Caleb steps between Liam and Ethan, and Ethan puts his hands in the air. He has no interest in swinging or being swung at. Maybe he has no interest in me.
“You’ve got it all wrong, man. It’s not like that,” Ethan says, puts his hands down and into his pocket. He pulls out his phone. “Just give me one second.”
Ethan’s eyes are on me, not on Liam, and he’s talking to me without talking to me. I don’t know what he’s saying. I just know I want to keep staring at him. Again, everything is too fast for me to understand, and also too slow, because I can hear the thump of my heart and the blood rushing in my ears, can feel the warmth of the coffee cup in my trembling hands.
My phone beeps. I have a message. I look down. I pick it up.
SN: it’s me.
I look up again. Ethan is smiling nervously at me. He’s typing without looking.
SN: me. not him. me.
SN: let me say this in caps: ME.
“You?” I ask, out loud, without hands, the words right where I need them. Finally, finally, realization dawning. My eyes are locked with Ethan’s. I can’t help it; I’m grinning. “For real. It’s you?”
“Me,” Ethan says, and holds up his phone. “You were early. We had an Oville meeting in the back that ran too long, and then he got to you first.”
I look at Liam, who is rocking on his heels, confused and still angry. Watching our conversation but not getting it at all. How could he? I barely understand.
Ethan is Ethan is Ethan.
Ethan is SN.
“Liam, I’m sorry. I can’t. I mean, it’s Ethan. It’s him,” I say, which makes no sense at all, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because now Ethan is sitting down across from me in the booth. And we are smiling at each other, goofy and giddy, and it’s easy, so much easier than it should be.
Liam looks more confused than upset. Caleb shrugs and then rolls his eyes toward the door, as if to say Give it up, man. She’s not worth it.
“Whatever,” Liam says, taking Caleb’s cue, the words casually thrown over his shoulder as he walks out the door. Caleb shakes his phone at me and Ethan, apparently his generic goodbye, as he runs to catch up with Liam.
“You?” I ask Ethan again, because I need it to be said one last time. To be sure that I’m not just jumping to conclusions and that I’m not dreaming.
“It’s nice to meet you again, Jessie, Jessie Holmes. I’m the weirdo who has been messaging you.” Ethan looks nervous, a question in his eyes. “Today so didn’t go the way I meant it to.”
I laugh, because what I’m feeling is something so much bigger than relief.
“What? You didn’t expect to almost get into a fistfight?”
“No, no, I did not.”
“I can’t believe it’s you,” I say, letting out the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. My phone beeps.
SN: are you disappointed?
Me: NO!!!
SN: can I come sit next to you?
Me: YES!!!
Ethan switches sides of the booth, and now his thigh is up against mine. I can smell his Ethan smell. I bet he tastes like coffee.
“Hello,” he says, and reaches up and tucks my hair behind my ears.
“Hello,” I say.
—
After we’ve talked for a while, it’s like all those other times I’ve hung out with Ethan but also totally different, because we’re not working on a project, we’re just together because we want to be, and I now know him, like really know him, because we’ve spent the last two months talking with our fingertips.
“Why?” I ask. He closes the gap, puts his hand in mine. We are holding hands. Ethan and I are holding hands. I am not sure I ever want to give his back.
“Why what?”
“Why did you email me that first day?”
“Since my brother…I feel like I’ve forgotten how to, like, how to talk to people. My dad made me go to this therapist, and she said that it might help to start writing instead. And when I saw you on the first day of school, there was just something about you that made me really want to meet you. You seemed lost in a way that I totally get. I decided to email. It felt safer to be undercover.” He shakes his head, as if to say Yes, I’m strange.