“You forgot,” Ethan continues. He walks into the room. “I’m insulted.” He doesn’t sound insulted. Picking up one of the finished name tags, he inspects the laminated pouch, pinching the clip a couple times with passive interest.
“Sorry. I’ve been busy,” I say. I’m pretty sure I’ve never said the word sorry to Ethan in my life.
He cocks his head, then sits down next to me, crossing one leg over the other expansively, one shoe perched on his knee. I feel his gaze on me while I finish cutting the row of name tags I’m holding. “You have been. Busy, that is,” he says. “I didn’t hear from you this weekend, and I looked for you during lunch.”
“I was in the library,” I reply, pushing hair past my ear compulsively. “I had to focus.”
Ethan doesn’t pick up a name tag. He just watches me, and I’m on the verge of ordering him to pitch in when he finally speaks. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Now I look over, my eyes wide like he’s just declared he’s dropping Harvard and becoming a priest. If Ethan Molloy wants to know what’s wrong with me, I should ask him the same question.
“Yeah, Sanger,” he says impatiently. “What’s wrong? You look upset. You can tell me about whatever’s”—he gestures awkwardly in the air—“bothering you.”
Shifting in my seat to face him, I search Ethan’s face. He seems sincere, which is weird. “We don’t . . . do this,” I start, not finding the vocabulary for what this is. His question is nothing I recognize from his lips on my collarbone or his hands under the hem of my shirt, nothing I remember from glares over group projects or class discussions. His surprising care warms me in an uncomfortable way. “Shouldn’t you be taunting me or something?” I prod his knee with mine.
His expression doesn’t change. “We could do this.”
I frown. “Three years of fighting and rivalry and a couple weeks of hurried hookups doesn’t lead to us discussing what’s wrong.”
Ethan looks stung, and for a moment I regret my harshness. It’s just, I spent the whole weekend ruminating on Dylan, and Dylan and Olivia. It left me with the unsettling suspicion their fraught relationship is exactly like what I have with Ethan. Everything I said of her and Olivia, I realized I could say of Ethan and myself. It’s what Dylan’s always maintained—Ethan and I aren’t healthy for each other. We’re tumultuous, we’re unstable, and we’re facing the prospect of carrying a high school relationship into college exactly the way I told Dylan not to do.
Ethan crosses his arms. “Thirty minutes in your office after school isn’t exactly hurried.” When I don’t reply, the playful fire in his eyes goes out. He continues, his voice earnest. “What’s happening right now? You’re very eager to oppose whatever we have here. Why?”
If he were interviewing me in one of the reporting clinics the Chronicle holds for new staffers, I’d commend him for the precision and directness of the question. In present circumstances, though, it makes me shift my eyes to the door.
“Because what we’re doing is immature. We don’t make sense,” I say. If my friendship with Dylan wasn’t real enough to last past high school, this flammable new thing with Ethan definitely isn’t. We’re founded on intermittent hookups and furious competition. That’s not a real relationship. That’s nothing. “We hate each other, Ethan. Remember? Just because we’ve warped our hatred into whatever improbable chemistry we have doesn’t mean it’s worth moving forward with. We’re going to Harvard next year. We need to think long-term.”
Ethan’s indignation fades into disappointment. “What even was this past week to you? Just a new kind of mind game?”
His question, an echo of exactly what I suspected of him when we first kissed, is enough to prove just how wrong what we have is. It doesn’t matter how intently he’s leaning forward, waiting for my response. It doesn’t matter how much being with him sometimes feels right. This is my nemesis. It would be painfully naive to have faith in a relationship constructed on top of the gunpowder we’ve stockpiled for years.
“Wasn’t it to you?” I ask.
I can practically watch Ethan’s expression closing up, becoming unreadable like a heavy book slammed shut. What enters his eyes is much more familiar. It’s dispassionate determination, his favorite facade when dealing with me. He’s watching me through the mask he’s worn when he’s not just ready to have one of our fights—he’s ready to win.
“Obviously,” he says coldly. If his reply didn’t hurt so much, I’d applaud him for the impeccably placed blow. I fight the impulse to explain I don’t want to do this—I just know, rationally, I have to. What would be the point in explaining? While I’m stuck silent, Ethan stands up, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “You’ll finish the name tags, then? I have a list of places I’d rather be.”
“I’ll finish them,” I say. I start routinely shutting off the possibilities of what Ethan and I could have been. Unrealistic possibilities, I remind myself. It does nothing to dispel the new wedge pressing into my heart. I fight the feeling, and when it wins, I clench my jaw and focus on the name tags. I guess I’m still not practiced at failing. “I work better alone.”
“Yes. You do.” He opens the door to the newsroom and walks out without looking back.
Fifty
“EXIT HERE.” HECTOR POINTS, indicating the freeway off-ramp where he wants me to return to surface streets. It’s cloudy, the parallel strips of highway matching the sky in gray. When it starts drizzling, I switch on the headlights without needing to be told.
Having failed my driving test once, I scheduled this session with Hector because I couldn’t bear the humiliation of failing when I retake the exam in a couple weeks. In part it’s due to Ethan. In the days since we ended our non-relationship, he’s been ruthless, seemingly determined to beat me even in the littlest contests. Getting to English earlier every morning. Disputing every one of my comments in class. Ignoring every edit I give him on his feature for the upcoming Chronicle issue. If our teachers thought we were toxic before, I imagine they’re on the verge of issuing Fairview an environmental hazard warning now.
If I were to fail the driving test a second time, I don’t know what Ethan would do. He might quite literally rewrite his Chronicle feature to focus on my incompetence behind the wheel.
This imperative is lost on Hector, however. My instructor repeatedly reassures me I’m driving “fine” while detailing his excitement for the upcoming Fairview reunion. In between yielding for pedestrians and making loops of the Whole Foods near my house, he comments no less than three times how he’s looking forward to getting together with AJ.