Page 98 of The Surprise

I suppress my smile. Barely. “Okay.”

Luckily, the second she sits, the waitress rushes over. It’s one of the benefits of being in a tiny town and a small diner. “What do you two want?”

I order two drinks and two muffins.

“What kinda muffins?” the waitress asks. She must be new, since I don’t know her. She looks like she’s about Beth’s age, and I wonder whether she’s a recent graduate too.

“Apple cinnamon and poppyseed?” I look at Beth for input.

“I don’t like apple in muffins,” Beth says.

“Great, then I’ll take that one.”

She rolls her eyes.

When the waitress walks out of earshot, I decide not to make small talk. I need answers, and with her being all weird, I may not get them if I wait.

“What’s going on? We were friends at the very least, and we had adate planned.” I cringe. I wasn’t going to say that. It sounds accusatory. “But then you got sick, and then.” I throw my hands up in the air. “Then it was like I had some kind of communicable disease or something. Did I grow horns?” I pat my forehead.

I thought it might get me a chuckle at least, but Beth’s too busy staring at her hands to laugh.

“Beth.”

She glances up and then looks right back down.

“What did I do? At least tell me that much.”

She’s still staring at her fingers like they contain the secrets of the universe.

“Did I say something? Did I—did someone tell you something? Because I should at least be allowed to defend myself.”

When she looks up this time, her eyes are narrowed. “Like what?”

“I know you like Hannah, and Izzy says you’re close, but listen. I don’t know what she might have said. I didn’t even talk to her really. She was like velcro, sticking herself to me.” I shudder. “I told her to knock it off, but she didn’t listen.”

Beth smiles.

“Okay, so was that it? Because I know she took some kind of weird photo of herself in a swimsuit, but I was only shirtless because she spilled stuff on me. We didn’t—”

“Ethan.”

“What?”

She shakes her head.

“Just say it.”

“We weren’t a good fit from the start.”

“No,” I say. “You’re wrong about that. We were a great fit. Always. It was the other stuff that wasn’t a good match. Timing. That’s all.”

She snorts. “You think it was just timing?” She shakes her head. “That’s a stretch. Even at the beginning—”

“At the beginning, you were like light to me. Like air. You were all I could think about, and now—”

“Now, what?” Her nostrils flare. Her hands press so hard on the top of the table that her fingers turn white. “How do you feel about me now?”

The waitress cuts her check in half by showing up right then, as if she hasnosense for reading people whatsoever. “Alright, that was a mint tea for the lady, and a hot chocolate for the handsome man.”

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