[2 Months home]
The autumn air was turning brittle, a biting chill settling over the town that mirrored the cold reality of Annie's daily life. It had been ten weeks- seventy days of waking up to a house that felt too quiet, seventy days of seeing her mother's life slipping away in her dreams. The grief wasn't a constant scream anymore, it had settled into a low, vibrating hum, a dull ache that she carried in her bones like an old injury.
At school, the atmosphere had shifted into something more insidious. The physical shoves in the hallway had mostly stopped- Ethan's looming presence and Ellie's sharp tongue had seen to that, but the "Mean Girl" quartet of Vanessa, Peggy, Rebecca, and Sarah had simply traded their fists for psychological warfare. They didn't need to bruise her skin when they could poison her reputation.
Peggy, in particular, was a heat-seeking missile of resentment. She had watched the way Ethan's eyes followed Annie during lunch, the way his jaw tightened whenever Annie looked sad, and the way he had essentially become her shadow. To Peggy, Ethan was a prize, and Annie was just a "charity case" taking up his time.
The school day was ending when Annie rounded the corner by the north lockers. She was looking for Ethan, they had a silent agreement to meet there so he could walk her home or to his truck. But as she turned the corner, she froze.
Ethan was backed against the lockers, and Peggy was closer to him than anyone should be. From Annie's angle, it looked like a scene from a romance novel.
Peggy's hand was splayed across Ethan's chest, her fingers toyed with the fabric of his shirt, and she was whispering something into his ear, a triumphant smirk playing on her lips. Ethan's head was tilted down, his expression unreadable, but to Annie's panicked heart, it looked like he was listening. It looked like he was leaning in.
A sharp, cold needle of doubt pierced through the warmth of her birthday memories. Of course, she thought, her eyes stinging. Why would he want to deal with my sadness and my mourning when he could have someone like Peggy? Someone who isn't broken.
Annie didn't wait to see Ethan push Peggy away. She didn't wait to see the flash of disgust on his face. She turned on her heel and ran, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was out the side doors and halfway home before the first sob escaped her.
By the time Annie reached her bedroom, she was trembling. She felt foolish. She felt like she had let her guard down too soon. The memory of their kiss- the warmth, the "babydoll" whispered in her ear, now felt like a cruel trick.
She walked straight to her window. Their houses sat barely fifteen feet apart, their bedrooms facing each other like two sides of a conversation. Usually, she loved this proximity. Tonight, it felt like an intrusion. With a violent tug, she pulled the heavy, dark velvet curtains shut, overlapping the fabric until not even a sliver of the evening sun could peek through. She was shutting him out. She was shutting everything out.
She crawled onto her bed, hugging a pillow to her chest, listening to the silence of her room.
Ten minutes later, the first sound came.
Tap.
A small pebble bounced off the glass. Annie squeezed her eyes shut.
Tap. Tap.
"Go away, Ethan," she whispered into her pillow.
Then, her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She tried to ignore it, but the haptic feedback was persistent. Finally, she grabbed it, the screen illuminating her dark room.
E🤍: Doll, open the window. Peggy was being a pest, I wasn't talking to her.
E🤍: I saw you run. It wasn't what it looked like. Talk to me.
E🤍: Annie. Come on. Don't do this.
She watched the bubbles dance as he typed again.
E🤍: The Pebble Target📚🎯 is being very stubborn right now. I'm not going away.
Annie felt a surge of frustrated tears. How could he be so casual? He was "E🤍" in her phone- the boy she was starting to trust with her shattered heart, and she had just seen him with the girl who made her life a living hell. She didn't reply. She tossed the phone face down.
A few minutes of silence passed. She thought maybe he had given up. Then, the phone buzzed with a long, continuous vibration- a call. She let it go to voicemail.
Immediately, a final text popped up.
E🤍: Fine. If you won't talk to me here, I'm coming over. I'll knock on the front door and ask Dylan- or better yet, Kyson, exactly why you're hiding. I'll tell them exactly what happened at school.
Annie bolted upright. Kyson. Her stepbrother was already suspicious of Ethan's "loyalty." If Ethan showed up at the front door making a scene, Kyson would explode, and the fragile peace of her house would be shattered. Ethan knew exactly which buttons to push.
Reluctantly, Annie slid off the bed. She walked to the window and yanked the curtains back. Ethan was standing in his own window, his shirt discarded, looking tired and genuinely stressed. As soon as he saw her, he dropped the handful of pebbles he was holding onto his floor.
Annie unlocked her window and pushed it up just a few inches, enough for the cool air to rush in, but not enough to let the world in. She didn't look at him, she looked at the shingles of his roof.
"You're a jerk for threatening to talk to Kyson," she said, her voice small and wavering.
"And you're a brat for closing the curtains on me," Ethan countered, though there was no heat in his voice. He leaned his elbows on his windowsill, closing the gap as much as the space between houses allowed. "Annie, look at me. Please."
She slowly lifted her gaze. His dark eyes were fixed on her, filled with an intensity that made her breath hitch.
"Peggy trapped me," Ethan explained, his voice low and urgent. "She started talking about you- saying things I won't repeat because they're lies. I was two seconds away from telling her to back off permanently when I saw you. By the time I moved her hand and turned around, you were gone."
"It looked like you liked it," Annie whispered, a tear finally rolling down her cheek. "She's pretty, Ethan. She's not... she's not mourning. She's not a mess."
Ethan's expression hardened, his jaw setting in that stubborn way she knew so well. "You think I want 'pretty and hollow'? I've known those girls my whole life, Annie. They're nothing. You... you're everything. You're the girl who paints the soul of people. You're the girl who survived that lake. Do you really think a few claws from Peggy are going to make me look away from you?"
Annie wiped her face with the back of her hand. The doubt was still there, a tiny flickering flame, but the sincerity in his voice was like a bucket of water over it.
"I'm just tired, Ethan," she admitted, leaning her head against the window frame. "Everything is so heavy. And seeing her touch you... it felt like I was losing the one safe thing I had left."
Ethan's gaze softened. He reached across the void, his hand hanging in the empty air between their windows, a symbolic gesture of wanting to touch her.
"You aren't losing me, Doll," he said firmly. "Not today, not because of Peggy, and not ever. I'm the same guy who breathed life back into you when the world tried to take it away. I'm not going to let a high school bully take me away now."
He paused, a ghost of a smirk returning to his lips- the flirty, bold Ethan she had met in the blanket fort.
"Now, are you going to keep being a hermit, or are you going to let me come over the 'right' way so I can make sure you've actually eaten something other than grief today?"
Annie felt a small, genuine smile tug at her lips. "I ate a granola bar."
"Pathetic," Ethan chuckled. "Come over for Chinese leftovers. And don't you dare close those curtains again, babydoll. I like looking at my favorite view."
Annie blushed, the heat in her cheeks finally chasing away the chill of the afternoon. As she watched him move away from his window to grab his hoodie, she realized that while the ache of her mother's loss would always be there, Ethan was becoming the light that made the shadows easier to navigate.