August 17, eight years ago

 

Since the party, Etta had been increasingly… weird.  Things between us?  Strained.  I didn’t question.  I tried to act as if nothing had changed.  She took on extra summer classes.  She found reasons to stay away from the apartment, even spending a few weekends in Austin with Emily and one in New Orleans with Brody.  Miles came and stayed with us more frequently.  In fact, we weren’t ever alone.  She invited Beth and Chris over a lot. 

She wasn’t really super different when she was around me, just quieter and often lost in thought, borderline distant sometimes.  I would feel her staring at me, and when I turned toward her, she looked away quickly.  I asked frequently if anything was wrong.  I always got the same answer, “Nothing.”  She told me once last week that she wasn’t sleeping well.

This morning, she left before I woke up; the note said she went shopping with Beth.  That by itself isn’t strange.  What is strange?  She’d been leaving a lot of notes lately.  And she’d often be gone most of the day.

So when she got home late this afternoon, I told her I was making dinner for the four of us.  I called Chris earlier and asked him to back out at the last minute so I could have time alone with Etta.  I was sure she would make up an excuse if she knew the dinner was just for the two of us. 

Chris came through, and he didn’t even have to lie his way out of it.  His sister went into labor when she was using our apartment’s pool, so Chris and Beth took her to the hospital.  I get that Houston’s heat in August is no picnic, especially for pregnant women, and that she frequently used the pool to stay cool, but her water actually broke in the pool.  Add that to the list of reasons why I refuse to use public pools.  Grossness aside, I owed that baby for coming two weeks early.

Etta walked into the kitchen as I was straining the spaghetti noodles.  Yes.  Spaghetti.  Sauce from a jar, salad from a bag, and garlic bread from the freezer.  I’m no chef.

“It smells good,” she commented.

I smiled.  “Don’t sound so surprised.  I’m actually a little mad at myself that I’ve never cooked for you before.”

She smiled.  “You’ve made me countless Nate specials.”

“That’s a sandwich, Etta, not cooking.”

She laughed.  “So boiling some noodles and opening a jar is cooking now?”

“Hey,” I whined.  “If you have to turn on the stove or the oven, it’s considered cooking.  So shut up.”

We sat down at the table to eat.  A few bites in, I started the conversation.

“So, are you sleeping better?”

She stilled her fork on her plate for a few seconds, then resumed swirling her pasta.  “No.” 

“What’s the problem, Etta?  You have not been yourself for a while now.”

She set her fork down and looked at me across our small table.  “I’ve been having dreams.”

“Like nightmares?  I read somewhere that it’s good to talk about them.  It makes them seem less real and less scary.”

“I’m fully aware of that, Nathaniel,” she snapped,  “but they’re not exactly nightmares.”

Uh oh.

She continued.  “And it doesn’t feel exactly like a dream.  It feels like something else.”

Double uh oh.

“Like maybe a memory.”

I kept my eyes on my plate and kept eating. 

“You know, your silence isn’t really a good thing at this point, Nathaniel.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to say anything.  I was letting you talk.”  Smooth.  “What are the dreams about?”

She paused for a long time.  “You.”  I looked up at her.  “And me.” 

Shit.

I couldn’t speak.  I fucking couldn’t say a word.  I thought she didn’t remember anything, and now, I wasn’t sure what exactly she did remember.  I was at a total loss.  I’m sure my expression wasn’t exactly innocent, either.

“Nathaniel, did something happen that night?”  When my mouth fell open, she added, “Between you and me?”

I looked down.  I didn’t know exactly how to handle this.  I knew I had omitted information before and admitting it now would be taken not well at all.  But I didn’t want to lie either.  I opted for vague.  “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”  She stood up and leaned over the table.  “Either it did or it didn’t, Nathaniel.  There is no sort of.”

I kept my eyes on the table.  “Yes sort of.  Because I stopped it.”

She crossed her arms and stared at me.  “That’s consistent with one of the versions of the dream.”

“There’s more than one?”

“Yes.”  She sat back down.  “So will you tell me what happened that night so that maybe I can finally get this out of my head.  And then afterward, you can explain to me why you’ve kept it from me for two months, which is just like lying if you ask me.”

“First of all, I didn’t lie.  I told you the truth before, just not exactly everything.  And I wasn’t keeping it from you to intentionally lie to you, Etta, I was trying to protect you.  And me a little, too.  I want to keep you as a friend, and I was afraid if you knew the truth, you’d want to move out.”

“So, you think I’ll think it’s that bad?”

“No,”  I wiped my mouth with my napkin.  “That came out wrong.  I thought you might be upset.”  I threw my napkin in my plate.  “Fuck, the more I say, the worse I make it sound.”

“So why don’t you try the truth?” 

I knew I had to choose my words carefully here, but if I thought too long, she would think I was lying. 

“Okay.  Well, you started flirting with me in the car on the way home.  I already told you that you said I was hot.  Then you started touching my hands and told me you’d thought about them,” I could feel my face redden, “um, at night.  When we got here, you smelled me and came inside and started taking off your clothes.  You rubbed me, grabbed my hands and…” I stood and started pacing.  “You guided my hands… to…”  She looked pale and stared at the floor.  “I stopped, Etta.  I swear I did.  That was it.  I didn’t even look at you naked, well until you turned around and dropped the shirt I asked you to put on, but mostly, I stayed focused on your face.  I knew you didn’t really want me.  It was just the drug, and if I had given in, it would have been wrong on so many levels.  I swear, Etta, that was all.  I told you to get dressed and I left and took a shower.  You passed out on top of your covers, and I covered you up and watched over you until I knew you were out of danger.  That was it.”

“That’s almost exactly the version of my dream that feels real,” she admitted quietly.  She stood and picked up our dishes.  “I think you left out a few details though.”  She moved to the kitchen.

Oh, this was not going well.  All my super-heroic restraint, turning away from my chance to finally have Etta so I didn’t ruin everything, was for nothing.  I was, right at this moment, going to lose her anyway.  I could feel it.  I.  Was.  Freaked.

I heard the water run and the dishes clinking as she put them in the dishwasher, which is probably the first time she did that in the history of us living together.  However, it didn’t register fully.  I knew she was going to walk out of my life, and I couldn’t think of a thing to stop her.

It wasn’t until she walked to the couch, sat down, turned on the TV and resumed her Buffy-a-thon, which she hadn’t done in two months, that I turned to look at her. 

“You gonna watch with me?” she asked.

What?

This woman confused me.

“Yeah, sure.”  I got up and sat on my end of the couch.  After a few minutes, I grabbed the remote and hit pause.  “Wait, I’m confused.  Now we just go back to the way things were?  Before…”

She turned to face me.  “You told the truth, Nathaniel.  If you hadn’t, we would have had a problem.”  She looked down at her hands.  “And I think I understand why you kept it from me.”

“Okay, explain to me what you think you understand.”

 “Well, you didn’t want me to feel bad,” she looked back at the TV,  “that you rejected me.”

“That’s not it at all, Etta.”  I moved closer to her and grabbed her hand, linking our pinkies together.  “You obviously don’t remember everything correctly.”  I lifted our pinkies to my mouth, and her eyes widened.  She inhaled sharply.  “I stopped because it was wrong to take advantage of you.  I stopped because I thought the drugs were making you do something you wouldn’t have normally done.  I stopped because I knew when you woke up, you wouldn’t remember.”  I leaned in closer, lowering my voice to a whisper.  “And walking away from you that night was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

She swallowed.  Her eyes closed and her eyebrows furrowed.  Torn.  She was torn. 

“What, Etta?  What are you thinking right now?”

She shook her head.  Always so stubborn.

“Please,” I whispered, pushing a piece of hair behind her ear.  “Tell me.”

She opened her eyes and focused on my face.  “I’m kinda wishing I had remembered the next day.” 

Yes!

“But,” she grabbed my hand, “I didn’t.  And I think that’s for the best.”  She traced the back of my hand with her fingers.  “I’ve told you before, I love our relationship.  And I really want to focus on school this year.  If I keep up what I’m doing, I’ll be able to graduate at the end of next summer.”  She let go of my hand and put her hands over her face.  “God, that makes me sound like a colossally selfish bitch.”  She looked me in the eye.  “You know how important you are to me, Nathaniel, right?”

No.  “Sure.” 

“And I just don’t want things to get weird between us.”

“Because they haven’t been weird the last two months, huh?”

“Yeah, that was my fault, I know.”  She smiled.  “I’ll stop.  I promise.”  She snuggled into the couch.  “Now, can you push play already?  I’ve had some serious Buffy withdrawal, which I’m pretty sure is responsible for all my weirdness.”

“So let me get this straight.  We’re just going to go back to the pre-party days where we are roommates and friends?”

She moved closer to me and wrapped her arms around my left arm, placing her chin on my shoulder.  “Please.  I need you back as my best friend.  Beth is great, but she doesn’t share my fondness for Vampire shows and Adam Sandler movies like you do.  And she never boiled anything for me.  Ever.”  She smiled.  “Please, Nathaniel.”

“Stop begging.  You know it always works.”

She moved back to her side of the couch.  I’m pretty sure, if I heard her correctly, she muttered, “Not always.”