He took a sip of his beer. “Well, it’s yours, if you need it. I think it could be a good thing.”
I met Ethan’s eyes. “You’re a surprising guy, you know that?” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. Of all the places I thought I might find comfort during all this, I wouldn’t have put you high up there.”
He put his arm around me. “I’m very comfortable.”
I laughed. “If you do say so yourself?”
He laughed too. Then he leaned in.
Ethan leaned in and tried to kiss me. I was alone and pregnant and surprisingly hornier than I’d ever been.
But I pushed him away. “I can’t.”
“Why? Your husband coming back?”
“I’m guessing no . . . probably never.”
“Well, you’re already pregnant, so, you can’t be worried about my super sperm. And it can’t be that you don’t find me attractive.”
I smiled. I wanted to tell him that I found him unbelievably attractive, but that felt like its own form of betrayal—a line I could cross but shouldn’t. And I was sticking to it. The right side of shouldn’t.
“So the lady doesn’t find me attractive. All right, then,” he said. “What does it say about me that my lukewarm attraction to you just grew by leaps and bounds knowing that?”
I laughed. “Everything.”
I put out my hand. How easy would
it be to slip into this new life? How nice in so many ways. A clean slate, a new me. But that was how I had ended up here, and I wasn’t going to do that again.
“What’s this?”
“You’re still the only friend I’ve got. And I really don’t want to lose you.”
Ethan sat back, and I could see it flicker across his face. My honesty had touched him.
“Then I guess I won’t let you,” he said.
And he took my outstretched hand. But instead of shaking it, he just held on.
47
I took a risk doing it, but there was one other person I needed to discuss this with.
So, the next afternoon, I stopped by her camp.
I arrived in time for afternoon snack, Sammy generously offering to share her applesauce and pita chips. I sat cross-legged with her on the floor and took a few grateful nibbles, making sure she ate most of it herself.
“You’re never going to guess what I was just doing,” she said. “Guess.”
“Let’s see. Were you learning to tap-dance?”
She laughed. “That’s a terrible guess. This is science camp.”
I smiled. “So you better just tell me.”