He considered lying. It would have been easy. The deflection was right there. Smooth and available. I'm fine.
It didn't bother me. Forget it. He'd been speaking that language fluently for 4 years. All of it, he said instead. She turned to look at him.
He found every single thing I'm afraid of, Ethan said. And he put them in one sentence. So yeah, it landed. He looked at his beer, which he still hadn't finished. Doesn't mean he was right.
Clare was quiet again. Not the uncomfortable kind of quiet, the kind that meant she was actually processing what he'd said, taking it seriously, not rushing to fill it with reassurance. You know what he was actually afraid of? She said finally. Ethan looked at her.
That you stood up. She held his gaze. That's what that whole thing was. He walked in here. He saw something real and it scared him.
So he did what he always does. Her voice was steady, but there was something underneath it. Something that had been worn down and rebuilt. He tried to make you feel like you were less than you are. Does he do that a lot?
She looked back at her glass. He did it to me for a year and a half. The bar noise continued around them. Marcus had mercifully redirected the table to a conversation about the Rockies. Diane was on her second drink.
The evening had resumed its shape, but underneath it, something else had taken shape, too. Something between Ethan and Clare that hadn't been there an hour ago. Not new exactly, more like visible for the first time. Tell me about him, Ethan said. She glanced at him.
You want to hear this? Only if you want to say it. She thought about that for a second. Then she said, he wasn't bad at the beginning. Nobody starts out bad.
He was charming and successful and he made me feel like I was interesting. Which she paused, which sounds like a low bar, but I was 29 and I'd spent 3 years in a career I was still trying to prove myself in. And having someone look at you like you're the most interesting person in the room is. She shook her head. It does something to you.