Healing Rain (13 page)

“I've been wanting to do this all day,” he whispered, putting his forehead against mine.

“Then why are you stopping?” I asked with a grin.

I couldn't see his face in the dark, but I could feel his smile as he pulled my face back up to his and kissed me again. The electric currents shot through my body as his hands slipped down from my face and landed on my waist. He pulled my body against his as his soft kiss became harder and more intense. I was so engrossed in the kiss that I didn't notice at first when his fingers gripped the bottom of my T-shirt and started to pull it up slowly. Suddenly, I felt his hands against my bare stomach. My racing heart began to jump up my throat as his hands began to slowly move up my body. A voice inside of me shouted,
Stop!

By reflex, I jumped back. “Ethan,” I said, but I didn't even know how to continue.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I got carried away,” he said. I didn't respond. I wasn't mad at him, but I was feeling a lot of things – confused, embarrassed, and a little mad at myself, for some reason.

Suddenly, the light came on. I looked up to see Ethan standing by the light switch with a sheepish look on his face. I then saw that we were in a bedroom; I guessed it was a guest room judging by the looks of it. It had a queen-sized bed with a white comforter and little red and white pillows. On the dresser sat a vase of fake red roses. I could tell it was not a room that someone actually
lived
in; everything sat neatly and seemingly untouched.

Ethan brought my thoughts back to him as he walked over and sat down on the perfect bed. He put his head down in his hands and didn't say a word. I let the silence go for a moment before I walked over and sat on the bed beside him, not touching him. “Ethan, I'm sorry,” I said.

His head jerked up to look at me. “
You're
sorry? For what?”

I shook my head. “I'm sorry I stopped you. It's just…”

He cut me off immediately. “Don't be sorry for that, Rain. It's too soon. I tried to go too far. I honestly didn't bring you in this room expecting something to happen, even though I'm sure that's what it looked like. Please don't be mad at me; I would never push you to do anything you didn't want to do. It's just that sometimes when I'm kissing you, I stop thinking clearly.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I told him as I moved over to sit closer to him. “I feel that way, too, trust me. It's just that…” I hesitated, wondering whether I should say the next sentence that was about to come out of my mouth. He was looking at me with such a sweet expression that I decided I had to tell him. “It's just that I'm a virgin.” There. I had said it. I couldn't take it back now.

He wrapped his arms around me in a hug. “Why are you so embarrassed to tell me that?”

I gave him a
look
. “Because. For one thing, I know that you're not. And that's okay. I'm just…I'm not Alexis, Ethan.”

He smirked. “I'm aware of that. Trust me. That's a good thing.”

“I'm serious, Ethan. I know that you and Alexis were…together. I'm just…not her.” When I heard myself stumbling over my words, I just stopped talking. I wasn't even sure what I was trying to say.

He pulled away from me and took my hands in his. “Yes, Alexis and I were together. We dated for seven months, Rain. I can't take that back.”

“What do you see in me?” I blurted out and immediately felt my face get warm. “Alexis and I are, like, complete opposites. I don't understand how you dated her and now you're interested in me.”

He sighed and shook his head. “It's complicated. I know Alexis can be a really awful person, but she isn't always like that. And she wasn't like that when we were dating, or at least not all the time. I saw a different side of her, and I still care about her as a person. But, there's a reason I broke up with her. We weren't good together.” With that, he moved closer to me again. “I can't believe you asked me what I see in you. You're smart and funny and gorgeous, and I love being around you. I can't be around you enough, if you can't tell. I'm already crazy about you, and I've only known you for a few weeks. No, you're not Alexis, and I wish you could stop comparing yourself to her. I like
you
. If I wanted to be with Alexis…” He suddenly stopped, but I finished the sentence for him.

“…then you could be. I know. Everyone knows – she makes it so obvious. I think that's why I am so intimidated by her.”

He sighed again. “I really wish you wouldn't be. In the entire seven months we were together, I never once felt the way I feel when I'm with you. I know it's really soon – we haven't even had our first official date yet – but I feel like this could really become something.”

I smiled at him. “I feel the same way.”

He hugged me again, even tighter this time. “And I admire the fact that you're still a virgin. I will not rush you or put pressure on you. I promise you that. It's just one more thing I have found that I like about you.” He pulled my face up to look at him as he gave me a teasing smile. “So far, I'm having a hard time finding something about you that I
don't
like. You seem pretty perfect.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ha! I'm far from perfect,” I told him.
If you only knew how
not-perfect I actually am
, I thought as my heart suddenly filled with sadness. It was at that moment that I realized how little he actually
did
know about me.

 

 

Ethan took my hand as we walked out of the bedroom. As soon as we turned back into the hallway, we ran right into Alexis and Melissa.

“Oh, sorry,” Melissa said, “we were just going to the bathroom.”

“It's okay,” Ethan said as he pulled me closer to him.

At that moment, both girls looked into the bedroom we had just come out of. Melissa eyed us suspiciously. “What were you guys doing back here?”

Ethan and I exchanged glances. “Nothing,” I said quickly, feeling my face get hot as I realized what Alexis and Melissa must have been thinking. I knew how it
looked
.

Melissa just laughed. “Uh-huh. Nothing. I see that.” She was clearly just giving us a hard time. I was sure she didn't really care what we were doing in there, but it was obvious that Alexis did. She was just looking at Ethan with a devastated expression. Even though it irritated me, once again I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. I was sure I would be feeling the same way if I saw Ethan coming out of some random bedroom with a girl he barely knew after he had broken up with me. I shuddered at the thought.

I pulled Ethan's hand to get away from the uncomfortable scene. We walked back into the party and sat down with Anna, Scott and Brooke for a while, and for the rest of the night, I tried to push the strange feelings I was having aside. Of course Ethan didn't know much about me, but it was going to have to stay that way. I couldn't let him know what had happened. There was no way he could relate to the problems I had gone through in the last few months. Obviously, his family had no problems with money, judging by the monstrous house I had dropped him at the first time we kissed. And even though our money problems had nothing to do with me, I still hated the thought of my new friends finding out about them. The last thing I wanted was judgment or worse, sympathy. And besides the money issues, there was also the whole overdose issue. I could
never
let him find out about that. It made my stomach hurt to think of Ethan viewing me with pity. This stuff had to be kept to myself – or, between me and Dr. Hope, anyway. Which brought me to another secret he couldn't know about…the fact that I was required to see a therapist twice a week for an undetermined amount of time. Boy, did I have issues.

I didn't really have a curfew, and Ethan knew that – Mom would be sound asleep when I walked in the door. Even before my dad passed away, I never really had a curfew. I had always been pretty open with my mom, which made her trust my judgment and decisions. She always told me that if I betrayed her trust or took advantage of her loose rules, she would have to set some boundaries, but so far that hadn't been necessary. It was actually pretty convenient, not having a curfew, but now I was ready to go home and I didn't really have an excuse to leave. After what seemed like an eternity, Ethan turned to me and said, “You ready to go home? We have football practice in the morning and I probably need to get some sleep.”

“Sure. I'll see you guys later,” I told the rest of the group as I got up with relief.

“Bye Rain. Bye Ethan,” they chorused as we waved and left the party. I didn't even look to see where Alexis was. I didn't know if I could face her again for a while.

On the way home, I couldn't get my mind off Alexis' face when she saw us come out of the bedroom. I decided there was more information I needed to know about Alexis and Ethan's relationship. “Ethan, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he said, smiling and taking my hand.

“Okay. I promise this will be the last time I ever mention you and Alexis again. I just have to know: why did you guys break up? I mean, I know you said it was because you wanted to be single and all that, but what exactly triggered that? What made you decide it was over?”

He sighed. “I'm gonna tell you the truth, but you may not like me for it.”

“I don't care. It won't make me not like you. I need to know,” I assured him.

“Fine.” He sighed again, and paused for a moment before he began. “I knew Alexis through our group of friends, and so obviously, we were around each other a lot. I thought she was pretty, but I had never really been interested in her or anything like that. Well, it started one night at a party. We had just beaten Southwestern, and I felt like celebrating. I drank too much, and so did she. One thing led to another, and we…sort of hooked up that night.”

I sucked in my breath. I had asked for the truth, but it still stung to hear it.

“Anyway,” he continued, “it went on like that for a while. We weren't really dating or anything; we would just hang out at parties. So, after about a month of things going that way, she finally confronted me with the whole relationship talk. I knew I cared about her and the whole physical part was…” he glanced at me, and I noticed he was turning red, “…well, you know. So, we decided to try the whole relationship thing. And it worked just fine for a while. We were comfortable with each other, and it was just kind of convenient that we hung out with the same people and did the same things. So, I just went with it for a while.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. So, what happened to break you guys up?”

He shook his head. “One night, after we had…been together, she said ‘I love you.' We had never said that in the entire seven months. I was completely caught off guard, because I had never even thought about saying that to her. Right then I realized that if in seven months I had never thought of saying that to her, obviously something was not right. I knew I didn't love her – not like that. So, I broke up with her.”

My mouth dropped. “She said ‘I love you' and you dumped her?”

He winced. “I told you you wouldn't like me for it. It was an awful thing to do, I know. Trust me. But it was like, I just felt like I had to do it right then and get it over with. Rip off the bandage, ya know? There was no point in letting it go further, when obviously her feelings for me were a lot different than my feelings for her. I feel terrible that I hurt her, but what could I do?”

“And so you told her it was because you wanted to be single for your senior year?”

He sucked in a breath and held it for a moment before he exhaled deeply. “Yeah, that's kind of the excuse I used. And like I told you, I thought that
was
part of the problem at the time. But now I realize that the problem was not that I didn't want to be with
anybody
, it was just that I hadn't met someone that I
did
want to be with.”

I sat in shock for a few minutes, letting myself absorb it all. So, he had basically only dated her because it was “convenient,” as he said, because they were together all the time anyway and she would sleep with him.
Ethan Collins might not be as perfect as I thought he was
, I thought.

All too soon, he was pulling into my apartment complex. He parked and turned off the SUV, turning to look at me. “Rain?”

“Yeah?”

“You haven't said anything in five whole minutes. Please say something. I wanted you to know the truth, even though I'm not proud of it.”

I finally looked at him. “Well, that's all in the past, right?”

He breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Yes. And like I told you earlier, my feelings for you are already more than I ever experienced for Alexis. In fact, I have never felt this way about
anyone
. Honestly. I've made mistakes, but I promise I would never do anything to hurt you. I couldn't.”

I smiled at him. How could I judge him for his past? I definitely wouldn't want him to do that to me. “It's fine, Ethan. Really. I'm glad you told me the truth.”

“I don't want to lie to you, Rain. I really like the way things are going between us right now, and the last thing I would want is to start off by being dishonest with you. I could have lied and blamed it on Alexis and come out looking like the innocent one, but I wanted you to know the truth. I did a bad thing to her, but I promise I would never do anything like that to you.”

I laughed. “Ethan, stop explaining yourself. Seriously. I said it was fine, and I meant it. I'm just glad you were honest with me.” To prove to him that I meant it, I leaned forward and kissed him as passionately as I could. He kissed me back, taking my face in his hands as he always did. His kiss seemed even more urgent than usual.

After what must have been a few minutes, I pulled away. “I better go inside. You have to get up early.”

He nodded. “Okay. We're still on for our date tomorrow night, right?”

I smiled. “Of course. What time are you coming to pick me up?”

“How about six-thirty?” he asked as he squeezed my hand.

“That sounds perfect,” I said as I got out of the car. “It's a date.” I leaned back in to give him one last quick kiss. “See you tomorrow,” I said as I shut the door behind me.

He waved as I walked into my apartment building, and then I heard him drive away. I walked up the stairs slowly, putting my key into the lock and pushing the door open as quietly as I could so that I wouldn't disturb Mom and Tyler. I quickly washed my face and brushed my teeth and went to my room to get into my pajamas. As I put on my orange ribbed tank top and tie-dyed boxer shorts, my favorite set of PJs, I thought about the events of the night. Alexis' face was still in my mind as I crawled into bed.

Even though I felt extremely sorry for her now that I knew the details of her and Ethan's breakup, I was bothered by something else. I didn't care that my perfect image of Ethan was somewhat tainted – it didn't change my feelings for him. I didn't approve of the way he ended things with Alexis and how he strung her along for all that time, but I knew that really wasn't what was making the strange knot in the bottom of my stomach.

As I turned on my side, I suddenly realized what was wrong. I thought back to Ethan's words about being honest with each other, and realized I was not exactly being honest with him. I hadn't lied to him about anything, but it felt like I was technically lying by omission. He didn't know the truth about my life or my background. He told me that he had never felt this way about another girl, but would that change if he knew the truth? What if we dated for a month or even a year, and then he somehow found out the truth? Would that change his feelings? Was I stringing him along in some way by not letting him know the real me?

All these questions swirled through my head as I tried to fall asleep. On one hand, he did know the real me – the me that wanted to be a cheerleader and hang out with the football team, just as I had done my whole life. I knew now that that really was
me
and not just something I did because my friends did it. I loved and missed the feeling I got when I was cheering. I liked this new group of friends, and I wanted to be part of them. But, I was so much more than that. Wasn't I? I used to be so confident in who I was. Who was I now? That side did not mesh with the part of me that Ethan actually knew.

It seemed like the only option I had was to hide my doubts and desires to find more of myself so that I could be with Ethan and my new friends. But somewhere, deep down, I could feel the question forming inside me – did I want to hide that part of me?