“Oh shit,” he said as he sat up straighter in the rocking chair.  The book slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“What are you doing in here?” I asked.

“Um, not much,” he said.  He reached up to gather his hair at the back of his head, twisting it up into a bun and then releasing it.  It fell around his shoulders as he rubbed his eye with his knuckles.  “Just kind of hanging out, I guess.  I hadn’t been in here for a while.”

“Ethan?” I said softly, and he looked up at me, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.  “Why the book?”

“Oh, um…well…” he said, stammering.  He reached down and grabbed the book, closed it, and stared down at the cover.  “Shit.  Um, it was one of my mom’s favorite books.  Well, series, really.  I think she read them all about twenty times.  I always meant to read them, but…well…I guess I waited too long.  I watched the movie, but apparently so much was left out that a lot of it didn’t make any sense.”

“Were you trying to read it now?”

“No, I really can’t,” he said.  “I used to try, but it was way too frustrating.  Before the accident I used to fall asleep reading in here all the time.  Sometimes when I’m tired but I can’t get to sleep, sitting in this chair and holding a book helps me.  I used to take sleeping pills, but Andrea told me they were addictive, and I figure smoking’s bad enough as it is.  I didn’t need to be dependent on anything else, so I stopped taking them.  Sometimes I drink chamomile tea.  Andrea makes it and it’s really good.  It can help a little.”

“Who is Andrea?” I asked, a pang of ridiculous jealously stabbing me in the gut.

“CeeCee’s girlfriend,” he said.  I immediately relaxed.  “Or fiancée, now, I guess.  They’re supposed to get married on the beach next spring.  Andi likes to pretend she’s taking care of me, and I kind of like having her play mom, so I let her.  Is that weird?”

“No,” I said quickly and then reconsidered.  He was so completely honest, and I wanted to return the favor.  “Well, yes, a little, but I think I understand.”

“She can’t have kids.” Ethan said softly.  “She found out last year and was kinda devastated about it.  She’s only thirty, and they wanted to have a bunch of them.  And I don’t have a mom, so it’s kinda worked out for us.”

“Can’t she do fertility treatments or something?  In vitro fertilization, maybe?”

Ethan scowled for a moment.

“They don’t have that kind of money,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I didn’t mean to be insulting or anything.  I’m glad there’s someone looking out for you.”

“We all look out for each other.”  Ethan’s smile returned.  “Hey!  I was going to order Chinese from this Szechuan place around the corner.  They don’t deliver, but I can pick it up and bring it back.  Do you like Chinese?  I sent you a picture of the menu to see if you liked Chinese, but I figured the message wasn’t all that clear.  This is the real stuff, not the Americanized crap.  It’s spicy though.  Do you like spicy food?”

Ethan ended up ordering Chinese and racing out to pick it up on his bicycle, completely refusing to let me get it in the car.  It was incredibly delicious, but a bit hot for my taste, and I ended up going through about four glasses of water.  Throughout dinner we talked more about books and the library in his apartment.  It had been his mother’s favorite place.

“She always read to me there when I was younger,” Ethan said.  “It was just…I don’t know…our time together.”

“It sounds like you were really close.”

“We were.  I was close to Dad, too, just not in the same way.”  He laughed.  “CeeCee says I was a mamma’s boy.  I don’t consider it derogatory, though.”

“How long have you known CeeCee?”

“He ran track with me in high school,” Ethan said.  “He was there when I got hurt and stayed with me until the ambulance got there. I only remember bits and pieces of it since I kept passing out.  I do remember how glad I was he was there.  He was a year older than me and a senior.  I hadn’t even known him before I got hurt, and when I realized he had stayed with me that whole time…well, I was grateful.  I guess I was pretty impressed as well.  He didn’t know me, and he still doesn’t know about this place or the accounts at your dad’s company. He’s just my friend.”

“It sounds like he helped you through a lot.”

“He did,” Ethan said.  “He still does sometimes.  Him and Andrea both.”

“So, he’s a year older than you, which makes him twenty?”

“Yeah.”

“And Andrea’s thirty?”

“Yeah.”  Ethan laughed.  “She’s a cougar!”

I smiled.  The greater age difference between Ethan’s engaged friends made his ability to see past our age difference clearer.

“It’s nice that they’re so supportive,” I said.

“Faith and Gwen help me out, too.”

“Do they all live in the same place?”

“CeeCee, Andi, and Gwen all live in one apartment, but Faith lives with her parents,” he told me.  “She stays with the others sometimes on the weekend, but her mom gets pissed when she does.  She doesn’t like Gwen very much, so she makes it kind of hard for Faith.  She hasn’t quite come to terms with the whole lesbian thing.”

“When did she, um…come out?”

“Sophomore year, but she was pretty quiet about it for a long time.  Faith was in my class in high school.  She’s a freshman at the university now.  My mom loved Faith.  I think she kept waiting for us to admit we were dating, but she finally figured it out.  Mom didn’t care, and she was always a lot more supportive than Faith’s family ever was.  Her mom was ultra-religious and used to drag her to some religious youth group that told her gays were going to hell and all that bullshit.  She spent a lot of time at my place just to get away from her mom.  Faith and I went to a lot of the school dances and shit together though—at least until senior prom.  She met Gwen right before then, but the three of us went together.”

“You didn’t have a date?”

“Well, I was going to just go with Faith,” he said with a shrug.  “I wasn’t seeing anyone then and didn’t really have time to find another date.  It was cool, though—we had a great time, and I met Sheila there.  She came with a guy named Ben, but Ben really wanted to be there with this other girl and ended up ditching Sheila, so she and I danced together.  We went out a couple of times after that, but nothing ever clicked.  Not for me, at least.”

“Sheila from the restaurant?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Hmm,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Ashlyn,” Ethan said with his eyes narrowed.  “Whatever you are thinking, just say it.”

I looked up at him and thought about how open and honest he had been with everything he had said since I first met him.  Normally, I probably wouldn’t have said anything, but when I looked into those intense eyes, it just came out of my mouth without warning.

“I didn’t like the way she pawed at you when we got there,” I said.

“Pawed at me?” Ethan laughed.  “Yeah, she is a little touchy-feely.”

“Well, I didn’t like it.”

“You weren’t jealous, were you?”  Ethan gave me a playful, smirking smile, which I immediately turned away from as my face warmed up.  He laughed again.  “You were!”

“No, I was not,” I said, defending myself even when I knew it wasn’t true.  “I just thought it was rude when you were obviously there with a date.”

“Miss Manners probably wouldn’t have approved.” Ethan nodded.  “I think my mom would have liked you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because manners were very important to her,” he said.  “She was always telling me to be careful of what I said and did because I could affect other people.  Then she’d bring out a storybook about bullying or something to make her point.  I swear she had a kid’s book for every social situation there was.  Shit, they’re probably all still in the library somewhere.”

Ethan looked down at his hands for a minute, then jumped up and started clearing away the food containers and putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.  He was quiet for a while, and I wondered if he was still thinking about his mother, and then I remembered the book he had been holding when I first found him in the library.

“Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you like me to, um, read Dune to you?” I asked, not sure if this was really a good idea or not.  The offer alone could bring up memories of his mother, and he might have had enough of thinking about her.  I could also have been insulting him.

“Are you serious?” Ethan turned and stared into my eyes, his expression one of shock.

“Well, yeah,” I said.  “I mean, if you would like to hear it, anyway.  You wouldn’t have to, I just thought…”

“Could I hold it while you read it?” he asked, his voice holding the slightest tone of desperation.

“I think that would work.”

“Yes, please.”  Ethan’s voice was a raspy whisper.  I looked closer at him and realized there were tears in his eyes.  “No one’s ever…um…wow…”

Ethan dropped down onto one of the kitchen chairs with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting next to him.

“Yeah,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes.  “Shit, I’m sorry.  I’m not usually like this.  I haven’t talked about any of this for a while.  I guess it kind of brings it all back.”

“Ethan, don’t apologize.”  I reached over and took his hands in mine, pulling them away from his face.  I leaned in and kissed his tear-stained cheekbone.  “You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”

I kissed the other cheek, then his lips.  He coiled his arms around my waist and he pulled my body up against his.

“Can we start now?” Ethan asked.

“Sure," I replied, “if you want to.”

“Please,” he said.

He grabbed my hand and led me down the hallway to the library.  I sat in the oversized chair first, and Ethan positioned himself between my legs, scooting himself down a bit so he could rest his head against my shoulder.  I slipped one arm underneath Ethan's, wrapping it around his side to hold the book.  He turned his head to look up at me and smiled a delicious smile—so delicious I had to taste it before I could begin the actual reading.

Ethan moved his head back to its place on my shoulder, wrapped his fingers around mine, and we held the book together.  I turned past the title page to the first chapter.

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.  This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows…”

I read for almost two hours before we decided to take a break so Ethan could smoke, and I could run to the bathroom.  I came out and walked into the great room, raising my arms up over my head and stretching a bit.  We had been sitting in one place for a long time, and I was a little sore.  I saw the large glass of water left over from dinner still sitting on the kitchen table and went to quench my dry-from-reading throat.

The sliding door of the balcony opened and Ethan came back in, tossed his pack of cigarettes on the table near the couch, and came up behind me.  He trailed his fingers over my sides and around my stomach.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for that,” he said, placing his chin on my shoulder.

“You don’t have to,” I told him.  “I love reading, and I’d never read that one before.”

“It really means a lot to me.”  Ethan hugged my back against his chest, and I felt his lips against the top of my shoulder.

“Well, we aren’t that far into it yet,” I said.  I placed my hands over his, still resting on my stomach.  “We still have lots more reading to do.”

“I’m glad,” he said, and he kissed my neck.  “You should probably take a break, though.  You want to watch something and rest your voice?  I didn’t know if you had seen any of the movies I sent you pictures of, but we could watch one of them.”

“I’m all right,” I told him.  “I wouldn’t mind a reading break though.  You want to just sit for a bit?”

“Sure,” he said.  He grabbed a can of Coke out of the fridge, added more ice to my water, and plopped down on one of the bean bag chairs.

“So what’s up with the chairs?” I asked, giggling a little.  “They don’t really match the rest of the décor.”

“Yeah, I know.”  Ethan blushed.  “I got them because I always wanted bean bag chairs, and Mom and Dad would never let me get any.  Mom thought they were bad for your back or something, which I always thought was bullshit.  Anyway, when I went to buy them, I started feeling guilty—I was still dealing with a lot of guilt then—and decided to get pink ones.  Pink was my mom’s favorite color.  You can probably tell from all the pink shit around here.”

“I did wonder a bit.”  I smiled.  Ethan reached his hands above his head and stretched, much like I had a minute ago.  When he did, I saw more of the tattoo up his arm.

“Ethan, could I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he responded.  “Anything.”

“Well…um…I can see you have tattoos.  I was just wondering what they were and maybe what they meant, if anything.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” Ethan said and immediately grasped the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head.

Oh my…wow.