I hadn’t seen Ethan in over two decades, not since June 1995.
We had been best friends since childhood. He’d always been smarter than me, but he was a little bit lazy, so I knew I could beat him. I had never thought about it until we ate that strawberry pie. My desire to be the best, might have robbed him of a full boat. It made me feel selfish. I hadn’t needed it. I had wanted it. Ethan had needed it, and that gave me an ache in my stomach.
He’d had his reasons for leaving, but I knew that ninety percent of those reasons were me. The other ten percent was the job, forced on him, because he needed room and board. And only because I needed to be better than everyone else.
See, the thing he didn’t realize is that while he might have been dirty on the outside because his parents didn’t even have a shower in the house Ethan was pure on the inside.
Me? I might have smelled like lilac and vanilla, but I knew I was filthy on the inside.
He was the good guy. I always knew that. I knew it from when we had lain on the grass on the hill behind his house, our faces stained with blackberries, as we sucked on clover flowers to steal the nectar from the bumblebees.
It was the first time he held my hand, and I loved it as we watched fluffy clouds roll by overhead.
The fact that he’d taken my hand at lunch, with no other expectation, no pronouncement of anger, no feeling sorry for me, but just caring about me like he’d done when he was ten, had been overwhelming.
I hadn’t realized how much I had missed him.
All those years gone by.
His wife, his four children, his grandchildren. I’d never had that kind of thing. It never happened for me.
And the worst part of it was that it could have happened.
It could have happened with Ethan.
But I had ruined it.
Out of fear.
He hadn’t said it. But I knew he left after high school to get away from—me.
I couldn’t blame him. I never blamed him.
But that didn’t make me any less envious over the years.
The FaceBook posts. The beautiful family. The wife, prettier than me. He’d been happy.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want him happy. I sure did.
I just wish it could have been me. But it wasn’t.
It had been so devastating for me when he posted the picture from his wedding on their anniversary. It made me remember too much, and I had unfriended him on social media. I couldn’t watch it anymore.
I was so happy to see him, and I can’t pretend that there weren’t a few moments when I had fantasies through the day that now that he was free he could possibly be mine.
But I knew it was just a pipe dream. If we had been meant to be together, it would have happened. But it didn’t. That was lost long ago.
He was still his perfect self and I was just the same broken me I’d always been.
I went with Kathy to the book signing session, where he read a portion of a chapter in his novel. His voice was more mature now as he spoke. We had both aged, now forty. Somehow he looked better than he ever had. I just felt haggard.
He seemed comfortable in his own skin. Still shy, and underneath I still saw the things I knew about him that no one else knew.
He was no longer the poor, dirty boy, with the good heart. He’d gotten thick somehow, broad in the shoulders in a way that the skinny boy I knew never could have managed. A few dark, curling hairs crept above his collar and his jaw carried a shadow that hadn’t been there at lunch. He was a man now, but I hoped that the heart of the boy was still there.
Life throws shit at you and it changes you. But underneath, you’re still you. I wondered how much of the guy I knew was left in the widower.
“Thank you for listening to me drone on and on,” he said in his natural unassuming way. “I’ll take some questions.”
There were already a dozen people standing in line for the microphone.
“First,” a young woman said, “You broke my heart. I thought I was in for a nice simple thriller. But then you had to go change everything. My question is, did you plan for this to be a love story all along?”
He smiled at her. “I’m glad the story moved you,” he said. “No. I didn’t expect it to be a love story. In fact, at the time I wrote it, I was going through a pretty devastating period in my life. A love story was the last thing on my mind.”
“But it ends so hopeful,” she said.
“Maybe it was cathartic for me. Thanks for your question. Next?”
“Yes, Mr. Anthony. I loved the book. But who is the story really about?”
He laughed a big hearty laugh, and it did my soul good. “I’m going to have to tell my daughter this,” he said. “See, she and I have this ongoing debate. Whose story is it? Ray, Kaylie, or Estia? She thinks it’s Estia’s story. What do you think?”
“I think it’s Kaylie’s story.”
Ethan nodded. “Thank you for your vote.”
“But whose is it?” the man asked. “Whose story?”
“That’s the cool part about the book. It’s each of their stories intertwined. It’s a tale for each of them.”
The next person, a young man, asked, “Will you be writing more in the setting? The book really needs a sequel.”
Ethan looked at his agent, seated to his left. “Can I?” he asked.
“Now’s as good a time as any,” the agent said.
“It just so happens that I signed an agreement yesterday to publish books two and three in the series.”
The crowd murmured.
“What are they going to be about?”
“You’ll just have to wait until you read them,” Ethan said with a grin. “But they are already written. Both of them. Book 2 will be out in the spring and Book 3 around Christmas time.”
The crowd erupted with cheers and applause.
Ethan was going to be a three-time published author. A whole trilogy! Why was I not surprised?
Kathy and I waited until the end of the signing to go up with our books, but it seemed half of the people from our graduating class were doing the same thing.
Mark Williams, who stood nearby, remarked on it. “Anyone want to go to Geddy’s for an impromptu class reunion?”
And we did just that.
In my copy of the novel, he wrote:
Annie, Thank you for being my first and best friend. Love, Ethan.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.