“I found out she was cheating on me… a few weeks before she died,” he says, waving his hand as if to give him the whiskey back now that he’s admitted to what happened. I shake my head.
“What? Lyndsey?” I ask, leaning against the counter. Lyndsey cheating on him wasn’t on my bingo card. She’s been obsessed with Ethan since we were teenagers, not only obsessed but possessive to the point of being a bitch to me. “That’s… not what I expected.”
He laughs bitterly. “Yeah, me too. It’s probably why she got away with it for so long.”
I shake my head. “Wait, how long has she been cheating?”
Ethan stares at me, a grimace twisting his face. “She has a four year old in London.”
My head snaps back. “Wait, what the fuck? A child? Like her biological child? How did you miss her being pregnant?”
“Yeah, I missed it because she planned it perfectly.” Ethan stands, rubbing at his temples as he starts to pacing. “Remember when the London office opened for her dad’s company? How I was supposed to help start it up, but he sent Lynds instead?”
I nod. “Yeah, she was gone for… nearly a year.”
He shrugs. “I guess she was already a few months pregnant. One of the investors she met while he was visiting the states.”
“And you’re sure it’s not yours?”
Ethan rubs at his face. “No. I’m not sure, at all. She decided the baby is his. I could have a daughter that doesn’t know anything about me.”
He closes his eyes and stands there in silence for a moment. No wonder he had been the way he was yesterday. His heart had already been broken before Lyndsey died.
“What are you going to do? Can we petition the courts for a paternity test?” I ask. Imagining Ethan with a child is odd because he’s never really expressed his desire to have any kids. Nor do I think he would want to prioritize one the way he’d need to. Ethan enjoys doing what he wants when he wants, but who knows? People have changed for less.
“I don’t know how it works overseas. Do they have to respond to a request from another country?” He sighs, slumping down on the barstool at the island.
“Then let’s go to London and demand one. What’s the dude gonna do? Run?”
Ethan looks up at me, his eyes wide with shock. “We should go to London.”
I nod, grabbing my phone to start looking up flights. “We can leave as early as later tonight. We doing this?”
He jumps from his seat. “Yeah, yeah. We’re fucking doing this.”
THREE
ETHAN
Ignoring the never-ending missed calls and texts, I slide my phone back into my pocket and face Trent. “I’m not sure I’ll have a job to come back to.”
My best friend raises an eyebrow, still typing away on his phone. “I thought you hated it anyway.”
I shrug, shifting my overstuffed duffel bag onto my other shoulder. “Money is money, right?”
“Hmm,” is his only reply and annoyance at whatever has his attention courses through me. I’m grateful he dropped everything to fly with me, but now I feel like maybe he didn’t actually want to come.
“If you have somewhere else you want to be, I’m good doing this myself.”
Trent tilts his face up to stare at me. “What?”
For the first time in a very long time, I feel embarrassed for my immediate dismissal of him. I used to encourage him when we were younger to do whatever he wanted because a part of mefelt like I was keeping him back. “Sorry, I just mean if you have someone waiting for you to get back.”
He holds up his screen. “I’m booking a hotel at the place I stayed at last time. They offered me a discount for rebooking.” His eyebrow crinkles and a small v forms between his eyes. “I don’t have anyone waiting for me, Ethan. I’m single and have nothing on my schedule but to help my buddy through whatever he needs.”
My teeth grind at thebuddyagain, but I nod and turn my head back to the sidewalk. As much as I don’t miss Lyndsey, it feels weird to only be the two of us again. We’d been a trio since we were sixteen, and honestly it’s a sort of relief. By now, she would have bitched about something that would somehow be Trent’s fault.
I frown further when I think harder about that. About how Lyndsey seemed to always find fault with whatever we booked or planned, that would seemingly be Trent’s doing. He traveled the most out of all of us and I trusted him and his choosing. At the time, I chalked it up to not being up to her standards since she’s used to a more luxurious lifestyle, but now I’m not so sure.
