have told us repeatedly that we’re not imposing on her and Vincent, that Mom and Dad would want us to stick together, and that we could commute to Los Angeles from Malibu. I love her, but no. I’m not enduring that morning traffic if I don’t have to. Also—” I end the call.
With my pulse thrumming against my breastbone, I video call him. He picks up instantly, and the smile overtaking my lips is just as quick the moment I see his face—featuring his dimples and laughter lines—on my screen.
“Also,” I continue, switching cameras to give him a quick tour of the office. “This room is not meant to be a bedroom for one person, let alone two.”
“I would have taken your word on it,” he says.
“But then you wouldn’t get to see yours truly,” I reply, beaming at the front-facing camera when I switch back to it. “How’s your new laptop? Oh. Wait. How’s your mom, by the way?”
“Both are good. My new work laptop runs even faster. Mom’s feeling better. She can walk around the block without too much difficulty. Actually, I just got back from dinner with my mom andsister,” he says. “But I need to go take a shower. It was ninety degrees all day, and Mom still doesn’t know how to set the thermostat.”
Thoughts about a certain hotel shower are halted when it occurs to me that the video call is about to end. “Oh. Okay.” My shoulders are practically deflating on camera. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’ll be right back,” he says off-handedly, and my eyes widen. “Let’s circle back to this?—”
“I swear to God, Ethan,” I cut him off. “Do not finish that sentence. Work isn’t for another nine hours.”
He laughs. “Tell your cat his human is fun to mess with. I’ll be right back,” he repeats. “Don’t miss me too much.”
My mouth parts as he hangs up on me.
Ethan callsme back like he said he would. Not via video, but I don’t mind since I’m lying in bed with Pie curled in my arms.
Bell is out with her friends. Knowing her, she won’t be back until three in the morning, so I don’t feel as bad as I would have if she were here and I’m on the phone this late into the night.
It’s like the eight-hour flight to South Carolina, where we just talk about everything and anything we can think of, but somehow different.Deeper.
Maybe it’s because I’m learning things aboutEthan Carterand not thehot guy on the plane.
He doesn’t like pineapple on pizza, which is okay. It’s more for me. He doesn’t read certain email chains at work if it hasnothing to do with him, but he’s convinced Kelly and Darlene from accounting hate each other. I think it’s because Darlene’s also into Steve, who I wholeheartedly believe is still having an emotional affair with Kelly, and Ethan is starting to come around on this theory.
He goes the distance for the people he loves. Literally. During college, he drove two hundred miles to pick Aaron up in the middle of the night. He never hesitated to do father-daughter dances at Lara’s elementary school either, just so she wouldn’t miss out on them. There are even pictures—which he sends me before I even ask. All the photos of a younger, leaner,emo-phaseEthan with flat hair and a little girl with dark brown skin, kinky black curls, and a grin identical to his are sweet.
English is technically his second language. His grandma and aunt watched him a lot when he was younger and his mom was putting herself through college and night school. They would only speak in Spanish around him.
He loves his family, though. Every time he mentions his sister or mom, it’s with so much pride that I practically feel it almost a thousand miles away from him.
When he brings up his stepdad, it’s so obvious he misses him. He doesn’t state it outright, but I can hear it in his voice when he brings up the things they did together: fly-fishing and camping trips, to name a few.
“So, Carter is your stepdad’s name?”
“Yeah. Got it changed when I was seven.” He pauses, which is another indicator of how much he misses him.
He never pauses at work. Usually, we’re racing against the clock in the thirty-minute or hour-long block we’ve scheduled for our calls, and he’s rather quick on his feet and eloquent with his tongue.
