Page 17 of Maybe in Another Life

“So we broke each other’s heart,” I say at last. I start walking forward again.

He joins me and smiles. “Agree to disagree,” he says.

We continue walking down the street, stopping at a red light, waiting for a cross signal.

“I never had sex with Chris,” I tell him as we walk farther and farther into the residential section.

“No?” Ethan says.

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

“Any reason why not?” Ethan asks.

I sway my head from side to side, trying to find the words to explain what I felt back then. “I... I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing that with someone other than you,” I finally say. “Didn’t seem right to do it with just anybody.”

I was twenty-one by the time I had sex with someone else. It was Dave, my college boyfriend. The reason I slept with him wasn’t that I thought he might mean something to me the way Ethan did. I did it becausenotdoing it was getting weird. If I’m being honest, somewhere along the way, I lost that feeling that the person had to be special, that it was something sacred. “I bet you didn’t turn down Alicia’s advances,” I say, teasing him. For a moment, I think I see him blush.

He guides me toward an ivy-covered building on a dark, quiet street. He opens the lobby door and lets me in first.

“You have me there,” he says. “I’m embarrassed to admit that there have been times in my life when rejection from the woman I love has served only to encourage me sleeping with others. It’s not my best trait. But it does numb the pain.”

“I’m sure it does,” I say.

He guides me to his apartment on the second floor.

“Doesn’t mean anything, though,” he says. “Sleeping with Alicia didn’t mean that I didn’t love you. That I wouldn’t have dropped everything to be with you. If I thought... well, you know what I’m getting at.”

I look at him. “Yeah, I do.”

He opens the door and gestures for me to walk in. I look at him and walk in front of him into his place. It’s a studio apartment but big, making it cozy without seeming cramped. It’s neat but not necessarily clean, which is to say that everything is in its place, but there are dust bunnies in the corners, a water ring on the dark wood coffee table. He has painted the walls a deep but unobtrusive blue. A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall opposite the couch, and shelves overloaded with books cover every available space. His bed linens are a dark, forgiving gray. Did I know, back then, that this was the kind of adult he’d grow up to be? I don’t know.

“It was very hard to get over you,” he says.

“Oh, yeah?” I say. There is a lump in my throat, but I try to cover it up by being flirtatious and light. “What was so hard to get over?”

He throws his keys onto a side table. “Three things,” he says.

I smile, letting him know I’m ready to listen. “These should be good!”

“I’m serious. Are you ready to hear them? Because I’m not messing around.”

“I’m ready,” I say.

Ethan puts up his thumb to start the count. “One,” he says. “You always had your hair up, just like it is now, in that high bun thing. And very occasionally, you would take it down.” He pauses and then starts again. “I just loved that moment. That moment between up and down, when it fell across your neck and around your face.”

I find myself fiddling with the bun on the top of my head. I have to stop myself from adjusting it. “OK,” I say.

“Two,” he says. “You always tasted like cinnamon and sugar.”

I laugh. If I wasn’t sure before, I am now positive that he is being sincere. “From the cinnamon rolls.”

He nods. “From the cinnamon rolls.”

“And what’s the third?” I ask. I almost don’t want to know, as if it’s the third thing he says that will undoubtably and irrevocably usher forth all those teenage feelings, a flood of blushing cheeks and quickening heartbeats. It is the teenage feelings that are the most intoxicating, the ones that have the power to render you helpless.

“You smelled like tangerines,” he says.

I give him a look. “Orange Ginger.”

---