Page 44 of The Surprise
His grin shifts back to fiendish. “Not for cake.” He snorts. “But that white frosting’s going to be pretty hard to clean up.”
“Blizzard,” I say. “If we just scoop up what we can and toss that plastic container in the trash, no one will ever notice.”
“I’m liking this terrible northern weather more and more.” Ethan leans forward again, but instead of kissing my mouth again, he presses a kiss to the end of my nose. “It gave me a good reason to kiss you, too. And now, maybe you’ll miss me over the next few days.”
“I was already going to miss you,” I confess, the words so small that a part of me hopes he didn’t hear them.
“I miss you now,” he says, “just thinking about the next few days.”
I lean against him, my face pressed against his chest for a moment, until a strong wind gust hits us both, and we shiver in unison. “You better get back,” he says. “I’ve got to get home before my mom leaves.”
“Go,” I say. “But whenever you do have cell reception.” I hold up my phone.
“I’ll text you, sweet Juliet.” He grins.
I still don’t love the comparison, but maybe, just maybe, we can rewrite the ending. I don’t hate that idea at all.
10
Beth
Iwas never much for Shakespeare. In fact, I never even read it. I’m more of a Cliff’s Notes kind of girl. But over the next few weeks, I actually break out the play.
I don’t ever read it, but I do watch the movie several times.
And I meet Ethan even more often. We have cake. We drop more cake. We make out. All of it’s fun, even though the weather in Daggett County is not doing us any favors.
He wears my scarf every single time.
I wear the shirt he gave me, even if it’s so covered in jackets and coats that he can’t see how shiny it makes me. He can see the smile on my face, and maybe that’s enough.
Thanks to him, I actually start to feel pretty shiny myself. My Aunt Donna even does me a huge favor and switches sides. The bummer is that, it turns out, she was never really the most important bad guy.
I’m not super shocked to discover it was my dad spearheading this.
But when November eighth rolls around, I’m optimistic. Partly, it’s that Ethan is justso surehis mom will take care of the problem. I guess in all the years he’s known her, she’s never lost. Or, that’s what he says.
He tells me stories about how she got his English teacher to regrade his paper. How she terrified the school counselors when Izzy got made fun of for praying during school. How she argued with some curling iron company and got a free iron, a full refund, and an apology letter.
Plus, of course, she’s a realHarvardlawyer, and my dad’s just. . .well, a bully. A determined and experienced bully, but still just a bully. More than anything else, though, I have faith in Ethan. So when he asks me to go to ice creambeforewe’ve heard the verdict, I just agree.
“I mean, if this goes badly, at least I’ll have a face full of ice cream to console me,” I say.
“That’s the spirit,” Ethan says.
I’m driving, because his mom’s using their car. “I can’t believe you don’t have your own car,” I say. “I mean, you’re eighteen.”
“My mom’s really old school about that stuff,” he says. “I was hoping to be able to spend some of the money from the cattle we sold to buy something, but—”
“I know. That Derek guy shafted you, and then you and your mom did your best, but it’s hard to do stuff like this the first time.” I sigh. “I’m sorry that all went wrong.” If I’d paid more attention to the details of my dad’s business, I might have been able to help them. I didn’t know they needed to make arrangements to water their cows on the day of the auction, either. I kind of assumed the sale lot would have water there, just like they did.
“It’s fine,” he says. “Unless you’re not into me anymore, because I keep showing up on a clapped-out four wheeler. . .”
I roll my eyes. “It’s fine.”
“Oh, no.” He presses his hand to his heart. “I knew it. You’re taking me to get ice cream so you can let me down easy.”
I know he’s kidding, but when he says that, I think about how I’d feel if we were breaking up, and my heart almost stops. I shouldn’t be in this vulnerable place right now. We were supposed to be planning a first datetoday, and only if his mom beats my dad.
