You Make Me (8 page)

“I’m sorry. I saw what you wrote, that you’re with me and are going to stay with me.” He looked ashamed and uncomfortable. “But he was obviously more than a brother.”

This was not a conversation I wanted to be having but I also didn’t want it between us, to repeatedly come up every time we had some sort of disagreement. I’d never known Ethan to be insecure and I didn’t like it. It drove people to do stupid shit like look in someone’s phone. I wanted trust between us. I didn’t want to have to put a lock on my phone just so he wouldn’t violate my privacy. I had nothing to hide, but he had no right to sneak around behind my back.

“You’re right. He was. And I told you we were close. He was very important to me. But I haven’t see him or spoken to him in four years. I think it’s natural that we might want to contact each other, just a little bit.”

“But why haven’t you spoken to each other?” He frowned, his brow furrowing. “That doesn’t make sense unless you had a fight.”

My throat felt tight. “We didn’t have a fight. But social services was planning to investigate him. Our relationship. I was sixteen most of the time he lived with us and he was eighteen.” I wasn’t going to spell it out for him. “So he left and joined the Marines.”

“But he’s still in love with you.” He stated it as fact.

I shrugged, though I felt anything but nonchalant. “I don’t know what he is. But seeing him brought back a lot of memories and I wanted to know he’s okay.” Answers to difficult questions. I wasn’t sure I had gotten those, but I did know without a doubt that Heath had loved me then. And still felt something for me.

It was helping to heal my heart. All the pain, all the hurt, years of wondering, worrying. All my fears had been assuaged and while I knew I couldn’t be with him, it was a gigantic emotional relief that I had just now realized listening to Ethan try to interpret my relationship.

There was no interpreting it.

It didn’t need to be dissected and explained. It just
was
.

Heath had made me who I was and I had made him who he was. We were indelibly entwined by the past forever regardless of what the future held. It was first love, true love, and it had changed everything.

But Ethan was still frowning. “I don’t want him stalking you and trying to interfere in our relationship.”

There was no preventing Heath if he wanted to be in Orono. There was no stopping him if he wanted to contact me, and I could tell him I was with Ethan, which I had, but I couldn’t tell him to go away and mean it. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

I knew what I needed to say though. I wasn’t going to give up what I had, and I wasn’t going to lose it because Heath walked back into my life as suddenly as he had walked back out.

I stared straight at Ethan and said, “How could he interfere in our relationship? Nothing he could ever do would matter.”

Unlike Ethan, I had always been a convincing liar.

He believed me.

Chapter Seven

I’d never owned a car. Had never been able to afford one. But Ethan had his father’s old Mercedes SUV with a hundred thousand miles on it. He said it would run for another hundred and he babied that car, doing all the proper maintenance and taking it in for car check ups. But his windshield had gotten dinged by a rock last August and Ethan, for once, had been too busy to deal with it. He had also resented having to spend the money on something that wasn’t his fault. It was uncharacteristic stubbornness on his part, but for some reason, he had dug his heels in.

So the bullet-sized crack had stayed for weeks and every time we’d get in the car, the crack was a little bigger, branching out in multiple directions, sprouting little tiny fissures. The more it splintered, the more stubborn Ethan was about it, studiously ignoring it. When I brought up the fact that it was getting a little hard to see between the lines of the cracks, he had gotten annoyed with me. There was nothing wrong with concentrating a little harder, he’d told me.

The Mainer outlook on life. Make it harder when it could be easier.

It was his car, so I shut my mouth even though he only half listened when we were driving anywhere because he had to put so much effort into visibility through the windshield. But I didn’t say anything again.

And one day, the entire window shattered and fell into our laps when we went over a speed bump.

Ethan had spent an hour apologizing and checking over and over to make sure there wasn’t glass clinging to me anywhere and that I hadn’t been cut. But it didn’t change the fact that the windshield had shattered, no matter how sorry he was.

It was just a windshield and I didn’t care, but one tiny crack leads to a million more, and as a few weeks passed by, Ethan’s perfection, all the things I loved about him as a person, as a boyfriend, started to crack, one small fissure at a time.

After he looked in my phone, he started to do weird, very un-Ethan-like things. He started spending a lot of time studying my social media, asking me who this person was and why did this guy comment on my picture of Aubrey and me in her room wearing tiaras. Things he said made it clear he had taken the time to scroll back through pictures that were two years old, before I had met him.

He insisted I take a key to his apartment, pressing it into my hand urgently. “At the end of the year you should move in with me.”

“Oh,” I said, caught off guard. “I hadn’t thought about moving in together. Is that what you want?”

We were on his couch and he had kissed the tip of all my fingers. “Yes. I want you to move in now actually.”

I laughed. “Geez. I feel very wanted.” But it felt like something else. Not Ethan wanting to be with me as much as possible. It felt darker, more sinister. Greedy. Possessive. Insecure. Unpleasant.

He kissed harder now, with less thought to my desires.

He wanted to spend every minute together, and frequently after a class I’d be walking across campus and he would appear, having established my routine. He would buy me lunch or coffee or a cupcake and touch me. A lot. The palm on the back, the holding hands, the leaning over and kissing my forehead, my temple, the top of my head, my fingers, hands, lips. In public places like he never had before.

Plans for the future were talked about constantly and I started to feel pressured to set a wedding date. We’d just gotten engaged. I figured the wedding would happen after my graduation, which was eighteen months away. So in two years. We didn’t need a date. We didn’t need a venue. But he insisted we did. And all I could think was that I was starting to wait in anticipation for the next crack to lengthen, for the next random comment or suggestion to come from Ethan, reminding me that he felt threatened.

And I was starting to feel the way I did when he piled the blankets high on top of us in his bed- weighted down. Smothered.

It didn’t help that Heath hadn’t texted me. It had been more than a week and I’d heard no word from him. I found myself darting my gaze around campus, looking for a dark head of hair, anyone not wearing a jacket. Heath didn’t put on a coat until January. But I didn’t see him. He had no reason to be on campus, other than to visit Darla. And Ethan was aware that I was distracted, which made him more clingy. Which drove me to greater distraction. Which made him clingier.

I could feel the tension growing, spreading, and I waited, trying not to wince, for the windshield to shatter and us to have a huge fight.

But we got a break because Ethan had to go to Boston for the weekend for his friend Dan’s birthday party. It had been planned for months and though I could tell he wanted to bail he didn’t have a good reason to, so he packed a bag and left, though he pouted about it.

I couldn’t stand that expression on his face. It was the only time I didn’t think he was hot and super attractive, when he gave me that pinched nose, pulled lip pouty face like he was five and I’d told him he couldn’t have a cookie.

“I don’t want to go,” he whined.

“It will be fun.” He had stopped by my room on his way to meet the group of guys going.

“It would be more fun if you were there.”

“That sort of defeats the purpose of guys’ weekend.”

“What are you going to be doing?” He was hovering in the doorway, leaning on the frame. “Girl stuff?”

“Yes, Aubrey and I are going to give each other bikini waxes.” I was joking, and the look of horror on his face made me laugh. “Kidding! What do men think women do in their free time? Why do you act like we’re so mysterious? I’m going to study for my macroeconomics exam and write a lit paper.”

Leaning forward I gave him a soft kiss. “Go. Your friends will be pissed. Have fun, but not too much fun. I don’t want you coming home with a tattoo you’ll regret.”

He took my hand, still sullen, and rubbed his thumb over the back of my wrist, where I had an infinity tattoo. “Is that how you got this?”

That made my amusement disappear. He had asked about the tattoo before of course and I’d always told him a partial truth. “It wasn’t alcohol. Just teen impulse.”

What it had been was Heath and I taking the ferry to Rockland and spending the day wandering through shops together, having a picnic in the park that I had packed for us. And using some of Heath’s hard-earned money to get matching infinity tattoos on our inner wrists. It was meant to symbolize that we were forever. I had stared at it many times, wondering what he thought when he looked at the permanent mark on his flesh, the eternal reminder of me. For me, it had depended on the day. Sometimes I had been angry, other times sad. Mostly I had looked at it and thought that one part of infinity was correct- I still loved him endlessly.

Maybe he had covered his up. It was a cheesy tattoo for a Marine.

Ethan finally left, reluctantly, and I was alone. I immediately called Tiffany, who had texted me earlier that she had info for me. “Hey, what’s up?”

“So it turns out that most of his online presence is posts or tagged photos from other people. Because he doesn’t have his own accounts, they’re basically buried unless you know how to look for him. I am going to send you some pics of him in Afghanistan looking all military badass. He also seems to frequently be referred to as Private Deprey or as a nickname, Private Depraved.”

That made me curl my lip. “I wonder why? He’s not a creeper.”

“It’s probably just guy talk. Haven’t you ever listened to fishermen talk to each other? It’s insults sprinkled with homophobic jokes. That is what they do.”

“You’re right. But it’s stupid.”

“No one said it isn’t. Just so’s you know, I found no evidence of any relationships with girls. Just references to lap dances on leave.”

“Gross!”

“Again, not surprising. He was in an all male unit deployed to Afghanistan for ten months straight with no women for literally hundreds of miles. I mean, aside from local women who are under lock and key and nine yards of fabric. So they cut it up a little in Thailand. I think it’s to be expected.”

“You are the oddest little creature,” I told her. “You have the reasoning of a thirty-five year old.” I actually meant it as a compliment.

There was a pause. “Yeah. Well. I had to grow up fast. Living in a broken down car at four years old will do that to you.”

I felt immediately guilty. And sorry for her. Which I knew she would hate. “Beauty, brains, and street smarts. You’re the whole package, Tiff.” Which I meant one hundred percent.

She made a sound of amusement. “Sure. That’s me. And because of my size I don’t even require extra postage.”

I laughed. “Good point.”

“I’m hanging up so I can send the pics and because you know I have very limited minutes on this track phone. This data is going to suck the life out of my allowance.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, and no arrests, traffic tickets, or child support petitions, in case you were wondering.”

It had never occurred to me that he could have a baby. Holy shit. My heart rate jumped, then settled back to normal. “Thank God.”

“What are you going to do, Cat? For real.”

Sitting on my bed in shorts and a tank top, I leaned against the wall and bit my fingernail. “What do you mean? Nothing. I haven’t even heard from him.” Which bothered me. I couldn’t deny it.

“Just be careful,” she said slowly. “You don’t want to do something that morally you can’t live with.”

She meant cheat. Have sex with Heath, probably.

But there were other ways to cheat.

Was it morally unacceptable to be with one guy yet constantly thinking about another? Yes. Yet I wasn’t going to throw over my relationship with Ethan because Heath had wedged himself back into my thoughts.

Tiffany had always had stricter moral boundaries than me. I was impulsive. More selfish than I’d like to be.

But I had changed at UMaine. Become a better person. Right? Wasn’t that what I had done? Or had I just put a glossy layer over the top? And if I had, did it matter? What was really wrong with the girl from Vinalhaven? Heath had liked that girl, and once upon a time, I had too.

“Just stay true to yourself.”

I closed my eyes. I was afraid that being true to myself was going to destroy the world I had created.

And more than one person.

The two pictures Tiffany sent were both of Heath in a group with other Marines. He wasn’t smiling in either. He looked dusty and tired and annoyed. Lonely. He looked lonely. Or maybe that was just my overreaching assessment.

Whatever he was, when I looked at him, I ached for him. I stared at those pictures for long anguished minutes, knowing that I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to be near him, just as friends. I couldn’t stand having him so close, yet not be able to talk to him, see him. It was my fault for ignoring his last text. He wasn’t going to beg me for attention so if I wanted to talk to him, I had to be the one to reach out.

So with Ethan gone, I did. I had to.

It was the lamest text ever.

How are you?

The minute I hit send I wanted to take it back. I wanted to be clever and sophisticated and sexy yet somehow cool and appropriate and intriguing all at once. It was a lot to ask of a text but certainly the one I had sent was none of those, so I cursed myself and tossed my phone on my desk.