Ethan, Who Loved Carter (17 page)

Ethan snorted with laughter. With the promise made, he returned to working on their song. He was more of a perfectionist than Carter and ignored Carter’s opinion that it was perfect.

Three rewrites and a blow job later and Ethan went off to work.

Carter put their song into the top drawer of his desk. After a moment’s consideration, he pulled it out again and sat down on the couch with his guitar. He’d played it before with Ethan, but never alone. Bending over the guitar, he played through to the end. A few words escaped his lips, but he kept most of them to himself. The words were a secret between him and Ethan. Carter didn’t want to share them, not even with the empty room. When the song ended, he sat feeling like Ethan was there with him. The sensation stayed with him and kept him cheerful as he focused on his work.

He needed all the cheer he could get because Alice had given him a score to transpose that had been a headache since he’d started. He should have known to be suspicious when Alice left,
fled
, before Carter had his knife out to open the box.

“U
H
-
OH
!
I know that face!” Andy pointed at Ethan’s face.

“What?” Ethan touched it, trying to feel his expression.

“You and Carter finally did it!”

“Oh. Yeah!” Now Ethan didn’t have to guess his expression because his grin stretched wide.

“Well? Details man, come on.” Grabbing Ethan’s arm, Andy ushered him to the back.

“No.”

“What? Ethan. You always tell me everything.”

“I promised Carter I wouldn’t. He’s shy about his—” He stopped, uncertain if Carter even wanted him to say “penis” in reference to him. “Anyway, I promised him that I wouldn’t say everything we did.”

“Everything?” Andy’s eyes bugged. “Kinky.”

Ethan grinned even bigger. Just being with Carter had felt wonderful. If that was kinky, then Ethan wanted more. He wanted to do everything with Carter.

“Oh my God,” Andy said. “You’re killing me. Tell me if he’s flexible. Come on. You can tell me that at least?”

“Can’t tell you.” Ethan headed back to the front.

Andy shouted after him. “Oh come on! Throw a horny dog a bone here!”

“Andy!” Vera snapped a tea towel at him. “We have customers.”

Andy dodged it. “Sorry!”

Ethan picked up his towel and got to work cleaning tables. He was still grinning when Mike and Douglas came in, and even Douglas’s usual bad temper couldn’t ruin Ethan’s good mood.

A
ROUND
six o’clock, Carter heard tires crunching on gravel. Thinking it was too early for Nolan and Liz, he looked out the window and saw a police car pulling up to the Harts’ house. Without a second thought, he sprinted out the door. He was inside Ethan’s house and almost in the kitchen before an officer stopped him. Carter pulled up short, realizing too late that charging shoeless into a house with a police car out front was the stupidest thing a person could do. At least he’d been cold earlier and put his pants back on.

“Can we help you, sir?” the officer asked. He stood too far away for Carter to read his name on his uniform.

“Is everything all right?” Carter meant to say, except he lost the words and his hand flicked out and jumped away from him. The cops touched their guns.
Be still
, Carter told himself, but he couldn’t.

“Sir, I’m going to ask you to—”

“He’s fine.” Elliot’s voice snapped out. Carter looked up from his panic to see Elliot at the kitchen table, leaning on his elbows. The cops turned to him.

“You’re sure?”

“He’s got Tourette’s. He can’t help it. Let him in.” The cops stepped back. Carter moved to the table.

“Elliot? What’s going on? Are your parents okay?”

“Yeah. They’re fine.”

Carter didn’t want to ask the next question. But he had to. “Is it Ethan?”

“Yeah.” Elliot’s voice sounded empty in the tension of the room.

Carter stumbled into a chair. He stared at his hands. Something in the back of his mind niggled at him.
Breathe.

“It’s not like that,” Elliot said. “It’s… Ethan’s accident when he was eighteen.”

Carter gulped the glass of water that one of the cops put in his hand. “So, he’s fine right now?” He turned to the policemen. “You came about the old accident?”

“They came because it wasn’t an accident,” Elliot said. He had a glass too, also empty. “My parents lied to us.”

“So, what was it?” Carter asked. He thought it best to ask that before
why are they here
?

“Ethan was attacked by two sixteen-year-old boys. It was a hate crime,” one of the cops said after Elliot didn’t answer. Elliot tucked his head into his crossed arms on the table.

“Okay,” Carter said. “So, do you have a lead on them, or…?”

“They were arrested and convicted while Ethan was still in the hospital re-learning how to know when he needed to pee,” Elliot said. “And my parents decided Ethan wasn’t going to know about it. And neither was I.”

Carter attempted to stand. His legs disagreed. He turned in his seat to face the cops. “So, why are you here about it?”

“I worked the case,” one said. “Got close to Nolan and Liz. The men who attacked Ethan were released from prison a few months ago, and we wanted to let them know so they could take precautions.”

“Why are you only coming now?” One officer frowned at Carter’s anger; the other took it without reaction.

“We just found out,” the calm one said.

“They came by to talk to Mom and Dad,” Elliot said, “but when they weren’t here, I had them wait while I called. Mom told me over the phone and now Officers McAllister and Rowan are filling in the many, many blanks.” He smiled sluggishly, as if the water had made him drunk.

“Are these men dangerous?” Carter asked.

“We don’t believe so,” Rowan, the calm one, said.

“That’s good. So, Ethan doesn’t have anything to worry about?”

“We didn’t say that.”

“If they find him,” Elliot said, “and tell him what happened, or if he figures it out, do you know what it will do to him? How the fuck can anyone explain hate like that to Ethan? He doesn’t have a chance of understanding it. It will fuck him up worse than before.” He slammed his hand on the table. Carter jumped and checked the cops for evidence of trigger finger, but neither had moved.

“Mike and Douglas have been checking in with their parole officer every week,” McAllister said. “Everything seems fine.”

“What?” Carter turned to give McAllister his full attention. “What did you say?”

“I said everything seems fine. We’re going to give you pictures, so you can monitor your surroundings and let us know if you see either of these men around any place Ethan might be.”

“Ethan already knows them,” Carter said. He wanted to slam the table too. His instincts had been right about Mike and Douglas all along. He’d just labeled it wrong. It wasn’t jealousy. It was disgust. “They’re at the coffee shop every day. They give Ethan gifts.”

“We’re going to need those,” Rowan said as Elliot made a wretched noise like an animal in pain.

“Yeah.” Carter dragged himself up.

“Ethan’s at work now,” Elliot said. “They could be there.”

“We’ll send someone to pick him up.” Rowan moved off and spoke into the radio on his shoulder. Carter listened to the instructions as he climbed the stairs. In Ethan’s room, he picked up two bottles of nail polish. The eyeliner sat in Carter’s living room. He’d have to go get it. He walked back downstairs. McAllister accepted the bottles into a plastic bag.

“There’s one more,” Carter said. “It’s at my house. I can run over and get it.”

“You don’t have to rush,” Elliot said. “The officers are staying here until Mom and Dad get home.”

Carter shook his head. “I’ll be right back.” He ran out the back door, into his house, grabbed the bottle and sprinted back. McAllister held another bag out. Carter dropped it in and sat down at the table. Elliot hadn’t moved. The door behind him swung open as McAllister and Rowan went silently into the living room. Elliot sat staring at his hands. Carter didn’t speak either.

“I’ve always been angry at him,” Elliot said. He’d been silent so long that his voice took Carter by surprise. He chewed his lip as Elliot kept talking. “When I was six, Ethan was amazing. He was the best brother in the world. And then he was almost dead. People talked about him like he was dead. And then they talked about him like he was a miracle, and I didn’t understand any of it.” He traced out a scratch in the table and rubbed it over and over. Carter didn’t say anything.

“He came home, and he wasn’t the same. I used to sob because I thought he wasn’t Ethan. I didn’t believe people when they told me he was, but he didn’t look the same and he didn’t talk the same. I didn’t know him. He was angry all the time and he cried a lot. He had a nurse who was supposed to help him, and all I remember is Ethan yelling. Everything scared me and I wanted my brother back more than anything. When I got old enough to understand about the accident, it made me angry. What was he doing rollerblading after dark? I started to hate him for being so stupid.” He looked up. “I
hated
him for taking himself away from me. It was his fucking fault. And now… Now I’m finding out it was someone else, some assholes….” Tears streamed down his face and he struck the table again, bringing his palm down hard each time.

“Elliot.” Carter’s voice cracked as despair threatened to overwhelm him. “You were six.”

Elliot snapped his gaze up to stare at Carter. “I didn’t start hating him until I was twelve.”

“You don’t hate him. Think about how angry you get when you suspect someone is going to hurt him.”

“I hurt him enough myself.”

Carter waited as Elliot pushed back from the table. He paced, punched the air a few times and stopped, finally, letting his arms wrap around himself.

“He loves you,” Carter said. “No matter what.”

Elliot looked at him, his face a mask of pain. “I know. That’s the worst part.” Carter wanted to hold him, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t risk upsetting the fragile balance Elliot held between man and boy. Instead, he stood like a lump and watched as Elliot hugged himself and turned away.

“E
THAN
?”

Ethan turned to see Officer Johnson waving at him. “Hi!”

“You about done here?” Johnson asked. Johnson was shorter than Ethan and built like a tree stump. He drank café Americano, large, twice a day, and ate one cruller for breakfast and a pastrami on rye for lunch. He knew the names of every person who came into the café more than three times. Ethan had quizzed him once. Some people got annoyed when Ethan had “too many questions,” but Johnson didn’t. He answered all of them and when his partner came in with him, he introduced her to Ethan and called Ethan “the best reason to come here.”

“Five more minutes.” Vera had started pushing people out the door. She was almost to Mike and Douglas. Johnson’s partner was over talking to them. For once, Douglas was the one talking while Mike sat quietly.

“So, can I give you a ride home?” Johnson asked. “I’ll let you work the siren.”

“I’m not six,” Ethan said.

“So, you
don’t
want to work the siren?”

Ethan grinned. “No, I do.”

“Thought so.” Johnson opened the door and they went out together.

“What about Officer Patterson?”

“She’s got some talking to finish up. I’ll pick her up after I drop you at home.”

Ethan thought to ask why Officer Patterson was talking to Mike and Douglas, but then Johnson showed him how to flip the siren on. It sounded different from inside the car. Ethan flipped it on and off as many times as he wanted. He didn’t tell Johnson that he made it play his and Carter’s song. It sounded amazing.

When he got home, his parents’ car was in the driveway, and another police car. “What happened?” Ethan tried not to be frightened. “Is Elliot okay?”

“He’s fine,” Johnson said. “You come talk to me anytime, all right?”

“Yeah.” Ethan trudged into the house and hoped he wasn’t in trouble. Johnson had pulled away before Ethan realized he’d forgotten to thank him for the ride.

W
HEN
the doorbell rang at 9:00 p.m., Carter wasn’t surprised to find Ethan standing on his porch with his backpack. Carter had stayed with Elliot until Liz and Nolan arrived, but then they’d asked him to go home. He’d watched through his window as Ethan arrived in the police cruiser.

Ethan was barefoot, and his toes had been scrubbed of their nail polish—the same polish Mike had given him. “He was my friend,” Ethan said. Carter looked from his feet to his face. It was scrubbed too and Ethan was trying not to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Ethan. Come inside.” He moved out of the way to let Ethan in. He rubbed Ethan’s shoulder as he passed. Ethan tilted toward him and rested his head on Carter’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe it.”

Carter wrapped his arms around Ethan’s back. “Who would want to hurt you?” He shivered thinking of it, his body drew up tight, and he spluttered his lips a few times before his hand jerked away from Ethan and back again to clutch his shirt.