I cover my mouth with my palm. Robert rests the mug in the sink and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Ethan saw the accident on his way home from work. He saw the car. Followed the ambulance to the hospital, but they wouldn’t let him in to see Rodney because he wasn’t immediate family.” Robert’s hair is falling in his eyes. He pushes it away. “So, Rodney died alone while Ethan was sitting in the waiting room. They wouldn’t let him in. Ethan fell apart and he couldn’t adopt his little girl so he lost both of them all at once.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, which seems like the wrong thing, but I can’t think of anything right.
“After that, Ethan seemed frantic to replace what he lost. Or maybe he knew he never could, so he was ready to settle. Whatever it was, Ivan took advantage.”
Robert yanks the rubber band from his ponytail and lets his hair fall around his face before he pulls it up and twists the band around again. “It was hard to watch. But you can’t make a friend break up with someone. If you tell them they should and they don’t, you lose them. I didn’t want to risk it.”
“You can’t blame yourself for this,” I say, because he looks like he does. His eyes are so sad.
“I never thought Ivan was this out of control. I didn’t like him, but Ethan kept telling me how great he was, and I thought—I mean, Rodney was my friend. I thought maybe I didn’t want to accept Ivan because it meant Rodney was really gone. If I’d known Ivan was this bad, I would have done something.”
Robert gives up on the dishes. We sit at the bottom of the stairs together so we can hear Ethan if he wakes up. So we can be right there if he needs us. We don’t say much. We just sit there, knees touching. When Robert starts to cry, I hold his hand.
— Chapter 47 —
Ethan spends a few days in bed. Robert and I take turns with him so he’s never alone. Robert gets a substitute chef when I play at the restaurant and I stay with Ethan when I’m not playing.
We lie in bed and watch soap operas. Matty is in a coma. If he wakes up, his fiancée is going to tell him the baby isn’t his. She has conversations about it with her new lover in his hospital room.
“He’s lying right there!” I yell, twisting the edge of Ethan’s quilt in my hands. “She’s such a bitch.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed you for a soap fan,” Ethan says. He smiles as much as he can manage. The bruises around his nose and jaw are dark purple.
“I know him,” I say, pointing at the TV. “Jake Jacobson. I know him.”
Ethan gives me a blank look. “You understand this show isn’t real, right?”
“The actor who plays Jake Jacobson. Matty—Matthew Spencer. I know him. I used to.”
“Like know him, or know him?”
“Second one.”
“Do you miss him?”
“If someone changes so much that they’re barely the same person, who are you even missing?”
“I miss him, you know,” Ethan says. I think he’s telling me about Rodney, but then he says, “I’m sure no one wants to hear it. But it’s not like I didn’t love Ivan. It’s not like every bit of him and me was a fight. It didn’t start out that way.”
He looks at me. The bruises and the sadness in his eyes are almost too much to bear. I grab his hand under the blankets and squeeze it tight.
“I still miss him and it hurts and I wish he would come back and be okay and love me and not hurt me again,” Ethan says, all in one breath, like it’s a relief to say the words. “There were good parts. There were tiny little parts of a good person and I miss having hope that those parts would take over.”
He starts to cry. He tucks his head into my shoulder and I rub his back.
When he falls asleep, I go into the bathroom and hang a towel over the mirror so he doesn’t have look at his bruises until they’re better.
— Chapter 48 —
Robert’s Friday night band at the bar cancels. It’s not my scene. It’s not Ethan’s either, so he stays home to paint. It’s the first time we’ve left him alone since Ivan showed up. His bruises have faded from purple to green. They look like shadows. He promises he’s fine. Says the alone time will be good for him. I check the locks on the doors before we leave.
The crowd was expecting a Blue ?yster Cult cover band. I sprayed my hair so there are curls in every direction and lined my eyes with black shadow. There’s big hair and acid-washed jeans everywhere. I think about playing Don’t Fear the Reaper, but it might be twisting the knife, and the guitar part is too complicated for me anyway. I stick to my angrier stuff, hit my strings as hard as I can. I keep scraping my knuckle. Sometimes the crowd listens; mostly they drink. After I’ve played a few songs, half the bar clears out. The ones who stay seem to like me. At the very least, they buy a lot of beer.