Ethan, Who Loved Carter (8 page)

“H
AVE
you shown him your penis?” Andy asked. They were supposed to be doing inventory, but instead they were talking about Carter.

Ethan shifted miserably on the wooden crate where he’d plopped down. “Mom says I shouldn’t do that anymore.” She’d sat him down a few nights ago and given him
another
serious talk about “his behavior and his penis” and how he needed to keep it in his pants or he could get in trouble with the police. Elliot had probably told on him because he and Ethan had had another fight about it. Ethan didn’t want to get in trouble with the police, so he was keeping his penis in his pants from now on. Then Mom said that if he was in a private place with someone he was dating, he could take it out, so Ethan felt better because once he and Carter started dating, he wanted to show it to Carter and have Carter touch it, and Ethan wanted to touch Carter’s too.

“Worked on me,” Andy said. “Works on a lot of guys.”

“Carter is different.” Ethan rested his head on Andy’s shoulder. He smelled like coffee, same as Ethan, though Ethan rarely noticed it on himself anymore.

“Why don’t you just talk to him?” Vera asked. She was tending the front, but since there were no customers waiting, she leaned against the doorjamb so she was half in front and half in back of the shop. Pepper lay against the exit door. She’d batted her toy mouse out of reach and given up on it. Andy tried to lure her over with a string he picked up from the floor, but she ignored him.

“Tried. He only wants to be friends. I have to make him change his mind.” Ethan scuffed his heels against the floor as he attempted to think. What could he give Carter that would be so special Carter would have to see how much Ethan cared about him?

The bell signaling someone had entered jingled. “Ah, music to my ears,” Vera said. She moved toward the counter.

“That’s it!” Ethan said.

“You’re going to give him coffee?”

“No. I’m going to write him a song.” He’d never had a more perfect idea. He took his apron off and headed for the back door.

“You’re still on the clock, you know,” Vera said.

“Oh.” Grinning sheepishly, Ethan turned back around. By the end of the shift, he had decided on the melody. He couldn’t wait to get home and start writing. He hummed in Vera’s car as she drove him.

“Do you think he’ll like it?” He hummed louder.

Vera grinned. “He’ll love it. If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot who doesn’t deserve you.”

“I like him a lot,” Ethan said.

“I know you do, sweetie.”

“He’s really nice.”

“I know.”

“And smart.”

“Okay.” She turned to watch the road.

“And cute,” Ethan said, needing to get the last thing out.

Vera turned to him again. “Well then, go get him, Tiger.” She pulled into Ethan’s driveway.

“Thanks!” Ethan bounded out of the car. Remembering at the last second to hold the railing going up the steps to the porch, he burst into the house and went straight to the basement where Dad kept his music books. Most of them were falling apart. They were all thirty years old. Ethan vaguely remembered his dad playing guitar, but the memory was so hazy he wondered if he’d imagined it. He searched the pile for the book that told how to write a song.

“What are you doing?” Ethan looked up to see Elliot sitting on the steps. He had a black eye.

“What happened to your eye?” Ethan asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“El—”

“I’m going to get in trouble for it later, so I don’t want to talk about it now, okay?”

“Fine.” Ethan huffed his response. He didn’t know why Elliot had to be so difficult. He let it pass, though. “I’m looking for Dad’s music book, the one that tells you how to write a song.”

Elliot came closer. “Are you writing a song?”

Ethan nodded, his attention on the books. “For Carter. So he’ll like me.”

“You shouldn’t have to write a song for someone to like you.” Elliot sounded angry.

Ethan bit down on his own tense reaction. He didn’t want to fight. He had to remember that Elliot was a teenager, and he was working his way toward being an adult, like Mom said. “Can you help me find it or not?”

Elliot looked like he’d say no. He got up. “It’s in my room. Come on.”

“You were using it?” Ethan followed him upstairs.

“I needed it for band.”

In Elliot’s room, Ethan sat on Elliot’s bed while Elliot got the book off his desk. He sat down beside Ethan. “You wrote music before, right?” He didn’t emphasize capital B, so Ethan couldn’t tell if he meant Ethan’s Before or a regular before that meant anytime before he and Ethan sat down.

“Yeah, I did it Before,” Ethan said. He still had some of his old work. It wasn’t anything complicated, just some things he’d done when he was a kid, but he couldn’t remember how to put the tune in his head on paper anymore.

“Well, hopefully it will come back to you if we practice.”

“You’ll help me?” Ethan asked.

“Sure.” He grunted as Ethan gave him a full-barreled hug.

“Thank you,” Ethan said. Elliot coughed when Ethan released him. He opened a notebook. Ethan opened the music book. It was a book for beginners that showed the staff and its parts, like the treble clef and bass and the names of the notes and where they appeared on the staff.

“Do we need to go over the notes?” Elliot asked. Without waiting for Ethan to reply, he pointed at the lowest note and, going from the bottom up sang “do re mi.” Elliot had a nice voice. It had cracked when he was fourteen, and while his voice wasn’t as deep as Dad’s, it was in a register between Dad’s and Ethan’s.

“Do you want to hear my song?” Ethan asked.

“Sure.”

Ethan hummed for him. Elliot closed his eyes as he listened. When Ethan stopped, he opened them. “Okay. I guess let’s draw a staff and go from there.”

They worked until Mom called them for dinner. They had the first line of notes down, which Elliot had written as Ethan hummed over and over until Elliot was satisfied he had it right. Elliot got lectured for his black eye, which it turned out he got because Elliot had punched his best friend Chad who had started dating the girl from the beach, and someone—Ethan wasn’t sure who—had called Ethan a retard, and Elliot shouted at Dad and left the table and then wouldn’t come out of his room.

Ethan went up after he helped Mom with the dishes. “Can we work on my song?” he asked the closed door. Elliot opened it. They sat, same as before. Ethan picked up the notebook and pencil.

“No one can insult you but me,” Elliot said. “Remember that, okay?” He sat on the bed. He hadn’t touched the music book. He was only staring at Ethan.

Ethan concentrated on coloring in one of the quarter notes that Elliot hadn’t filled in all the way. “What if I don’t want you to?” He glanced up. Elliot’s face went tight.

“Can’t always help it.” He tugged Ethan’s paper away and looked at it instead of at Ethan. “You’re doing good. Want to try doing the next line yourself? I’ll help you with where the notes go.” He held the notebook out for Ethan to take.

Ethan stared at it. It felt like Elliot was trying to say something else, but Ethan never understood him. He took the notebook. “Okay.”

When he went to bed, they had the song almost done. He lay awake, humming it. It wasn’t until he rolled over and saw the light on at Carter’s house that he remembered he’d forgotten to go over in the afternoon. Reaching for the light switch, he turned the lights on and off, and then did it a second time. He didn’t know if Carter would recognize he was trying to say goodnight to him. After a few seconds, Carter’s bedroom light flickered off and on. Ethan settled back in bed and hummed himself to sleep. Carter would love his song. Ethan couldn’t wait to show him.

W
HEN
Ethan didn’t turn up on his doorstep the day before, Carter had figured Ethan had other plans, like working late or going out with his other friends. After it was clear Ethan wasn’t coming, he’d spent the evening catching up on work. Today was back to normal, with Ethan arriving at his usual time in the late afternoon. Carter swung the door open for him, ready with a smile to greet him. However, as he looked at Ethan’s uncertain expression, he wondered if something had happened. “Ethan? Are you all right?”

Ethan, still standing on the stoop, thrust his hand forward. He had a piece of paper rolled in his fist. “Here.”

“Um. Thank you?” Carter unfurled the paper. A hand-drawn staff appeared, and a mishmash of notes; the strength and angle of their lines suggested two different writers. Carter glanced from the paper up to Ethan, who now wore a hesitant grin. “Did you do this for me?” Reaching forward, Carter squeezed Ethan’s hand.

“Do you like it?” Ethan leaned forward, eager.

“I love it. No one ever wrote a song for me. Come on. Let’s look at it together.” Ethan hummed snippets of the song as Carter pulled him over to the couch. Carter got comfortable and balanced the paper on his lap with Ethan sitting close. “Is this why you didn’t come over yesterday?”

Ethan beamed. “Is it good?” He leaned over Carter’s shoulder. “Elliot helped me learn how to write the notes. We used one of Dad’s books.”

“So Elliot
is
useful for something.” Carter laughed and dodged Ethan’s fake punch. “Let’s find out how it sounds on the guitar.” Carter set the paper on the table and picked up his guitar, which was already on the couch. He strummed the simple notes slowly and then picked up the tempo. “How fast do you want it?”

“Like this.” Ethan tapped his leg to demonstrate a midtempo speed. Carter replicated it on the guitar.

“It sounds good,” he said. “Really good.”

“Maybe I can do more music?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, definitely! Do you want me to help you with the lyrics?”

“Like write a song together?”

“Sure.”

Ethan hesitated.

“What’s wrong?”

Ethan pushed the paper toward Carter. “I wrote this for you. If we write it together, then it won’t be for you anymore.”

Carter ran his fingers over the paper. The first line was written in a tight, neat hand. Elliot’s, he guessed. He recognized Ethan’s writing in the rest—still neat, but larger, and darker around the edges from adding pressure to the paper in his concentration to make the notes.
Ethan had written a song for him
. “What if we write a new one together?”

“Okay!”

Carter laughed when Ethan hugged him. He put the guitar down to hug Ethan back.

Ethan pulled away to look at Carter with a serious expression. “I don’t want words on this one. It’s an instrumental. Like you; you’re all music.”

Ethan’s sincerity almost overwhelmed him. Carter scooted backward, needing the space to compose himself. “I, uh, excuse me for a second, okay?” Without waiting for Ethan to respond, Carter headed for the bathroom. Turning the faucet on, he bent over the sink to splash water on his face. He had certain tics, all involving his facial muscles, that were so habitual and so beyond his control that he didn’t notice them unless someone pointed them out, usually by asking what was wrong with him, or he’d remember he did them if he thought someone was staring. He hated those tics more than the big obvious ones, the shooting his arm out or kicking his foot, or grabbing people. Those tics he could turn into something resembling normal movement, but he couldn’t normalize a squint, a grimace, or sticking his tongue out.

Ethan seemed to revel in Carter’s most hated tics. He’d
set them to music
. The light bounce of notes, starts and stops, of Ethan’s song, it was the music of Carter’s Tourette’s, and Ethan had made it beautiful. He’d made Carter feel beautiful for having them. Staring at himself in the mirror, he searched for a trace of his tics, but they never showed when he looked for them. Not ready to go back out, he sat down on the closed toilet. He was falling for Ethan. No, not falling.
Fallen
. Fell. Past tense. He’d
landed
.
He’d known for a while, but now,
this
, just like in the songs he transposed, Carter was head over heels.

So what should he do about it? Maybe Ethan wouldn’t hurt him; but what if he hurt Ethan? Hiding his face behind his hands, Carter sat for a moment taking deep breaths.

When he returned to the living room, Ethan beamed as if Carter’s return was the best thing to ever happen. Ethan waved his phone, showing he’d received a text message.

“You’re invited for dinner tonight,” Ethan said. “Can you come? We’re having macaroni.”

“Yeah, I’ll come.” It would be his first time out of the house since Elliot and the girl had insulted him at the beach. This was what Ethan’s song had done for him.

“Good,” Ethan said.

Carter sat down next to Ethan, tense now that he’d accepted that his feelings for Ethan went beyond friendship. He handed Ethan a piece of paper with a music staff already printed on it and a pencil, careful to keep his head down in case Ethan saw something in his eyes.

“Carter?” Ethan didn’t accept the pencil, and he sounded confused. Carter looked up. Ethan’s expression matched his tone. “Are you angry at me?”

Carter let the pencil drop. It bounced off their legs and fell onto the couch. “No. Why would you think that?”

“You’re not looking at me. You liked the song right?”

“I loved it.” Carter poured the passion he couldn’t show for Ethan into his statement about the song.

Ethan relaxed. “Good. I was worried.”

Touching Ethan’s hand, Carter said, “Don’t be worried. About anything, okay?”

“Okay.” Ethan’s smile was so open that Carter had to look away again, but he didn’t want to upset Ethan, so he hugged him instead and hid his face against Ethan’s shoulder. Embracing on the couch was awkward. They had to twist their torsos while their legs stayed forward. Ethan grunted. Carter flinched when Ethan accidentally elbowed him, but soon they slotted into place against each other. Carter clung on, maybe too long, but Ethan held him tight. They both laughed when they pulled away. Ethan looked happy. Carter’s mood had lifted too. He picked up the paper again.

“So, what should our song be about?”