Better than Him

MARA "Where are you going?" Derek's voice slid into my ear the way it always did over the phone, smooth and easy, like he was only asking about the weather. "Library," I said, hugging my laptop bag to my chest as I cut across the quad. "Thursday study session." "Third floor? That corner table by the window?" I frowned. "Did I tell you that?" "You must have." He laughed. "Your journalism brain remembers everything. Mine just listens." I didn't remember telling him. But I told him so many things. "Who's going to be there?" he asked. "Jade. And Ethan, like always." Silence. Two full seconds of it. I counted them without meaning to. I always counted them. Two seconds meant he was thinking. Three meant I had said something wrong. "Every Thursday," he said at last. "Wow. You three are so dedicated." "I can skip it." The words left my mouth before I decided to say them. "I have my notes. I could come to your place instead and—" "Mara." Another laugh, warm this time. "Babe. Don't change your plans for me. Go. Have fun." My shoulders dropped half an inch. "Okay." "Just text me when you're done so I know you got home safe. And wear the green jacket next time. The blue makes you look tired." I looked down at my blue jacket. I had picked it that morning because it was my favorite. "You know you're lucky, right?" he added, softer this time. "Not every guy would be this patient with how busy you are." "I know," I said. "I'm lucky." "Love you." "Love you too." The call ended. I stood in the middle of the quad while students flowed around me, and I did what I had been doing a lot lately without noticing. I tucked my hair behind my ear. Then I did it again. Lucky. I had said it so many times that it had stopped sounding like a word. The library at Harlow university smelled like old paper and burnt coffee, and I had never been so happy to smell anything like this. I took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. Ethan was already there, of course. He sat at our corner table with his sleeves pushed up and his sketchbook open, dark hair messy like he had been dragging his hands through it for an hour. On my side of the table sat a paper cup with MARA scribbled across it in his awful handwriting. "You're late," he said, not looking up. "Eleven minutes." "You counted?" "I always count." Now he did look up, and his eyes did the thing they always did. A quick sweep. Face, shoulders, hands. Like he was checking a building for cracks. "What happened?" "Nothing." "Mara." "Derek called." I dropped into my chair and picked up the cup. "Is this—" "Vanilla. Extra shot." His mouth went flat for a second. "Because Derek called." I should have said something. Defended him, maybe. Instead I took a sip and felt the warmth go all the way down to my toes. "Okay, can you two stop?" Jade was sprawled across from us with her chin in her hand and a highlighter dangling from her fingers. "It's like watching an old married couple. If he starts folding your laundry, I'm staging an intervention." "I'd never fold her laundry," Ethan said. "She steals the good socks." "I do not—" I started, and then I was laughing. Really laughing, the loud, embarrassing kind that made the girl at the next table glare at me. Jade laughed too. But when I glanced at her, her eyes had slid to Ethan, and for just a second her smile looked like it hurt. Then she grabbed her highlighter and the moment was gone. I pulled out my laptop. That was when I noticed my shoulders. They had been up near my ears since the quad, tight as fists, and now they were coming down inch by inch, like a held breath finally letting go. That was the thing about this table. I never felt how tense I was until I sat down here. Three weeks ago I won a big journalism award. Derek had a "prior commitment" and sent a very sorry text. Ethan was in the front row with a bunch of grocery-store sunflowers, grinning at me like it had never been a doubt that I would win. I told myself that was just friendship. I had been telling myself a lot of things for two years now. "Okay, focus." Ethan slid his sketchbook toward me. "Tell me this isn't the ugliest staircase you've ever seen." On the page was a sloppy spiral staircase with a tiny stick figure falling off it. Under it he had written: ‘Studio critique, live footage.’ I laughed so hard I had to cover my mouth. "Your professor would fail you for that." "He'd fail me for breathing." Ethan was grinning now, that crooked grin he only pulled out when it was the three of us, and I thought, not for the first time, that I could stay at this table forever. I was still laughing when I looked up. Derek was standing in the doorway. I only caught the end of his face. That was the thing. A second, maybe less, before he knew I had seen him. And it wasn't anger. I knew his angry face. I had studied it for two years now. This was something else. Flat. Still. Cold in a way that made the whole floor feel smaller, like someone had quietly shut a door in an empty house. Then his eyes met mine, and the smile slid across his face as if it had been waiting backstage. "Surprise," he said, crossing the library toward us like nothing had happened. "I was in the area. Couldn't stay away from my girl." He kissed my cheek, and his hand settled on the back of my neck, warm and light and heavy all at once. "Missed you." "I missed you too," I said. It came out automatic. Like breathing. I told myself I had imagined it. I had got ten very good at that. But across the table, Ethan had gone completely still. And he wasn't even looking at me.