Ethan (2 page)

Chapter Two

Ethan stared at the pattern in the granite countertop as he began to organize his thoughts. Shae Matthews was coming here. She’d agreed to help him. He glanced at the clock on the stove. Two hours tops. And then he’d have to bare his soul. No way around it. Only Ethan wasn’t a bare the soul kind of guy. He was a doer. He was a mover. He hated to be in one place longer than a minute. Standing in line at the ATM made him itchy and plane flights were unbearable. He was that guy, strolling up and down the narrow aisle, bumping his head against the bulwark and being asked to sit down, “Please, sir.
Sit
. You’re making the other passengers nervous.” He heard that refrain every flight, at least three or four times, and wondered why, why,
why
engineers didn’t make aircraft larger, with viewing platforms, maybe, and a sky deck that was all window and open to a little fresh air.

Yes, he knew it was ridiculous. He understood aerodynamics. But, hell, they were living in the twenty-first century. They were able to charter flights to the moon and built robots small enough they used the human artery as a swimming pool.

Flight attendants liked him less than screaming babies.

He wasn’t afraid to fly. He wasn’t claustrophobic. It was the knowledge that he wasn’t able to leave that got to him.

He didn’t have this problem as a teenager.

It was possible he was an adult with ADHD.

His sisters thought so. His doctor did not, “ADHD is characterized by the inability to achieve sustained focus. Does that sound like you?” Ethan didn’t think so. He spent a lot of long hours in the cut room, peeling thorough film. But then he was
doing
something. “It’s not your brain that’s rebelling, Ethan,” the doctor assured him. “It’s your body. Try a long run before your next cross-country flight. Exhaust yourself.”

It helped some. He didn’t think it would do anything for him now.

He cringed when he thought of telling Shae that he was writing the screenplay because it was cathartic. He wanted—
needed
—to put the past to rest. His emotional past. The truth was, he didn’t think he’d ever completely healed from Tina’s passing. He hadn’t stopped long enough to do more than glance at the idea of loss. He had grieved on the run. Now, he wanted to slow down. A feeling of unease was creeping up on him. He often felt it peering over his shoulder, and crazy as it may sound, he feared it was looking for new places to dig in and destroy.

Chad, his partner at Absolute Cinema Productions and a buddy from his Marine days, had made a point of telling him that emotional baggage grew in size exponentially. It fucked with a guy’s ability to see clearly and eventually contribute to life in a meaningful way.

Ethan’s first response was anger. “So you’re a shrink now, Chad? You have your PhD in brain scam and now you’re trying to diagnose me?”

“I’m a guy who has been there. Different set of circumstances, same dense approach—put your pack on and scramble over the next set of hills.”

It bothered Ethan that his friend was right. He shouldered the weight and moved on. And as much as he needed to be doing something, there were a few places along the way he’d have liked to linger. Whatever was going on with him, it killed each and every one of his romantic relationships. He held back. He gave a woman what she needed physically. For a while, he was even her friend and confidant. But when he sensed her getting too close, when her arms wrapped around his neck and she gazed into his eyes, seeking…that’s when he ran. And hid. And six years in the Corps, most of them in the Middle East, had made him an accomplished evader. No woman stood a chance.

“You’re saying I’m carry
ing around some heavy baggage?”

“I’m saying Tina,” Chad responded. He had known Ethan’s wife, though only briefly.

“That was years ago.” Almost ten. Had he spent a full decade on the run?

It s
eemed about right. Pre-service, he’d enjoyed lazy days, soaking up the sun and waves and wishing he could put the world on pause for a few years. His blood had flowed slowly through his veins, without that constant ticking that made him feel like he had to be
doing
something. He longed to be that man again. To have at least a little of that easiness back.

“Exactly,” Chad agreed. “You have to look at it—all those messy emotions that have morphed into this ugly monster.” He tapped Ethan’s chest. “It’s living inside you and it eats your    heart for breakfast.”

Ethan had buckled enough to ask for help. “How do I do that? Where do I start?”

“At the beginning. Loss has a geography. It’s as easy to follow as a map.” His friend’s eyes grew dark with memory. “But you have to look at it. You have to wrestle it to the ground. It’s a take no prisoners approach.”

Chad had been there done that. Ethan knew his buddy had suffered some pretty dark moments before joining the Corps. He didn’t know the details, but Ethan was with him when a communiqué came through from the Red Cross, calling him home from a tour of duty. Chad’s only comment then had been, “I’ve been waiting for this,” as he packed his bag. “It’s long overdue.”

But Chad was successful at chasing away the demons. He’d produced some amazing films. He had gotten married the year before and the bastard was so happy there were some seriously tense moments when Ethan wanted to wipe the goofy smile off the guy’s face.

“And Ethan, even when you think you’ve got it taken care of, you don’t,” Chad had warned and nodded, confirming some inner thought. “You have to stand your guard, and when you feel the pressure squeeze your heart, you leap on it.”

And so Ethan sat down at his computer and recreated probably the most painful moment of his life—the arrival of the unit’s Chaplain, gripping that telegram from the Red Cross. The pain in Ethan’s chest had radiated outward, spreading in a number of directions. But Chad was right. Each ray was a road into territory Ethan needed to explore. They were clearly defined. They were pitted paths filled with the possibility of ambush, but he had maneuvered through several of them and he had gotten to a point where he actually felt a loosening inside, the release of a heavy load. The world was full of color again, pushing back what he hadn’t realized was a persistent gray, like a settling of fog on his personal landscape.

It was thrilling. Exciting. New. It trembled like a day old bird in the palm of his hand. He didn’t want to do anything to mess it up. He liked his new surroundings. He’d found a small nugget of the peace he had long forgotten. And now he wanted it all.

He liked where he was at so much he was afraid to move, paralyzed by the fear he’d make a mistake and lose what ground he’d recovered. Where was he meant to place his next step? He couldn’t figure it out. He knew it had something to do with his marriage. Not the end of it, but the soft shallows that had populated it. He needed to go there. But he couldn’t seem to find a point of entry.

So he had reached out to Stevie. The guy had been his agent when Ethan had first come on the scene. Back then, Ethan had been billed as a military expert and it just so happened that Hollywood needed a few good men in that capacity. Ethan’s career took off. He made connections that grew in a sinuous pattern throughout the industry. It gave him Stevie, and in turn, Shae Matthews—
the
screenwriter of woman’s drama.

Ethan needed a woman’s point of view. A writer’s perspective, because he feared he had lost his due to his proximity to the subject matter.

“Hey, bro?”

Training made Ethan’s response to the sudden and cutuous, a dead calm. While his heart jumped in his chest, he turned slowly and regarded his youngest sister. He’d forgotten she was in the house.

“What is it, Eva?”

She’d shown up last night, claiming she needed a break from
every
thing. Yet she’d spent most of the past fourteen hours texting and checking e-mail from her smart phone.

“Why are you so stressed?”

His tone had been biting. The tension in his shoulders was unrelenting. He glanced at the clock again. In an hour, maybe two, he would be sitting down with Shae Matthews and telling her about his marriage, dissecting it, wondering aloud, with an audience, if perhaps marrying Tina had been the right thing for them. They would tackle infidelity and his role in the destruction of his marriage.

Tina had cheated on him. She’d begun another life while he was half a world away. And Ethan wanted that not to matter.

“I’m working.”

“No you’re not,” she challenged him. “When you’re working you have that helium thing going on. You’re so happy we have to pull on your
pant legs to get you back to earth.”

Ethan let out a long breath and regarded his sister with growing wariness. “Since when did you become an expert on me?”

“Duh,” she replied. “You’ve only been my brother for twenty-four years.”

“I was gone a lot of that time,” he pointed out.

“I know, but I idolized you before you left and you made up for it when you came back.”

He was trying to. A military man pretty much took one of two paths when he went off to war—he either clung to any and every shred of home and family, or he isolated himself in the hopes of surviving the constant barrage of violence and death. Ethan had chosen the latter.

“Okay, so I’m not working. I’m stuck,” he admitted.

“On what?”

He shrugged, but it was an uncomfortable movement. “I’m writing something. A screenplay, I think.”

She almost snickered and Ethan was beginning to understand Brian’s—Ryan’s—whatever the guy’s name was—problem with Eva.

“You’re writing?” Her eyebrows shot up—both of them.

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Must be all those letters from boot camp, and Iraq, and—”

“There was never anything good to say,” he cut her off.

“Any word would have been welcome on this side.”

Ethan let the dagger of guilt pierce his skin. He deserved it. Still, he said, “Dear Mom, we were shot at again by a roving band of insurgents…”

“You could have done better than that.”

“Apparently not.” He looked at the clock again. He felt a cold sweat at his hairline.

“Why do you keep staring at the clock?”

“Help is on its way.”

“Help?” She slid onto a bar stool and gazed at him with her chin in her hand. “Chad?”

“No. Shae. Shae Matthews. She’s a real screenwriter. She writes—”

“Are you kidding me? I know who she is. ‘
Personal Touch
,’  ‘
Send Her
’ and all that. Why is she helping you?”

He frowned and felt the skin fold between his eyebrows. “Because I’m a world famous, critically acclaimed director with—”

“Blah, blah, blah…Really—why?”

“We have the same agent. Or we did, back when I needed one.”

“You called in a favor?”

“It happens all the time, all over the world.”

Eva nodded but didn’t bother to hide her doubt. “You don’t like cashing-in. You’re a giver. You always have been.”

“Then it’s time I took a favor.” Or two. It was going to take time and expertise to get him where he wanted to be. He hoped Shae had patience. That she didn’t mind pitching a tent and staying a while.

“So why are you so nervous about it?”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You’re sweating.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“The air is pumping full blast.” She waved toward the vent over Ethan’s head. “And you need to change your shirt.”

He looked down and noticed the half-moons of sweat spreading under his armpits.

“Shit.” He lifted the shirt over his head and tossed it on the counter. He stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “You’re right, I am nervous.”

“
Why? Because she’s wildly talent? Incredibly sexy? Or because you don’t want to show off your stunning lack of talent when it comes to stringing words together?”

It was probably a mix of all three. Shae had talent in surplus. She had that all-American sexy going on. And he definitely didn’t want her to read what he had written and then cough through a series of excuses on her way out the door. More than any of that, he didn’t want to explore his feelings with her and if it hadn’t been so helpful—so exorcising—already, he wouldn’t even entertain the thought of such an excruciating exercise.

“I’ll take that as a yes on all counts.”

Eva sat back, folded her arms over her chest, and gazed at him. Her eyes were considering him and all that he’d already shared, and she suddenly looked a lot older than she’d been acting lately.

“What?”

“Shae Matthews writes deep, dark woman stuff.”

“I know.” He could already feel the skin peeling off his bones. If her movies were anything to go by, Shae Matthews knew women. She knew women when they were involved with men, and vice versa. She knew the human condition and its natural inclinations, all the ways people sabotaged a perfectly good thing, and for what little they were willing to cling to the unhealthy. She understood relationships better than Dr. Phil. Yeah, he was going to need some intensive first aid when they were done.