“She always read to me there when I was younger,” Ethan said. “It was just…I don’t know…our time together.”
“It sounds like you were really close.”
“We were. I was close to Dad, too, just not in the same way.” He laughed. “CeeCee says I was a mamma’s boy. I don’t consider it derogatory, though.”
“How long have you known CeeCee?”
“He ran track with me in high school,” Ethan said. “He was there when I got hurt and stayed with me until the ambulance got there. I only remember bits and pieces of it since I kept passing out. I do remember how glad I was he was there. He was a year older than me and a senior. I hadn’t even known him before I got hurt, and when I realized he had stayed with me that whole time…well, I was grateful. I guess I was pretty impressed as well. He didn’t know me, and he still doesn’t know about this place or the accounts at your dad’s company. He’s just my friend.”
“It sounds like he helped you through a lot.”
“He did,” Ethan said. “He still does sometimes. Him and Andrea both.”
“So, he’s a year older than you, which makes him twenty?”
“Yeah.”
“And Andrea’s thirty?”
“Yeah.” Ethan laughed. “She’s a cougar!”
I smiled. The greater age difference between Ethan’s engaged friends made his ability to see past our age difference clearer.
“It’s nice that they’re so supportive,” I said.
“Faith and Gwen help me out, too.”
“Do they all live in the same place?”
“CeeCee, Andi, and Gwen all live in one apartment, but Faith lives with her parents,” he told me. “She stays with the others sometimes on the weekend, but her mom gets pissed when she does. She doesn’t like Gwen very much, so she makes it kind of hard for Faith. She hasn’t quite come to terms with the whole lesbian thing.”
“When did she, um…come out?”
“Sophomore year, but she was pretty quiet about it for a long time. Faith was in my class in high school. She’s a freshman at the university now. My mom loved Faith. I think she kept waiting for us to admit we were dating, but she finally figured it out. Mom didn’t care, and she was always a lot more supportive than Faith’s family ever was. Her mom was ultra-religious and used to drag her to some religious youth group that told her gays were going to hell and all that bullshit. She spent a lot of time at my place just to get away from her mom. Faith and I went to a lot of the school dances and shit together though—at least until senior prom. She met Gwen right before then, but the three of us went together.”
“You didn’t have a date?”
“Well, I was going to just go with Faith,” he said with a shrug. “I wasn’t seeing anyone then and didn’t really have time to find another date. It was cool, though—we had a great time, and I met Sheila there. She came with a guy named Ben, but Ben really wanted to be there with this other girl and ended up ditching Sheila, so she and I danced together. We went out a couple of times after that, but nothing ever clicked. Not for me, at least.”
“Sheila from the restaurant?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Hmm,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Ashlyn,” Ethan said with his eyes narrowed. “Whatever you are thinking, just say it.”
I looked up at him and thought about how open and honest he had been with everything he had said since I first met him. Normally, I probably wouldn’t have said anything, but when I looked into those intense eyes, it just came out of my mouth without warning.
“I didn’t like the way she pawed at you when we got there,” I said.
“Pawed at me?” Ethan laughed. “Yeah, she is a little touchy-feely.”
“Well, I didn’t like it.”