attracted to you, and of course you interpret it as something about your body and cheese curds? Jesus, Olive, that is so like you, to focus on the negative in every interaction.”
Blood pulses in my ears. I don’t even know how to process what I’m hearing, or the undeniable ache it shoves through me that I think he might be right. Defensiveness pushes aside introspection: “Well, who needs to see the upside of things when you’ve got your brother telling you that I’m a shrew and to stay away from me anyway?”
He throws up his hands. “I didn’t see anything that contradicted what he’d said!”
I take a deep breath. “Does it occur to you that your attitude can foster how people react to you? That you hurt my feelings by reacting that way, whether you meant to or not?” I am mortified when I feel my throat grow tight with tears.
“Olive, I don’t know how to say it more plainly: I was into you,” he growls. “You’re hot. And I was probably trying to hide it. I’m sorry for that totally unintentional reaction, I really am, but every indication I had—from you or Dane—was that you thought I was a waste of space.”
“I didn’t at first,” I say, leaving the rest unsaid.
He clearly reads the I do now in my expression, though, and the line of his mouth hardens. “Good,” he says, voice hoarse. “Then the feeling is conveniently mutual.”
“What a fucking relief.” I stare at him for two rapid breaths, just long enough to imprint his face in the space marked DICKHEAD in my braincyclopedia. And then I turn, storm back to the bedroom, and slam the door.
I fall back onto the bed, reeling. Part of me almost wants to get up and make a list of everything that just happened so I can process it in some sort of organized way. Like, not only was Dane sleeping around for the first two years of his relationship with my sister, but he told Ethan not to bother with me.
Because Ethan wanted to ask me out.
I don’t even know what to do with this information because it is so at odds with my mental history of him. Until the past couple of days, there has never been a hint of Ethan wanting anything to do with me—not even a flash of softness or warmth. Is he making that up?
I mean, why would he do that?
So does that mean he’s right about me? Did I misinterpret everything in that first interaction, and carry it with me for the past two and a half years? Was a single ambiguous look from Ethan enough to send me into this place of no return, where I decide we’re bitter enemies? Am I really that angry?
I feel my breath grow tight as the rest of it nudges back into my thoughts: Is it even possible that Ami knew about Dane seeing other people? She knew I was lukewarm on him from the get-go—so I have to give some space to the possibility that they had their own arrangement, and she didn’t tell me because she knew I would worry or protest out of protectiveness. Frankly, it’s hard for me to even imagine Ami and Dane in an open relationship, but whether or not it’s true, I can’t exactly call her from Maui and ask. That is not a phone call conversation; that’s an in-person conversation, with wine, and snacks, and a careful lead-in.
I pick up a pillow and scream into it. And when I pull it away, I hear a quiet knock at the bedroom door.
“Go away.”
“Olive,” he says, sounding much calmer. “Don’t call Ami.”
“I’m not calling Ami, just—seriously—go away.”
The hallway falls silent, and a few seconds later, I hear the heavy click of the suite door closing.
• • •
WHEN I WAKE UP, IT’S midday, and the sun pours brightly across the bed, bathing me in a hot rectangle of light. I roll away from it, straight into a pillow that smells like Ethan.
That’s right. He slept in this bed with me last night. He is everywhere in this room—in the neat row of shirts hanging in the closet, the shoes lined by the dresser. His watch, his wallet, his keys; even his phone is sitting there. Even the sound of the ocean is tainted with the memory of him, of his head in my lap on the boat, struggling to overcome seasickness.
For a dark flash I derive some joy out of the image of